6. Ben
6
Ben
O ver the past few days, I’ve grabbed my phone to contact Carlisle countless times, but each time, I practice self-restraint and put my phone down without reaching out. Our connection is tenuous at best, but I want to get to know Carlisle better.
However, I know that I shouldn’t. Or rather I know I can’t .
The timing isn’t right with two movies coming out. My life is under the microscope, and I've been strongly cautioned about getting involved with someone right now, especially after the paparazzi photos from the coffee shop were published.
I scared myself last weekend when I told Carlisle the truth about reading a screenplay. How very Hollywood of you, she said. If I slip up enough times, accidentally supplying Carlisle with enough nuggets of truth, she’ll figure out who I am, and I can’t take that risk. Not now. Not when there’s so much at stake.
But damn, I cannot stop thinking about her, especially not after spending the last few days reading the Losing Love script.
So, with Losing Love fresh in my mind, I cave to temptation and call Carlisle. Getting comfortable on the couch, I throw my feet up on the coffee table and wait for Carlisle to answer .
“Hey stranger. Long time, no hear,” Carlisle huffs, her southern accent more pronounced than usual. Which I've figured out usually means that she's pissed.
“Miss me?”
“Not even a little,” she answers nonchalantly.
“That’s too bad because I missed you.”
After a shaky breath, she grouses plaintively, “Brent, you cannot say things like that to me.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” she hesitates. “It’s not fair to call and text me constantly over the weekend and then lose my number for days. It’s confusing and I don’t want to play games.”
Carlisle's blunt honesty is so fucking refreshing to my jaded ass, especially in comparison to my ex-girlfriend.
In hindsight, I realize that all Kelsey did was play games for the duration of our relationship. Kelsey was like a beautiful mirage, there one minute and gone the next, always leaving me wanting more. But ours was a volatile relationship, full of dramatic ups and downs. We’d fight, we’d break up, we’d make up, and then we’d start the whole dysfunctional cycle over again. The constant emotional upheaval was tiresome but also addicting. Looking back, I still don’t know which feelings were real between us and which Kelsey faked just to string me along. I'm not sure that I ever knew the real Kelsey.
But there's nothing fake about Carlisle and that strengthens my trust in her.
“Noted, I’m sorry. I’ll stay in contact better.”
I have zero willpower concerning Carlisle. I’ve spent the last four days convincing myself that not talking to Carlisle is for the best, but now, after barely a minute of conversation, I promise her that I’ll do the exact opposite. She makes my head spin and my heart hope for more.
“You know, you could always initiate contact with me too. The phone works both ways.”
“Not my style."
“Not your style?” I repeat, puzzled by her vehement, and instantaneous, answer before a realization hits me. “Let me guess. Being the well-heeled southern girl that you are, you don’t believe girls should call guys, do you?”
Which is a philosophy my own mother shares. Growing up, she would often tell my brother and me that we needed to be the ones to make the first moves when we started dating. I always believed that old-fashioned way of thinking had fallen by the wayside, but apparently not completely.
“You’re catching on quick.”
“Like, ever? You won’t ever call a guy?” I ask with a grin, needling Carlisle because it’s fun to rile her up. “What happens if you’d like your guy friend to grab something from the store for you or you need a ride home from work because you can’t ride the bus anymore since all the other commuters think you’re a phone sex worker?”
She huffs daintily in response. Relenting, she says, “Only in the beginning. Until we know each other better.”
“So, there’s hope that one day you might call or text me first? Be still, my heart!”
Chuckling, she retorts, “Shut up.” After a pause, she blurts out, “You know, if you want to speed things up, we could FaceTime. Putting a face to a name would help us get better acquainted. Maybe then I'd call you.”
“Nah.” Her suggestion is a minefield I have no desire to navigate.
“Why not, Brent? ”
She sounds exasperated with me, and for good reason. Her request isn’t ludicrous. In fact, it’s probably the normal next step, but my situation isn’t normal and I'm not ready to give up my anonymity.
And I'm not willing to encounter the possibility that Carlisle will change how she treats me once she finds out who I am.
