Chapter 26 Benji
I wake up at five-thirty in the Holiday Inn with the memory of Mickey’s hand on my hip. The hotel room is fine. The bed is clean, the pool is, in fact, questionable, and the coffee maker on the counter uses pods that produce a liquid I refuse to dignify with the word “coffee”.
I order a large cold brew for myself, a scouting mission to ensure the local brew is worthy of Mickey. While I wait in the drive-thru, I take a photo of the cup sweating in my cup holder. I text it to him.
I take the coffee back to the hotel and sit on the bed.
And then, because I can’t leave well enough alone, I get an idea.
I prop my phone against the lamp beside the bed.
I pull my shirt off. I lean back against the headboard and let the white hotel sheets sit low on my hips, just below my navel, and I take the photo.
My hair is wrecked from sleep, no eyeliner, no chain, bare shoulders and a grin that has no business existing at six in the morning.
The sheets are positioned exactly where I want them.
Low enough to be suggestive and high enough to maintain the thinnest line of deniability.
I send it.
Benji: Don’t worry. I put on a cap and went through the drive-thru. Nobody was subjected to this mess.
His response comes in forty seconds.
Mickey: You’re sending me shirtless photos this early? After last night. You know exactly what you’re doing.
Benji: No idea what you’re talking about. This is simply a coffee review with visual context. The shirtlessness is incidental. The lighting happened to be good. The sheets just happened to fall that way. Total coincidence.
Mickey: You staged the sheets.
Benji: I STAGED NOTHING. The sheets fell naturally. Gravity did that.
Mickey: Liar
Benji: Fine. Caught me. I staged the sheets. While I thought about your hand on my waist while I did it. And your chest muscles. Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear?
Mickey: Yeah. Those are the words I wanted to hear.
Benji: I’ll be there at noon.
Mickey: Better be. Don’t make me chase you again.
Benji: Stop threatening me with a good time.
I put the phone down and lie on the hotel bed grinning like an idiot. He called me out on the sheets. I admitted it. He liked it. The exchange has the rhythm of two people who are figuring out the language between them, and I save the whole thread to read it again tonight.
There’s a plant nursery six minutes from here. I find it on Google Maps while eating a granola bar and by nine-thirty I’m standing in the tropical section talking to a woman named Dolores about fiddle-leaf figs.
“They’re dramatic about light,” she says. “Too much direct sun and they burn. Not enough and they sulk.”
“Great,” I say. “They’re basically me in plant form. We’ll get along fine.”
Dolores looks at me over her glasses and decides she likes me.
She picks out the best one, a two-footer with thick glossy leaves and a healthy root system.
She wraps the pot in burlap and helps me carry it to the car.
The plant takes the passenger seat. I buckle the seatbelt around the pot because I’m a responsible plant parent.
I name him George.
The Italian place for lunch is called Nonna’s and I find it by ignoring the apps and driving until I see a small sign with a full parking lot at eleven-thirty on a weekday.
Nonna’s has seven cars and a woman at the counter who calls the meat sauce “gravy” and says it in a way that makes arguing with her inadvisable.
I order rigatoni, penne with mushroom cream, garlic bread, and a salad that starts leaking through the container before I reach the car.
I knock on his door at noon carrying a fiddle-leaf fig, a tray of coffees, and a paper bag that smells like garlic and warm bread.
“Get in here,” he says.
“I’ve missed hearing you say those words. Where do you want George?”
“Who is George?”
“This big fellow. I told you this room needs a plant. George will transform this space. Within a week it’s going to feel like an actual human being lives here.”
I spend two full minutes positioning George in the corner, turning the pot so the best leaves face the room. Mickey watches from his wheelchair with a dubious expression. Then I unpack lunch on the tray table. The rigatoni is extraordinary, with slow-simmered sauce that coats the pasta perfectly.
Mickey eats focused and quiet when the food is good, with the slight nod he gives on the first bite. I always wait for that nod before I take mine.
The meal resets whatever tension is still humming between us from last night by replacing everything complicated with butter and carbs. When we finish, I put my fork down and sit up straighter.
“Okay,” I say. “I need to say something about yesterday and I need you to hear all of it before you respond.”
He turns to give me his full attention.
“I’m not going to apologize for being attracted to you.
Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. My body responded to your body and that response was honest. But I also know what the injury means for yours, Mickey.
