I Do With You (Maple Creek)

Chapter 5 HOPE

Chapter 5

H OPE

Lying in bed, I can feel the impending panic attack that’s been building all day getting closer and closer, like a train coming down the tracks, heading straight for me.

I wanted an escape, and Ben’s done a great job of providing that all evening. We talked about nothing of importance, which was exactly what I needed. He kept me laughing with his dry sense of humor, preventing my brain from short-circuiting into a loop of oh my God on repeat. And once he noticed I was going for the tiny dill pickles on the admittedly Lunchable-esque board, he started pushing them all my way. Pickles and beer certainly aren’t the dinner I thought I’d have, but nothing about today is what I thought my wedding day would be like.

Now, in the quiet darkness, the anxiety is coming full throttle. And so are the tears, which are sliding hotly down my cheeks and onto the pillow I’m clutching like a lifeline.

What have I done? Why did I do it? And most importantly, now what?

I toss and turn, not having any answers, until a quiet sound catches my attention. I flip over, listening again.

What is that?

It’s Ben, I realize. He’s playing his guitar, so low I can barely hear the chords he’s strumming. Focusing on that, I try to identify the song, but it doesn’t sound familiar. After a while, I realize he’s playing the same bit over and over, like he’s learning it. I still don’t recognize it, though I’m not sure if it’s because I’m unfamiliar with the tune or he’s not very good at it yet.

Whatever it is, it’s now the soundtrack of broken dreams as I completely shatter into a million glittery pieces, crying myself to sleep. Not because I regret what I’ve done, but because ... I don’t.

“ Sage! Olive! Breakfast is ready!” I shout down the hall, smiling when I hear the pounding of little feet coming my way.

“Mom! It’s my turn to pick the morning music,” Sage reminds me. It’s a tradition my mom started when I was a kid, and I’ve continued it with my girls, letting them take turns choosing a song each day. We started out with nursery rhymes and have progressed to pop music as they’ve gotten older.

“Nu-uh! You picked yestah-day! It’s my turn!” Olive argues.

They barrel into the kitchen with elbows flying, both fighting to be the first one to the stools at the island, where I’ve already placed their waffles and jelly. At five, they want to spread their own jelly like big kids, not have me do it, even though it’ll take an extra ten minutes for them to cover every nook and cranny and then lick the mess from their fingers. And that’s before they actually start eating.

Two pairs of blue eyes turn to mine, both demanding my judgment on whose turn it actually is.

“Sage, you chose yesterday. It’s Olive’s turn today.”

Like I knew she would, Sage argues back. “I did not! It’s my turn.” Of the two girls, she’s the spitfire, and Olive is the more laid-back one. But they’re learning from each other the same way Joy and I did.

Olive starts singing the Taylor Swift song Sage selected as a reminder. “Whoa-oh-oh-ohhh, it’s a cruel summah.” Her little drawl is the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. Truthfully, it’s more of a speech issue with -er sounds, but it’s adorable regardless, and I’ll miss it when she outgrows it.

Sage freezes, realizing that Olive is right. I can see it on her face, but she doesn’t want to admit that she was wrong.

“It’s okay, honey. You can choose again tomorrow—but what do you tell Olive for trying to take her turn?”

“Sorry,” she mumbles.

Crisis averted, Olive chooses her song. “Hey, Siri, play ‘Cruel Summah.’” She grins a gappy smile at Sage, who’s looking back in surprise. And then together, they sing along as they spread their jelly.

It’s the best start to a day since yesterday.

After I drop the girls off at school, the day is a whirlwind of teeth-cleaning and reminders that flossing is actually important and not a moneymaking scam by Big Flossing, and then I’m picking up the girls at school for an afternoon of dance classes, homework, and making dinner. Around six, my phone rings.

“Hey, babe,” I answer, after seeing Roy’s name on the caller ID.

“Bad news, babe. I’ve got to work late,” he says, not sounding sorry at all. This is becoming a more-than-occasional occurrence. I think he’s worked late more nights than not for at least the past six months.

Schooling my face so the girls don’t notice anything amiss, I sigh. “I get it. Not like the banker gets to work bankers’ hours, right?”

“You know it. See you later.”

I start to tell Roy that I’ll put his plate in the microwave so he can have dinner when he gets home, but he’s already hung up.

