“I have to talk to him,” I say to Finn numbly. “Let him down easy.”
Finn sits down next to me. “There’s no such thing, you know. He likes you. A lot.”
“Oh God.” I bury my face in my hands again.
“Now you’ve granted his heart’s desire, and you’re going to have to find some way to tell him it was all a big mistake.”
I get up and walk over to my window to look out, and Ben’s truck is still in front of my house. Which means he’s waiting downstairs to talk to me.
40
Ben
I can hear Ben making small talk with Danny, and I wonder what I could possibly say to Ben to let him know that the last week of my life with him was a total anomaly. He’s either going to think I’m completely nuts or toying with him.
I have no idea how to handle this. Worse, I’m feeling guilty, because truthfully, other me has enjoyed all of this. Too much.
I feel a very weird mix of confusing feelings, as I have other me’s memories fresh in my mind, of Ben with his mouth on mine and those perfectly muscled arms around me. These are mixing with my near-death rescue by Finn and the tenderness he’s shown me in the aftermath. The way I feel when he holds me is just different. There’s a rightness about it—just as there was a rightness for my other self when I was with Ben.
I reach the bottom of the stairs, and he’s stopped talking to Danny. Instead, he’s looking at me with a wealth of pain in his eyes.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” he says. And my traitorous mind goes back to yesterday, when the other me walked down these stairs, and he called me beautiful, the way his eyes brightened, and that easy grin he broke into when he saw me. My heart gives a lurch and I take another deep breath, trying to push all that out of my mind.
Danny breaks the ice.
“Jessa! I’m winning!” he yells gleefully as he points at the TV screen. “Am I good at this, Ben?”
“You’re a killer, Danny. I should know better than to play with you,” Ben says.
Danny turns his baffled face to Ben. “I don’t kill you. You died.” He looks up at me. “Me and Ben were playing but he died, so he said he was going to go wake you up. I didn’t kill him.”
“He didn’t mean it like that, Danny,” I explain. “When someone says you’re a killer that way, it means you’re good at something.”
“It’s mean to say I killed somebody,” Danny says.
“Ben wasn’t being mean. He said it because he likes you. He meant you’re good at the game.”
“I’m good at this,” he says matter-of-factly. “I’m winning. Are you going to stay here now, Jessa?”
“Yeah, Danny,” I say, eyeing him warily. “I live here, remember?”
“Is Finn still here? Can he play the game with me?”
I feel Ben’s eyes on me, and his whole body is frozen.
“Danny, Ben and I are going to go out for a little while, okay?” I tell him. “Just keep on playing.”
“Okay. I’m a killer. Ben says so.”
I fold my arms across my chest and we walk to the door. I keep my eyes on Ben’s rigid back and I hate myself. Oh God, do I hate myself. I want to find a mirror, reach through, and punch me right in the wandering mouth.
We walk outside to his truck, and he turns to face me, leaning his back against the door.
“Ben…,” I start. I look at him, and the urge is overwhelming to wrap my arms around him. This is Ben. Ben. And she—we—love him.
He shakes his head, and I see his jaw tighten, like he’s keeping himself from saying something.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and the tears start to slip out. “I’m so sorry.” I put my hands over my face and start to cry, big, heaving sobs, and I don’t know how it’s even possible that I have any tears left after all the crying I’ve done this morning. I hear him sigh and feel his hand settle tentatively on my shoulder.
“Talk to me, St. Clair. What’s going on?”
“It’s … complicated.”
“What’s complicated?”
“Everything. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“About me? Or about him?”
“Both, I guess.” I look at him and realize that’s a cop-out. I have to be honest with him. I owe him that. I force myself to meet his eyes.
“You, mostly,” I say, and the tears start up again.
“So this whole week was … what? An accident? An experiment? What?” His arm drops. He’s getting mad now. He can barely get the words out, and I am drowning in misery for it.
“No! It’s not like that!”
“Then what are you doing? With him?”
Oh God, I am so bad at this. “It’s not like I don’t … care about you. I do. I just … I’ve done some thinking.”
“And you think you’d rather have Finn,” he says flatly. “Or would you rather just string us both along until you figure it out?”
“That’s not fair!”
“Not fair? I’m not being fair?”
He storms around to the driver’s side of the truck and gets in, turning the keys in the ignition.
I follow him, and I reach out and stop the door as he tries to shut it.
“Wait, Ben—where are you going?”