“I really need to go into Benny’s office and work on his bookkeeping. It’s a fucking disaster.” She rolls her eyes.
“How is working with Benny?”
“Okay, I guess.” She takes another sip of her coffee and then sets the empty mug between us. “He’s usually quiet and brooding, and when he does open his mouth, he somehow manages to piss me off.”
I can’t help but laugh. “What’s he do to piss you off?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He calls me princess for one, which he knows infuriates me. And he’s always making little comments about how I look nice or that my hair looks pretty—”
“Wait,” I interrupt, stopping the swing. “That’s a bad thing, why?”
“Because, it confuses me,” she huffs. “Ugh! I wasn’t going to tell you, but right before I left to go back home, Benny kissed me.”
“What!?” I screech as I fly out of the swing. “Are you serious? I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that!”
“It was nothing.” Mia grabs my arm and yanks me back down. “Okay, well it was something . . . at least I thought it was. It was gentle and sweet, and I almost didn’t leave because of it.”
“But you did.”
“But I did,” she confirms. “He and I texted off and on while I was gone, but he was mostly keeping me up-to-date with you.” She glances over and gives me an apologetic smile, and I roll my eyes. “So I mentioned to him that I wanted to move back, and I may have suggested that we pick back up where we left off . . . but he told me no.”
“He told you no?” I ask incredulously. “What the hell?”
“Yeah, I have no idea. Of course, I was more than embarrassed and didn’t talk to him again until the day I showed up at your door.”
“Now that I think about it, you two have been acting sort of weird around each other. You’re not near as friendly as you were before.”
“Well, how the hell am I supposed to be friendly with him? Do you know how humiliating that was, to put myself out there like that and for him to just shut me down with absolutely no explanation at all?” Mia moans and drops her head to my shoulder.
“So why did you agree to work for him?” I ask, genuinely curious.
“Because I’m an idiot. And even though I was embarrassed, I still enjoy being around the dumbass,” she says with a slight shake of her head. “I usually just ignore him, which I think ticks him off, and every once in a while he’ll shoot me a compliment, which he knows ticks me off. So it’s become a mutual thing, us pushing each other’s buttons.”
“Interesting,” I mumble.
“Okay.” She slaps my leg and pushes up from the swing. “I better get going, and you should think about getting ready too. What time do you have to be there?”
“Nine.” I follow her into the house with a yawn.
Mia walks into the living room and shrugs the blanket off her shoulders, letting it fall to the couch. She walks into the kitchen, drops her mug in the sink and then grabs her purse off the counter. “Call me if you need me, got it?”
“Got it,” I respond with a mock salute. She rolls her eyes and smacks a kiss on my cheek before walking out the door. “Love you,” she hollers over her shoulder.
“Love you too,” I yell back, knowing she can’t hear me because the door is already shut. I try to never let one of these amazing people walk out of a room without telling them how I feel. Luke and Mia always say it back, Benny responds with a grunt, and Levi . . . well, he usually gets this look on his face like I just leveled his entire world. I can tell he feels the same way, I just wish I knew why he hasn’t said it back. ‘In time,’ Mia keeps telling me, and I know she’s right. But when you tell someone over and over and over how much you love them and never hear the words back, that wears on a person.
I guess I can’t complain too much because he always has some amazing words for me. He’ll tell me that I’m his world and he can’t imagine his life without me. And the other day after we made love, he told me that I meant everything to him. If that’s the case and I mean everything to him, then he probably loves me, but I’m just aching to hear those three little words. I need to hear them.
A faint buzzing pulls me from my head. I dig my phone out of my pocket to see Benny’s name lit up on the screen. Swiping the ‘talk’ button, I bring the phone up to my ear. “Good morning, sunshine.”
“Don’t ever call me that again.”
“Oooh . . . Grouchy Benny. This should be fun,” I quip, pulling a chair out from under the table and sitting down. “What’s up?”
“I can’t make it to your treatment today.”
“Okay, did something come up?” I ask. It’s not like Benny to cancel on me. Usually if something else comes up, he just cancels whatever it is since that’s his way of ‘showing support.’ I don’t mind that he can’t come because, like I told Mia, I’m more than comfortable going on my own.
“Uh—” Benny’s words cut off and his end of the phone becomes scratchy. I hear faint whispering, but I can’t make out who he’s talking to. “Yeah. Um . . . something came up. Look, I’ve got to run, but I’ll check in later. Just call if you need me, okay?”