CHAPTER 9 BEN
I have two weeks left of summer break, and I need to figure out how to solve this shit before I leave town. I’m supposed to plan my big Shithead Shindig, but I can’t seem to find the energy to even think of throwing a party, let alone plan one.
I bang on her front door.
She doesn’t answer.
Fuck that.
I head to the bar where she bartends, and I grab a stool as I wait for her to finish up with another customer. She walks over. “I was wondering how long it would take you.” She glances at her watch. “Nine days. You held out longer than I expected you to.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean it took you nine days to realize we should be together.” She rolls her eyes and nods a little. “I figured it would take some time for you to get over her, but nine days was a little longer than I estimated.”
“Well, for one thing, there you go being all delusional again since I have not, in fact, realized we should be together. But for another thing…what?”
She grabs a glass and fills it from the Miller Lite tap before setting it in front of me. “You ended it with her, wallowed in your misery, and came back for me. Isn’t that what you’re doing here?”
I push the glass to the side and lean on the bar to lower my voice so only she can hear. “I fucking gave you what you wanted. I ended things with Kaylee even though I am in love with her and I want to spend my life with her. Now give me back the goddamn towel so I can get on with my life.”
She purses her lips and shakes her head. “Not the answer I was looking for, sweetie. Listen, get it together and come back to me, and we won’t have any problems. If you don’t want to do that, Kitty gets the towel. Seems pretty simple to me, don’t you think?”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Because we belong together, and sometimes men are just blind to what they really need.”
Now that shit sounds like something my mother would say. Is Tatum really so delusional that she thinks I’ll just come running back to her because she said so?
“You hurt me, Tatum. You killed my trust in women. You killed my dreams for the future.”
She sighs. “Are we still harping on all that? It’s been a decade, Ben. Let’s move forward. You’ve got a great career, money in the bank, endorsements out the ass…all because of what went down between us.”
“I’d hardly give you that much credit, but way to inflate your own ego,” I say dryly.
The insult goes over her head—or maybe she just ignores me.
“None of those things are because of you. Did I reinvent myself?” I shrug.
“Sure. Of course. I needed a change after I was burned by you. I’ll never be able to move forward from the losses I suffered at your hands.
Don’t you see that? It’s the fact you cheated on me combined with the fact that you lied about the paternity of the baby that changed who I was as a person.
I mourn the loss of that baby every single day.
How different would my life be right now if I had a ten-year-old son?
Or if you had the baby and eventually I learned that he belonged to somebody else? ”
“I’m sorry,” she says a little flippantly. “I did what I had to do to hold onto you.”
And that’s the problem in its entirety. She says she’s sorry, but even after all this time, she still shows zero remorse for what she did.
And it’s not even that. She told me no when I asked her to marry me. Why would she have said no if she was trying to hold onto me?
Because she plays games. She fucking plays games, and she always has, and I am done.
“I hate you,” I hiss. “I will never make the mistake of being with you again. Ever.”
“That’s fine,” she says. “I’ll just call up my good friend Kitty and give her the towel and a little cash to help her spark up those allegations against you.”
“You don’t have any money,” I challenge, though I’m bluffing. Maybe she does, or maybe she doesn’t.
“Oh, I have money. It’s so ironic that you still don’t know after all this time, but I’m tight with a good friend who’s been helping me out.” She smiles a little wickedly, and I have a sick feeling it’s someone I know.
“Who?” I challenge.
“You’ll figure it out.” She glances over at another customer down on the other end of the bar.
“I need to get back to work. Thanks for visiting, sweetie. The Miller Lite is on the house.” She winks at me then blows me a kiss for the sake of anybody watching the two of us like she didn’t just drop some mysterious bomb that’s about to detonate right on top of me.
I don’t drink the beer.
I don’t stay.
But I don’t head to Gramma’s yet, either.
Instead, I head to Tight Fit. Maybe Craig has some intel on what Crazy Tatum’s up to now.
He’s busy with a client, and while I could probably wait until he’s finished, I decide to head back home. Gramma will be starting dinner soon, and I don’t want to miss out on the latest song and recipe.
All that is only a small part of why I’ve overstayed my welcome—that paired with the fact that I just like being around her. She’s a bright light in this dark time I suddenly find myself in.
I need to get back home. I need to pack up my shit and lock up my place and head back to Vegas. I only have two weeks until camp starts, and I need to get my ass camp ready. I need to figure out a way to get my head back in the game because right now, it’s squarely centered on Kaylee.
But first, I have a few things I need to wrap up here.