Chapter 27 Benji #3
“The food’s not bad. The sweet tea here is terrible, though. Not enough sugar. It tastes like someone waved a sugar packet over a glass of brown water.”
“That is a crime,” Mom says. “Sweet tea should be sweet enough to stand a spoon in, and I’ll send some with Benji when he comes to visit.”
Mickey smiles at her. I’m sitting across the table watching it happen on my phone screen and I have to press my tongue against the roof of my mouth to keep it together.
Why does he make me so damn emotional?
“Benji, don’t you think Mickey is handsome?” Mom says, still looking at the screen.
“Mom, please.”
“I know you do and so do I. I’m telling him to his face. Mickey, you’re very handsome. Has anyone told you that today?”
“No, ma’am. Not today.”
“Well, now someone has.” She turns the phone back to me. “I like him,” she tells me, not even trying to be discreet.
I take the phone back. Mickey’s face fills the screen again.
“Sorry about her,” I say.
“Don’t be sorry. She’s great. I can see where you get it.”
“Get what?”
“The way you just say whatever you’re thinking,” he says.
Mom and I both laugh and he joins in.
“I’ll let you go,” I say.
“It was nice to meet you, Elena.”
“Hope you can come to dinner soon,” Mom calls out. “When you can travel. I’ll make Benji’s favorite casserole for you.”
I hear Mickey say “I’d like that” before I end the call.
“I hope you can find a way to bring him to dinner,” Mom says. “I like him already.”
“I will, Mom. He needs to finish rehab first.”
“Well, I’ll be waiting to meet that young man. But I have a feeling he’ll be around a long time. Now have some pudding before Lori comes back inside and eats it all. That woman has no self-control around banana pudding. She gets it from your grandmother.”
I eat the pudding, hug Mom twice, and drive home with Mickey’s voice on the speaker. We say goodnight at eleven and I fall asleep thinking about the way he said “I’d like that” to my mother.
I wake up the next morning to a text from Mickey that was sent before seven a.m., which means he sent it right after his early morning session with Jason. He was thinking about me while sweating, which is information I will store permanently.
Mickey: Arms day.
There’s a photo attached.
I open it and sit up in bed so fast I knock my phone off my face and have to catch it midair.
Mickey is shirtless in a gym bathroom mirror.
The overhead fluorescents are cutting shadows under his shoulders and across his chest like every muscle was carved specifically to end me.
His hair is pushed to the side and damp.
There’s a towel over one shoulder. His skin is flushed from the session and there’s a sheen of sweat across his chest and his arms — his arms, God, his arms — are twice the size they were in Tallahassee.
The triceps are visible. The shoulders are round and full.
The chest fills the frame and makes my mouth go dry.
Two words and a photo and I’m destroyed.
I type a text. Delete. Type. Delete. Type.
Benji: MICKEY WEAVER.
Benji: EXCUSE ME.
Benji: WHAT IS THIS? WHAT AM I LOOKING AT? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?
Mickey: It’s a gym photo. People send gym photos.
Benji: PEOPLE send gym photos. YOU have never sent me a photo of you. You have sent me exactly zero visual evidence that you have a body. And now you’re sending me a SHIRTLESS MIRROR PHOTO with SWEAT on your skin and your SHOULDERS looking like THAT and you think I’m going to be OKAY about this???
Mickey: I thought you wanted to know how the arms were coming along.
Benji: YOU THOUGHT I WANTED TO KNOW!! Mickey. I’m sitting in my bed right now. I have a client meeting in two hours. I have eyeliner from yesterday under my eyes and pillow creases on my face. I just opened a photo of you shirtless and WET and I made a sound that woke my neighbor.
Mickey: Sorry.
Benji: You are NOT sorry. You sent this at 6:47 AM.
You knew I’d open it first thing. You’re a cop.
You time everything. This was CALCULATED.
This is the most calculated photo I have ever received and I have received some VERY calculated photos in my life.
I’m a gay man in Miami. I’ve seen thirst traps from men who do this PROFESSIONALLY.
And yours just beat all of them with two words and a towel.
Mickey: It’s just a progress photo.
Benji: With that LOOK on your face? That is not a progress face. That is an “I know exactly what this is going to do to you” face. That face is illegal. You’re in law enforcement. Arrest yourself, Mickey.
Mickey: I need to go shower. Talk tonight?
Benji: NO! You can’t just drop that photo and then say “I need to go shower” and expect me to function.
