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Chapter Twenty-Five
Benji
If I haven’t mentioned it a time or three already, Cris is absolutely right.
Her reminding me of our agreement at the beginning was brave and totally the right call. But she also agreed we didn’t have to stop sleeping together right away. Thank God. My idea of never having an end date was kind of crazy. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I made that suggestion.
She’s going to want to move on with her life. I can’t monopolize her time indefinitely. Well, I can. Totally tempting given how I know I’ll feel when she’s with someone else, but shit. I’m not a total dick. What I am is a dedicated bachelor. Eventually she’ll meet a guy who’s not. Maybe have a few babies.
I hate that. But she deserves to be happy.
I’m half embarrassed to admit I was caught up in the emotions bleeding out of Nate as he worshipped Vivian at their engagement party. His proclamations weren’t made with sweat clinging to his forehead or with a shake of doubt in the hand holding the microphone. He was certain. How the hell does he do that? He’s so damn transparent it’s galling.
During his speech, happy tears shined in Cris’s eyes. I wanted her hopeful smile to last forever. Then she admitted she was a romantic, and I started wondering why she never told me.
And then I started considering the things I’ve been doing for her. Like the rose petals and artisanal donuts the night she gave me her virginity. The fancy Thai dinner before I whisked her into a hotel room to blow her mind once again. The day I packed her car with pink roses and carried her to bed after.
Romance squared.
So okay, I was caught up before the party, but the party definitely put me in the mindset to suggest we don’t stop. Nate’s speech to Vivian was really something. Not the words he said so much as the way he looked at her when he said them. Like he’d reached up and plucked her out of the sky. Or maybe like she’d fallen and he caught her.
Ha. Actually, that did happen. Anyway, Vivian has changed since meeting Nate. She used to be guarded and hard. Careful and calculating. On Saturday night her smile was easy and her eyes only for him. I saw in those two something I swore I couldn’t trust.
Permanence.
It looked damn good too. Easy, like Vivian’s smile. I thought maybe I had it wrong. Maybe I could achieve permanence too. But, like I said, Cris was right. I was caught up, is all. Who wouldn’t be? Nate and Vivian swept up everyone in their happiness whirlpool. Good for them. I mean that unironically, by the way.
Three days later, on a mundane Tuesday, I’m standing in front of the coffee pot in my kitchen waiting for my mug to fill. I’ve had a few days and nights to marinate on the idea of permanence. I came to the same conclusion I had before the engagement party briefly robbed me of my pragmatism.
Permanence is a nice idea, but it’s a myth.
Absolutely nothing in life is permanent. Hell, life itself isn’t permanent. Each of us will hang up our boxing gloves at the end of the last round, no exceptions. Nature isn’t permanent. Trees drop their leaves every fall. Birds crash into windows and break their delicate necks. Gone in a snap. The pink roses I gave Cris withered and died within a week.
Sorry. That was bleak. But it’s the truth. Pretending there is a never-ending daily rollover, or that there’s a way to stretch the perfect now into eternity is a kid’s dream. Being the kid I was, I learned at a young age dreams can turn into nightmares.
So, after a blip of irrationality appeared on my radar, I have once again come to my senses. I properly seduced Cris on Saturday night after we left the club—hey, she’s the one who invited me to guess what she was wearing under her dress. I masterfully steered us out of the choppy waters of commitment and straight into my bed.
A good night turned into a better weekend. She stayed Saturday night. On Sunday, we woke up late and had more awesome sex before she headed home to do the requisite laundry and other unsavory weekend tasks belonging to those of us who practice regular “adulting.”
A splashing sound yanks me from my thoughts. I blink at my coffee mug, currently overflowing onto the counter.
“Shit! Goddamn—” I muzzle the other swearwords I might have said. Cris is in her office and could be on the phone. Two seconds later she bursts into the kitchen, her hand over her chest, alarm in her wide gray eyes.
“I thought there was some sort of emergency out here.”
“There was, but I’m handling it.” I flash her a quick smile as I swap out one mug for another, carefully pouring the excess from mine so I can take a drink without spilling it down my shirt. I set both mugs aside and reach for the roll of paper towels, but she snatches it from me. “Sorry about the shouting.”
She mops at the spill. “Everything else okay?”
Other than feeling totally and completely thrown off every day since Sunday? Everything is peachy. I smile and hope mine is more believable than hers. “Great. You?”
“Oh. Yeah. Great.”
The silence that follows is stifling and for us, incredibly unusual. Maybe that’s what’s throwing me off. The sex on Saturday was amazing, and waking up to her on Sunday felt relatively normal—our new normal, anyway—but then Monday came and… Weird City, population: two.
I want old Cris back. The one I found attractive from afar but whose feelings I didn’t have to worry about hurting.
Trish called yesterday. I didn’t answer. I waited until Cris went home for the day and then I called Trish back. The bad news is her mom died. She was in tears when she told me. I guess there is no good news. The point I’m trying to make is, before Cris and I were sleeping together, I would’ve answered the phone call and not thought a thing about it. Now the idea of letting Cris make reservations for my dates is cringeworthy.
