Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It had been a day.
In fact, all days felt like that lately. And it wasn’t just time within the hospital that seemed to drag on forever. Even at the beach house, the days were long, the gap between sunrise to sunset seemingly endless.
Maybe it was the gray skies that added to it, because there really hadn’t been much of an actual sunrise or sunset recently. Yesterday was the first cloudless sky they’d had in over a week, and that big ball of sunshine was a welcome reprieve.
This evening, Tabitha was going to take advantage of what little daylight remained.
After her shift at the hospital, she’d gone home, laced up her sneakers, thrown on a windbreaker, and texted Ben, asking him to join her for a run along the shore.
He had showed up twenty minutes later in athletic wear, ready to go.
Their pace was quick at the start, their feet pummeling the packed sand as they ran down the beach.
But by mile two, they’d both slowed up, not because their stamina had waned, but because they wanted to talk while they jogged.
Ben had asked about her day, something they didn’t do much of before.
But now those sorts of conversations had become a new normal.
Tabitha shared about her surgeries and a few of the cases that came through the hospital, and then she reciprocated by asking Ben about the most recent house he’d listed, the one with the indoor pool bigger than her entire downstairs at the beach house.
They weren’t doing this exchange out of obligation.
Tabitha had a true interest in the things that were important to Ben and vice versa.
By mile three, they’d decelerated into a walk. Ben reached for her hand, fitting their fingers together.
“Have you thought about what you might wear to the gala?”
The question caught her a touch off guard, almost as much as the handholding. “I still need to go shopping for a dress.” It honestly had been the last thing on her mind. “Have you picked out a suit?”
“None of the ones I currently have fit. Turns out all the running has taken a few inches off my waistline. Go figure.”
Tabitha had noticed. Ben had never really been what she would call overweight, but in the last year he’d toned up and was looking the most fit she’d ever recalled him being. He looked great.
“We could go together to find our outfits. If that’s something you’d like to do,” she suggested.
His thumb ran along the back of her hand, sweeping across her skin.
“I’d like that. We both know I can’t put a decent outfit together to save my life.”
“I don’t know.” She turned her head to take him in. “You look pretty put together right now.”
His joggers and long-sleeved moisture wicking shirt made him appear as though he’d stepped off the pages of a fitness magazine. Tabitha never understood how it was that men just got better with age, but Ben was a prime example. Truthfully, she’d never been more attracted to him.
“I honestly just went to the athletic store and bought this off the mannequin.” He waved a hand over his torso. “I’m helpless otherwise. Needs to be completely laid out for me.”
“Well, then I’m happy to help you.”
They had doubled back at this point, and the wind met them head on now. Tabitha hadn’t thought to twist her hair up into a ponytail, so it currently just whipped around her face, coils of dark strands obscuring her vision.
Ben swung around to face her. Letting go of her hand, he brought both of his up to cup her cheeks and surprised her with the sweetest, slowest kiss.
“What was that for?” She asked when he drew back. She smoothed the hair from her face.
“I just felt like doing that.”
They’d never been spontaneous, and she was beginning to wonder why. Because she loved the way that kiss took her by surprise. Loved the way Ben kept surprising her over and over lately with small gestures that had a big impact.
“You’re welcome to do that whenever you like,” she said, trying her best to flirt but not entirely sure it translated. She’d been out of practice.
“Welcome to kiss you?”
“Yes.” Tabitha nodded once. “I mean, since we’re boyfriend/girlfriend and all.”
Ben chuckled and swung back around to continue their walk side by side. “Sounds so juvenile, right?”
“It does, but I’m not sure there’s a term for us. For what we’re doing.”
“You don’t think there’s a term for two exes falling back in love?”
Tabitha’s feet rooted beneath her. “Is that what we’re doing?”
“Falling in love?” Ben was a few steps ahead with his hand stretched back, still holding hers.
Tabitha’s throat was too thick to answer. She just nodded again.
“I mean, that’s what I’m doing. I’m not entirely sure I ever fell out of it with you, Tabs.”
Oh goodness, that made her heart and her thoughts stutter.
