Chapter 12 Ben #2
My mind ran in circles as I worked. Of course I’d been flirting with Ella because I wanted to flirt with her.
It’s not like someone had held a gun to my head and forced me to tease her or slip a few innuendoes into our conversations.
I felt like an idiot now for trying to blame my behavior on my meds.
But even though I was starting to realize my attraction to her might be more than just physical, I struggled to move past that fact.
Every time I tried to picture how our relationship might advance, I ran head-first into a brick wall with the letters CTE spray-painted across it in loud, neon colors.
Whatever lay on the other side was completely out of sight, and for that matter, out of grasp.
Ella pulled up several minutes later, while I was still outside, stuck in my own head. I planted the shovel in the snowbank and walked over to greet her. She got out of the truck and shut the door carefully behind her. There was no sign of her dogs as she hurried to meet me halfway.
“Okay, so I did a thing,” she said, her expression cagey. “This present I got you, it doesn’t have to be permanent. It can just be on a loaner basis, which the person I got said present from fully understands, so there is no pressure for you to keep said present.”
I started to walk around her, my curiosity getting the better of me. A loaner basis present? “Ella, you’re stalling. Is it in the truck?”
She skirted in front of me and held up her hands. “It is. And I’m stalling because I don’t want to do that thing where I-”
“Get pushy?” I finished for her. Jesus, Brian was right. The woman had been going out of her way to accommodate me.
She stilled, hands dropping back to her sides, expression falling right along with them. “Yeah, that.”
I took her by the shoulders and leaned down to look into her eyes. From this close, they were as blue as the Mediterranean. “Ella, we’re friends now, right?”
“I hope so,” she answered.
“Then as my friend, I’m asking you to please stop worrying. Sometimes I need a push, or even a swift kick in the ass.”
She chewed her lip for a second as she thought this over. I had a sudden desire to lean forward and pull it out of her teeth with my mouth. For once, I didn’t suppress the thought. Her lips were gloriously full, a dusky shade of pink that would probably darken with use.
“But you’ll still tell me if I’m too much?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, hating that she thought I’d ever think that about her. I needed to find some way to fix our dynamic. Brian was right; this wasn’t fair to her. “Now can I please have my damn present?”
As I hoped, she grinned. She practically vibrated with energy beneath my hands, so I let her go.
She bounded back toward the truck, her long legs eating up the ground.
I followed after her, letting my gaze slide up those legs.
The woman had a great ass. I’d noticed it the first night we met and had avoided looking at it since.
The fact that I’d had to avoid looking at it spoke volumes.
Instead of opening the door, Ella stood on her toes and peered in through the window, waving me over. I joined her, confused.
“They fell asleep on the way over,” she whispered.
“They? They? Ella, what did you do?”
At the sound of my voice – which was elevated because of my surprise – the two little balls of white fluff on the backseat stirred.
A small head with triangular ears rose from the one closest to the door.
A pair of black eyes blinked open, and a little jaw dropped in a wide yawn, exposing a pink tongue and tiny razor teeth.
“Did you get me puppies?” I asked, tugging on her coat sleeve. I sounded like a little kid. Hell, I felt like a little kid. Because puppies!
She smiled. “I did.”
I nudged her sideways out of the way with my hip and carefully pulled open the rear door.
She laughed at me, but I was too far gone to care.
The puppy already awake sniffed the air.
The one beside it remained conked out. I tugged off a glove and reached forward to pet the one looking at me, and it immediately started whining as it tried to lick my fingers.
“They’re Samoyeds,” Ella said. “My friend Jen and her husband raise sled dogs, and right now, they have more puppies than they can handle. I offered to take a couple off of their hands for a few days. If you don’t want to keep them here, Jack has already offered.”
“I don’t have stuff for them,” I said, gently petting the puppy. “But yeah, I want to keep them.”
“I stopped in town and bought all the supplies you should need.”
Of course she did. “What are their names?”
“Jen’s kids named them, so don’t feel like you have to stick with them. The one you’re petting is Boots, and the other one is Doodle.”
