Benny
I really shouldn’t have thrown Bree’s name out there like that, but I couldn’t help myself. She really thought she was fooling me. Her wig and makeup and clothes threw me off in the beginning, but all she had to do was open her mouth and my body reacted. I knew that voice. I knew this woman.
I never expected her to drop into my house through an open window, but stranger things have happened.
To be honest, I never thought I’d see Bree again.
When we parted ways at sixteen, I was devastated, but it had obviously been the right thing.
Bree enjoyed fame. She liked being in the spotlight, and after getting a healthy dose of it, I knew it wasn’t something I could do for the rest of my life.
The anxiety that accompanied the fame was already too much for me to handle.
My quiet ranch in Montana suited me much better than stadiums of girls screaming my name with manic obsession.
Don’t get me wrong, music is my passion. When I was fourteen, I thought I’d love everything that came along with my record deal, too. How was I supposed to know that the loneliest I could feel would be on stage surrounded by thousands of fans?
Enough of memory lane. Bree scrambles off her hands and knees on the slick path. I cringe, reaching to help her up.
Bree hisses, pulling her arm away from me.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
“I’m fine.” She laughs awkwardly, blinking rain from her eyes. “But uh…how long did you know it was me? I thought my disguise was working.”
“It did for a minute. But you didn’t even try to change your voice.”
She mutters something incoherent. “Noted. Okay, well…this is awkward. Can you please not tell anyone you saw me here?”
My body stiffens. There goes the brief, miniscule thought she came here for me.
When I realized who was dripping water on my floor, for half a second I wondered if I was the reason she was here.
If she knew I had a hand in her current musical success and had come to thank me.
But the longer she tried to pretend she didn’t know who I was, the less I believed that to be the case.
Now she’s watching me with anxious trepidation. I guess all the posts on social media about her disappearance aren’t entirely falsified for attention. This woman really is hiding.
She chews on her lips, waiting for me to promise I’ll keep her secret. So I relax like I’m not the least bit curious about why she’s running away from the fame she loves so much. “Who would I tell?”
“I don’t know. Your grandma? Is that why you’re in town, to visit her?” She doesn’t wait for me to respond. “Just don’t tell her I’m here.”
Don’t tell Bree’s all-time biggest fan that she’s only a few streets over? Yeah, probably a good idea not to loop Grandma in on this.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Bree in person, and a lifetime—it feels—since we were in a relationship, so it’s surprising she remembers my grandma lives in Bodega Bay.
It also occurs to me she thinks I’m in town temporarily.
She doesn’t realize I live here. When I called this place my house, she must’ve thought I meant it like the place I’m staying, not the place I own.
I’m torn between informing her we’re about to be next-door neighbors for as long as she stays here and keeping her in the dark, but it’s late, the rain is soaking us both, and I need to decompress.
“Benny?”
“It’s Ben,” I correct her.
“Do you promise not to tell anyone?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure.”
Her eyes narrow. “That doesn’t sound like a promise.”
“I’m not spitting into my hand, Bree.”
“That was one time, and I’ve outgrown it.” Bree pops a fist on her hip, making me think of her in my living room holding my sea lion sculpture.
I’m tempted to invite her back, to ask what she’s been up to—really been up to. She televises so much of her life, but I’ve been there when the cameras were rolling for the reality show about her family, The Belacourts. It’s too scripted for me to believe much of what I saw on TV.
If she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s here, she’s in hiding. I’ve seen the headlines on social media. I know she’s running from a big breakup. What I don’t know is if the mascara running down her cheeks right now is from the rain or her heartache.
She wipes rain from her eyes and looks up, like it might help her gauge how much longer she’s going to be soaked. “Can I trust you, Benny?”
No one has called me Benny in years. Apparently, my initial correction went through one ear and out the other.
I can’t really blame her. It’s the middle of the night, she broke into the wrong house, and now she’s dealing with a scraped elbow and is getting drenched in cold rain.
I need to let her go. Why is it so hard to do?
“Benny?”
“Yeah, you can trust me.” The fact that I’ve lived off the grid for so long should be proof enough I don’t have paps in my pocket.
My connections to the Industry aren’t gone—it’s how I’ve kept such a healthy, quiet career over the last decade.
But even if I did tell Chip or Justin about my run-in with my ex, they wouldn’t care enough to pass it on. Probably.
I won’t say anything, just to be safe.
But I need to say something to her. “I’m not really the one you have to worry about, though. There are two houses on this street with teenaged daughters. That alone is cause for concern.” Teenagers film and post everything.
“That’s okay. I’m not planning on leaving the house too much.” She looks over her shoulder at my cousin’s Airbnb rental, then back at me. It might just be me, but she seems as hesitant to break the conversation as I do, like once she does, she might never see me again.
If she’s here for a month, she’ll have to leave the house at some point. Unless, of course, she has someone coming to meet her here. She probably has multiple assistants on payroll. “I don’t think they stock the fridges in these short-term rentals,” I say.
“That’s why we have grocery delivery.”
Delivery, which means she probably doesn’t have someone coming to meet her. “From Diekmann’s? I don’t think they do that.”
“I was thinking .”