And I’m not going to show up every day acting like your rehab room is a strip club with medical equipment here for my enjoyment.
The cream ritual stays because that’s ours and I’m not giving it up.
But outside of that, I’m going to try to sit in this chair like a gentleman.
I will not pounce. I will not climb you.
No matter how good your chest looks in a T-shirt.
” I glance at him. “And it looks very good today. I’ve been trying not to mention that for ten minutes. ”
He grins at me. “Strip club?” he says. “Is that how you see me now?”
“That’s what you took from everything I just said? I’m trying to be serious, Mickey.”
“I heard every word.” He picks up his fork and takes a bite. “And I want to talk about it. For real. But not yet. Not over pasta. When the time is right, I’ll have something to say about it.”
He’s taking me seriously. He heard me and he wants to answer well, not brush it off or shut it down.
“Deal,” I say. “Now tell me about the rehab. The honest version about everything you’re doing here. Not the quick ‘I’m fine’ version.”
His shoulders settle lower and the performance drops. What’s left is a man who is tired and willing to let me see it.
“The physical part isn’t the problem,” he says. “Jason pushes me hard and I push back harder. My arms are stronger than they’ve been since I played football. The push-ups, the transfers, the core work, all of that makes me feel like myself.”
“And the part that doesn’t?”
He looks away from me. “Keeping my balance is the hardest. Leaning forward in the chair. Reaching for things. Without the legs to anchor, I tip. Jason calls it trunk control. He pushes me off center and I have to catch myself, and half the time I don’t.
I was the biggest guy on the football field except for Tex.
Linebacker. Two hundred and twenty pounds.
Nobody moved me. And now a physical therapist half my size can push me over like a toddler sitting on the floor with two fingers. ”
I don’t say anything. This isn’t a moment for my words.
“The occupational therapy is different, but as hard in its own way,” he says.
“Leah’s teaching me to live in the chair.
How to cook from a seated position, how to dress myself, how to reach the high shelves.
It’s practical. And every skill she teaches me is a skill for a life in a wheelchair and I’m learning the skills while praying I don’t need them permanently.
It’s like studying for an exam you’re hoping gets canceled. ”
“But the studying still matters,” I say. “Even if the exam gets canceled.”
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s a good way to think about it. The studying still matters. Jason tested my legs again this morning. The sensation test. Pinwheel. Fingertip pressure. I tried to move my toes.”
I go still. “And?”
“Same. No response. Weeks of daily testing. Same result every day.”
“That doesn’t mean forever, Mickey.”
“I know. The body heals on its own timeline. I’ve heard the speech. I believe it, mostly. But I hear the speech and then I look at my feet. They don’t move and the gap between the speech and my feet is where I live right now.”
“It must be exhausting,” I say.
His shoulders shift a little like he wasn’t expecting that answer. “Yeah,” he says. “It is.”
I squeeze his hand once before I let it go and check my phone for the time. “Damn, time is up again. I need to let you get back to your afternoon sessions. What do you have?”
“Leah at two. Group at three-thirty.”
“I’ll come back after you’re finished. Five-thirty? Whatever time works.”
“Five-thirty. I’ll be done by then.”
“Any dinner requests?”
“Surprise me,” he says. “You’re always good at that. I don’t know if you realize this, but your visits kept me going in the hospital. They brightened up my day every time you walked into the room.”
“I wanted to be there,” I say. “I wish I could’ve been there more for you.” I quickly clean up our lunch and tidy his room. “Hey,” I say from the doorway when I’m leaving.
“Yeah?”
“The photo I sent you this morning from the bed. I want you to know I thought about that photo for a very long time before I sent it. And by that, I mean about two seconds. I have zero impulse control and regret nothing.”
“I saved it,” he says. “To my favorites. I have a whole folder of you.”
“What are you planning to do with it?”
“I’ll never tell,” he says, winking at me.
My face goes hot. “Oh, my. Goodbye, Officer Weaver. I’ll see you at five-thirty. Don’t eat the cafeteria food before I get here.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I return at five-thirty with an extra-large brick oven pizza with Mickey’s favorite toppings. He seems more excited to see the box than to see me.
“Is that what I think it is?” he says.
“You bet. Brick oven. Sausage, banana peppers, extra cheese. I called ahead so it would be hot when I got here.”