A Reason To Stay (9 page)

“I’m not going in the girls’ room. No way,” he stated firmly.

The waitress dropped by at that moment to see if everything was all right. “Amanda, could you sit with Mason while I take Faith to the bathroom?”

“Honey, I have tables to serve. I’ll go get Ben for you.”

Before she could stop her, Amanda was at Ben’s table pointing back at her, explaining something. He walked over to them.
Shit, shit, shit
.

“I can sit with Mason. Go ahead.”

“I can’t believe Amanda asked you.” Elise looked at Mason with an evil eye. “He could have come with us.”

“Not likely,” Ben said. “He isn’t a girl.”

“I know that,” she said, taking Faith’s hand. “It wouldn’t have killed him just this once. It’s not like there will be anything more inappropriate than a toilet in there!”

Elise stood at the sink, waiting for Faith to finish washing her hands. She looked at her reflection in the mirror. Why hadn’t she straightened her hair that morning? The heat seemed to be counteracting with her natural curl and was frizzing up the ends. Scarecrows looked better. She splashed some water on the ends and tried to smooth them out. When Faith was finished wiping her hands, dread swept over Elise about returning to the table. She hoped Ben was gone. But he wasn’t. He had cut up Faith’s food and was talking with Mason when they returned.

“Thanks. I hope I didn’t ruin your lunch with your date.” She had to hit the ‘date’ button one more time. Was she jealous? Not on your life. That time of her life was over. That opportunity lost by hers truly.

“You didn’t. It’s just lunch.”

He stood up from the table, and their eyes became level with one another. The smog of tension was making it hard for her to breathe naturally. Was she hitting him with the forced air from her fighting lungs?
Easy yoga breaths. Count.

“Thanks, again.” She took a seat and tried her best not to watch his back as he walked away. His butt was one of her guilty pleasures. The thought of it naked made her cheeks heat.

For the next ten or so minutes, she rushed the children through lunch. Watching him glance over at her made little of her appetite. The coconut meringue pie would have to wait until she could fully enjoy it with rolled-back eyes and moans. She paid the check and tried to make it out without an additional scene. The kids ran over to him before a successful getaway. Elise waited at the door for them to finish and flashed a smile without true eye contact before leaving.

Luckily the car started and she headed for the park. This called for a lengthy telephone call to her friend and sponsor, Kelly. She needed outside reinforcement to stop her craving for a piece of her past. She had been doing so well with Darren. Well sort of. Letting her visit back home destroy the mountain climb of an ‘I love you’ to her boyfriend was not advisable. She just needed a voice other than the one in her head to say so.

She parked in the open lot and opened the back door. The children took off like flies from a mason jar. “You better be careful, and no dare deviling,” she yelled as they clearly were ignoring her.

She sat down in the grass under a huge oak tree and took out her phone. After she read a text message from Darren wishing her success in her day, she dialed Kelly’s number. While she waited for her to answer, she stroked the green grass, its softness bending with her touch. Nothing like the sharp blades of California.

“Hello?”

“Thank God. Are you busy? I have a crisis.” Elise took note where the kids were playing. They were crossing back and forth over a kiddie bridge, playing imaginary sword fighting.

“That’s what I’m here for. Please tell me you’re still potentially engaged.”

“Engaged? What the hell have you been smoking? I told him I loved him. Kill me now.” Elise screamed toward the sky. “But I spent the whole plane ride analyzing it and getting over the fact that I didn’t suddenly melt into a puddle because of it.”

“Plane ride? Where are you?”

“Oh, right. I haven’t kept you up to speed, have I? I’m in Kentucky. I’m watching my sister’s kids for a week while my mother recovers from foot surgery.”

“Kentucky?”

“Yes, now listen to my new problem.” Elise talked fast, so she could get it all on the table in order for her friend to solve her spiraling world situation. “I was settling down from the whiplash of the airport confession. By the way, I told him as he loaded my bags on a sky shuttle. Why is it that things that are allowed to loiter in your head for years are given an expiration date of when the plane’s propellers  begin to spin in the distance? It’s like you have ten seconds and counting to say what you should have said two months ago.” She was barely taking breaths in between sentences, still keeping an eye on the children.

