When I Was Theirs

4. Ben

4

Ben

S top this.

Stop this.

Stop—

But I can’t.

I can’t.

I’m lost for Emmy Marsters.

We walk to her apartment quietly, her hand held tightly in mine.

Ignoring the aging security code on the door, she pushes it open. “Are you… coming up?”

I have to close my eyes.

I can’t look at her.

Because if I do, then I’ll go up.

“I can’t, Emmy.”

The words are ripped from deep in my chest. Because I want to keep hold of her hand. I want to follow her upstairs, and see where she lives, this quiet girl who’s so damn sad.

I want to make her happy.

You can’t make her happy, Ben.

So I let her hand slide from mine, feeling her withdrawal as if it were a physical touch. The walls that slide back up again, just when they’d lowered enough to let me in. “Okay.”

You’re the worst kind of asshole, Ben Bennett.

She’s staring down at the floor, her cheeks pale again. “Goodnight, then.”

I can’t leave it like that.

“Emmy…,” my voice is hoarse. “I’m leaving soon.”

She lifts her chin up, facing me with glittering blue eyes that don’t mask the hurt. “I wasn’t asking you to move in.”

But her voice shakes. Because we both know that this could be more than one night.

This… this feels like it could be permanent.

“I want to,” I whisper. “It’s not that.”

She swallows audibly, backing away from me. “It’s fine. I’m going inside now.”

But Emmy hesitates, and so do I. I wonder if she feels it too. The sensation of something more , slipping through our fingers.

“Goodnight, Emmy.” She stills when I reach forward, pressing my lips to her forehead. I breathe her in, watermelon and ice and the heat beneath. I press the handle of her umbrella into her hands.

The umbrella she rigs with fairy lights, so she doesn’t have to be scared of the dark as she walks home alone.

And then I spin, walking away.

The ache in my chest threatens to spill over. My eyes are burning. And I listen, to make sure she goes inside.

I’m halfway down the street before the door closes.

I pick up speed. My feet, so light a few minutes ago, feel like blocks of concrete as I force myself to move faster, move until I’m almost running.

She waited for me to turn back.

No connections.

Nothing to leave behind.

That’s what I promised myself. And that promise sticks painfully in my throat.

You can’t do this to anyone else, Ben.

Especially not her.

By the time I get to the water, I can barely breathe. I pushed myself too hard tonight, the oxygen wheezing in my lungs as I collapse down onto the sand.

It’s a beautiful sunrise.

And the sight of it, of the hues of color that spill across the sky like a gift, it only makes me angrier.

My anger won’t change anything. I know that by now.

But I roar it into the sky anyway.