Seventeen
Sadie
Ben is due home any second, and I’ve been sitting at Kate’s table biting my nails (a nasty habit). We all agreed to meet here before going our separate ways—meaning he’s coming to meet my family.
“Nervous Nelly over there, you excited to see your rock star?” Kate interrupts my nail biting.
“Are you excited to see your rock star?” I retort.
Eric and Kate have had a terrible week. Even though they aren’t exclusive, Kate thought that the two of them sleeping together meant they were only sleeping with one another. He, however, understood it differently.
“I don’t know if I’m nauseated because the thought of seeing him excites me or if it’s because I’m repulsed and still pissed that he screwed some groupie. She probably had fake boobs that could fit the entire circumference of my head.” I frown, feeling for her. I don’t know what I would do if Ben was still seeing other women, especially if he were sleeping with them.
“I’m sorry. Did y’all work it out?”
“Yes and no. I explained I’d forgive him this one time.”
“And?”
“He agreed, and then he went on and on about how much he likes me and how he only thought of me. I get that we aren’t exclusive or anything, but why have sex with someone else if it ‘meant nothing’ or he was ‘only thinking of me’?” I understand fully what she means as she peppers air quotes through her speech.
“Are you going to be able to trust him when he goes back out on the road?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Who even knows what we’ll be after this weekend.”
Kate’s showing her hand for the first time. She is vulnerable over a man in a way I’ve never seen, and my heart aches for her.
“I’m here if you need me. We’re both busy, but I am never too busy to talk.”
“I love you for that. And hey, you still have to tell me all the details of what happened when you got that wild urge to fly to your man. Was it hot?” She wiggles her brows at me, and I blush, remembering the way we made up. The mirror. God, his touch. It was electric. I’m glad I flew to him, and I am even more glad we are making progress on the trust aspect of our relationship. My mouth opens to tell her a very PG version of what happened, but there is a knock at the door.
“Kate, baby! Open up, I’m home!” Eric yells from the other side of the door.
My body reacts because he is here. Ben’s back. My stomach runs wild with butterflies. I stand from the kitchen chair and make sure my new skinny jeans are fitting me snugly and my cute floral chiffon V-neck top is showing my cleavage yet leaving some mystery. The perfect combination of sexy and cute. My low-heeled booties compliment my smaller frame and give me some height, making my legs look longer and leaner. Kate was shocked I bought this whole ensemble, but for Ben I want to look sexy while keeping my own sense of style.
I fixed up my hair, curling it in loose waves, a mix of wild and messy on purpose. Completing the look is my makeup—winged liner with some blush and a layer of nude gloss on my already pouty lips.
The door opens, and Eric immediately wraps Kate up in his arms. They share a kiss and whisper, Kate and my conversation forgotten. Biting my lip, I see Ben skate around them in his gray beanie, matching gray T-shirt, black leather jacket, and skinny jeans. But what has me gasping and rushing to him worriedly is his black eye.
“Oh my gosh! Ben! What happened!” I crowd him, still only reaching his shoulders even with my heels. I peer up at him and lightly touch his swollen yellow-and-purple eye. His hands grip my hips, and he clings to me extra tight, as if he’s checking that I’m in front of him, cementing him to the ground.
“Your hair is different. You look stunning.” He looks me over, completely ignoring my question.
“Ben . . . Your eye, what happened?” I whisper softly, changing my approach.
“Let me take you to my place, and I’ll explain. Nick’s waiting for us in the car.”
* * *
Ben and I settle into the backseat for the ride. I half expected him to take the front seat to avoid me pushing for answers. He isn’t putting physical distance between us, but his body language is screaming for me to let him have a moment. He looks out the window with our interlocked hands bouncing on his bobbing knee.
“You look so fucking amazing,” he whispers, slowly turning to face me and leaning in for a kiss. I taste the mint he must have popped in his mouth after a recent cigarette, and I’m surprised that it’s a taste I enjoy. I think I would enjoy anything that is Ben Cooper. His highs, his lows, his flaws, and all the devastatingly beautiful things that make him chaos. We linger, his full lips on mine, sharing soft, gentle kisses. Our lips barely touch, yet it’s still more intimate than most kisses. I scoot closer, dying to get nearer to him, and he grabs me without pause. My hands claim his chest as Nick turns up the radio a little to grant us more privacy.
I want to be close to him. Pull him in and heal his wounds. I want to take all of him and never let go. Wrap him in a bubble of my love and shelter him from the outside world. The distance made me yearn for him; it gutted me to not be within reach of something I never want to lose.