“Boots and Doodle,” I said, testing the names out. As silly as they were, I didn’t hate the sound of them. “How can you tell who is who?”
“The collars. Boots’ is purple and Doodle’s is green. They’re both boys.”
“Hi, Boots,” I said, gently lifting him up. He was so small, and so warm, and so ridiculously fluffy.
Ella leaned past me to wake Doodle with a few gentle pets, then scooped him up too. We stood there next to each other in the driveway for a few minutes, cuddling the dogs and grinning like fools.
I shifted Boots to one arm and wrapped the other around Ella’s shoulders, pulling her in for a sideways hug. “Thank you so much for this, and for bringing everything they need. You fucking rock.”
Her smile was blinding. “You’re welcome.”
I released her, even though I didn’t really want to yet, and together we got the puppies and all their supplies into the house. She’d bought puppy food, dog bowls, toys, a pet brush, and something she called puppy pads, which were supposed to help with housetraining them.
“Jen said they’re already pretty good at letting you know when they have to go to the bathroom,” Ella said, laying a pad out by the front door while Doodle sniffed a circle around our discarded boots.
I side-eyed her. “You mean go pee-poop?”
She turned away. “I hate you forever.”
Still holding Boots, I scooted around her so I could see her face. “You blush so easily,” I said, shifting the puppy to one arm like he was a fluffy little football so I could poke at her cheek with my free hand.
“Stop that.” She batted me away. “I do not blush that easily.”
“Okay, fine, but when you do, it’s spectacular. Takes up your whole face.”
She stuck her tongue out at me and then leaned down to pick up Doodle.
We spent the next hour laughing and talking in ridiculous voices and making even more ridiculous noises and taking far too many pictures as we watched the dogs explore the first floor of the house.
“It’s not just me, right?” I asked her later. “They are uncommonly adorable.”
She sat down next to me on the floor of the sitting room, and Boots immediately jumped from my lap into hers. “It’s definitely not just you. They stay this adorable all through puppyhood, so you better get used to that cute aggression you’re feeling right now.”
“Do their tails stay curled like this?” I asked, ruffling Doodle’s.
“Yup. But aside from that, they kind of look like polar bears when they get older.”
“How old are they now?”
“About ten weeks. You can start training them right away if you decide in a few days that you want to keep them.”
I was pretty sure I wanted to keep them, but I stayed quiet about that in case my feelings changed for some reason. Instead, I asked more questions about the breed, how much exercise they needed, and how best to train them. Ella answered me with patience and an amount of detail I was grateful for.
“Just like with Huskies, negative reinforcement doesn’t work with them, so yelling will do you little good,” she said.
“I’ve found with housetraining, it’s best to bring them outside a lot, and bring treats with you, so if they go,” she shot me a dark look, “pee-poop,” I grinned at her, and she rolled her eyes, “you give them a treat and it lets them know that going to the bathroom outside is good. You don’t do that if they go on the puppy pad, and they’re smart enough to work it out for themselves even at this age that it’s better to go out than in. ”
“Do I let them sleep in my room tonight?”
“It’s really up to you, but I would.” She leaned down and lifted Boots from her lap.
He immediately tried to lick her face. “Up until today, they’ve been around their mama and littermates, and they’re used to cuddling up to them at night.
I have no idea how tall your bed is, so you might want to think about tugging a mattress onto the ground to make it easier for them to get down if they have to.
And of course, put some pads in the room.
” She raised her head, lifting Boots with her so that they were both looking at me with puppy eyes.
It was hard to tell who was cuter. “Please let us sleep with you” she said, miming the puppy’s voice.
I arched a brow at her. “Really, Ella?”
Her eyes flashed wide as she realized how that sounded. “I meant both puppies. Not me and Boots. That would be unfair to Doodle.”
I opened my mouth to keep teasing her, but my phone alarm went off, ruining the moment. Time to take my meds. This would probably be a good segue into bringing up my depression and anxiety. The only thing was, I had no idea how to casually do that.
“Hey, can you watch the dogs? I’m off to down some anti-depressants!”
Ugh. Just no.