Does she realize how long it takes to get anything delivered out here? I doubt groceries would be much different. If she’s wanting veggies, they might end up a pile of brown mush before they reach her porch. Does even deliver vegetables?
She seems to read my face. “Or a store in Santa Rosa. I can probably pay someone to bring me food.”
It’s a forty-minute drive, thirty if she orders from a closer town, but there are people willing to do that for cash.
If she wants to remain in hiding, though, that’s probably not her best bet.
Besides, if she doesn’t have a bodyguard—and given the events of the evening so far, she doesn’t—she shouldn’t be inviting strangers to her house for any reason. It’s too dangerous.
Bree scrubs a hand over her mascara-covered eyes and sighs. “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out tomorrow.”
“Okay. Well, if you need anything, I’m right here.”
Bree’s eyes snap to mine. Despite the blonde wig and abundance of mascara gone awry, her brown eyes look deep and dark and pull me in.
Since when did she have freckles?
I swallow hard. Why did I give her an open-ended offer? Should I have acted more aloof? Drawn a healthy boundary between us? I haven’t seen this woman in years. It can’t be a coincidence that she’s literally standing in front of my door right now. But it’s too late—too early?—to get all analytical.
“Good night, Bree.” I take a step back, safe under the porch from the rain.
It goes against every fiber of me not to pick up her enormous suitcase and carry it to her front door.
Something tells me she needs space, like she’s a feral racoon—dark-rimmed eyes and everything—and one step closer will make her lash out. She needs the room to retreat.
Bree grabs the handle and yanks it down the wet sidewalk. “Good night, Benny.”
I listen for her front door to shut and watch the living room light flash on, off, on through the lacy drape-covered window.
My house is too quiet now, even with the window open to the sound of rain pinging against my back deck.
I clean up the puddle on my hardwood floor and find myself staring at the sea lion on the nearby table.
Bree is here. She’s here.
And she seems to want nothing to do with me.
I wake up, lace my shoes, run down to the beach and back—not on the sand, as I don’t actively sign up for torture—and shower, all before six AM.
Something about knowing that Bree Belacourt is in Colby’s house next door has made it impossible for me to get any sleep at all.
Even my run doesn’t push her from my head.
I know she’s there. She knows I know she’s there.
I can’t get the thought out of my head that she has nothing in her fridge and no rental car.
Is she hungry? Do I take her muffins? Avoid her completely?
She has nothing to eat, and the Bree I used to know was a raging monster before food. She defined the word hangry for me.
But she’s not that girl anymore. She’s a woman with life experience and changes in her preferences and behaviors, undoubtedly.
When we dated, I hated onions. Absolutely loathed them.
Picked them off my pizza, sent back sandwiches that had been defiled by their potent stringy bits.
Spit out a bite of stuffed mushroom at a Grammys after-party once because the onion crunch had been so jarring.
Yes. I once spit my food in a bush in front of Shawn Mendes. He was nice about it.
But now? I love them. Grilled, baked, caramelized. They’re the sprinkles on my cupcakes, and I add them to anything savory I can. There aren’t many meals in the Rhodes house that aren’t onionized somehow.
So, clearly I’ve changed. I can’t expect less from Bree.
Then again, hanger doesn’t seem like the sort of thing one grows out of. I pick up my key, throw on my helmet, and head for my garage. I don’t have to see Bree to bring her something to eat. It’s not out of line to leave muffins on her porch, right? That’s the polite, neighborly thing to do.
It crosses my mind to ask Colby for her number. He’d have it through the booking she made on his short-term rental, right? Then I could text her that there was food on her porch and never even have to knock.
That feels like too much. Does Colby even know who he rented the house to? She couldn’t have used a real name. Not if she doesn’t want to be found.
Cool morning air whips my cheeks as I snake through the ocean-lined highway toward town on my retro Harley.
Well, town is generous. It’s more like half a street covered in an array of shops punctuated, by old houses turned into high-end art galleries and wind chime stores. The people here really love their wind chimes. We have a lot of wind, so I guess it’s fair.
If you need anything more than a quick supermarket can provide, you have to drive into a bigger town where they don’t price-gouge you for milk and eggs. Which is why I take a once-a-month venture to Costco and stock up.
I’m currently due for a Costco run, so I’m fresh out of anything worth sharing with a neighbor.
But fifteen minutes later, I’m choosing pastries at Wild Flour and agonizing over which foods Bree might like now that she wouldn’t eat ten years ago.
What are her onions? Does she like cherries?
She used to hate them. Or maybe she isn’t a fan of blueberries anymore.
They have an array of fresh scones, so to be safe, I take one of everything.
Which is how I end up driving home slowly while holding an overstuffed paper bag and wishing I’d taken my truck instead.
When the blue ocean comes into view, sunlight sparkling like a thousand little diamonds, my regret slithers away.
I breathe in deeply, letting salty, cool air cleanse my lungs, and turn for home.
I don’t really have time for this. I have a Zoom meeting with Justin in thirty minutes, and I haven’t even warmed up my voice.
I’m slowly puttering up my street when I notice movement in the bushes in front of my house. A woman is trying to peek through my front window, face pressed to the glass and hands cupped around her eyes to block the sun.
That woman looks a lot like Bree.