“Anyway, I began feeling less and less nauseated from hearing myself say it to him, in my mind. You know, kind of like realizing I wasn’t a wooden puppet after all? I was a real girl and could say real things? Let alone, feel it?” Elise didn’t wait for the rhetorical answer.

“So then, in walks Ben.”

Kelly interrupted her. “Ben? Old lover Ben?”

“Yes,” answered Elise.

“The one you fled, Ben? The past, Ben? The one you should never see again, Ben?”

Boy, her best friend really did know her well. “Yes, all those Bens. So, the question is, did I really mean...could I really mean I loved Darren if at the very moment I saw Ben, I imagined him without clothes? Well, sort of. I saw him with clothes, my heart had a seizure, then I imagined the clothes somehow disappearing. Impulsive, I guess. Like when you’re about to descend down a rollercoaster hill, you close your eyes. When I see Ben’s tight butt in jeans, his clothes suddenly fall off. Not to mention I become very jarred at his very presence. It’s been twelve years and I still can’t be unaffected.”

“Okay, Elise.” Kelly charged in to get a word in edgewise. “You need to listen and listen good. Get out of Kentucky. You are on dangerous ground. You just finished a triathlon of some sort by telling Darren your feelings. Bravo, by the way. It’s about time. Now, it’s natural to be weakened by such an outpouring of emotion. You’re vulnerable. It’s the best time to go back and be with Darren. Shake off the wooden planks you’ve been wearing for nine months and settle down into a good relationship. Kentucky is going to set you back.”

“I can’t go back there now! I know he’s just waiting for the perfect moment to corner me and ask that I say it again.”

“Don’t you want to? Don’t you think that after three seasons with the same guy, he doesn’t deserve some form of commitment from you? I’m your best friend. I know he’d die before hurting you.”

The kids had jumped from the bridge and began running wildly to the parking lot. Her eyes scanned that way and saw a Ford Explorer parked. It was Ben.

“Oh, shit. I’ve got to go. He’s here.”

“Who’s there?”

“Ben. What in the world is he doing here? Do I have a low-jack for guys who are looking to destroy me? I’ll call you later when I can talk. I heard what you said, Kelly. I know he’s good for me. I’ll try and figure out my problem.” She hung up the phone without waiting for Kelly’s response and tried to inhale some definition into her posture. Something to seem more confident that Ben didn’t affect her. She wondered how it looked to the unsuspecting, figuring he knew her better than she knew herself. It was a skill he had never lost.

Ben jumped out of his vehicle and handed Mason a play truck and Faith some small items. Elise squinted her eyes, trying to figure it out. She straightened up more as he made his way to her, pulling at the bottom of her shirt to cover where it’d raised up from leaning back on the comfy grass.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

His tight jeans walked right over to her and crouched down. She tried her best not to leave her eyes on them too long. She put her phone down in the grass and looked toward the kids.

“I was getting off the phone, anyway. I see you are either very skeptical I can watch them or this was also your time for recess. Speaking of children, where is your date?”

“Ouch,” he said, grimacing. “She’s hardly a child. And for your information, she works a late shift at the hospital today. Did you know they let fifteen-year-olds give shots and take blood now?”

Game on.

“So, she gets her driver’s license next year? It was good of you to drive her, then.”

Ben looked ahead, smiling. He always said he could never win a match of wits with her. “No. Mason told me you were bringing them here and I just wanted to bring their toys. You know, the ones they usually bring, but you might have forgotten some because you were too busy packing your cell phone?”

Elise figured she’d stop before the digging went ‘history deep,’ somewhere she never visited, and certainly would never invite Ben.

“Touché.”

She began replacing the bald spots with the grass she’d just pulled out while she was on the phone with Kelly. Was he going to stay the whole time or what? Meditation was not performed that morning to prepare her for this. She rolled her head around on her shoulders. They had never had a problem in the past with discomfort of being together. But then again, they usually filled the silence with some form of touch.

“Well, I guess I’ll take advantage of this unscheduled visit and go play with them. Do you mind?” He stood up and looked down at her. His very presence was killing her. Slowly unhinging all her doors of defenses, opening up the wounds of her past regrets.

“Not at all.”

She watched him as he ran toward them. What an awesome dad. He sat on the dirt and drove Mason’s dump truck back and forth, loading Faith’s dolls and taking them for rides. Elise’s eyes grew heavy watching them. The sun draped a blanket of warmth on her and the ground beckoned her to become more comfortable. She laid back and stared up into the millions of branches in the tree. Before she got to number twenty, she was asleep.

