Chapter 22 Benji
The day after the wedding is the day everything stops. Not all at once. It drains out slowly until what’s left is quiet and nothing to fill it with.
I’ve been running on emergencies since the night of the shooting. The hospital, the visits, the wedding, the constant consuming business of holding a hundred things in the air at once. But there’s still work left to do before it’s really over.
I spend the morning at the beach house with Dante doing breakdown. The bamboo arch gets disassembled, the rental chairs folded, the LED candles boxed, the linens sent to the laundry service.
Every trace of the wedding gets packed and removed until the beach house looks like it did before I ever walked into it.
Cold and empty, as if a hundred and twelve people didn’t stand on that terrace last night and watch two people promise to stay together forever.
I sit on the terrace steps when we’re done.
Dante sits beside me. The water is flat and blue and the spot where the arch stood is just concrete now.
“Beautiful wedding,” Dante says, breaking the silence.
“Thanks to you,” I say, and I mean it. “It would’ve been a disaster otherwise. Callie’s mother even sent a text this morning. She said it was the most beautiful night of her daughter’s life and she’s recommending me to everyone she knows.”
“Where does she know people? Here?”
“Yeah, apparently. I guess word travels.”
By four o’clock the wedding is done. Fully, officially done. Every vendor paid, every rental accounted for. Callie and her husband are on a plane to Portugal. The fee is in my bank account and I should feel triumphant, or at least relieved. Instead, I’m drained.
Mickey’s texts aren’t helping. Whereas I used to smile every time my phone lit up, now the notifications make me anxious.
Mickey: Tough session this morning. Worked on transfers and upper body. Arms are shot. How’s the cleanup going?
The text is a perfectly fine text, but I can’t ignore that it’s shorter than the ones he sent from Tallahassee.
We texted in paragraphs. We sent photos and running jokes and rants that went on for screens.
These Jacksonville texts are purely factual.
He’s tired and he’s in a new place, pushing his body to its absolute limit, so of course the messages have shrunk. He’s not pulling away; he’s exhausted.
Benji: Cleanup is done. Wedding is officially over. I’m a free man for the first time in weeks and I don’t know what to do with myself.
Mickey: Congratulations. You earned it. Eat. Rest.
Tonight is Dante’s last night in the Panhandle before he flies out in the morning, and I can’t spend it moping over a text message.
“What do you want to do for dinner?” I ask him. “Seafood? Lots of alcohol?”
“Mickey told me I should drive 30A to take a peek at the real estate,” he says. “Do we have time for that?”
“We’ve got all night,” I say, standing up and dusting off my pants. “Let’s go. I’m sure we can find somewhere to eat along the way.”
I take him the full stretch of 30A, starting at Rosemary Beach.
Dante spends the whole drive switching between looking at the coastline and searching Zillow.
We drive through Seagrove, quieter and more residential.
Then Seaside, the pastel-colored town that looks like it was designed by someone who loves ice cream.
I point out the shop where I was supposed to pick up the driftwood from until it closed for inventory and gave me a panic attack.
Dante makes me slow down to a crawl so he can read the menus on the food trucks parked beside the road.
Then on to Grayton Beach, with a hippier vibe than the planned communities.
We pick up shrimp po’boys there and eat outside at a table under umbrellas.
Dante eats with one hand while scrolling through property listings with the other, with the intensity of someone who has found an exciting, new business opportunity.
“Mickey was right about this area,” he says, his eyes never leaving the screen. “There’s massive opportunity here. It’s probably a ghost town in the winter since it’s so seasonal, which might actually work in our favor.”
“Are you seriously scouting real estate during our goodbye lunch?” I ask.
“I’m always scouting. It’s my job.” He finally puts the phone face-down and looks at me. “When are you coming home, Benji?”
“Soon. I don’t know the exact date yet.”
“Benji.” He reaches across the table and squeezes my hand once. “The wedding is over. Your rental lease is up in two days, and your clients in Miami are expecting you, and your condo is sitting empty. Your entire life is in Miami.”
“I know where my life is, Dante.”