“Your eye looks painful. I hate that you’re hurt. Promise me you’re okay,” I whisper, my head moving against his gently.
He nods. “I am now. You make everything feel right again.”
“You, too, Ben. I missed you so much.” With barely any words, he pulls me in close, my legs dropping over his, my head on his shoulder and his lips against my forehead, peppering it with kisses. The short drive to his apartment is painfully slow, most likely because I need answers. By the time we pull up, I am ready to beg for those answers.
“Stay out of trouble, you two, and Sadie, I’ll see you soon, sweetie,” Nick says as he sends us off.
“You, too, see ya!” We climb out, and I help Ben with his luggage. We climb up the stairs silently, and I follow him inside his third-floor apartment. I’ve never been here before, and Ben’s touch is all over the place—it’s the first thing I notice. There is a piano next to the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. Opposite that, there is a guitar on a stand. An intricate epoxy-covered coffee table with white and black rivers woven into cedar sits in the middle of the room, and it pairs well with his black sectional. Their debut record, Longest Hour , hangs in a glass case above his couch with a picture of him and the band outside the record studio.
I admire his smile in the picture, reaching from ear to ear like a little kid’s. I love seeing him happy over what he has accomplished. It makes me unbelievably proud to call him mine.
“Come sit down, baby.” I didn’t even notice him sit.
“Okay, what happened?” I ask now that we’re alone.
“All right, Sadie. Some of the things I’m going to tell you are not going to be easy to say, and they may not be easy to hear.” He’s terrified. His hands shake in mine, and I do my best to surge some strength into him, tightening my grip.
“It’s okay, Ben. It’s me, remember?”
Dropping his head, he gnaws at his lip. “I have intermittent explosive disorder. I was diagnosed when I was in the foster system at seventeen, after my dad was taken to prison for killing my mother.”
“Ben.” The anguish in my voice can’t be avoided. I feel his words deep in my chest. An onslaught of emotions hits me like a crashing wave. It’s as if a bomb was dropped on my protective bubble.
“The drugs are a way of coping. The weed calms me down, and so do my meds—sometimes—but the cocaine gives me adrenaline.” He pauses, and I stay silent. The space around us is for him. I don’t need to fill it with words.
“My father used to beat us. Bad . . . really fucking bad. It was almost every day, starting when I was six. God knows how long he beat my mother before that.”
“He beat your mother to death?”
“Yes.” With that, I watch his eyes dilate as if he’s seeing it all again in his head. “It was my fault. It should have been me.”
“You? How is it your fault, Ben? Please don’t say that.” I all but jump on him, his words frightening me, snatching my heart in a deadly grip.
“Because he was mad at me. I ditched school to get drunk with my friends, and he knew about it. And instead of going home, I stayed out so he wouldn’t beat on me. If I had been there that night to take my beating, my mother would still be alive.” His eyes squeeze shut, and he pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s attempting to chase away the demons in his mind, but it isn’t working, and he is growing more agitated.
“Ben, what he did was not your fault. Your father is at fault. Not you. He would have killed both of you.”
“Then it should have been me too! Damn it! My mom was a fucking saint. She put her faith in me, and then life ripped her away savagely!” He stands up from the couch in a rush, kicking the coffee table, causing it to scuff the floor.
I jump a little, taken aback by his outburst. Quickly, that passes, and the urge to comfort him takes precedence. His reaction is intimidating, but it’s also a cry for help. It makes sense now why he looks at life as a series of letdowns where you can only hold on to the moment you are in.
“No, Ben. Your mom wouldn’t have wanted that . . .”
I’m up and on him, comforting him. I was raised to take on the pain of the world. To wear the wounds of the ones I love and stitch them back together. I did it for my father every day that my mother was sick and for my mother when she was worried about how he and I would go on if she didn’t make it. Being in the medical field has put me in places where I have watched people’s last breaths. I have been in the room with families as they are told their loved one has passed, and they’ve fallen apart in front of me. But right now, in this moment, it is different. This isn’t a stranger I just met; this is someone who owns pieces of me, who has sown the seeds of their being into my heart. But I do my best to apply some of my training. I want to understand him and give him the space to grieve. Has he ever even had that? I don’t know.
“Sometimes I fight because I owe it to her. No punch can bring her back or compare to the ones she took that night, but I damn well deserve to understand the pain.” His voice is eerily quiet, and I keep my focus on him, surprised by what he has admitted. “I take a sniff of cocaine and then I rage fight. I find someone who deserves it, and I fight. When I hit them, I see my father, and I feel I’ve vindicated my mother. Avenged her death. It’s the least I can do for being a coward when she needed someone to protect her.”
