Dirty Little Lies (Dirty Little #2) (18 page)

I reach down and play with the hem of Ben’s shirt that I’m wearing, because his steady gaze is too much for me to take. I can actually
feel
the weight of his eyes on me, and I can’t let myself break down now.
 

“I had worked up the courage to do it that night, and I had bought every test known to man. I waited and waited, but you never showed. You weren’t answering my calls. So, I went ahead and took the tests. Every single one of them was positive.”
 

“Jesus, Marisa,” he whispers, his voice completely broken. There are tears in his eyes, and I just can’t let myself absorb all that right now.
 

“I was crying my eyes out, and I wanted to see you. I went over to your apartment, and knocked on the door. Oliver answered. He told me he hadn’t seen you, but thought you’d be home soon. I decided to wait for you in that park on the corner, you remember the one?”
 

He nods, but it’s almost robotic. Maybe he knows what’s coming, or maybe he’s nervous because he doesn’t.
 

“I walked to the park, and there was a couple there. Kissing, laughing.
 
The guy had her pressed up against the ladder to the monkey bars.”
 

Ben gently slides my legs off of his lap, and stands, gripping the railing with his good hand.
 

“It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that the guy was you.”
 

Ben leans forward, balancing on the balls of his feet, like he might actually be sick.

“There I was, pregnant with your baby, watching you make out with some other woman. I was angry…I was
devastated
. I went back to my apartment and cried myself to sleep.” Even now, five years later, I still remember the ache in my chest, how difficult it was to breathe as I lay there that night, alone and scared. “I lost it the next morning,” I tell him, tears pricking my eyes. Ben bows his head. I know there’s a part of him that wants to run, but he stays. He
stays
.
 

“I figured that was my chance to get a fresh start without you, so that’s what I did.”
 

An immeasurable silence stretches out between us as Ben processes what I just told him. For years I had considered telling him about that day, but I never really saw the point of giving him the possibility of something, only to take it away. Even years later, a part of me wanted to save him that pain.
 

He’s feeling it now though, I know.
 

“How can you even look at me?” Ben asks roughly, turning his head back in my direction. His eyes are shining with tears.
 

I stand, and take a step toward him, resting my hand on Ben’s back, between his shoulder blades. He flinches away from me, like my touch actually burns him.
 

“You asked me why I broke up with you,” I explain. “But you never asked me what made me stick around so long in the first place.”

That must shock him, because his eyes actually meet mine again.
 

“What?”
 

“You know how they say that you are the person you are when people aren’t looking?” I ask.
 

“What does that have to do with anything?”
 

A small, sad smile pulls at my lips. “That wasn’t the only time I saw you when you thought I wasn’t looking.”
 

“I know I asked for it,” he says quietly, “but I don’t think I can take hearing about all the other ways I was a fuck up tonight.”
 

“So how about I tell you about the ways that you weren’t?”
 

Ben looks almost hopeful, definitely curious. Incredibly cautious.

“Ask me why I stayed,” I tell him again.
 

It takes him a minute, but he does it.

“Why did you stay?”
 

“Because you used to go to my grandmother’s nursing home and read her poetry on Wednesday afternoons,” I tell him.
 

His eyebrows scrunch together. “How did you-”

“When we would go to the movies,” I continue, ignoring his question, “you’d always wear that brown leather jacket I liked, even if it was ninety degrees outside, because you knew I’d get cold in the middle of the movie. You always ordered pizza with the crust a little burnt, because even though you hated it, I loved it that way. You’d wake up at five thirty in the morning—before I even got up—to turn on the towel warmer in your bathroom so I wouldn’t be freezing when I got out of the shower.”
 

Ben looks utterly lost right now, eyes wide and searching mine.
 

“That’s the guy it was so difficult for me to give up on,” I explain. “And I can look at you because that guy is who you are now. And I’m giving him another chance.”
 

Ben turns toward me, his eyes searching mine before he gives me a soft, tender kiss.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, pressing his forehead against mine. “I’ll never be able to tell you how sorry I am. For what I did, for who I was.”
 

“Show me, then.”
 

“How,” he says eagerly. “Tell me how, and I’ll do it.”
 

“You’re doing it,” I say, smiling. “You care about the things that I care about. You’re being supportive, and helpful, and amazing. Be the guy I know you can be. That’s how you show me you’re sorry.”
 

“I can do that,” he says through a smile.
 

“I know you can. I have a condition, though.”
 

“Anything.”
 

“The past?” I say, sliding my hand across his chest before wrapping my arm around his neck. “It stays right here. If we’re going to be together, if we’re going to move forward, we have to let it go. No bringing it up in fights, no guilt, no angst. Okay?”
 

Ben blinks, like he can’t believe this is happening. “Okay. I just wanted to apolo-”

I press my finger against his lips. “Clean slate.”
 

He nods. “Clean slate.”
 

Using the arm that’s anchored around his neck, I pull myself up and give him a proper kiss. A kiss that’s full of promise, and hope.
 

A kiss that’s like a beginning.
 

