Chapter 32
“This hiking trail feels very murdery.”
Keith Morrison’s voice echoes through my head. She lit up every room she walked into!
I always felt like that had to be a lie—there’s no way everyone who had an episode of Dateline lit up the rooms they walked into. What does that even look like anyway? They smiled at strangers? That seems to be what got them into the whole murder mess in the first place.
Ben’s boisterous laugh draws my eyes to him.
I made him walk in front of me, mainly because I like watching his firm ass in the short hiking shorts.
He’s paired the shorts—which I feel like could be at least two inches shorter—with a Hawthorne hoodie and hiking boots.
We left Ernest back at the cabin because I wasn’t sure if he’d be able to handle the hike.
Ben is taking lots of pictures to “show him later,” he said before giving Ernest extra belly scratches.
“Don’t you think if I was going to murder you, I would have done it last night? Why wait until today?”
“Hmm… maybe you enjoy the thrill of the chase,” I suggest.
He turns around, quirking his dark eyebrow at me. “Kinky.”
“Whatever, I was always faster than you anyway. I could definitely outrun you if my life depended on it.”
Ben stops dead in his tracks, but I’m so focused on not tripping over a tree root that I charge right into him. When he turns around, his slight elevation on the trail makes him tower over me more than usual. “Want to test this theory?” he smirks.
There must be something seriously wrong with me based on the excited swoop that flies through my stomach. Ben sees it on my face because he leans down to whisper in my ear, “You have until the count of five. Run.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice. With a squeal, I take off, following the trail we were taking. Ben’s voice grows further away as he slowly counts to five, adding a Mississippi between each number. “Ready or not, here I come!” he yells, spurring me to run faster than I have in a long time.
But Ben apparently spends a lot more time on the treadmill than I do nowadays because it’s not long before I hear his heavy footsteps catching up to me. Hoping he’s not able to see me yet, I dart off the path in hopes of a place to hide.
A tree wide enough to cover me is only about ten feet away, and I try to quietly tiptoe behind it without crunching too many leaves. My heart is pounding and my breathing is heavy, but I can hear Ben pass my hiding spot before slowing down once he realizes I’m not in front of him anymore.
“Very clever, Red,” he calls out. “You’ve got to be around here somewhere.”
I chance a peek around the tree and see his back toward me, searching the opposite side of the trail. Looking around, I contemplate whether or not I should move to a different tree. When I look back toward Ben, he’s gone.
My brow furrows as I lean further around the tree, straining to listen for his distant footfalls to no avail.
“What the fuck,” I mutter before deciding to change locations.
Maybe if I get a bit closer to the trail, I’ll be able to hear him.
Quietly, I tiptoe back toward the path, cringing when a twig snaps beneath my boot.
I make it back to the main opening, but there’s still no sign of Ben.
My mind is spiraling with worst case scenarios when a strong set of arms suddenly grabs me around the waist, twirling me not once, but twice.
“Got ya,” says Ben’s smug voice in my ear. I can barely hear him over my own scream. His hand comes over my mouth to muffle my startled screech. “Jesus, Red. You’re going to make people think an actual murder is occuring.”
“Youscaredtheshitoutofme,” I mumble into Ben’s palm.
“Yes, I caught you,” he teases, dropping me back to the ground and crowding me up against the nearest tree. He leans in close, lips grazing mine. “What’s my prize?”
“My undying devotion,” I joke, taking his lips with mine.
“Deal. Sealing it with a kiss.” And he does. A tender, affectionate kiss that communicates so many things that I’m not ready to hear. I think he knows this though, because he laces his hand through mine and wordlessly starts us back on the hiking trail.
A short while later we arrive at our destination. The waterfall we must have been hearing last night at dinner. It falls straight into a swimming hole that would be perfect for the summertime. Ben opens his backpack and lays out a blanket for us to sit on.
“This place is really nice.” Though we can’t swim, the fall colors are stunning and definitely make the hike up here worth it.
“We should come back in the summer.” Ben says it so casually. As if it’s just normal that we would be making plans together for almost a year from now.
I hum in response, joining him on the blanket.
“Does it freak you out when I make plans like that?”
Of course he caught on to that. “It makes me a little anxious,” I admit.
He pats his lap indicating that he wants me to lie down. My head willingly meets his bare thigh—thank you short shorts—and he tugs at my hair tie. “Can I take this out?”
I do it for him, and he begins to play with my long locks. He braids and unbraids my hair several times before saying, “I don’t want to make you anxious. I can come on… very strong. I know that. But I want to find a way to make you feel secure.”
“It can take me longer to process things. It’s not necessarily that I don’t like the thought of coming back here with you next summer… oftentimes it just takes my brain a minute to wrap around new or surprising ideas.”
He nods, which I can feel more than I can see. “So, give you processing time. Don’t try to interpret your silence.”
“That would be really helpful.” My heart picks up speed again, this time from an emotional intensity rather than a physical one.
“Can I ask a hard question?”
“That seems more than fair, after last night.” I laugh but Ben, for once, stays serious.
