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“Thank you, Bennett. It’s… well, it’s Cordelia Clarke. As if having cancer in the family wasn’t hard enough. Add into the mix my mother’s personality, and the environment you get is…” I fished for the right word. A word my mother would use.
“Caustic,” Bennett offered.
I snapped. “Caustic, yes.” I took in a cleansing breath. Deep through the nose, out through the mouth.Choose what you want to emote, Con. “Rachel is putting together a fundraiser at the playhouse. Not for my mother. Lord knows she doesn’t need it. All funds raised are going to a foundation for glioblastoma treatments.” I snickered, though it felt odd leaving my mouth. “Got that word right this time.”
My eyes had been downcast. Toes curled around the low rung of the stool. I willed my body into submission, to not react, simply to obey what I told it. That’s when I felt something warm on my hand, almost too hot. I looked at Bennett’s hand, lightly gripping my own. A firm hand, callused from countless hours on the rings or horse or tumbling over and over on the mats. I looked up. His brow curled upward, the perfect symmetry of his over-pronounced cupid’s bow lifted.
“It’s hard. I know.”
He would, in his own way. He excised his mother from his life as ifshewere the cancer inhim.
I swallowed. Bennett’s hand retreated. Coldness. I cleared my throat and sipped carefully at the coffee, useless now with my burned tongue. Silence bubbled as the moment protracted. I wanted to blurt out everything I felt, but the timing seemed off.
“Hey, um, you know of any good gyms around here?” I asked. The abrupt change in subject depolarized the air. “I still have all my weights from high school, but I need a little more.”
Bennett locked both hands back around the mug. “You plan on staying for a while? I figured you’d get things settled, then head back out.”
I figured. That meant he had been thinking about me.
“Rachel has been scheduling me all these appointments. I need to meet with a trust lawyer, an estate lawyer, the family lawyer. Although they might be the same person? One of the friggencongressmenof the state wants to meet with me. Half a dozen publishers have been hounding Rachel for rights to my mother’s story. She said I could deal with them since that’s more my area of expertise.” I shook my head in disbelief at my own words. “I’ll be staying for a while, so I need to keep exercising if I want to stay straight and focused. It’s how I got through all the BS after Winnie tanked my career.”
“There are a few gyms in the area, yeah. All of them probably have what you need.”
Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but I’d take it. “Okay, great.”
“You’re not in the middle of filming anything?” Bennett asked. “I never understood how all that works. Filming and personal time.”
“Ah, no. I was fired because of everything that happened two years ago.”
“Oh. Nothing since? What were you doing before all the accusations started flying?”
Man. This is stinging, I thought. But really—what did I expect? Him to know everything I had ever been in? Ask me about what it was like to be nominated for my role inMortal Evidence? My eyes fell to the counter. “Few things here and there.”Two Emmy nods, but no big deal. “I take it you never…?” How to ask without sounding presumptuous? Or needy?
“I don’t have a lot of free time to watch TV,” he said.
Crestfallen, I tried to push through that. Who was I to judge, anyway? Sure, I searched “Bennett Dubois Massachusetts” every so often. Never found him on my socials (and you better believe that, yes, I searched hundreds of thousands of followers back then to see if I knew any familiar faces). But I didn’t obsess about trying to track his every movement in the last twelve years. Why should he do the same for me?
A face-splitting yawn captured Bennett, and he brought up a hand to hide his mouth. “Sorry about that.” His eyes watered.
Of course, I yawned, too. His lips curled into the faintest hint of a smile at my involuntary mimicry. I counted it as a win.
Made Benny smile. Twice.
“I’m sorry, I’m keeping you up past your bedtime,” I said.
“With irregular schedules, time doesn’t quite exist.”
He hadn’t touched his coffee. Maybe he didn’t want a jolt of caffeine before heading to bed.
“And here I am, dragging you away from precious sleep.”
“You didn’t drag me, Connor. I wanted to come.”
I licked my lips. “You did? I didn’t, I dunno, pressure you? Too much?”
“Well, I mean maybe a little. But. That’s okay. I’m glad you invited me. This was nice.”
Again, my heart took over my mouth and forced me to speak before my brain could gather a committee to assess. “I would love to get caught up. On everything. It’s been a long time and I feel like you’re my only lifeline in this town. I’m glad you’re still here.”