“Oh my god, I
love
these,” Mia says, as she delicately removes the top of the box full of colorful macarons that I brought her from a fancy French bakery downtown. After she takes a few seconds to survey the delicious inventory, she smiles at me. “You brought all my favorites.”
 

I shift in my chair, as some of the nervous tension I was feeling drains out of me. To be honest, when Mia suggested that the two of us get coffee together the night we met at the Murphy Building benefit, I never thought that I’d actually take her up on the offer, much less be the one who arranged the meeting.
 

Yet, here we are.
 

“I’ll admit to cheating there,” I tell her. “I called Caleb and asked him what you would like.”
 

She tilts the box in my direction. “Share one with me.”
 

Normally I would beg off, but Mia has this friendly warmth to her that makes it difficult to say no.
 

I reach forward and pull out a pink one, which is rose-flavored, if I remember correctly. I take a small bite, and have to stifle the groan that threatens to come out. We’re in public; I can’t make noises like that over food, I remind myself.
 

“So,” she says, before pulling a green cookie out of the box. “I’m always up for treats, so please don’t think I’m being ungrateful, but what is this for?”
 

“It’s a thank you,” I reply.
 

“What for?”
 

“For everything you did to help my sister and me. And Ben, too.”
 

She gives me an unassuming smile. “I was just doing my job,” she says.
 

“No,” I reply, not wanting her to get away with shrugging this all off as some part of her job description. “Please don’t make it sound like less than it was.”

She takes a sip of her latte, and nods. “Okay.”

“I know we don’t know each other very well-”

“
Yet
,” she says.

I grin at her. “We don’t know each other very well
yet
, but Ben told me how hard you worked trying to decode that flash drive, and some people, they might’ve given up. You did that for me and Corinne, two people who are strangers to you, and I owe you the world for that.”
 

“It was nothing,” she says.
 

“It was
everything
. Both to me and to my sister. And to Ben, too. Macarons don’t even begin to cover it, but it’s a start.”
 

Mia puts the top back on the box of macarons, and pushes it aside, giving her room to lean forward and rest her elbows on the table.
 

“I don’t have any blood relatives left,” she explains. “But I know how important family is, and I know that you can build one that means just as much to you as the one you’re born into. Being with Caleb has given me the opportunity to build a family. Oliver is part of that, and Ben is, too. Ben might be my boss, but he’s my friend, too. If he needs me, I’m there. And he cares about you and your sister, so of course I was willing to do whatever I could to help.”
 

She’s right about family, about how your friends can take you in, and give you shelter and comfort and love that you sometimes can’t find from the people in your life who are supposed to give you those things. That family can be there for you when the other one falls apart.
 

I’m just getting to know Mia, and getting reacquainted with Oliver and Caleb, but they’ve all offered me a network of support over the past few weeks that I thought I’d lost the day my mother and father got arrested.
 

The realization that I can have that tight knit feeling with a family of my own making gives me a hope for the future that I didn’t think I’d have again.
 

“Ben told me that he thinks you and I have a lot in common,” I say, before wrapping my hands around my warm coffee cup.
 

“A protective streak a mile wide is the way he put it,” Mia replies, laughing.
 

“Well, if you’re going to do something stupid, do it for someone you love, that’s my motto.”
 

Mia laughs. “I couldn’t agree more.”
 

I want to ask her more about her family, about why she’s had to find one in our small group of friends, but we don’t know each other well enough for that yet. I want to, though. Anyone who has such a great capacity for caring in her heart that she would do what she did for me after only meeting me a handful of times, and for Corinne, having never met her at all…well, that’s the kind of person that I want to have in my corner.
 

And I want to be in her corner, too.
 

When I called and asked her to meet, she told me that she didn’t have a lot of time this afternoon, so I know she’s gonna be going on her way soon.
 

“Do you think we could meet for coffee again?” I ask. “It’ll be nice to talk to you away from the guys.”

Mia’s whole face brightens.
 

“I’d really like that,” she says. “I’m still new in the city, and even though I’ve met a bunch of people through work, it’ll be nice to have a
friend
, friend. That probably doesn’t make any sense.” Her face turns kind of red, and she lets out this nervous chuckle.
 

“It makes perfect sense. You need someone you can talk to without work being the focus of the conversation. Someone you can share things with and not have to look in the eye at the office.”
 

She nods enthusiastically. “Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.”
 

“I’d love to be your
friend
, friend. I work for myself, and I tend to spend long hours at my kitchen table, wrapped up in my site.”

“A site that I
love
, by the way.”
 

I can’t help the short wave of bashfulness that overtakes me. My site is successful and getting bigger by the day, but it still catches me off guard whenever someone talks about how much they like it. It’s so fulfilling, putting something out into the world that people enjoy.
 

“Thank you,” I reply. “I get a ton of great samples, and I’m always happy to share.”
 

Her whole face lights up. “Seriously?”
 

I nod, laughing. “Seriously.”
 

“Next time we meet for coffee, we can take it back to my place, and I’ll show you.”
 

“That sounds great.”
 

“If you don’t mind,” I say, pulling my phone out of my pocket. “Give me your cell number. I’ll text you my address, and we can set a date.”