Page 53 of Forget About Me

“Yeah, Mom’s bringing my daughter to have dinner with me. Delilah’s been begging for a pet so she’d probably love to play with him.”

“That’d be great.” I shake out my arms. “I just need to move.”

“Do you want to run lines?”

“Not really.”

“Yeah, me neither. I’m just bored.”

“That’s tech rehearsal for you.”

“Yup.” She leans over to grab her purse and paws through it until she finds a tube of lip balm.

Puck has nestled in next to her, so I take a walk around the lobby, or what passes for a lobby. It’s just an open room with a few cafe tables near the area where they’ll sell refreshments at intermission. After I do a half-hearted series of calisthenics, I flop back down next to Puck and Bella.

She closes the magazine she’d been flipping through. “So, what’s going on with you and Lucy?”

“What do you mean?”

“Ben. You’re obviously gaga for her.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“Uh, yeah. You look at her like I look at chocolate, which is about as exciting as things get for me these days. So, what’s the deal? Are you guys dating? Fuck buddies? What?”

“You talk that way around your kid?”

“Nah, I manage to curb my sailor talk when I’m with her.” She holds up a finger. “Except when I’m driving. She knows she’s not allowed to use that language until she’s old enough to drive and has to deal with Boston traffic.”

I laugh. “Yeah, good luck with that.”

Bella seems to have a few secrets of her own—I mean, I’ve never heard her talk about a husband or boyfriend, but Delilah must’ve come from somewhere. At the same time, she’s open-minded. She might be the perfect person to do a dry run with.

It’s not like we have anything else to do.

Not sure I can look at her while I tell this story, I prop my elbows on my knees and my forehead on my hands. “Lucy and I have a history and I need to tell her something, but I’m worried if I don’t do it right, she’ll never forgive me.”

Puck squirms out from between us to go sniffing around.

I peek at her. “Can I tell you? Like as practice? No judgement?”

She sits up, hands in the air. “As you can imagine, my life has not been sin-free. I am in no position to judge anyone.”

“I don’t know about that.”

She drops her habitually cheeky grin. “You can tell me anything. Seriously.” She points to her face. “Unshockable.”

I move so I’m sitting cross-legged facing her, determined to just spit it out. “Lucy and I had a thing the summer before she went to college. We kept it a secret from her whole family. They were likemyfamily; her big brother was my best friend, and I knew they wouldn’t approve.”

She nods, and I let my gaze follow Puck’s progress around the perimeter of the lobby as I continue.

“We didn’t break up exactly, but we decided that we’d give each other the freedom to date other people when we went to school. I didn’twantto see other people, but in August it seemed like the best thing to do. By Thanksgiving, I was missing her like an amputated limb. So when her brother Tony came by and asked if I wanted to ride with him to Amherst to pick her up, I jumped at the chance. He’d been on a ship for months—he’d just enlisted in the Navy.” My jaw tightens, picturing him with his super short hair. “I’m sure in his mind, it was a chance for us to catch up.”

I can still hear the razzing that started up the minute my butt hit the passenger seat. He’d bulked up big time and grown a few inches. I was a scrawny twig in comparison. “Tony was giving me all kinds of shit about all kinds of things. The usual guy stuff, but mostly about how skinny I was.”

“What? You haven’t always had the body of an Adonis?” When I give her a look, she slaps a hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she says through her fingers. “You’re just so easy to tease.”

“You’re telling me.” I blow a breath through my lips.Just get this over with, Ben.“Anyway, I wasn’t exactly working out back then. I was studying acting and I’d stopped working for my dad, so I wasn’t lifting stacks of lumber or cabinets anymore.”

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