“Ah. That explains my growling stomach.” I toss the brush down on the battered wooden table, scarred and stained a multitude of colors. “What’s up?”
He turns, and my artist self notices the way light falls on his face. Pale swaths gloss his straight nose, edge his lower lip, fuller than the top. His eyes are always a little twinkly, as if he’s going to tell you a secret that will make you laugh. I have the feeling that he’s mulling something over, and then he shakes his head. “Just checking on the windows. The rainy season is on us.”
I nod, wipe the rest of my brushes clean, and toss them into a bucket. “You hungry? I’m going to make a BLT for lunch.” We’ve become good friends over the past few months, unified by the weirdness of coming back after such a long time, and age and proximity.
“I could eat. Do you have any of those homemade pickles?”
“I do.” Smiling, I scrub my hands at the sink, but even after a second round, orange stains my cuticles from the poppies I’ve been painting. “And the oolong tea you like.”
“Excellent.” His attention is captured by something outside. “Is that Suze? Is she back?”
I cross the room to stand beside him. She’s on the beach, standing there with her hands in her pockets, her trademark hair flying in the breeze. Worry and hope mingle in my body. A lot of things in her life have tried to break her, but this last one seems to almost have succeeded. I don’t know what’s happening between us, but seeing her sparks something in my chest. Hurt, resentment. Longing. “She is.”
“She’s had a pretty hard time.”
“Yes.” A flash of the news video about her beating rips through my gut. “It will help to be home. She’s safe here.”
“Doesn’t the press follow her?”
I shrug. “They used to. Not so much anymore.”
“Really?” He’s frowning, watching her, his hands in his pockets, and I feel a tiny ripple of disappointment. Like everybody else, he’s dazzled by her fame, even though we both knew her before. “Because . . . ?”
I give him a wry, slightly bitter smile. “She’s not a sexy hot girl anymore.”
“But isn’t this the biggest show she’s ever been on?”
“She plays a grandmother.”
He looks at me, and the force of those pale-blue eyes strikes me. If I painted them, what color would I use? Phthalo blue mixed with flake white until it was very, very light. “So? Why would that matter?”
I laugh. Men are not touched by ageism the way women are, at least not until they’re a lot older than he is. As someone said, “Men don’t age better than women, they’re just allowed to age.”
We stand there a little longer and he starts to say something. “Phoebe . . .”
I wait, but he shakes his head. “Never mind.”
“Sure? I’m in no hurry.”
He smiles, maybe a little sadly, and I feel that thing happen, that soft puff of yearning that can still catch me at times.
But Ben is way out of my league. Once upon a time, for about twelve minutes, I had a body that could stop a clock, but these days I very much look like the grandmother I am, soft and hippy and so very ordinary. “Come on, let’s go eat before I fall over in a dead faint.”
We reach the back door of my house and slip out of our boots, padding inside in woolen socks. I reach for the kettle, but he says, “Let me. I’m working on my tea game.”
“Be my guest.”
I gather things for sandwiches, the fresh pickles, the bacon and tomatoes, bread. There’s leftover bean soup from dinner last night. In the narrow space between counters and fridge and stove, Ben and I weave easily, used to the dance. He gets out a ceramic teapot and cups and the small teaspoons I like, a gift from Suze once upon a time, when she filmed a movie in England.
Ben is a widower, and an easy guy to be around because of it. There’s no sex on the table, no unspoken dialogue to navigate. Every so often we bump, and we hardly even say sorry anymore. It’s been so nice to have him around, all the companionship and ease of a long relationship with none of the tension.
“When does Jasmine arrive?” he asks, plucking a pickle from the bowl.
“Her mom worked today, so it won’t be until late afternoon.”
“Will Stephanie stay overnight here?”
“No, I think she has a flight in the morning from Portland.” I slice the sandwiches in half and put each one on a plate, thinking I have plenty of time to go over and say hi to Suze before they arrive. Anxiety sparks along my neck. We have left things in such disarray.
The kettle clicks off. I watch as he measures the loose tea, his hands large and competent, tanned from being outside all the time. For the first time I notice that his ring finger is bare. It’s been long enough that the stripe has disappeared. “I didn’t realize you’d taken off your ring.”
He spreads his fingers, looks at the empty spot. “It was time. She’s been gone three years.”
“Be careful,” I tease. “Once the grapevine gets hold of that, you’ll be inundated with casseroles and brownies.”
He looks at me. “Is that what this is?” He points to the plates and bowls and pickles. “Seduction?”
“No!” A hot, hard blush rises up my neck. “We’re friends.”
A flicker of something dims the light in his eyes. “I know.” He claps my arm, right above the elbow. “Sorry, I was teasing. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
“It’s okay.” I bow my head, willing the heat to leave my ears. “I’ve always hated this blush.”
“It’s charming.”
“When you’re twelve.”
Thankfully, he lets it go and we carry everything to the table, covered by an ancient oilcloth left by my grandmother. As we sit down, he says, “For the record, I had a pretty bad crush on you back in the day.”
I give him a skeptical glance. “No one had a crush on me. It was always Suze.”
“Not me. I liked you.”
“Really?” That soft, rustling awareness moves through me again. Maybe he’s not completely out of my league, then?
“Really.” He takes a hearty bite of his sandwich and chases it with tea. “You were stuck on Joel, that guy who burned the church down.”
“I can’t believe you remember that.” My cheeks flame.
He nods.
“Pathetic.” I shake my head. “God, I was so smitten! What happens to girls, I wonder? Up until I was about twelve, I was such a tomboy, and I didn’t care what anybody thought of me. And then”—I sigh—“puberty turned me into a needy mess.”
“It wasn’t just you.” His eyes are warm, resting on my face with something that looks like appreciation. “We all felt that way. For about five years, I thought about breasts pretty consistently every two or three seconds.”
I burst out laughing. “That’s a lot.”
He nods. “Tell me about it.”
“Kissing,” I say. “That’s what I thought about, a hundred times a day. I would sit in classes and imagine all kinds of ways I could kiss somebody.” I take a bite, relishing the salt of bacon with tangy mayo, remembering.
“Hormones,” he says with a sigh.
“Amen.” I look up and there’s something hot in the air that makes me think about how it would feel to kiss him, feel that beard against my chin. Would it be soft or springy? It looks soft.
“Are you thinking about kissing, Phoebe?” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “Because you’ve never been able to hide that blush.”
I lift my chin. “I was remembering.”
“Me too,” he says. “You had a little blue halter top, with sparkly things on it.”
It pops into my mind, a beautiful thing made of green and blue fabric with sequins laced on it in little patterns. Suze, with her clever fingers, made it for me, and I loved how I felt in it. “It wasn’t that little.”
He grins. “I wanted it to be littler.”
“Tsk, tsk.” A silence falls and I’m thinking about being fifteen and kissing and that top. “That was a hard summer.” Especially for Suze, who was sent away to an unwed mothers’ home, her head shaved, her life in tatters. I glance toward the window, up the hill. “I guess I should go see her.”
Ben’s eyes are calm. “You should.”
THEN
YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND