Chapter 31 Benji
The confirmation email arrives on a Tuesday night while I’m lying on Dante’s couch eating pad Thai out of the container and half-watching a show about people renovating houses in Portugal.
I’d told Mickey on Sunday that I was coming this weekend no matter what. I said I’d figure out the drive, maybe leave Thursday night, sleep somewhere along the way. He said okay and changed the subject, and I thought that was the end of it.
Then the email lands.
Below it, a second confirmation email for a rental car.
I stare at the screen. Mickey went online, looked up flights from Miami, compared times, picked the flight that got me there fastest, typed in my name and his credit card number, and then went to a rental car site and did it again.
Two transactions. Fifteen minutes of effort, maybe.
And it’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.
I call him. “You bought me a plane ticket.”
“I did.”
“And a rental car.”
“The rental counter is right at the terminal. You won’t even have to take a shuttle.”
“Mickey.”
“You’ve driven to me countless times. Now it’s my turn to make it easier on you.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know I didn’t have to. I wanted to. There’s a difference and you taught me that.”
I press the phone against my ear and close my eyes. “Thank you.”
“Friday can’t get here soon enough,” he says. “I’ll be waiting for you.”
Friday comes fast. I pack a bag that takes me forty-five minutes because I try on six outfits and reject all of them.
“You’re packing like you’re going to a photo shoot,” Dante says from the doorway of my room. “It’s a bar in the Panhandle. You’re going to smell like smoke and grease in twenty minutes.”
“I want to look good.”
“You look good in a trash bag. You’re annoyingly attractive and it’s one of the top three reasons I find you exhausting. Just pick a shirt and go.”
“The white linen or the blue?”
“The white. And unbutton the top two. You’re going to see a man, not interview for a job.”
The flight is ninety minutes of me staring out the window and vibrating with a frequency that the woman beside me can probably feel through the armrest. Once the plane lands, I’m in the rental car, and on my way in twenty minutes.
When I arrive at the bar, I park the rental next to Tex’s truck.
I grab my bag and go inside. The bar is mid-afternoon quiet.
A few regulars at the far end. Classic rock low on the speakers.
The smell of hickory, beer and deep-fried air that my lungs have learned to accept as the scent of people I love.
Sheila is behind the bar. Her hair pinned up, reading glasses on the chain, towel over her shoulder. She’s pouring a draft with one hand and she looks up when the door lets the light in and sees me.
“There’s my baby,” she says.
My baby.
Possessive. Claimed. The “my” changes everything because the “my” means I belong to her now. I’m in the group of people that Sheila has decided are hers.
She finishes the pour, delivers it without looking, wipes her hands on the towel, and comes around the end of the bar.
Sheila does not come around the bar where the customers sit.
Ever. The fact that she’s walking toward me on my side of the bar makes the tears spill over and I don’t even try to stop them.
She takes my face in both hands. “Look at you,” she says. “All healed up. Pretty as a picture.”
“Hi, Sheila,” I manage.
She pulls me down and kisses my forehead. One firm press of her lips against my skin. Then she holds me at arm’s length and inspects me.
“You’re too thin,” she says. “I’ll send food up.”
“Sheila, I’m not hungry.”
“I didn’t ask your opinion. Go on up. Mickey’s been rolling past this bar every twenty minutes checking the clock. I told him if he rolled past one more time I was putting a speed bump in the hallway.”
She gives my cheek one pat — equal parts love and get moving.
“Go,” she says. “Your man is waiting on you.”
I wipe my face with the back of my hand and walk toward the back of the bar before I dissolve completely. I take the stairs because I’m in a hurry. I step inside and the light hits me first. Gold, warm, late-afternoon sunlight pouring through the windows and filling the space.
Mickey is there.
He’s in the wheelchair at the kitchen counter, wearing a blue shirt that fits him perfectly. His face lights up so bright when he spots me.
“Hi, handsome,” I say.
“Get over here,” he calls out.
I drop the bag and run to him. I’m across the room in five seconds and he’s already put the armrests down like he knew exactly what was going to happen the second I walked through the door.
His hands are on my waist and he pulls me down onto his lap in one motion.
I land against him and his mouth is on mine before I’m even settled.
This kiss is different from the bathroom kisses.
There’s no clock ticking. No nurse coming in forty-five minutes.
But the urgency is still there because phone calls and texts and lying in my bed replaying every sound he made are in this kiss.
I can feel all of it in the way his hands grip my hips and the way he pulls me closer like the distance between us is still too much even though there isn’t any left.
I pull back, my forehead against his.
“Sheila kissed me,” I say. “She came around the bar. She called me her baby and I cried in front of four regulars and a man eating buffalo wings.”
“She hasn’t come around that bar since Tex’s birthday in 2022. And that was only because the cake was too big to pass over the top.”
“I’m both honored and wrecked. I’ve only been in this building for four minutes.”
He’s smiling. “Come on,” he says. “Let me show you the place.”
He wheels through the loft with my hand in his. The photos he sent didn’t capture it. Everything designed so carefully that the accessibility disappears into the beauty of it.
“Stormy did all this,” I say, running my free hand along the counter edge. “Every inch of this is Stormy.”
“I told him it was perfect,” Mickey says. “He turned red and ran back downstairs.”
George is in the corner, tall and thriving, new leaves unfurling at the top. Frankie is on the nightstand in his blue-gray pot, facing slightly the wrong direction, which I will fix later.
“The plants look amazing,” I say. “Who’s been watering them?”
“Stormy. Every three days. Eight ounces measured in a cup. He researched the watering frequency and put it on a calendar. He won’t let me or Tex near the plants in the building.”