“All right, Girls’ Dinner tonight!” I tell them, feigning excitement. “You know what that means!”

“Toothpicks instead of forks!” they tell each other happily. I don’t know why, but they love it when I cut up their dinner and they can stab every morsel with a toothpick instead of a utensil. Whatever floats their boat, I guess, and it makes getting dinner in their bellies easier on me, so that’s a win in my book.

I grab the shaker of toothpicks and rattle it a bit with a forced smile.

After dinner, baths, and two bedtime stories, I’m alone in the living room when I hear the garage door opening. Roy comes in, looking exhausted and disheveled. “Hey, dinner in the kitchen?” He walks in front of the TV and straight for the plate I left him. No kiss—not even a hello, really.

I sigh, not surprised. I know. I’ve known for a while now. Months ago, I “ran into” one of Roy’s bank tellers at the grocery store, and she oh-so-casually mentioned the “new girl” who’d started at the bank. Even as she gently and subtly tried to warn me, I already knew. I just hadn’t decided what to do about it then. I still haven’t.

Everything’s perfect, except it isn’t.

“How was work?” I ask, following him into the kitchen. I’m almost begging him to tell me the truth. Or maybe daring him to.

“I swear, the tellers can’t fucking count. They know their numbers have to match before closing out the day, but they never do. If they were smarter, I’d think they were embezzling or something since they’re always wrong and I have to fix their shit.” He eats the dinner I made without comment or compliment as he blames the tellers—who’ve mostly worked at the bank longer than he has—for his late nights and time away.

He doesn’t ask about my day, about the girls, or anything else. We’re ships floating in the same sea, but I’m a cargo ship weighed down with responsibilities, to-do lists, and baggage, and he’s a speedboat zipping in and out of the harbor before rushing back out to do his own thing.

“I’m gonna shower,” he tells me after he’s finished eating. He puts his empty plate in the sink, and on some level, I feel like I should be thankful for that teeny-tiny gift, like it’s something he did for me. He walks past me but then takes a step back and presses a quick, dry kiss to my forehead. Wordlessly, he’s gone again.

Scrubbing the damn plate, I stare at the water running from the faucet until it blurs from the tears in my eyes. How did this happen to us? This isn’t what life was supposed to be like. As I stare at the water, something happens. It doesn’t look ... right. It’s not wrong in the way Roy and I are, but it is wrong. Like gravity doesn’t exist and the flow is going the opposite way from what it should be. I press against the fixture, trying to see if there’s something stuck to it, but it feels okay. I blink, feeling strange as I glance around the kitchen.

Things are wavy, like I’m going to faint. Or like it’s a time-warp scene in a movie. Like ... a dream ...

“Aaaah!” I sit straight up in bed, panting hard, my heart racing. “What the hell was that?” I mumble to myself. It was a dream, but it felt so real. I can still hear Sage and Olive singing, can feel Roy’s lips on my forehead, can taste the bile in my throat at the unexpected twists life sometimes takes.

“You okay?” a sleep-gruff voice says next to me.

I jerk my head to the side and see a dark-haired man who is definitely not Roy in bed with me. His sharp jaw is covered in scruff, his brows are furrowed down low, and one eye is slit open as he peers at me grumpily like I disturbed his sleep. Notably, he’s shirtless, exposing the bumpy ridges of his toned stomach and flat, brown man-nipples.

Screaming loud enough to rattle the stuff on the walls, I leap from the bed in panic. “Who are you? Why are you in my bed?” I demand as my feet hit the floor. Realizing I’m half-naked in only a T-shirt that grazes my thighs, I grab the blanket on the bed, forcefully yanking it toward me, which somehow makes the man tumble off the far side of the mattress.

He lands on the floor with a heavy thud as I wrap the blanket around me, covering as much of myself as possible with it. “Fuuuck. What the hell?” he groans.

“Oh my God! Did we have sex?” I whisper, though I’m not sure who’d hear me.

Confusion swirls through my head like fog over the lake on a fall morning. Where am I? Who am I? What’s happening?

