Saving Ben (23 page)

“I’d say I’m not surprised.” I eased myself back down in my chair and patted his seat for him to sit. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

He took a long swill from his beer and sank back into the down cushions of his chair. “It started a few months ago. Probably that night at Brewster’s, if I had to pinpoint a date. By the way, I never invited Emma to come with me. I don’t even know how she found out about it.”

For weeks after that horrible night in October, I’d waited for an apology from Ben. When one never came, I let him slide, but only because I could see how hard he was working to get his life back on-track.

I leaned back in my chair and kicked my feet up on the ottoman. “Well
I
certainly didn’t tell her. How
did
she find out about it, if not from you or from me?”

“Cell phone maybe,” he said, shrugging. “Either yours or mine. It’s not like she didn’t have access to both.”

Chills traveled my spine. “That’s pretty scary.”

He nodded. “Seeing Maddie and Reed together that night made me realize how much I’d screwed up my life. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re perfect for one another, but I couldn’t help but compare her with Emma. Emma in her unattractive state of drunkenness and Maddie so polished and articulate, so put-together.”

“You’ll find someone like that, Ben.” I peeled off part of my label, wadded it up, and flicked it at him. “But you can’t move on with your life until you get rid of psycho-bitch, once and for all.”

“She’s changed so much since I first met her. I know you don’t want to hear about it, so this is the only thing I’ll say. Emma has gotten so perverted about sex. She likes it rough.” Ben’s eyes narrowed and zeroed in on my neck. “Regardless of everything that happened last summer, that’s not who I am.”

“That’s all behind us now. You don’t need to bring it up again.”

He hesitated for a minute before he nodded. “Okay.” He flipped open his phone and showed me his missed call log. “Check this out.”

I took the phone from him and scrolled down the list. “Damn. She’s called you at least eight times since we’ve been sitting here.”

“She sends me twice that number of texts.”

“Isn’t she supposed to be in Texas?”

“She was in Texas for Christmas, but now she’s skiing in Aspen with her aunt and uncle and their kids.”

“What’re you gonna do if she keeps harassing you like this?”

“I only have one semester left before I get the hell out of UVA. I’ll have my business degree and then I can finally apply to culinary school,” he said with a mischievous smirk.

“Good for you, Ben.” I tapped his bottle when he held it out to me. “I’m really proud of you for chasing your dreams. Where will you go, New York?”

“Yes, if everything works out the way I hope it will. New York is close enough to home, but far enough away from psycho-bitch.”

“You know . . . the last time I spoke to George he mentioned he was applying for an internship on Wall Street. Has he said anything to you about it?”

Ben shook his head.

“Maybe you guys could get an apartment together or something.” I reached for my cell phone in my purse on the floor next to me. “Let’s call him and see if he wants to come over.”

Ben got up to put another log on the fire. “I don’t know, Kitty. We have a ton of stuff to do tomorrow. Do you really want to deal with a hangover?”

I looked up from my phone. “Who said anything about a hangover? George has only been out of rehab for a few months.”

“Apparently that doesn’t mean anything to George. Every time I’ve talked to him recently, it’s been late at night and he’s been weeping in his whiskey.”

“Really? I’ve spoken to him a few times myself. Sounded to me like he was doing better.” I abandoned the idea of calling George and dropped my phone into my purse. “Sucks, doesn’t it? The thought of losing a sibling? Which in my case would mean you. Don’t let this go to your head or anything, but I’d be crushed.”

“Right back at you, little sis.” He grinned at me for a minute and then his face turned serious again. “What if George is just using his grief as an excuse to cover up his addiction?”

“Or what if he’s using alcohol as a crutch to relieve the pain in his heart? I can’t imagine how hard it must be for the Turners during these first holidays without Yabba.”

Thompson shrugged. “We’re way out in the country. Who’s gonna know?”

The doctor had given Thompson’s family the best Christmas present they could’ve hoped for. His mother’s cancer was in remission. I sensed a renewed energy in him, and for the first time in months, the worry lines were gone from his face.

Ben stood and greeted Thompson. “How’d you get these, anyway? Please tell me you didn’t drive all the way down to South Carolina yourself.”

