Page 41 of A World Without You
“Rightfully so,” Bennett points at me with his drink. I glare at him even though he’s right.
“And I literally have no prospects for my life!”
Bennett makes this clicking noise with his tongue—an almost laugh. For someone who seems rather content and happy with his life, he really should laugh more. “You’ve watchedPride & Prejudicetoo many times.”
“One, there is no such thing as watching that movie too much. And two, there was nothing else to do in Roslyn,” I argue, then sit back in my seat, crossing my arms over my black sweater.
“I don’t believe you for a second.”
“Well, you should.”
He leans over the table, his forearms devouring the mahogany. “Really? No cow tipping? Driving down backroads? Drinking beer in a field of wildflowers? Climbing mountain men?”
“I only climbed dairy farmers,” I deadpan.
“You’re such a hater,” he says with hints of laughter in his voice as he sits back in his chair.
I lean forward and zero my vision in on Bennett. “I am, and I have permission to hate because I lived there, and that town hurt all of my feelings.” He tosses his head back with a laugh, letting his gaze drift to the crowd of twenty-somethings dressed in ugly Christmas sweaters stumbling through the entrance. I stay quiet momentarily, letting my gaze drift into my red wine. “Roslyn wasn’t that bad. But what I did to Colin was, you know?”
Bennett nods slowly, not adding to it. He isn’t going to sugarcoat my choices or try to make me feel less awful for what I did. Even as the guilt sinks in my gut, I’m thankful he’s letting me feel the punishment for my choices.
“You know what the worst part about the whole thing is?”
“What’s that?” Bennett asks, sipping his bourbon.
“I’ve just become a cheater.”
He pulls a face and shakes his head. “I thought you said you didn’t get with Graham until you ended things with Colin.”
I groan and sigh, collapsing my shoulders. “Does a quick, whiney phone call begging him to come get me, and him not coming, and then me telling him it’s over count as ending things?”
“Yes,” he says simply, and I twist my lips, tasting the sour semantics of the notion.
“I threw away eight years.”
“And gave Graham five. You act like it was a fling.”
I sit back in my chair. “No, it wasn’t a fling. It was just...wrong. And now, I’m always going to be a cheater.”
Bennett leans forward. “Explain that.”
“I am. I was getting emotionally attached to Graham that whole week before I even spoke to Colin and ended things. Who does that?” I shake my head. I hate how quickly I tripped into love with Graham. “Once a cheater, always a cheater.”
“That’s just an expression people made up after they were cheated on,” he says, leaning over the table. His tattoo flinches with every movement of his fingers as I contemplate my next words.
“No, it’s based on a series of patterns in human behavior. If you can disregard a person’s feelings and disrupt boundaries once, then you’re capable of doing it again.”
“Well, if that’s your logic, we’re all cheaters.”
“You’re not a cheater.”
“You don’t know me.”
I stare at him. The statement is almost true. We don’t really know each other that well anymore. We’ve just known each other for a long time. Big difference.
“I don’t,” I confess, then twist my lips, realizing I know very little about what happened to Bennett and his ex-wife, Krista. Only that it wasn’t good and that, according to my mother,we should really pray for him. Let’s be honest: I love it when gossip is disguised as a prayer request, but then again, I didn’t want to know Bennett’s. I didn’t want to imagine a world where he wasn’t happy, so I never pressed for details.
I clear my throat and muster up the courage to ask, “What happened to Krista, Bennett?”
