Chapter 29 Benji
Mickey calls on a Monday night and his voice is different. Lighter. Like something loosened in his chest.
“The doctor gave me a discharge date,” he says. “Friday. Tex is picking me up.”
“I’ll be there Wednesday,” I say.
“Benji, you don’t have to—”
“No arguments or trying to talk me out of it. I’ll be there Wednesday.”
The drive from Miami to Jacksonville takes five hours, and I make it in four and a half because I left early, the roads were empty and my foot was heavier than it should have been.
Six weeks since I left him there. Six weeks of phone calls and missed visits and excuses that got thinner every week. I’m not missing this one.
I stop once for gas and coffee, again at a grocery store for two Italian subs with everything on them and two sweet teas.
Frankie rides shotgun in the passenger seat — a small Echeveria in a blue-gray ceramic pot barely bigger than a coffee mug.
Bright coral-tipped leaves fanning out in a tight rosette.
Bold for his size. I found him at a nursery in Miami three weeks ago and have been waiting for the right moment to bring him to George.
I arrive at the rehab facility and park. Grabbing the bags in one hand and Frankie in the other, I walk through the front doors with my heart hammering. His door is open. I knock on the frame and step in.
He’s in the wheelchair by the window. The sun is hitting the side of his face and he turns his head when he hears me and the look on his face makes me forget how to walk.
The cop mask drops. Just for a second, just a flash, and underneath it is pure, naked relief. Like he’s been holding his breath and the exhale is my name.
“You’re early,” he says.
“I left at four,” I say from the doorway. I’m holding Frankie in one hand and the grocery bag in the other. I drove three hundred and fifty miles to see him and I’d do it again tomorrow.
“What is that?” He nods at Frankie.
“This is Frankie.” I walk in and set the bag on the tray table.
I hold up Frankie in his blue-gray pot like I’m presenting a newborn.
“Frankie is George’s companion. George has been in this room alone for too long and I decided he needs a friend.
He’s a succulent. He’s small but he’s loud.
Look at those colors. He’s an accent plant.
Every big green statement plant needs one — something bright next to it that makes the whole picture work. ”
I set Frankie on the nightstand next to the cream. The little blue-gray pot looks perfect there, the coral-tipped rosette catching the window light.
“You brought my plant a plant,” Mickey says.
“I brought your plant his other half. There’s a difference. George is big and green and serious. Frankie is small and flashy and shows up uninvited. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Like us, if you think about it.”
“Which one of us is the succulent?”
“I’m obviously Frankie. Small and loud. You’re George. Big, quiet, everyone on the floor loves you.”
He shakes his head like I’m being ridiculous but he’s smiling.
“And I brought subs,” I say, patting the bag. “Italian with everything. I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to find a real restaurant because I left four hours early because I have no self-control and no patience. I wanted to see you so badly that I was on the highway before the sun came up.”
His eyes change. The smile is still there but something shifts behind it, a heat that wasn’t in the room thirty seconds ago. He’s looking at me the way he looked at me when I stepped out of the shower. Except now there’s no screen between us.
“The subs can wait a little longer,” he says.
His hand reaches out and catches mine. The calluses are thicker, the fingers surer. He wraps his hand around my wrist and pulls, and I take a step toward his chair.
“Mickey—”
“Follow me.”
He doesn’t let go of my wrist. He wheels with his free hand, one strong push on the left rim that angles the chair toward the bathroom door, and I stumble after him like I’m being towed.
Which I am. A man in a wheelchair is physically towing me toward a bathroom with a lock on the door and my pulse is already in my ears.
He wheels through the wide doorway. My hip clips the frame as I follow because I’m not paying attention to where I’m going. I’m watching the back of his neck and the way his hand hasn’t loosened on my wrist for a single second.
He stops in the middle of the bathroom and sets the brakes. “Get the door,” he says.
I reach back and lock it.
He lets go of my wrist. Then he reaches down to the armrests on both sides of the wheelchair and does something I’ve never seen him do.
He flips them up. Both of them, the padded rests hinging backward and out of the way, and suddenly the sides of the chair are open.
Nothing between his lap and the rest of the room.
When I sat in his lap before, the armrests were up.