I reach over and turn Frankie a quarter turn to the left so his best rosette faces the window light.
“You’re here thirty seconds and you’re already redecorating,” Mickey says.
“I’m adjusting. Frankie’s best leaves need the light source. It’s about his personal brand. Every living thing has an aesthetic, Mickey.”
He’s watching me fuss with a succulent’s orientation in his bedroom and his eyes are warm. I could stay in this moment forever.
Footsteps are coming up the stairs. Quick and light. Stormy appears at the top of the staircase and stops when he sees me.
I cross the room and wrap my arms around him before he can brace for it. His body goes stiff for one second and then he relaxes into it.
“The tile,” I say into his shoulder. “Stormy. The blue-gray tile. You matched the Gulf at seven in the morning when the clouds are low. I would have chosen the same one.”
He pulls back. His face is pink. “It’s not exact. The water shifts depending on cloud cover and time of day.”
“It’s absolutely perfect. You have an eye for this, Stormy. The colors, the layout, the way everything flows. Do you know that? This isn’t just functional. Someone with taste did this.”
The pink deepens on his face. “I brought food,” he says, holding up a bag that I didn’t notice he was carrying because I was too busy hugging him. “Sheila made plates. Brisket. Sweet potatoes. Greens.”
“Thank you, Stormy,” I say.
He sets the bag of food on the counter, smiles at both of us, then leaves without another word. He delivers food, accepts a hug, disappears before the moment gets too big. That’s Stormy.
Mickey wheels to the sliding door. “Eat on the deck?”
“You bet.”
I carry the food outside. The deck is smooth composite planking, gapless, wide enough for his chair to turn.
The water stretches out in front of us, blue going gold as the afternoon leans toward evening.
We eat side by side at the railing, the brisket as perfect as it always is, and for a few minutes we don’t talk.
We’re finally exactly where we want to be.
“Mickey,” I say, setting my empty plate on the railing. “Can we go down to the hallway together?”
He doesn’t ask which hallway.
“You sure?” he asks.
“I’ve been avoiding it. Every time I came here, I kept my eyes forward. I didn’t look at it. I walked past it like if I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen. And I don’t want to do that anymore. Not today. Not in front of you. I want to face it with you and get it over with.”
“Then let’s go.”
We take the elevator down. Mickey wheels through the bar and I walk beside him. Sheila glances up as we pass, reading the situation, and she gives one small nod. The nod says, I’m here if you need me.
The hallway is to the right. Twelve feet long, bathroom doors at the end, a light fixture overhead that’s bright and new. The dimensions are the same. The width is the same. Everything on the surfaces is different.
Mickey wheels to the entrance and stops. He doesn’t go in first. He waits for me.
I step into the hallway. One step. Then another.
Mickey wheels in beside me, his chair rolling smooth on the new composite floor, and we move together until we’re in the middle.
At the spot. I don’t know the exact coordinates because the floor is different and the landmarks are gone but my body knows.
The skin on my back tightens. My pulse jumps.
Mickey parks his chair. He reaches for my hand and I give it to him. He holds it, his rough palm against mine, and we sit in the place where everything started.
I was on this floor. My back on the concrete and then the heaviest thing I’d ever felt landing on top of me. Mickey’s blood everywhere. On my shirt, my jeans, my hands, in the spaces between my fingers.
I didn’t know his name. I didn’t know anything about him except that he was bleeding and heavy. I held on to him because I didn’t know what else to do.
Now his warm hand is in mine and he’s sitting beside me in a wheelchair because of what happened here.
“This is where I fell on you,” Mickey says.
“You were so heavy,” I say. “That’s what I remember most. Not the blood. Not the gun. How heavy you were.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Don’t you dare apologize for falling on me. You fell on me because you jumped in front of a bullet. You don’t get to apologize for saving my life. You get to hold my hand in this hallway and let me say thank you.”
His grip tightens and his thumb moves across my knuckles.
“It’s just a hallway, Mickey,” I say.
“That’s all it is,” he agrees.
We go back upstairs to watch the sun go down.
We’re on the deck, side by side, and the Gulf turns from blue to gold to copper.
I kick off my shoes and put my bare feet on the warm planking.
Eventually the stars come out, all at once, like someone hit a switch.
No city light to compete with. Just the sky and the water and the glow from the bar below.
The jukebox downstairs is playing something slow with a steel guitar, the bass line bleeding up through the floor.
“It’s beautiful here,” I say. “I’ve been in a lot of beautiful rooms, Mickey. I build beautiful rooms for a living. I’ve never been anywhere that felt like this.”
“What does it feel like?”
“Like you.”
He reaches for my hand. His fingers lace through mine, the calluses familiar, the grip warm and certain.
“Benji. Stay with me tonight.”
“Of course, I’m staying tonight,” I say with a laugh. “That’s why you bought me a plane ticket. That’s why I packed a bag. Where do you think I’m staying? Another Holiday Inn?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I glance over at him. The deck is dark except for the light coming through the sliding door. His face is half in shadow and his eyes are steady and serious.
“I mean stay with me,” he says. “In my bed. I’m asking you to stay with me tonight the way I’ve wanted to ask you every time you walked out of a hospital room and I watched you wave from the doorway. I want you in my bed tonight.”
My hand tightens on his. “Are you sure?”
“You said you wanted our first time to be here in a real bed. Both of us. No clock or nurses to run you out.” His voice drops lower. “I don’t want to wait anymore.”
“Oh, my God, me either,” I say. “Show me your bed, Mickey.”
He pulls my hand to his mouth. His lips press against my knuckles and then he doesn’t let go. He holds my hand and wheels toward the sliding door and I follow him inside.