Thompson shook Ben’s outstretched hand. “If I’d known they were gonna be such a big hit, I would’ve gladly driven to California to get them. But the truth is a friend of mine brought them back from Charleston, where he was visiting his grandmother for the holiday.”

I clapped my hands together. “Okay boys, let’s put the toys away for now.” I opened the door to the front-hall closet and kicked the box inside. “Ben, just a friendly reminder that you have chocolate melting on the stove.”

“Oh shit!” he said, making a dash toward the kitchen.

“Do you need any help with that?” Thompson, my brother’s new best friend, called after him.

“Sure,” Ben yelled from down the hall, “if you know anything about white chocolate mousse.”

As it turned out, Thompson knew nothing about baking except how to stick his finger in the bowl for a taste. Nevertheless, the two of them worked together for the next hour like a couple of experienced chefs, beating eggs and whipping cream and straining raspberries. When they were finished, they had the three separate parts that made up dessert—white chocolate mousse in chocolate meringue shells with raspberry coulis.

Loaded down with beer and champagne and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, the rest of our gang—Spotty and Archer, Maddie and Reed—arrived a little after six in the same car from Richmond. We were all comfortable together without the tension of having Emma around.

Once the groceries were stored away and coolers of beer placed strategically around the house for easy access, we gathered downstairs in the game room. For the next hour, the girls watched the highlights of the upcoming New Year’s celebrations on television while the guys—with the exception of Ben who was busy running back and forth between the kitchen and the grill—played pool.

The doorbell rang as
Entertainment Tonight
was ending. I heard the thumping of Ben’s feet in the hall above me, and then the sound of George’s voice in the foyer.

“George!” I dropped my magazine on the coffee table and rushed up the stairs to greet him. “OMG, I’m so glad to see you.” I jumped on him, wrapping my legs around his waist like I was eight years old, begging him not to go home at the end of a really great day. “Please say you’ll stay for dinner. Ben’s cooking.”

“Yeah, dude,” Ben said, slapping George on the back. “You can be
my
date. I’m flying solo.”

“You? Stud-man? Since when can’t you get a date?” George asked, doubling over in fake agony when Ben play-punched him in the gut. Despite his attempt at humor, George’s face was pale and his eyes were dull, as though his mind was clouded with turmoil.

“Seriously, though,” he said, straightening up, “I just came by for a drink. I have another party later.”

At the mention of a drink, the issue of George’s visit to rehab crowded the room like an uninvited guest. We glanced around at each other, none of us knowing what to say next.

“Come meet Thompson first.” I grabbed George’s hand and dragged him downstairs to the game room. He barely had a chance to greet everyone before Spotty was shoving a pool stick at him.

George waved him away. “Chillax, man. I just got here.”

“Sorry, dude,” Spotty said, “but you’re the first real competition we’ve seen all night.”

“What’re you talking about, Spotty?” George said. “You of all people should know that Kitty is your real competition. Have you forgotten that she’s the champion of the Northern Neck?”

“She won’t play with us,” Reed said, sounding like a three-year-old whose best friend refused to help him build a sandcastle.

“You’ve been holding out on me.” Thompson wrapped his arms around my waist from behind. “A female pool shark. That kind of turns me on.”

Spotty ran his hand down the rack of cues until he came to mine. “Check this out, Thompson—she even has her own Hello Kitty cue.”

Thompson and I reached for the stick at once, but he beat me to it. “There is no Hello Kitty brand on my cue,” I said.

“Still . . . it’s pink,” Reed said. “A feminine weapon if ever I’ve seen one.”

“The question is, do you know how to use it?” Thompson asked, examining the cue.

“I’ll let you be the judge of that.” I snatched the stick away from Thompson and looked pointedly at George. “You game?”

He held the stick over his head and stretched. “Yep. Time to realign some egos.”

Ben arrived on the scene just as Reed was making the break. “Who let her out of the cage?” he asked Thompson.

Thompson laughed. “Is she really that good?”

He nodded. “Our grandfather taught us both to play on this very table when we were little. But because Kitty was his pet, pun intended, he shared all his secret strategies with her.” Ben nodded his head toward the table. “Just watch.”