“Come here,” he says, patting his thighs.
I step forward. His hands find my hips and guide me in and I lower myself onto his lap. My knees settle on either side of his thighs, my shins along the outside of his legs. His hands slide around my waist and pull me in until my chest is against his chest and my face is level with his face.
Eye to eye. Mouth to mouth.
“There you are,” he says. “Finally. Back in my arms where you belong.”
“How long have you been planning this?” I ask.
“Since the shower video,” he says. “I’ve had time to think about what I wanted to do when I got you back in this room. The armrests fold up. I figured that out a long time ago. I’ve been waiting weeks to use that piece of information.”
“What is it you want to do then, Mickey? I’m dying to know.”
“Kiss me, Benji, and I’ll show you.”
I lean in and kiss him. All the hesitation from our first kiss in this bathroom has been burned away by weeks of late-night calls, flirty texts, and that shower video where I showed him everything.
My hands slide from his shoulders into his short hair, pulling him closer as his tongue pushes past my lips to find mine.
The moan that rises in my throat disappears into his mouth.
His strong arms tighten around my waist. Sitting on his lap like this, with my legs straddling him, every inch of my upper body presses against his. The heat of his chest radiates through our shirts, sinking straight into my skin.
I pull back just enough to catch my breath, our foreheads resting together.
“Your shirt,” I whisper against his lips. “Off. Now.”
Grabbing the hem of his T-shirt, I tug it upward.
He lifts his arms, letting me pull it over his head and toss it aside.
His chest looks even more impressive every time I see it — the weeks of push-ups and transfers have carved his shoulders into thick, rounded muscle, his pecs full and powerful, with that tempting trail of blond hair leading down into his shorts.
“Now you,” he murmurs.
Mickey grips the bottom of my shirt and peels it off in one smooth motion. The silver chain catches briefly on the fabric before dropping back against my bare chest. The moment I’m shirtless on his lap, his hands are on me, palms gliding over my ribs and up to my chest.
I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face against his throat, breathing him in.
“I can’t stop dreaming about you,” he whispers into my hair. “Having your weight in my lap. Feeling you pressed against me like this.”
Lifting my head, I kiss him again, taking my time. My fingers thread through his hair as he makes that low, rumbling sound from deep in his chest, the one that always goes straight to my cock.
His hands travel up my spine, tracing every vertebra before spreading wide across my shoulder blades. He pulls me harder against him, our combined body heat warming the silver chain trapped between our chests.
His mouth leaves mine to trail along my jaw and down my neck. When he finds the sensitive spot below my ear, he presses his lips there, then grazes it with his teeth. Pleasure shoots through me so sharply that I grip his shoulders, a loud moan escaping before I can muffle it against his skin.
“You’re noisy,” he says against my skin.
“I warned you in this exact bathroom that I’m a loud and enthusiastic person.”
He laughs against my throat. The vibration of it runs through my whole body because every part of me is touching every part of him.
I hold his face in both hands and kiss his forehead, his temple, the bridge of his nose, the corner of his mouth.
Small kisses. His grip on my back loosens and his face tips into my hands.
I run my thumb along his cheekbone. “Mickey.”
“Yeah.”
“I want to touch you. All of you. I want to make you feel what you make me feel every time you put your hands on me. I want to know what you feel like everywhere. Will you let me see you below the waist?”
His arms are still around me but his face changes. The openness from thirty seconds ago pulls back half a step. He sighs heavily. “Benji. I’m sorry. I’m not ready for that. Not yet.”
“Is it the touching you’re worried about? Or me seeing you?”
“Both,” he says. “I want to. Believe me. But I can’t let you see me like that yet. The way things are right now. The things that don’t work the way they used to. I need…” He stops. “I need to be further along before I do that. I need more of me back first.”
He’s embarrassed. Because of me. His body got damaged saving mine. I look away to keep my face from crumbling.
I want to tell him I’m sorry. That every scar, every nerve that went quiet, every muscle that thinned — all of it happened because he chose me over himself. And I will spend the rest of my life trying to deserve that choice.
But this isn’t the moment for my guilt. This is his boundary. He drew a line and I’m going to honor it without making it about me.