“I like the mystery of getting to know your personality first. It’s innocent and old school and fun.” I grapple for a safer topic. “How was your day?”
“Nothing special. You?”
“I had most of the day off, so I read and worked out. Now I’m talking to you and getting ready to go to bed.”
“Do you ever work?” she mutters sarcastically.
“Did I forget to tell you that my work hours are sporadic?” I reply, ignoring her jab.
“Somehow, I think that there’s a whole heck of a lot that you’ve forgotten to tell me, Brent," she ripostes.
“Touché.”
“I'm determined to peel back your layers as if you were an onion, Brent. Eventually I'll figure you out."
Which is exactly what I'm afraid of.
But it's also exactly what I need. I need to find that person who works to understand me and accepts me as I am, flaws and faults and all.
"Tell me something about yourself. Give me something, Brent.”
My mind instantaneously goes blank at Carlisle's request. “Umm…” I ponder what I can tell her to pacify her curiosity without lifting the veil of secrecy too much. “I grew up in Austin.” Talking about my early life in Texas seems safe enough.
“Hey, wasn’t Friday Night Gridiron filmed around there? I used to watch that TV show with my mom. ”
Damn, apparently not safe enough.
Despite airing over a decade ago, Friday Night Gridiron continues to be a cult favorite, and it’s the show on which I scored my first onscreen acting role. It was only a nine-episode arc for my character, but it was enough to cement my desire to act professionally. My performance also helped me land Jada as my agent when I moved to LA after high school.
“Yeah, it was mostly filmed in and around Austin,” I confirm.
"Tell me about your family. Any siblings?"
"One younger brother."
"Are you close?"
"We've grown apart over the years. He's only a year younger than me and being that close in age made things hard sometimes."
"Sibling rivalry," she guesses.
"Yeah," I agree without elaborating.
"I would have loved having a sibling when I was growing up. Being an only child was lonely." Carlisle's wistful tone quietens, and I know she's probably missing her mom or thinking about her half-brothers. "What about your parents? What's your relationship with them like?"
"Pretty good, all things considered." Fighting a yawn, I decide to head up to bed. I walk while I talk, turning off the lights downstairs and arming my security system before climbing the stairs to my bedroom.
"All things considered?" she parrots. "That sounds ominous."
I chuckle. "I didn't mean it that way. I just meant growing up and moving away. I don't get home to visit them often."
“What were your high school years like?"
“High school was okay. Socially, I survived mostly unscathed. I always had a group of friends, but my circle grew a lot during my junior year when I went through a big growth spurt and made the varsity football team.” Which is what helped me land my role in Friday Night Gridiron , but of course, I don’t offer up that information. “Up until that point, I’d been a theater geek who dabbled in sports, but once I made varsity, that boosted my popularity quite a bit.”
"I should've known that you were a popular kid." Carlisle teases, and I feel more at ease now that I can tell she isn’t acting perturbed. “Who were your best friends?”
“I hung around with other football players—Will, Fletcher, Brock, and Cole.” A memory floods my brain, and I smile thinking back on those happy, carefree years. “This one time, we drove to a construction site and stole one of their port-a-potties."
“That’s disgusting!” She interjects, aghast.
“It was."
"Why would you do that?"
"It was for our senior prank. Our plan was to load the port-a-potty into the bed of Fletcher’s truck and then deposit it in our principal’s driveway, blocking his car in the garage so he couldn’t drive to school the next day. Unfortunately, we didn't think to tie it down, so when Fletch took a turn a little too fast, the port-a-potty fell on its side and all the sewage spilled out. We were such dumbasses that we thought running through a car wash would fix the problem.”
“Let me guess—it didn’t," Carlisle surmises with a laugh, sounding delightfully horrified.
“It might have if we’d been smart enough to open the tailgate beforehand. But we didn't. When we got out of the car wash, his trunk bed was filled with several inches of dirty water. It was a bubbling mess of piss, shit, toilet paper, and probably the bubonic plague."
"What'd you do?"
