Chapter 4 #2
Jack’s arguably softened.
For a moment, Benny was sure both had forgotten he was standing there—not smiling at all.
Then he was mentally backtracking, calculating the distance between the Main Street Café and him standing awkwardly in his dog jammies.
Had they really both walked all that way?
Together?
“Oh, look at you being funny.” Carol added in another trill of laughter. “Acting like my concern over a friend is a bad thing. I mean, have you seen some of the comments out there about our Benny? He needs his friends to stand by his side more than ever. There’s nothing wrong with that, surely.”
Not that they were asking for his input, but Benny mentally corrected her use of the term friend. To be a friend, they had to be friendly together, right? Other than the night before at the bar, he wasn’t even sure when Carol had last smiled at him, let alone with him.
Jack, at least, didn’t keep the chain of passive aggressive investigation going.
He started the wrap-up with a dropping smile.
“You’re right. There certainly isn’t.”
Whereas Jack’s smile had produced some heat in Benny, it losing its steam was the bucket of ice reminder he needed.
He was supposed to admit their lie, not indulge in whatever this new thing was.
Plus, if he leaned into the joke part, maybe Carol wouldn’t be too insufferable.
Benny cleared his throat. Finally, the pair on his doorstep remembered he existed. Both turned their sights on him.
“I actually wanted to talk to you about that, Carol. About us, I mean. I think—”
Jack, however, was faster than Benny’s rising confidence.
He pushed the door open wide and turned around so they stood side-by-side. Some kind of cologne—heavy and distracting—enveloped Benny as Jack wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
Benny had never lost the plot so fast in his life.
“We were going to wait a bit, but we’ll go ahead and officially accept your invitation now,” he said. “We'll be there with bells on.”
The image of a leash around his neck, with Jack holding the lead, nearly put Benny in an immediate coma.
Carol's eyebrow arced high.
Did she imagine it too?!
“Really?” she asked.
“Really,” Jack replied.
And whatever it was that he had confirmed, it did a number on the current situation. Carol’s smile went megawatt bright, she actually clapped, and then she was nearly skipping off the porch with only one last look back.
“Great,” she called over her shoulder. “Then we'll see you in two hours! See you two lovebirds then!”
Carol became a flash of spandex and blond hair across the sidewalk, turning back toward Main Street. Benny stood stock still in his PJs.
When she was out of sight, Jack dropped his arm and sighed. He swiped the coffee cup from Benny's hand and moved past him into the house.
“I think Carol drugged me.”
“What?!”
Benny shut the door behind them and locked it—no one was going to catch him underestimating Carol—before scurrying after the man to the living room, no longer caring about his slapdash appearance.
Jack's attitude towards the woman in question was transforming into obvious frustration.
“One second I'm standing in line for my coffee, and the next she has me walking a million miles away with it in this damn humidity to see you.” Jack motioned around the room. “I had no idea in hell where you lived, and I know she knew that. But she just kept talking and walking and suddenly we were on your porch while my truck is still at the café. And—” He cut himself off and put his hands behind his head. “She had to have drugged me, right? I mean how else did she manage all of that when I’ve barely been awake for an hour?”
He made a face, brow furrowing.
Then he took a drink from his coffee and that brow found even more room to furrow.
“And now I can't even enjoy my coffee. I'm just too damn hot.”
The image of himself on a leash again flashed through Benny’s mind.
Talk about hot.
His need to understand the rest of the conversation between Jack and Carol outweighed the desire to explore all that that image implied.
“What is happening?” he finally broke, throwing his hands wide. “Why didn’t you stop her? Where are we supposed to be in two hours and why?”
Jack met his reaction with another loud one.
“Like I said, that woman is what happened! I woke up, went to get a coffee, and now we’re going to the damn Robertson cult compound in two hours.”
“What?!”
Apparently Benny’s reaction was too much and only one of them was entitled to properly have a moment. Jack waved a hand dismissively at him before moving to the fireplace and eyeing the framed pictures on the mantel.
Benny didn’t need confidence to intervene.
He was now running on rising panic.
He moved between Jack and the fireplace and nearly tripped over his own words.