I had zero practice with this. I hadn’t even told my parents. Mom and Dad would get on the next plane out if they knew. I’d have to ask Brian in our next session if he had some pointers.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Ella.
“More puppies for meee,” she said, leaning forward to pull Doodle toward her too.
I went upstairs, took my meds, and then called Dad on FaceTime as I headed back down.
He answered after the third ring, already smiling into the camera.
Behind him, sunshine drenched the deck of their house, the lush, tropical forest just visible beyond, like a wall of verdant green.
Lucky bastard was outside enjoying the weather.
“Hiya, Benny,” he said.
“Hi, Dad. Mom with you?”
“She’s inside. One sec. Lemme go find her.” There was so much movement on his end of the line that I had to look away or risk getting dizzy. “Klara! Ben’s on the phone!”
I heard my mom’s distant answer, and within seconds, both of their faces filled my screen.
“Hi,” Mom said, waving.
“Ella got me a present, and I thought you two would want to see,” I told them. I switched the camera direction and took the hallway toward the sitting room. “Ella! My parents want to see what you did!” I called, giving her some advanced warning.
We found her sprawled out on the floor, laughing as the dogs leapt and stumbled and rolled over her, yipping and growling as they tried to adorable her to death.
Mom shrieked. “Oh my God, puppies!” She grabbed Dad by the arm with both hands and started shaking him, so that he disappeared off the screen with every push and re-emerged with every pull. “Hani, look!”
“I see them,” Dad said, laughing at her.
This was the Mom I knew and loved. This woman who got outrageously excited about small animals. The one who borderline assaulted my father whenever she was overcome with joy. It was nice to see a glimpse of her again. It had been far too long.
My stomach sank at the realization. Maybe I wasn’t the only one dealing with depression. We’d never been great, as a family, about talking about our feelings. Or at least the negative ones. It felt like it was past time we changed that.
A thought that I’d probably regret popped into my head. I switched the camera so my parents could see me again. “Did you want to come out and meet them?”
In response, Mom started crying. Like, face in hands insta-sobbing.
Holy shit.
Ella whipped her head up from the floor, all traces of humor gone. “Is she crying?” she mouthed.
I nodded and decided to step out of the room. “Mom, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, waving a hand toward the screen. She was obviously not fine.
Dad slid an arm around her shoulders and dropped a kiss on top of her head. “She’s just overwhelmed. She’s had a rough couple of days.”
That sounded familiar. Was this the reason he’d been so defensive of her when she got pushy with me? The fact that I didn’t know made me feel like a jackass. First, my selfishness with Ella, and now this.
“Do you want to call me back later to talk about coming out here? It might be another week before I can host you. I still have to finish the spare room.”
“We’ll do that,” Dad said. “Love you.”
“You too,” I told him.
We hung up. I left my phone in the kitchen and went back to Ella and the puppies.
Doodle bounded over to me and started attacking my left foot with his paws, slapping it into submission.
I stopped where I was and let him have his fun, absorbing the sight and letting it balance out some of the shit of today.
Ella’s present couldn’t have been better timed.
“Is your mom okay?” she asked.
I lifted my eyes to hers. “I’m not sure.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She looked down at the Boots, who was sprawled out between her legs. “I made my mom cry once when I was in high school. Some horrible comment about how she wasn’t my real mom. I think it’s the worst thing I’ve ever said to someone. I felt like garbage for weeks afterward.”
“Yeah, this feeling is…not good.”
She nodded and looked up. Our gazes caught.
“Do you want to meet them when they come out?” I asked.
Her expression brightened. “Of course. I feel like your mom and I would really hit it off. It must be something about the way she inflates my ego to astronomical proportions every time I talk to her.”
I grinned. I could tell she was trying to lighten the mood, get me to smile, and I really didn’t want to deny her that.
“And your dad is pretty much the cutest.”
“I’m sorry, what? Now I need to compete with my old man?”
“Psssh. I said he’s the cutest, not -” she cut herself off, hard, her cheeks flaming red.
“Not what, Ella?”
She dropped her gaze to the puppy and reached out to ruffle his fur. I didn’t think she would answer at first, and then she said, “Come on, Ben. You know what you look like.”