“I don’t expect you to say it back or anything like that. I just want you to know the depth of this for me.”
She wanted to say it back, but the words weren’t there. Not because they didn’t exist. They did. She did love Ben. But she could count on two hands the number of times they’d even told one another that back when they were a couple. It wasn’t something they did, confess their love verbally.
But Ben was so free with his words and feelings now. So certain. It made her appreciate him all the more. Appreciate the man he’d grown into in her absence. Maybe because of her absence.
“I’m in the same place you are, Ben.” It was as close as she would come for the time being. Ben didn’t seem to mind. He moved in front of her again, tilted her chin, and kissed her once more.
“I know you are,” he said before tapping his finger on her nose. “You don’t have to use the words, Tabs. I know.”
There was a comfort in that. In being able to convey her feelings in more than one way.
Ben could read her. Had he always been able to?
Honestly, probably. He knew to leave her alone when she would come home from work.
She had needed to decompress, and Ben always let her.
It also looked a lot like Tabitha shutting him out, and in the end, he let her do that, too.
She supposed they did it to each other.
But now, they were letting one another back in. Slowly, but surely.
The remainder of the walk was comfortably quiet.
Together, they paced up the coast, hand in hand, heart in heart.
A young family with a golden retriever lobbed a long stick into the ocean and the happy animal dove in after it, time and time again.
A toddler knocked over his older sister’s sandcastle and the tears that ensued made both Tabitha and Ben chuckle under their breath.
There was a couple sharing a bottle of wine on a patchwork quilt, deep in conversation.
Tabitha loved the beach. It was a gathering place where people could create memories. Where they could fall in love or out of it. Where they could laugh and where they could cry. The ocean was a backdrop for so many of life’s events.
It had always been that for Tabitha.
Her greatest sorrow was losing her parents to its roaring power and magnificent depths.
But she’d also found so much of herself on these runs along the beach.
To Tabitha, the ocean gave just as much as it took.
An hour later, they were back at the beach house shaking out the sand from their shoes.
Tabitha left hers on the back door by the deck to dry out.
Even when she tried to avoid getting them wet, a rogue wave would lap at the tread of her shoes, dampening the soles.
Ben stepped out of his running shoes too and followed her into the house barefoot through the back French doors.
“Are you hungry?” she asked over her shoulder.
Tabitha didn’t have much in the refrigerator. It had been on her list to go to the market earlier in the week, but with the storm, she hadn’t really ventured out other than to hospital for work.
“I could eat.” Ben cuffed the back of his neck and waggled his shoulders. “What were you thinking?”
“Maybe going down to the fish market and seeing what they have? I feel like seafood if that sounds good to you.”
“We could have just kept walking, you know.” He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling in the corners.
He was right. The market was only another half mile up the coast, in a little inlet with a few other Mom and Pop shops.
“We could still.” She shrugged. “I’m up for it if you are.”
Ben just gave a little nod and then they both laced up their sneakers once more to continue up the coast.
They were chasing daylight at this point.
By the time they arrived at the fish market, the sun had been swallowed up by the horizon, its final rays echoing in a deep orange wash of light that spread low across the sky.
They made quick work of selecting their seafood.
Ben insisted on lobster tails while Tabitha silently protested their price.
She was fine with something simple like cod or even shrimp, but Ben said he was having a good year in real estate and that they should celebrate.
It wasn’t that she doubted he could afford them.
She just didn’t love spending hard-earned cash on something consumable.
On her car, well, that was a different story.
But the lobster tails proved their worth. Every last, delicious penny.
Their taste and texture melted in her mouth. Maybe it was the way Ben had prepared them. Coated them with a lemon herb butter before placing them in the air fryer. He said he’d learned on some cooking show, but in all the years she’d known him, she’d never witnessed him watch one.
This man was full of delightful surprises.
They sat on the back deck for three more hours, until the stars were over an hour into their nightly show.
The moon was big tonight, full and clear.
Its reflection on the water’s surface was almost as bright as its actual presence, and the constellations that twinkled above gave off nearly as much light.