“You told me about your friendship with Maya and how things ended there. I noticed you don’t really talk to your parents either—was it something similar?” he asks.
Surprisingly, this topic isn’t too difficult to talk about, though I can see how Ben would assume so with the relationship he has with his parents.
“Well, you know that I moved to Sassafras when my parents divorced in middle school. After that I was pretty much estranged from my mother. I don’t think she ever really wanted to be a mom, but I was the bandaid on a marriage that was in the middle of brain surgery.
Surprise, surprise, a child does not make marriage easier.
Especially not a child with undiagnosed autism. ”
We’re both quiet for a bit. I listen to the falling water as Ben continues to play with my hair.
“My dad,” I finally continue, “he is a pretty conservative guy. He retired to Florida a few years ago and I haven’t talked to him much since.
Just the occasional obligatory check-in.
I think he realized both the autism and the queerness weren’t a phase.
” I shrug. “Maybe I would miss him more if he had ever tried to form a real relationship with me, but he didn’t.
And that’s sort of the parent’s job, isn’t it?
He didn’t get the perfect child so he stopped putting in the effort. ”
“How the fuck could anyone think you aren’t perfect?” Ben seethes.
“I’m not,” I laugh. “Not in his eyes, at least.”
“You were the goddamn valedictorian, Colette. Didn’t you get a full ride to Stanford? What else did he want?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. It caught me by surprise at first. He hid a lot of his preferences away from me. I really had no idea he felt the way he felt, probably because I’m not good at interpreting nonverbal communication.
It’s why I struggle with feeling like I’m missing something in other social relationships I’ve formed.
Between that and my fallout with Maya, you know?
“I’m thinking when I came home and told him I had a girlfriend instead of some macho jock that wanted to wife me up and put two point five babies in me, he finally realized I wasn’t going to follow the path he had laid out for my life.
” I sigh. “The irony of all of this is that he would have loved you. Floppy hair and athletic, put together, a real guy’s guy. ”
Ben scrunches his nose and I laugh. “Gross, please never call me a guy’s guy again.”
“Fine, you goof.” I spin in his lap and look up into his disgusted face. “If it makes you feel any better, now that I know you I can wholeheartedly say you’re a girl’s guy.”
His hand comes over his heart. “Thank you.”
“What about you?” I ask. “Tell me more about your relationship with your parents. They seem great.”
He nods in confirmation. “They are great. With both of them, what you see is what you get. They are loving, down to earth, overly affectionate and way too involved in their children’s lives.
But we all agree how lucky we are to have them as parents.
Both Mom and Dad just want us to be happy.
They love big family dinners that seem to grow each Sunday.
The more the merrier has always been their motto. ”
“I was so envious of your dynamic in high school,” I confess. “The Bardots were everything my family wasn’t. I felt like the only thing I had was school… achievements. I think I hated you because you threatened the one thing I felt like I had any control over.”
“That makes a lot of sense, Cole.” He pushes my hair away from my face, twisting a piece slowly around his finger. “I never hated you.”
I scoff. “Fuck off, yes you did.”
He grins, shaking his head. “No, I didn’t.
I wouldn’t have tried half as hard in school if it wasn’t for the opportunity to spend more time with you.
I admired your work ethic—still do. And yeah, I enjoy friendly competition.
” His hair flops onto his forehead when he looks down at me.
“But really I was just trying to get your attention. Albeit, I would go about it entirely differently now.”
“No you wouldn’t,” I tease. “You got off on me being mean to you.”
He groans, tipping his head back so his Adam’s apple is on full display. “Fuck, I really did. Well… do,” he corrects.
Then both of us are laughing. Full belly laughs, something only Ben is able to pull from me.
He falls back until he’s lying flat, stomach moving up and down in silent laughter.
Catching my breath, I crawl on top of him to give him a proper kiss.
Ben makes me excited to touch, to laugh, to play.
There’s freedom in that, something I could easily get used to.
He takes my left hand, kissing the ring there before he maneuvers me off of himself and pushes to standing. “Let’s get back to Ernest. I want to show him the pictures I took for him,” he says, completely deadass serious about showing my dog his photographs.
“Okay, Benoit.” I hop up to join him, and we work together to fold the blanket. “Should I stop calling you Benjamin?”
“Hell no.” His reply is instant. “You’re the only one who is allowed to call me the wrong name. I love it. Love your sass.”
I blush and he clocks it, tracing where my skin is turning red. “Love this too.”
“That makes one of us.” I roll my eyes. “C’mon. I’m hungry and I have some more studying to do. But maybe tonight we can get back in the hot tub?”
“And do some butt stuff?” Ben suggests.
“Oh my God.” I shove him as we start back down the trail.
“What? Never hurts to ask.” He smirks, pinching my ass in emphasis.
“Maybe I want to do butt stuff to you,” I tease.
“Colette.” He sighs. “We’ve been over this a million times. My answer to you is always yes.”
Damn, tonight is going to be fun.
“Race you down the trail? Last one to the bottom gets to be the bottom,” Ben winks before taking off.
Spoiler: we take turns being the bottom.