You can’t put the image of you shirtless AND the image of you in a shower in my brain in the same text and expect me to conduct business today.
I have to discuss centerpieces. How am I supposed to discuss centerpieces when my brain is full of your shoulders? ?
Mickey: You’re resourceful. You’ll figure it out.
Benji: I’m saving this photo. I’m putting it in a folder. The folder is called “Evidence” because that’s what you’d call it and I think that’s romantic.
Mickey: Very romantic.
Benji: I know it is. Talk tonight. Go shower. And Mickey?
Mickey: Yeah?
Benji: Guess what I’m going to go do now while looking at your photo??? My sweatpants are already off. Send more.
Mickey Weaver sent me a thirst trap. The man who types in complete sentences flexed in a mirror for me before breakfast.
I’ve been the one sending photos. The bathroom mirror. The hotel bed. The staged sheets. I’ve been the one performing, putting myself on camera, hoping he’d look. And he did look. He said he did.
But he never sent one back. Until now.
My phone buzzes one more time.
Mickey: Here’s another photo. Since you insist.
It’s the same mirror. Same bathroom. But this one is from the side. His arm is flexed, not for the camera, just bracing on the counter, and the angle catches his profile — the line of his shoulder into his bicep, the shadow under his chest.
Mickey: Now you owe me one.
I pull the pillow over my face.
That night I’m on my balcony at six to take Mickey’s call.
He’s in his room, propped on the pillow, the phone angled up at him.
He’s in a clean shirt now, but my brain immediately puts him back in the mirror from this morning.
Shirtless. Sweating. I blink it away because he’s about to say something and I need to be a functioning person for it.
“Jason put me on the parallel bars this morning,” he says. “I stood up, Benji. For the first time since the hallway.”
My hand goes to my mouth. He was upright.
He’s getting better.
“Mickey. That’s incredible. I’m so proud of you I can’t breathe.”
“Don’t cry, Benji,” he says.
“Too late.”
We talk for an hour. The conversation moves between the hard things and the light things, his rehab and my clients, his body and my vendors.
Halfway through, he shifts on the pillow and the collar of his shirt pulls to one side and I see the edge of his collarbone and my brain short-circuits for a full three seconds while he’s talking about his discharge timeline.
“You, okay?” he asks. “You went quiet all of a sudden.”
“Your shirt moved,” I say. “Your collar shifted and I lost the ability to process language for a moment. It’s fine. I’m okay now. Please continue. I lost my train of thought there. You were saying something about insurance forms.”
He smiles. “Benji, you’re ridiculous.”
“I’m also still thinking about that photo.
For the record, I’ve been thinking about it all day.
I thought about it during the centerpiece meeting, and I thought about it at the grocery store, and I’m thinking about it right now while you’re telling me about parallel bars.
I feel guilty about that because the parallel bars are important and I should be fully present, but your shoulders keep interrupting my emotional processing. ”
“Goodnight, Benji.”
“It’s only seven-fifteen. Where the hell are you going? Do you have a date?”
“Nowhere. But I wanted to say goodnight because the way you just said all of that is going to keep me powering through tomorrow morning’s session.”
After we hang up, I sit on the balcony in the dark. Miami is mine. I built this life. Six years of weddings and vendor relationships and the reputation I earned one bride at a time. My mother living twenty minutes away. Dante two blocks away.
But the Panhandle has a man in a wheelchair who told me he missed me. Who kissed me and made me feel wanted. Whose mouth I think about every time I close my eyes.
I want both. And for the first time, both feel possible.
My phone buzzes again much later at eleven-fifteen. I’m back out on the balcony. I should be asleep because I have a ten o’clock venue walkthrough but I’m not asleep because my brain won’t stop replaying the way his voice sounded when he said “I stood up.”
Mickey: You still on the balcony?
Benji: How did you know I was on the balcony?
Mickey: Because you told me two hours ago that the balcony is where you go when you can’t stop thinking. And I just told you I stood on the parallel bars. You’re not sleeping tonight.
Benji: Are you calling me predictable?
Mickey: I’m calling you consistent. There’s a difference. Can I call you?
I hit the video button before he can. His face fills the screen.
He’s in bed, the phone propped on the pillow beside him, the room dark except for the light from his screen.
His face is half-lit, the shadow cutting across one cheekbone.
He’s wearing a white shirt and the collar is loose and I can see the hollow of his throat.
“You look tired,” I say.
“I’m not tired. I’m wound up. I couldn’t calm down after we talked.”
“Excited about the bars?”