The man peeks over the edge of the bed and holds his hands up, palms toward me in a calming motion. “Chill out, Hope. You had a nightmare. I came in to check on you, and you asked me to stay, which I did—on top of the covers. We didn’t have sex. I’m not exactly the type of guy who takes advantage like that. You’re okay; you’re safe. The neighbors probably called the cops after that scream, though.” His lips lift in a teasing smile. He’s making jokes, but his voice is still rough, and that somehow settles me as my brain finally starts firing on all cylinders and remembers ... everything.

Roy. The wedding. The running. Ben. The pickles. The music. And also, the dream? Was it all a dream? I feel the loss of Sage and Olive viscerally, like they were real. But I also feel the loneliness I had in that kitchen. It was just as real too.

How could my brain do that to me?

I collapse to the bed, curling my legs underneath me. “It felt—” Whatever I was going to say is cut off as Ben stands up and comes around to sit on the edge of the bed, keeping a respectable distance between us, though the bed sinks beneath his weight, making me lean in closer to him. I look at his hands, which are clasped between his knees like he’s keeping them visible for my benefit. “I dreamed years into the future. Roy and I were married, with two daughters. He was cheating with a bank teller, and I was all alone.”

“Prophetic warning?” he suggests.

“Maybe.” I blink, seeing it all in my mind again. I’m not sure what to make of the dream—no, nightmare. The girls were a dream, but the rest was definitely something else entirely.

Realizing that I threw Ben to the floor in my attempt at escaping from the bed, I ask, “You okay?” I crinkle my nose as I look toward the far side of the bed. “I kinda forgot where I was and what’d happened for a second there.”

He nods like he’s already forgotten it. “First time waking up with a stranger, I take it?” When I stare at him in shock, he laughs. “First rule is, don’t freak out. Second is, don’t use names. Third, offer coffee. Want some?”

“Yes, please,” I sigh. But I note that he’s broken rule two, because he definitely called me Hope, so he hasn’t forgotten my name. Of course, yesterday was pretty memorable. He’s going to have a hell of a vacation story about me, the crazy runaway bride who attacked him. Twice.

He gets up and heads to the kitchen like this is a normal morning. Maybe for him it is? It takes me a few minutes longer to rally myself into following him.

As he starts the coffeepot, I ask, “So have you woken up with strangers often?” I don’t know why I care. It just seems so opposite to my life experience that I can’t imagine what that’d be like.

He shrugs, and I watch his back as he makes the movement. He’s fit, lean but muscular, and his black sweatpants are sitting dangerously low on his hips. Low enough that I can tell he’s going commando beneath them. Whatever nightmare I had that brought him running must’ve disturbed his sleep last night, because when I left him, he was still in jeans.

“I wouldn’t say ‘often.’ But more than you, obviously.” He throws a smirk over his shoulder, and I roll my eyes. More seriously, he says, “I was a shy kid. When I got older and more confident, I wasn’t so shy.” A beat later, he adds cryptically, “Well, in some ways.”

“I don’t buy that you were ever shy. That’s pure bullshit, and you know it.” I look him up and down pointedly. He’s attractive—hey, I’m messed up in my head, not dead—but he knows it too. Not in a cocky, arrogant way, but rather, like he’s comfortable in his own skin and with who he is.

He laughs. “You have no idea. I grew up before I grew out, so I was a tall, skinny string bean with arms and legs that were always too long for my clothes.” He holds his arms out in a T, and the only word I can think of is wingspan . When he lets them fall back to his sides, he continues, “Every girl I liked, Sean would hype me up to talk to her, and then, when I finally got up the nerve, they’d inevitably ask me to introduce them to him.”

“Sean?” I ask. The fog of confusion is gone and I remember all of last night, but Ben hasn’t mentioned anyone by that name.

There’s a flicker in his dark eyes I don’t understand, but he doesn’t explain it when he tells me, “My best friend. More like a brother, even though we’re not blood related. Fuck knows we’ve bled each other like brothers, though. Lately, we cuss each other out more than we talk.” Given the tic in his jaw, that seems to bother him. A lot.

“Maybe you can introduce me to him sometime,” I say casually, and then grin as I wait. Ben’s shoulders droop, but when he realizes I’m fucking with him, he snatches a muffin from the counter and throws it at me, although it’s more of an underhanded toss than a sizzling fastball. After seizing it out of the air, I take a bite. “Thanks. I am hungry.”

His laugh is deep and rumbly, riling up the nest of June bugs in my belly in an entirely new way.