Throughout our day, we talked about our lives and I discovered so much more about him that I didn’t know. When he asked me questions about USC and I asked him how he knew the campus so well, he told me he visited his brother and sister there many times. He also told me his brother was in the Kappa Sigma Fraternity, but lived off campus. I mentioned that Ben was in the same fraternity, but skirted the topic. He told me he went to a few parties at the frat house and then crashed at either his brother or sister's place. I got the impression that who he stayed with depended on which sibling took someone else home with them. Funny, we only saw each other that one night, but good I guess.
I found out River’s mother moved out of Brentwood a couple of years ago when she got remarried; she and her husband actually live in River’s neighborhood. His sister lives with them, and his brother lives in what used to be their grandparents’ condo in downtown Beverly Hills. His grandparents both died within six months of each other last year and left a sizable inheritance to River and his brother and sister. Xander inherited their condo. I learned his grandfather was a silent partner in one of the first and most successful retail stores on Rodeo Drive and was extremely wealthy. I also found out there is another wing to River’s house. It’s located behind the garage and that is where the laundry room is. I laughed that he had no idea if there actually was a washer and dryer at the house, but we discovered, once we returned, that there is. I also laughed, because just like him, laundry is not something I actually think about or even do for myself. Since we hadn’t bought laundry detergent we couldn’t wash the new sheets. Instead we put the sheet from the air mattress on the new bed and proceeded to christen it.
Right now, thinking of laundry makes me think about Ben, something I haven’t been doing much of lately. But since he always took care of the laundry, I can’t help but remember him. When I say Ben took care of the laundry, I mean he dropped it off at Fluff and Fold. He was so funny about dirty clothes, he hated when they’d pile up. There were only a few things he was OCD about and the care of our clothing was one of those things. Although, I remember one time when the large pile of dirty clothes didn’t seem to bother him.
We had piled our laundry on the floor in the laundry room. Neither one of us had gotten around to bagging it in the special bright yellow bags provided by Fold and Fluff. Ben had been busy on a story, and I was trying to write my thesis. It was a Sunday morning in the early spring, and Ben was headed out to a flag football game, but he couldn’t find all of his gear.
“Dahl, have you seen my jersey?” he yelled from the laundry room.
“Nope,” I said without even giving him a sideways glance from my desk in the kitchen.
“Could you help me look? I’m late!”
“Sure,” I said as I pranced his way.
When I walked into the laundry room, there he was, bending down over the pile in only his track pants. Freshly showered, his back glistened with droplets of water. I had been cooped up at my computer for far too long over the past week, and the sight of him brought a yearning I didn’t expect.
Walking over to the pile, I stood there in my Ugg boots looking at him as he rummaged through the huge pile. “Find it yet?”
When he looked up at me, he noticed I was wearing nothing but one of his long sports t-shirts and my boots. I hadn’t showered yet because I wanted to finish another section of my thesis first, so while he was in the shower I threw on something comfortable and warm and made my way to the kitchen for coffee and writing.
He shot me a wicked grin, and I rolled my eyes. “What?”
“I found my jersey,” he said as he stood up and sauntered one step closer to me.
“You did? Where?” I whispered, barely able to pull my eyes away from his smoldering blue ones.
He cocked a brow at me and pointed. “You’re wearing it.”
Then lifting the jersey over my head he said, “Fuck flag football today.”
As I’m reminiscing about Ben, River bumps my shoulder. “Nervous?”
Suddenly transported back to the here and now, I shake my head and say, “No. Should I be?”
“No of course not,” he says grinning at me. “You just seem . . . somewhere else.”