"We played rock, paper, scissors to see who had to be the one to stand at the back of the truck and open the tailgate. Poor Will lost and got drenched in that toxic sludge. Then he promptly started throwing up because of the smell. We still got the port-a-potty to the principal's house though, but Will had to ride home in the bed of the truck.”
Those were good times, long before my life got complicated. When my biggest problems consisted of things like failing a math test or wondering which girl to make out with at a party.
“Do you still keep up with those guys?”
Carlisle’s question is innocuous, but like the dangers of a glacier, there is a lot lurking beneath the surface, so I succinctly answer, “Nah, not really.”
"Okay, tell me a funny story about your college years. Oh, or even better, tell me an embarrassing story!"
"Sorry, Carlisle. I didn't go to college, so I don't have any stories to share," I reply, glad to have an excuse to get the attention off of me. "Which means that it's your turn to tell me a funny or embarrassing story. I'll let you pick if it's from high school or college.”
“Umm, haven’t I done that with every single one of our conversations?” Carlisle deadpans. Smiling, I acknowledge that she has a point, but I continue to harass her until she succumbs. “Fine,” she growls. “But if I tell you this, you must promise to never bring it up again. Deal?”
“Damn, this must be good. Deal.”
“While I was in college, I took the class Human Sexuality as one of my humanities electives. In addition to the hardcover, I also had access to the audio version to the textbook. Most of the chapters were pretty dry and clinical, but there were several chapters that were a little racier. Those covered sexual kinks.”
“Getting material for your second job as a phone sex operator?” I kid .
“I hate you,” she replies without any heat behind her words. “Anyway, so I needed to do my grocery shopping for the week, but I also needed to finish my class readings. I have the brilliant idea to multitask. I'll complete my grocery shopping while listening to the chapter we were discussing that week in class. That week’s topic was on bondage and autoerotic asphyxiation. Unfortunately, my cheap wireless earbuds weren’t working well, and I had to keep turning up the volume higher and higher so I could hear my textbook over the noises of the grocery store." Carlisle pauses and I can practically feel her embarrassment through the phonelines. "About this time, an older woman, who turned out to be the store manager, taps me on the shoulder. I pull out one earbud so that I can hear what she’s saying to me.” Carlisle exhales a deep breath. “And at that moment, I realize, to my utter horror, that the reason I had to keep increasing my volume was because my earbuds weren’t paired with my phone. My phone was just blaring my textbook for all the grocery shoppers to hear. I was mortified. Absolutely mortified!”
Laughter rolls through me. “No! What did you do afterwards?”
“What do you think I did? I grabbed my purse, abandoned my cart full of food, and ran out of there as fast as I could. And for the rest of college, I drove twenty minutes to the grocery store in the next town over to do my shopping.”
Though I break my promise to myself, I stay true to my promise to Carlisle, calling and texting regularly over the next few weeks. Between her eight-to-five work schedule and my days and nights quickly filling up with commitments in preparation for the fast-approaching Captain Commander publicity tour, we’re forced fit in our talks early in the morning or late at night. Luckily, Carlisle rolls with it and doesn’t question my irregular schedule much.
Lazily, I sink into my pillow and pull up the sheets, getting comfortable for my nightly call with Carlisle.
“About time you called me, punk,” she greets me, sass and snark oozing from her voice.
“Is that anyway to speak to your dear friend?” I respond in kind.
After a slight hesitation, she asks candidly, “Is that what we are, Brent? Friends?”
“I’d like to think we are. Honestly, I don’t have a lot of good friends, and I’d like to count you as one of mine.”
“You? How do you not have a lot of friends? You're always going out to fancy dinners and meetings.”
“Those don’t count,” I correct. “They’re work obligations.”
“Still don’t want to elaborate on exactly what it is you do? Are you bartending at private parties or something?”
She pries a bit each time we talk, and I worry that my half-truths and vague answers won’t satisfy her curiosity much longer. “Something like that, Carlisle.”
“You’re not a high-end escort, are you?”
I laugh. “No, I’m not. You’re really hammering me with the hard-hitting questions tonight,” I tease before changing the subject from me to her. “How was your day? Work okay?”
“Ugh, just another day in paradise trying to avoid my boss who likes to pinch my cheeks,” she grumbles.
