When no one came back to me in a few minutes, I stood, tearing my gaze away from the scene in the cabin.Muffin whimpered and danced at my side.“Yeah,” I muttered, voice shaky on the quickening breeze, “let’s go home.”
#
BEN WAS HALFWAY DOWNthe front walk when Muffin lunged out of my grasp and made a beeline for his knees.Deft from months of experience, Ben turned to the side and let Muffin barrel past, onto the porch where he danced to the tune of Tony barking from inside."Heath just called," was all Ben said.
I nodded."I need a shower and a drink, in that order."
He trailed after me into the house, peeling off to wipe off Muffin's muddy paws while I trudged up the steps, unable to shake the vision of Tubbs’ dead body and howwrongit was to see him so still.Soempty.
I took so long in the shower, scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing, that Ben came knocking."Be out in a minute."
He hesitated—I could feel how still he was on the other side of the door—then finally said "Okay.I made some tea.My dad...He made this blend whenever things sucked so I thought maybe..."
I stared at the door through the cloudy glass shower cubicle."Okay," I rasped."Um.Thank you?"Silence was the only reply.
Ben was in the kitchen, puttering around the stove when I shuffled in a few minutes later.I was swimming in an oversized sweatshirt I'd gotten from Lost in the Wash, a really cool thrift shop in Van Nuys that sold stuff people abandoned at laundries.The shirt was ancient and saidDesperately Seekingon the front, the remnants of the nameEleanorin flaking puffy paint underneath.Max and I had googled our butts off and found out it had been a promo line of sweatshirts sold at Walmart for some Madonna movie before we were born, packaged with little tubs of puffy paint so people could add their own names.It was ridiculous and cheesy and tacky and reminded me of LA and Max and sitting on the floor in my crappy apartment overlooking the alley.I kind of wanted to live in that sweatshirt for a while, at least until I stopped seeing Tubbs’ wide, empty eyes staring up at me.
This never happened to me in LA, I thought miserably.Ben's small, tentative smile rested oddly on his face and, for some reason, that made me smile in return."You look constipated," I offered, and he rolled his eyes, a small flicker of a real smile ghosting his features before he sat across from me at the table.He pushed a cup of blueberry green tea towards me and nodded at the sugar bowl."Thanks," I murmured.
He doctored up his own tea and, in relative silence, we sipped.
"You're a nicer guy than you want people to think," I said, giving my tea an unnecessary stir."Careful, or people are going to start thinking you're more a Bingham than a Darcy."
"I'm sorry, what?"
A tiny snicker worked its way free from the knot of anxiety in my throat."Seriously, you really need to watchanyversion ofPride and Prejudice.Or," I said with an expansive gesture, holding my cup in a sort of broad salute in his direction, "read the book.Bingham was a very nice man."
"I've read the book," he replied dryly."And MacFadyen wasn't hard on the eyes but Colin Firth was a formative experience in realizing my sexuality."
"I stand corrected," I grinned, hiding my smile behind my cup."Totally a closet Bingham."
"Darcy was nicer than people thought," Ben protested."What he did for Lizzie's family after Wickham pulled his crap, for one."
"Hmmm."
Ben scowled."Nothing like Bingham," he muttered.
We were gearing up for an argument.We'd had dozens of largely ridiculous, unserious ones over the past few months, ranging from what exactly the color of the mint toothpaste in his bathroom would be called to whether or not he should switch from oak to hickory for the fireplaces come autumn.The only really serious ones involved Margie and her upcoming trial.Her attorney had reached out to me regarding testifying and Ben had been horrified to discover I didn't have representation.
It was still a very sore point between us.He left his friend Mario's card in conspicuous places for me about once a week now.
"What's your obsession withPride and Prejudiceanyway?"he demanded suddenly."She wrote other books, you know."
“Did she?”I asked mildly, taking a sip of my tea and watching the emotions flit over his face.I managed to hide a small, tired smile just as he finally realized I was kidding.“I’m not sure if I should be amused or offended you had to wonder if I was joking.”
He tipped his head consideringly.“You’re not only joking, you’re deflecting.”
“It’s been a long and not great night.”Setting my cup down, I stared into the pale liquid, gathering my thoughts in a messy mental bundle.“Maybe if I hadn’t agreed to meet him, he wouldn’t be dead,” I sighed.“Maybe he’d have been, I don’t know, off with the ladies and Nate being a dick to waitstaff or something.Or already on his way back to LA.Or—”
“Or,” Ben interrupted, “you didn’t agree to meet him.He asked—ordered—you to do it and went to the boat on the assumption you’d be there.And,” he added, his argument gaining steam, “Heath said it looked like an accident.A slip and fall.Who’s to say he wouldn’t have done it in front of you?Accidents happen, Damien.And they’re unfair.And terrible.And unpredictable.”
I started to shake my head, pausing mid-motion when something wiggled free from that handful of thoughts I’d gathered.“He wasn’t alone.Not before I showed up, I mean.His neighbors—er, the people in the slip next to theBeth—the guy yelled at me about making a lot of noise earlier.Ben—” I’d ridden the Tower of Terror with Max and one of his girlfriends once.That had nothing on the sudden plunge my stomach executed as I stared across the table at Ben.“I don’t think—"
“No.”
“Ben, listen—”
He groaned, tipping his face up to the ceiling, looking for some guidance from the stamped copper tiles.“Damien, don’t.”
