“You didn’t have to do this,” he says quietly. His hand goes to my forehead again, smoothing the loose hair away from my face. It feels so soothing that a little sigh escapes and my eyelids flutter closed.
“I’m allowed to self-destruct when the last nine months of my life just went down the flippin’ drain.” I laugh bitterly.
“Won’t even curse when you’re drunk. Now that’s commitment.” I hear the smile in his voice and I can picture it perfectly even with myeyes closed: the upturned corners of his mouth, the amused twinkle lighting his eyes.
I reach out for his hand, curling my fingers into his palm. After a brief moment of hesitation, his fingers close around mine. I feel tears pricking at my eyelids, but I will not give in to them. I willnotcry in front of Ben. I open them and blink furiously.
“Guess I should have listened to you weeks ago, huh? You warned me I was wasting my time. You told me I was going to fail. Shocker, I wouldn’t listen.”
I hate how pathetic I sound. I hate even more that I’ve proven him right—I’m too idealistic, I take things too personally, I’m fighting losing battles. I tense, waiting for the inevitableI told you sothat I’m sure is on the tip of his tongue.
But it never comes. He just sits there, his fingers threaded in my hair, his thumb tracing my palm.
“Youdidn’t fail. The bill failed.” His voice holds an urgency, like he’s desperate to communicate this to me. “It was bad timing, Kate, that’s all. Maybe I knew it was a long shot. But I don’t know everything.”
“You knew,” I insist, tears clogging my throat. “But then you told me not to give up, and I listened. You made me feel like I coulddothis. Why did you do that?” My chest burns with the need to cry, and I have to pause briefly to compose myself. “I got my hopes up, and I know better than to hope for something that’snevergoing to happen.”
I can hear the change in my voice, and I know I’m not talking about the bill anymore. I’m seven years old again and I’m crying myself to sleep because I miss my dad.
There’s a long silence, long enough that I assume he’s not going to respond—and, really, what do I expect him to say? I’m barely making sense at this point. But then, softly—so soft I barely hear it—his voice cuts through the darkness.
“I couldn’t stand to be the one to put this look on your face.”
It takes a second for his words to sink in, but when they do, they slam into my chest, squeeze, twist, and wring me out. It’s the most intimate exchange we’ve ever had—no defensiveness or one-upping, no walls hiding our true feelings. Just Ben, with raw emotions and a vulnerability I’ve never seen from him before.
I don’t know how long we sit there, my hand in his, staring at each other in silence—but the silence eventually becomes another entity entirely, something we can’t ignore, like another person in the room. When he finally looks away, breaking the moment, I feel the loss acutely. It felt like he trulysawme. I wonder if I’ll ever feel that way again.
He gives my hand a firm squeeze and moves to get up. I grip his wrist forcefully, tugging him back down.
“Are you leaving?” For all my waffling earlier, I now have clarity: I am desperate for him to stay.
Uncertainty blankets his face. “I think you’ll be fine now. You’ll wake up with a nasty hangover, but I’m sure you know how to handle that.” He seems to regret his choice of words. “Not that I’m implying you do this all the time or anything.” He closes his eyes briefly and shakes his head.
“Don’t go. Please.”
I’m near tears again. The thought of him leaving makes my loneliness feel overwhelming.
He hesitates. “I can stay if you want me to.”
“I want you to,” I practically beg. The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m now pleading with Ben, my sworn enemy, to spend the night with me—but in this moment I don’t care about our jobs, or our friends, or anything else that would come between us.
I just want him to keep holding my hand.
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll stay.”
I wake up a couple of times during the night, my sleep marred by restless, tumultuous dreams of Rhett Butler carrying me through a burning pine forest. The first time I stir, Ben is still awake and reading something on his phone, the brightness turned way down. When he notices me watching him, he murmurs for me to go back to sleep.
He’s no longer holding my hand or caressing my hair, and I long for his touch like an addict needing a fix. I’ve gone so long without affectionate human contact, I’ve forgotten how good it feels. Hownecessary. My hands literally shake with the desire to reach out and touch him, to claim his hand in mine again, but I know how unwise that decision would be. We’ve already blurred our battle lines so much that I have no idea how I’ll face him at work on Monday.
And then I reach out and grab it anyway. If he says anything, I’ll plead drunken insanity.
I tuck his big bear paw between my two palms and pull it over to me, using our hand sandwich and his substantial forearm as my pillow. In my peripheral vision I see his lips curve in a tiny smile, but I close my eyes so if there’s any judgment in his expression, I won’t see it.
My cheek is resting on his shirt-sweater sleeve and I nearly swoon at the softness. I need to find out the manufacturer of this bewitching garment and write them a gushing love letter. Better yet, I’ll track down the supplier and secure reams of fabric to get a pillow and sheet set made. I’ll wrap myself in this heavenly cocoon every night. The idea of it makes me sigh with pleasure as I drift back to sleep.
The second time I awaken, Ben is asleep. I’m groggy and my head is pounding, but even in my feeble state I recognize the rare opportunity to stare at him unobserved and resist the urge to fall back into my comfortable cloud of sleep. He’s sleeping on top of my bedspread, arespectable distance from me—always the gentleman, which I’m currently finding more annoying than noble. He’s kicked off his shoes and they’re lying haphazardly on the floor, though he’s otherwise fully dressed.
I drag greedy eyes over his profile, exploring the lines and contours of his face up close: his hair, too long and ruffled by the pillow; wide-set cheekbones; his nose with just the slightest ski-jump curve at the end; his mouth, so sharp and expressive in life, relaxed and guileless in the repose of sleep. Those spellbinding eyes—the ones that make me question everything—mercifully hidden beneath his lids. He really has a very nice face.