“Do you? Because as of four o’clock today, you have no reason to be in this part of the state anymore. None. Mickey is four hours away in Jacksonville now. Has he invited you to come visit him?”
“He hasn’t mentioned it. He texts me about his physical therapy. He hasn’t said ‘come see me,’ and he hasn’t asked when I’m leaving here.”
“That’s because Mickey would rather chew his own arm off than be a burden to anyone,” Dante says.
“How could you possibly know that? You met him for forty-five minutes.”
“That was plenty of time. He’s a cop, Benji. He’s used to being the one doing the helping. There is no world where he asks you to drive across the state to watch him struggle. He won’t do it, so I hope you aren’t sitting around waiting for a formal invitation.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“You don’t wait for a green light because Mickey is never going to give you one,” Dante says. “You just go and see what happens.”
I look down at my sandwich, finishing the last few bites without answering.
“But,” Dante adds, his voice dropping into something gentler — less lecture, more plan. “You should come home first. Drive straight back to Miami. Read your mail, check on your business, and sleep in your own bed. Be a person for a few days. And then drive up to Jacksonville to see Mickey.”
“And if he doesn’t want me there?”
“Benji.” Dante puts his phone away entirely. “I saw how he looks at you. His eyes track every move you make. He isn’t going to turn you away. Besides, going to Miami first gives you a little time to see if he’ll make the first move.”
The next morning, I drive Dante to the airport. He stands at the curb with his bag looking exactly as out of place as he did when he arrived, immaculate against a busy airport crowded with sunburned tourists flying back home.
He pulls me into a hug, full and tight, his chin on top of my head, and I press my face into his shoulder.
“Thank you,” I say into his shirt. “For coming. For helping me with the pots from hell. For everything.”
“Stop it,” he says. “You’re going to make me teary-eyed at a ratty regional airport and I refuse to do that. There are families watching.” He holds me at arm’s length, his hands on my shoulders. His eyes steady and warm. “Come home and rest first. We’ll figure everything out.”
“Call me when you get home,” I tell him. “I’ll be home soon.”
“Hope so,” he says.
He picks up his bag and walks through the automatic doors without looking back. I watch him disappear into the building and then I’m standing at the curb of the Panama City airport alone.
The next morning, I pack the car. Three weeks in the Panhandle and everything I own fits in two bags and a garment carrier.
I stand in the bathroom one last time and look in the mirror.
The person looking back is thinner than the person who arrived three weeks ago.
The dark circles are fading. The bruise on my cheek is gone. My hair needs cutting.
But first I have one more stop.
I drive to Big Tex’s Roadhouse. It’s ten in the morning and the bar doesn’t open until later but there are trucks in the lot. The hickory from the smoker hits me before I’m out of the car.
I walk to the side door propped open with a cinder block.
The kitchen smells like Tex’s strong coffee and the floor is still wet where Stormy mopped it.
Tex is standing at the prep counter with a mug in one hand, wearing jeans and a faded Big Tex’s T-shirt.
He sees me in the doorway and his face softens in a way I wasn’t expecting.
“Benji,” he says.
“Tex.”
He picks up a second mug and pours without asking then offers it to me. I take the coffee. It’s the best coffee I’ve had in three weeks and the competition includes Dante’s Cuban.
“I was on my way out of town,” I say. “I wanted to come by before I left.”
“I’m glad you did. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.
” He leans against the counter and crosses his arms. “Benji, I need to say this and I need you to hear it. What happened in this bar that night shouldn’t have happened.
Not to Mickey and not to you. Four men jumped you in my hallway.
In my bar. A bar that I own with my partner.
Four rednecks followed a gay man into a hallway and beat him and one of them was carrying a gun.
I have signs on every wall. No weapons. That’s always been the rule here.
And somebody walked through my door with a gun in his jacket and that gun went off.
My best friend is in a rehab facility in Jacksonville because I didn’t catch it. ”
He says it all straight up and I know he means every word.
“That’s on me,” Tex says. “Not on you. You came into my bar and you had a drink. You were minding your business and those men targeted you because of who you are.”
“Tex, I...”