Chapter 5 #2
Never in a million years would he have thought their dry and very real reunion would take place surrounded by Robertsons with him hand-in-hand with the internet's newest sensation.
And he didn’t even have time for a good shower fight to prepare.
Jack glanced at the clock on the dash.
If they didn't leave soon, they'd be late. Which would only give Carol more things to say to make the situation even more uncomfortable.
Jack's hand hovered over the horn, wondering if he could play the insistence off as a joke, when the front door opened and Benny came out.
The guy might have been slow to react to certain things, but the second their eyes met, he ran at the truck like the devil was on his heels.
“Is someone chasing you?” Jack asked as soon as he was inside and buckled. He looked back at the house, curiosity pausing his anxiousness.
Benny huffed.
The pale blue button-down he was wearing fit nicely across his shoulders and chest but strained a little as he pulled his seatbelt on. Jack wondered if he worked out.
Not that he cared.
Jack averted his eyes and cleared his throat.
“Because I’m game for a lot, but fighting off the devil at your heels might not be in my wheelhouse for today.”
Benny made another little noise again.
Frustrated but not red.
“Not the devil, but he might be easier to deal with,” Benny answered. “It was my brother, Cal. He has this way of digging in deeper when he knows I'm lying and the only way to beat him is to flee from him.”
“Lying?” That surprised Jack. “You didn't tell him about our fake dating thing?” Benny shook his head. “What about Marcus being Guy?”
“Oh, absolutely not,” he said with another, slightly dramatic head shake. “I wasn't just talking to talk when I said you were the only one who knows that secret. Now drive.”
Jack touched his chest with one hand and pulled away from the house with the other.
“Well goodness me,” he said, feigning choked emotion. “I’m truly touched by the amount of trust you have in me, Benny.”
“You accidentally earned my trust because you’re too good at your job,” Benny countered. “Those Cassidy’s Special drinks should be studied as alternative interrogation tactics. Alongside Carol Robertson.”
Jack snorted at that.
“I'll take that as a personal compliment, thanks.”
Benny’s mood was nowhere near humored. Not that Jack had ever seen the man next to him anywhere near carefree. It was like the man always had his attention split between what ifs in the past, present, and future.
Even as they drove away from the neighborhood, Jack could see him look back toward the house.
“But you did tell your brother about us dating?” he ventured.
Benny nodded. Then he shook his head.
“He got an email from his middle school ex-girlfriend about it.”
“A middle school ex? Isn’t that just like a friend you maybe passed notes with?”
“According to her, that’s enough of a history to reach out to see how Cal was doing. I saw the email and she only made it two sentences before she was asking about the two of us.”
He sighed.
“I was already planning on telling him, but I wasn’t sure how or what to say, so I panicked and sounded like I’d just been born last week.
I probably didn’t do any favors for myself when I bolted out of the house either.
I’m not sure what I’ll tell him when I get back, but I guess I’ll deal with that then. ”
Benny seemed genuinely bothered by lying to his brother.
Jack could hear it in his voice.
“Why not just tell him the truth? Or at least about our arrangement? Are you two not close?”
Hesitation filled the car.
When Benny answered Jack could tell he was doing it with care.
“It’s the opposite actually,” he started.
“We're very close. It's just that, well, he hates lying more than I hate lying to him. So if I told him the truth, he’d help me hide it and that would…be bad for him. I'd rather skip over that part and have him just be upset with me for now knowing that I’m not telling him the whole story.”
Jack saw Benny turn toward him out of his periphery.
“Which, by the way, this lying and anxiety in my stomach is all going to be pointless if we can’t get our story straight.”
“Our story?”
Jack nearly jumped as Benny clapped his hands together.
“Exactly,” he exclaimed. “We don't have one! How are we going to make a believable story about 'us' when we don’t even have an origin story? A meet-cute? Heck, we don’t even know a thing about each other.”
Jack took a turn that led them right to Main Street. He could see that the communal parking lot across from Town Hall was already filled with people heading into the café or to the Basket Case restaurant for lunch.
In two weeks, the entire street would be crawling with locals, out-of-towners, and parade floats ranging from total crap to top-dollar designs.
Cassidy's Place hadn't had a float in the parade in ten years. Before that, it hadn't been a pretty sight. The Knox men were good at a lot of things. They were shit at papier-maché.
Jack gave the customary lifted-hand wave to a few of the pedestrians who looked up as they moved across the sidewalk. Benny paid them absolutely no mind. His dark eyes were burrowing deeper and deeper into the side of Jack’s face.
Finally, he sighed.
“Hey, I know some things about you.”
Benny scoffed at that.
“Like what? That my name is Benny De Carlo and I make poor life choices?”
Jack shrugged.
“Well, yeah. That and I know that you are a lightweight when it comes to fruity drinks, you live in Nashville but are here visiting your brother—the same brother whose name is Callum and who hates to lie—and you don't really seem to be a fan of Carol despite having some intense feelings for her twin. That’s like five things right there.”
Benny groaned.
“My God. We're doomed. Turn the car around. Better yet, drive me into the bay.”
Jack waved Benny’s mounting concern off.