First her nose itched, then her ear. She swatted them both and then heard uncontrollable giggling. She jumped, freaked out about where she was and if it was nighttime yet. It had only been fifteen minutes, but she had slipped into a wonderful slumber. After all, she was still missing a few hours of sleep from the time change of the night before.

“Mason, stop,” Ben said authoritatively to the little boy who was stirring a blade of grass in his aunt’s ear.

Elise sat up, dazed and confused. But most of all, completely embarrassed. “Oh, shit. Did I fall asleep?”

“Shit,” laughed Faith.

“Don’t say that, Faith,” Ben said with popping eyes at Elise.

“Oh, shit.” Elise just didn’t get when to stop the expletives. “I’m sorry.” She put her hand over Faith’s mouth. “Don’t say that, honey. It’s an ugly word. How long was I asleep, anyway?”

“Not long, but the kids don’t have sun screen on and I’m afraid they’re going to get burned if they stay out.” Ben extended his hand to help her up. Two awkward seconds passed as she thought about the consequences of touching him. She gave into the argument in her head and accepted. Skin to skin. Contact was made. Not a good idea.

He pulled her within inches of him. She quickly stepped backward, her oxygen level dangerously low. Fog swirled in her head, and she braced her hand against the tree. Mason handed her the phone she’d left on the ground.

“Thank you, Mason. Well, then are you all ready to go home?” What child wants to leave a play yard? She must’ve missed the memo on the sun’s UV rays and little people.

“Daddy said we can go for ice cream.”

Faith clapped her hands, smiling from ear to ear. Elise froze from the suggestion. Time with him, one on one (well, three), wasn’t in the plan for the day.

“Guys, we have to go check on Grandma.”

That answer was as popular to them as the dentist and the Boogey Man. Faith threw her dollies down and grabbed her daddy’s legs.

“I’m sorry.” Elise looked at Ben, thanking him for destroying her hero image.

He stooped down to Faith and Mason’s height. “I forgot about Grandma, guys. You have to go and check to make sure she’s okay. Maybe we’ll do it another time.”

Faith burned a nasty look into Elise’s forehead and Mason walked like a whipped dog to Elise’s car. Her celebrity was tarnished with one slip of the tongue from Ben. Puppy killer had become her new identity.

“Let’s get in Mommy’s car, Faith. I promise we’ll go next time,” Ben promised.

He buckled in the kids and talked with them in the back seat as Elise waited at the rear of the car. He shut the door and walked toward her.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mess up your plans. They’ll be fine.” He kept a safe three to four steps between them.

“It’s okay. I’ll see you around.” She did the wandering eye thing and awkwardly moved past him to the driver’s side of the vehicle and got inside. She crossed her fingers that she actually wouldn’t be seeing him around. One near miss was enough to last her a lifetime.

“I’ll take you for some ice cream when we leave Grandma’s house. What do you say?” She waited for the whoops and hollers she knew they were capable of. When she didn’t get it, she turned around. The kids got out their electronic devices and started playing their games.

“We wanted to go with Daddy,” Mason confessed, never looking up from his Game Boy.

“Well, he said he’d take you later. Let’s focus on that.” She concentrated on the lights of his bumper as he pulled out of the parking lot.

Elise turned the key and listened to the grinding gears putter and eventually die. She banged her head on the headrest when nothing happened.

“Son of a...” She caught her word before it slipped out into Faith’s new set of vocabulary.

She pumped it again. Nothing. She waited a reasonable ten seconds and turned it hard again. It stammered and then grew dead silent.

Elise jumped out of the car and kicked the tire. When nothing happened but the crack of her two useful toes, she looked at the empty parking lot. Perhaps if she banged on another part of the vehicle, it would make a difference. She began banging the hood with her hand. “Start, you fricker.”

“Daddy,” screamed Faith.

Elise looked up. Ben was driving back toward her car. He pulled up and rolled down the window. “Is everything all right?”

“No, this stupid thing won’t start.”

“I figured as much when I didn’t see you in my rear view mirror.” He put his truck in park and got out. “I told Melanie to take it in to the repair shop. It’s the alternator. I don’t know why she hasn’t.”