“I was ready to tell her us dating was all a joke—a bad, dumb, stupid little joke—because this—us—isn’t going to work,” he hurried.
“Fake dating is something that happens in the movies, it’s not decided on a whim behind some bar on a Wednesday afternoon!
I-I appreciated the help then and the offer after but— Well, I didn’t need you to make couple plans with her two seconds after we sealed the deal! ”
Benny worried that he’d overstepped the second he paused for air.
Jack’s eyes had narrowed, and he looked down his nose at Benny with an expression that didn’t seem any less annoyed than when he’d been sparring with Carol.
“I figured that’s what you might try and say, just like I’m figuring now that you haven’t actually been online yet, have you?
” Jack pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and shook it.
“Half the reason I needed this fancy sugar coffee was to give me the energy to ignore all of the messages I've been getting.”
Benny’s stomach went from hot, swirly, and appreciative of Jack’s cologne to sinking to his fuzzy-socked-up feet. He abandoned his attempt at a position of power and fast-walked to his bedroom where he’d flipped his phone over in defiance the night before.
Judging by the heavy footfalls behind him, Jack followed.
Benny’s sinking stomach managed to crash through the metaphorical floorboards once he turned his phone right side up and double tapped the screen.
“Oh. My. God.” A wave of déjà vu nearly bowled him over. Benny turned, open-mouthed, to the bartender he’d only officially met the day before. “Thirty-two text messages. Five missed calls.”
Jack looked entirely too smug for someone standing this close to a potential disaster.
“Apparently, Miss Pain in the Ass Robertson made a post about us,” he said.
“Me being Guy and also me accepting your love. Everyone is going nuts about it. Just take a trip through some of your socials. I’ve personally never had so many friend requests in my life.
That’s not saying anything about the thirsty DMs that have flooded my inboxes.
Some of them were so creative, I’m thinking of printing them for my coffee table.
I’m not sure about how many people are calling me ‘daddy’ though.
Am I really old enough for that to be a thing yet? ”
Benny wasn't even going to look at his socials. No way. He'd already turned off social media notifications on his phone the day the blog had gone viral.
And he'd done that for one reason and one reason alone.
It stressed him the hell out.
Planning parties? Events? Other people’s life milestones?
That was different.
That wasn’t social. That was work.
But going viral for being a person?
That was an onslaught of noise, attention, and opinions from people he grew up with to people he barely knew to strangers.
That had been too much.
That was why he needed to breathe.
That was why he’d hidden in Arbor Bay.
Jack, maybe finally reading the room, spoke a little less harshly than before.
“If you still want to back out, we can, but I think it might be more messy than if we hadn’t kissed.”
“If you hadn’t kissed me,” Benny deadpanned.
Jack shrugged.
“We can blame that—you can blame me—all you want, but we both know you were drowning in a Carol sea and I was just trying to help you float.”
“And now if I say that, I’m as good as shipwrecked.”
Jack snorted.
“See? We can do this. We’re already using some seafaring analogies together.”
Benny ignored the humor and scrolled through his text notifications, hoping to not see one in particular.
That hope sank to the bottom of the ocean, analogy continued.
The text was from Rizzie Caplan.
“What is it?” Jack must have moved closer. The smell of cologne wrapped around Benny with startling speed, just like the mental leash image.
Benny, giving up, sighed.
“If anyone finds out I lied or am lying about you, about the blog…then I think I’ll lose more than I ever had to gain from it. I don’t know if I can take that risk any farther. But also, now Carol has Caroled and I can’t see a way out of this. Not without me looking pathetic.”
Benny dropped to the edge of his bed.
Jack kept standing.
“Then don't come clean,” he said simply. “Let’s commit to it instead. Make them believe it. Starting with getting ready so I can come back and pick you up in about an hour and a half.”
A hand—big and warm and heavy—landed on Benny’s shoulder.
“Dress light. She said something about a garden party.”
Benny barely had time to get a “huh” out before Jack left the room. Only after he was gone did Benny process the last thing he said.
“Looks like our first date is going to be in the belly of the beast, sweet cheeks.”