“No, stop. Ben, you can’t do that. That’s not the way you remember your mother. You can’t bring violence on someone to make up for the violence done to her. You could get hurt, and then her legacy will be for nothing.”
He shakes his head. “Her legacy? Her abuse is not her legacy, Sadie.”
“No, but you are. You’re her legacy, Ben. I didn’t know her, but there’s love in your eyes and in your actions. You are the best thing she gave this world, and if you keep fighting, that legacy might fade away.” I say it calmly; however, inside I am haunted by the image of Ben lying there bloody and lifeless.
“You don’t have to fix this,” Ben says. “This is who I am. I’ve been alone for years now, and I’ve come to terms with how I live my life.”
“I’m not trying to fix this,” I explain, shaking my head adamantly. “I’m trying to understand what happened to you. To be there for you. Because I don’t think anyone really ever has.” I pause, looking out the window then back to him. “Ben, you mean something to me. I . . . I love you, Ben Cooper, and you hurting yourself like this scares me. You being abused all those years and losing your mother breaks my soul. I hate that someone hurt you. My parents told me to never hate people, but I hate that man for what he’s done to my best friend.”
His lip quivers, and I witness him cry for the first time. “You love me?” he questions, and I nod, reaching up to grace his lips with a whisper of my fingertips.
“I do love you. You’re the first man I’ve ever loved.”
“Sadie . . . I love you too.” In that instant, we collide, his lips on mine. Like Romeo and Juliet, we share our first I love you s after such a short time knowing one another. I’m his first great love, as he is mine.
He’s opened his soul to me and let me into the darkest parts of him, the places only he and I know. He brings me down on his lap, and I straddle him, pulling at his hair and putting all of me into this kiss.
Ben’s hands skate over my back and up into my hair, where he mimics my movements. The warmth of his tongue against mine overwhelms me. I lose my breath in him. I’m hurting inside for the small child who was abused, for the teenager who lost his mother, and for the man who is suffering.
“You feel like home,” he whispers as our lips part, our foreheads still touching.
“Is this the first time you have felt like you know what a safe home is?” I want to make sure that he tells me the truth. If we are to continue building, I have to make sure he feels safe with me.
“You can make it even better.”
“How?”
He tightens his grip on my face and traps me in his longing gaze. “Marry me.” It isn’t a question, and I’m not sure if it’s a joke.
“What?” If it is, then the joke isn’t funny.
“Marry me, be my forever. Be my fucking home, Sadie.” He smiles, and it’s coming from a place of vulnerability. He’s afraid and wants something to make him feel whole. I can give him that, but this is without a shadow of a doubt coming from an emotion that will wear off, and he’ll regret ever saying it.
“You’re emotional—we both are. You don’t mean it.”
“Whatever you want to think, but I’ve never been more sure of anyone or anything in my entire life.”
I shake my head and chuckle hysterically.
“We’re late to meet my parents, and we aren’t in a place mentally where we can think about this,” I start. “Besides, it’s only been a couple weeks. The entire world would think we’re insane.”
“I don’t give a fuck what the world thinks. I give a fuck about what my girl thinks.”
I lean in and kiss his lips gently before pulling back and whispering, “I love you, and today we shared something personal. Let’s just adjust to this and comfort each other.” If the feelings weren’t so raw and palpable, I would think this were a dream.
“Fine. Think what you want. I’ve never met anyone who can make me feel whole the way you do, Sadie. I may be young and new to this whole love thing, but I’m not new to knowing what I want, and I want you.” I nod again and let his words settle like ink into my skin. I want him forever, too, and there is no doubt that I would marry this man in a heartbeat, but we would be crazy to do it this soon. This young. Wouldn’t we?
“I love you. Ask me again tomorrow when you’ve had a night to sleep on it.” I wink, attempting to lighten the mood, knowing come tomorrow he will forget about this little slip-of-the-tongue marriage proposal.
“Will do, angel.”
The thought that he may not ask again seems logical, but I also feel a slight sting of disappointment. I know I want Ben forever, but I haven’t thought about how long forever is for him. Is it a fortnight or an eternity?
It’s the emotions. Today was a big one. His homecoming, his tragic life story—all of it was a lot to take in. I can’t think logically right now. Shutting off my brain and taking my own advice, I drop the subject and get us up and moving.
Time for him to meet my parents. We will address this when we can breathe in fresh air.