39
After, Ben falls asleep, locking me in the cavern of his arms. It’s like eighty degrees in the room—that poor air conditioner coughing in the window is no match for the desert’s brutal heat—and Ben himself radiates warmth like a furnace. But I don’t move, even though I’m hot and sticky with sweat. I don’t want to move, and eventually I fall asleep. I wake up a bunch of times in the night, and every time I do, Ben’s arms are still locked around me.
And then I wake up in the morning, and they’re not, and I’m cold, even though the room, which never cooled down in the night, is starting to get hot again. I sit up. There’s no sign of Ben, though his stuff is in a neat pile in the corner.
I slip into the shower. There’s an achiness between my legs, my virginity freshly gone. Meg loved that I seemed tough and sexy, and was a virgin. And now I’m not. If she were here, I could tell her about it.
The shower goes icy, though it has nothing to do with the water temperature. Because I realize I couldn’t tell her. Because I did it with him. With Ben. And he was hers first, even if it was just once.
I fucked her. That’s what he said.
But I’m different. He and I, we became friends first.
The rest of that conversation hurls back to me. Before it all shot to shit, we were friends. And then: When you fuck a friend, it ruins everything.
No. This is different. “I am different.” I say it out loud in the shower. And then I almost laugh. Because how many other girls have fed themselves this line about Ben McCallister to make themselves feel better in the shower the morning after?
Faces flash before me: my father’s. The look of hatred for him on that teen girl’s face. Bradford’s look of fury when I said the thing about his son. The various shades of loathing I’ve seen on Ben’s face, which have no doubt been reflected on mine.
I think of one of the first emails I read from him. The one that got this whole thing started.
You have to leave me alone.
Through the cardboard walls, I hear the sound of the door opening and closing. I turn off the taps, now embarrassed to be in the bathroom with all my clothes out in the room. I wrap myself in as many towels as I can find, and tiptoe to my bag.
“Hey,” Ben says. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see he’s not looking at me, either.
“Hey,” I say back, eyes lasering in on my heap of clothes.
He starts to say something, but I interrupt. “Hang on. Let me get dressed.”
“Yeah, okay.”
In the bathroom, I throw on my dirty-even-for-me cutoffs and a T-shirt, and spend some time toweling off and trying not to think of how, out there, Ben would not look at me.
I take a deep breath and open the door. Ben’s busy mixing up some kind of drink. Without looking up, he starts talking superfast. “I was on a mission to find iced coffee. Apparently there are Starbucks here, but they’re all in the casinos, and I didn’t feel like dealing. But nowhere else had iced, not even the actual coffee shop. So in the end I got some fresh-ish hot coffee and my own ice, and I think that’ll work.”
He’s talking a mile a minute, babbling about iced coffee with the kind of caffeinated specificity I’ve only ever heard from Alice. And he still isn’t looking at me.
“I got half and half,” he goes on. “For some reason I like my cold coffee with milk. It reminds me of ice cream or something that way.”
Stop talking about coffee! I want to scream. But I don’t. I just nod.
“Do you want to hit one of those buffets, power up before we hit the road, or should we put some distance between us?”
Yesterday Ben said that the difference between him and me was that he learned from his mistakes. He was right. And I’m an idiot.
“I vote for distance,” I say.
His eyes flicker up for a second and then they skitter away, like I gave the right answer. “That’s cool. Whatever you want.”
I want you. I want to lie back down on the bed and have his arms lock around me. But I know that’s not how it works. When you fuck the bartender, the free drinks dry up. I learned this from Tricia. I learned it from Meg. I learned it from Ben himself. It’s not like he didn’t tell me exactly what he was.
“In fact, I need to get home,” I tell Ben.
“That’s where we’re headed.” He folds a shirt.
“Like, now.”
He stares at the bedspread on the mostly made bed we didn’t sleep in last night. “Car needs gas and probably oil,” Ben says. His voice is harder, that hint of a growl returning. “If you’re in such a hurry, you could take care of that while I pack up.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I say. His arms, the comfort of them, feel so far away now. “Meet you at the car?”
Ben tosses me the keys and I catch them, and he’s about to say something but then doesn’t, so I scoop up my crap and haul it outside. I’m gassing up, when my phone rings and I reach for it. Ben. This is so stupid. We’re both being stupid.
“Cody! Where the hell are you? You were supposed to be home two days ago.”
It’s not him. It’s Tricia. As soon as I hear her voice, my throat closes.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Mom?” I say.
“Cody, where are you?” I hear the fear in her voice. Because I never, ever call her Mom.
“I need to come home.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No. But I need to come home. Right now.”
“Where are you?”
“Laughlin.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“Nevada. Please . . . I want to come home.” I’m about to lose it.
“Okay, honey, don’t cry. I can figure this out. Laughlin, Nevada. Cody, hang tight. I’m gonna work this out. Leave your phone on.”
I have no idea how Tricia is going to figure this out. She’s as broke as me. And she doesn’t know how to use a computer and she probably doesn’t even know where Nevada is, let alone Laughlin. But I feel better somehow.
x x x
Ben’s waiting downstairs in front of our room when I get back. I dig my sunglasses out and put them over my red eyes. I pop the trunk and he loads everything in. “I’ll drive,” I say.
It’s maybe not the best idea. I’m shaky, but at least if I’m driving, I’ll have something to focus on.
“Okay,” Ben mumbles.
“Tell me when you would like to stop and eat,” I say formally.
He just nods.
In the car, he focuses on the music, but the iPod adapter has died, so there’s only radio, and it’s all crap. He finally lands on a Guns N’ Roses song, “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” I used to like the song, but now, like everything, it’s digging a crater into my stomach.
“My mom loved this song,” he says.
I nod.
“Listen, Cody.” It sounds exactly like the Garcias and their And, Cody’s.
Before I can answer, my phone rings. I reach for it and it falls onto the floor. I swerve.
“Watch it!” Ben shouts.
“Answer it!” I shout back.
He scrambles for the phone. “Hello,” he says. He turns to me. “It’s your mom.”
“Tricia,” I say, taking the phone.