An unbelieving laugh bubbled out of me. “Now who’s just being loyal?”
“I’m serious! He asked approximately three thousand questions about you during dinner. He smiles whenever he so much as says your name. He’s clearly smitten.”
I felt sick suddenly. The sandwich churned unforgivably in my stomach. “He thinks I’m crazy. He smiles because he’s trying not to laugh at me.”
“I think he has a crush.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from demanding Emma to take it all back. How could she think that? “Emma, be serious. I am not the kind of girl men have crushes on. He’s seen the chaos of my life and he knows about Grady. The last thing he has is a crush on me. He feels sorry for me. That’s it.” As soon as I said the words, I hated them. The thing I appreciated about Ben so much was that he didn’t feel sorry for me.
Or at least he didn’t act like it.
“He does not feel sorry for you, Elizabeth. He likes you.”
“As a friend.”
A full minute went by where neither of us said a word. We stared at each other, waiting on the other to admit that she was wrong. I felt myself grow hard with determination. She was wrong about this.
Finally, she gave a defeated sigh and said, “I’m sorry I said anything.”
“I’m sorry I freaked out.”
She looked at the clock on my stove. “I should go anyway. I have to get ready for class.”
I deflated immediately. I wrapped my arms around my waist and curled my shoulders in. I didn’t want her to leave like this. And over something so stupid! Why couldn’t I stop fighting with every single person I cared about? I hated that I kept lashing out in the ugliest ways possible.
I walked her to the door and found myself near tears. I threw my arms around her before she could get too far. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
She returned the hug and squeezed me tightly. “I’m sorry I suggested you’re hotter than me.”
I giggled into her neck and sniffled back tears. “I didn’t realize that’s what you were doing.”
She pulled back and hit me with her baby blues. “Lizzy, you’re thirty-two-years old and smokin’ hot. It’s a compliment if you can manage to catch a guy’s eye with your wild kids running around.”
“I like Ben. He’s been super nice.”
“So what if he has a little crush on you? It’s harmless.”
“Because it would mean that he’s crazy. You know what my kids are like! You know what I’m like. And he’s seen us all at our worst. He would have to be completely bat shit to find anything about this remotely attractive.” I waved a hand down the length of my body and tried not to make a face.
It was my sister’s turn to burst into giggles. “You don’t see yourself, Liz. You never have.” That was her goodbye. She kissed my forehead, turned around and skipped to her little Jetta. I waved to her, feeling more lost than ever.
It wasn’t that I didn’t see myself. I did see myself. Very clearly. Which was why I knew that she was wrong about Ben.
He wasn’t interested in me. He couldn’t be. I absolutely believed that I was well beyond the years of catching anyone’s eyes. If it wasn’t the four kids that turned them off, it was the dead husband. And if those two weren’t enough to put me completely in the untouchable category, I was half-crazy with grief and more than overwhelmed with life.
I had become the kind of woman that men ran from. And men should run from.
Ben was smart and funny. He had a great job and a gorgeous house. He was maybe the nicest person I had ever met and so giving. Finally, he was great to look at. Basically, Ben could have his pick of females. The last one he would turn his dark eyes on would be me.
Emma’s words bounced around in my head throughout the rest of the day. In between naptime, picking the kids up from school, taking Abby to swim team, Blake to basketball, rushing them back home to feed them some semblance of a healthy dinner, finishing up homework and getting them all to bed, my thoughts had ping-ponged back and forth with frustrating thoughts about Ben’s real motivation for helping me.
By the time I walked downstairs again at eight-thirty, I had come to the conclusion that insanity ran in my family and Emma was out of her damn mind.
That was the only thing that made sense.
I had almost made it to the kitchen when someone knocked on my door. I turned around and couldn’t bring myself to feel surprised when I saw Ben’s figure blurred through the glass, as if my spinning thoughts had conjured him.
I opened the door and greeted him with a smile, “Hi.”
He held up a bottle of wine, “Hi.”
“What’s this?”
“Well, I figured since you didn’t have time to grab milk this week, chances were you didn’t have time to grab wine either.”
“I went to the store by myself today, remember? Someone called in emergency babysitting for me. I bought four bottles.”
His wide grin made his eyes sparkle. “Good. You owe me.”
He pushed the door open and stepped inside before I could invite him. I followed him to the kitchen, reflecting on how quickly he’d made himself at home.
“So your plan is to show up and drink all of my wine? How neighborly.”
He flashed a smile over his shoulder and started rummaging through my cabinets. “I’m going to share. It’s too cold to sit outside now, even if I built a fire. Glasses?”
“Next to the fridge.”
He moved over and finally found what he had been looking for. He surveyed my small wine rack that sat on the side cabinet. His lips pressed into a frown as he picked up each bottle and read the label.
“We’ll drink mine,” he finally decided.
“Snob! There’s nothing wrong with my wine.”
He gave me a look that contradicted my opinion. “I’ll teach you. You get out of the house so little, you need my help.”