Reed was successful in putting away the solid six in the far corner pocket off the break, but when he missed his next shot, the game turned to me. I sunk numbers ten and fourteen in one shot with little effort, and then followed up with number eleven in the corner pocket. Spotty screwed his turn up so badly we all laughed, leaving George several options. For the remainder of the game, aside from the occasional lucky shot by one of our opponents, the table belonged to George and me.

“Maybe next time I’ll let you borrow Hello Kitty,” I said to Spotty and Reed when the game was over.

In search of their dignity, Spotty and Reed challenged George and Thompson to the next game while the rest of us went upstairs to work on dinner. Archer and Maddie set the table with white linens and white china and every size and shape of candle they could find while Ben and I dug through three pounds of crabmeat for shell.

“I’m glad you remembered to call George,” I said to Ben.

He froze. “I thought you were the one who called him,” he said, looking up at me.

I shook my head. “He must’ve seen the lights on. He looks like shit, like a vampire, with those dark circles under his eyes.”

Ben began adding the ingredients—Saltine cracker crumbs, a beaten egg, mustard, mayo, and Worcestershire sauce—to the crabmeat to make crab cakes. He was using his hands to work it all together when the doorbell rang. He looked up at me and grinned. “Your turn.”

“Surprise!” Emma shouted when I opened the door for her. She looked ridiculous, like a little girl playing dress up in her mother’s leopard-skin fur coat.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Ben said, arriving on the scene with crab gunk still on his hands. “You’re supposed to be in Aspen.”

She pushed past me and planted a noisy kiss on Ben’s lips. “One of the brats got the flu,” she said, slipping out of her coat. “I had no idea a real fur could be so warm.” She folded it over her arm, and held it out to me. “Wanna feel it?”

I ran my fingers quickly over the fur and then snatched my hand back. “Is this your Christmas bonus from Uncle Hollis?” I asked her.

“Something like that,” she said, making a start toward the stairs. “I need to freshen up after driving all the way from Texas. Where should I put my things?”

I held my breath, waiting for Ben to respond. “In my room,” he said. When she smiled her conceited smile, the one that made me want to smack it right off her lips, he added, “You’ll have it all to yourself, because I’m sleeping in my parents’ room on the top floor.”

Emma stomped up the stairs, and Ben and I returned to the kitchen. “What the fuck is she even doing here? I didn’t tell her we were coming to the river, did you?” Ben whispered.

“Are you kidding me? This is déjà vu from that night back in October. She must’ve read one of our texts.”

He washed the crab goo off his hands and dried them, pacing back and forth. “Duh, Kitty. Use your head. We didn’t even decide to come down here until last week.”

A chill traveled my spine. “Oh my god, you’re right. She did not have access to our computers or our phones. Okay, so now I’m a little creeped out. Should we call someone?”

“And say what? My brother’s ex-girlfriend is stalking him and she just showed up at our door looking like Cruella de Vil wrapped in one-hundred-and-one Dalmatians?”

I shrugged. “Maybe not the police but Mom or Dad or someone. Just in case we wake up dead.”

“Okay, so now you’re overreacting.” He stuck his hands back in the mixture and began patting out a crab cake. “Archer or Maddie probably posted something on their Facebook page. Let’s just be cool, and with a little luck, she’ll get bored with us and go away peacefully in the morning.”

“Sure, I’ll be cool,” I said, heading toward the hallway. “Just as soon as I go upstairs to see what’s taking her so long.”

“Don’t provoke her, Kitty,” Ben called after me. “I’m warning you.”

I stuck my head back in the kitchen. “She’s our houseguest. I just want to make sure she has all the towels and pillows she needs. Oh, and FYI, Maddie and Archer are not friends with Emma on Facebook.”

As expected, Emma was nowhere to be found, in or around Ben’s room. By the time I climbed the stairs to my parents’ room I was furious, and when I found her laying out a sexy teddy on their bed, I was blinded by anger. I’d never been in a physical fight before, but my rage took total control over my body. I grabbed her arm and jerked her around. “You black widow bitch! Ben specifically told you to put your things in his room.”