I narrow my eyes, slightly perplexed. “He pinches the cheeks on your face? That’s bizarre. ”
“I wish,” she mutters. “No, my boss likes to play grab ass, and I swear that I spend most of my working hours playing hide and seek with him—I hide and he seeks.”
Her confession raises my hackles and jogs my memory. During our first phone conversation she described her boss as being libidinous, but I assumed she was exaggerating.
“That’s bullshit, Carlisle. You don’t need to put up with that. There are laws against that type of behavior.”
“I know, I know,” she sighs peevishly. “Forget I said anything. Please. I’m trying my best to deal with it and figure out my next step.”
“Okay, I’ll trust that you’re managing the situation but let me know if I need to beat anybody up. I’m serious, Carlisle.”
I’ve never even met this woman in person, but she brings out my protective streak. Probably because it doesn’t seem like she has a lot of people in her corner willing to protect her.
"Thanks," she whispers as her voice trembles, belying her emotions.
“You deserve better, Carlisle. Talking to you has become the highlight of my day, and I hate hearing that something bad happened to you.”
Without any prior thought, the words fall from my mouth, but I’m not embarrassed when they do. It’s the truth.
Carlisle is quiet for a few beats. “When you say things like that, I can’t help but wonder and maybe hope that there could be more developing between us. Am I stupid to hold out hope that we could become more than friends, Brent?”
Her whispered revelation guts me. Even if I was brave enough to further our relationship, how could I? From the very beginning, she’s shared openly and honestly. Meanwhile, I continue being evasive, steering the conversations in different directions and providing only half-truths when pushed .
Where do I even start to make it right?
“It’s Ben. My name is Ben,” I correct Carlisle, realizing that I want to give her something, to grant her access to some real aspect of my life, no matter how miniscule.
She draws in a sharp breath. “Why would you lie about something as simple as your first name?”
“Technically, I didn’t lie. My name is Brent Benjamin, but I go by Ben.”
Sitting up in bed, I swing my legs over the side to rest my elbows on my knees and hang my head. When I blurted out that my name was Brent during our first conversation, I never thought Carlisle would have an opportunity to find out otherwise. I never imagined that we’d form an ongoing friendship.
“Well, it wasn’t entirely the truth either.” Carlisle barks out a sarcastic chuckle. "Here I’ve been worried this whole time that you might be a crazy psycho, but it’s me. I'm the crazy one. I’m crazy to keep talking to you!”
“No, you’re not crazy, Carlisle.” I stand up from my bed and cross the room, pacing with anxious energy. “Fuck,” I mutter, raking my fingers roughly through my hair.
“I am though,” she argues. “I should delete your number and forget about you. I’ve used our friendship as an emotional crutch, but if nothing more will ever come from this, then I need to move on.” She scoffs. "Like you said, I deserve better."
“I hope you won’t do that. I wasn’t lying when I told you that talking to you is the highlight of my day.”
“I always look forward to talking to you too,” she admits reluctantly, followed by a lengthy sigh that fills the void between us. Without words, her sigh communicates a lot of feelings—frustration, sadness, anger, and maybe even longing .
It tugs at my conscience and makes me wish that my circumstances were different. I can’t bring someone else into my life, especially someone who isn’t accustomed to the downsides of being famous. Living with the media scrutiny is something that I signed on for, but it isn’t something that I want to drag Carlisle into unknowingly.
Besides, Becky and Jada have been up my ass to maintain my squeaky-clean image. No booze, no drugs, and no women. Especially after that stupid article ran in a tabloid claiming that I was caught on a coffee date. The studio wasn't thrilled, assuming that I'd lied to them about my relationship status.
“I wish I could offer you more, but I need to be upfront with you about the parameters of our friendship, Carlisle. My life is complicated currently, so for the time being, this is all it can ever be between us. Just talking and texting.”
She’s been honest with me, so I owe it to her to be honest about my intentions and the limitations on our friendship. There’s so much I can’t be honest about, but I owe her this much at least.
And if that isn’t enough for her, then she’s right—it would be better to end it now.