Page 100 of A World Without You
“No,” he shakes his head. “You didn’t. It’s just hard being a single parent sometimes, you know? Even if it’s best.”
My throat feels thick with emotion, not because I understand but because I want to. I want to feel and know his pain so well that I can take it and write an entirely different story.
I press my gloved hand over his, squeezing as tightly as I can over the layers of fabric. I’m caring for him more and more with each passing day. I can’t measure it in any way that makes logical sense. It’s only quantifiable in a feeling that’s indescribable—a friendship bound in love and covered by protection and dipped in honesty and truth.
“You seem better than you were last night,” he says.
“I am,” I admit. He smiles at me, and there’s a brief moment where I’m seen and understood by him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Well, certainly not go sledding on blankets of white ice on a random Monday.” He takes off his wool beanie and shakes out his hair. The tips of his brown locks are curling from the snow melting against his warm skin. “You did a lot of this kind of stuff in Roslyn, though, right?”
I shrug. “Kind of.” I think of the snowmobiling through Snoqualmie. I remember the hunting Graham did on the weekends while I worked at the lodge and catered to “folks not from around here.” And all I wanted to say was,I’m not either—let’s be out-of-towners together. I think of the lonely nights with Bowser, even when Graham was home. I think of how our love life became methodical and not passionate. And then I try to remember the last time he took me on a date.
I come up blank.
“Have you ever wanted someone who didn’t want you back?”
“Yeah,” Bennett breathes.
I swallow, knowing how he must feel about Krista.
“Yeah, that’s what we became,” I confess. “There were times Graham wanted me, and there were times he tried. But there were more times that he didn’t try, and he didn’t care. Toward the end, we didn’t do anything together, which is a shame because it was a beautiful place to be in love and create a life, but I think he just wanted the wife and didn’t think he had to do anything to keep me. There were more times I looked at him and thought,do you even like me?than times that I just knew he loved me.”
“I’m sure he did, though,” Bennett whispers through my tangent.
My gaze stays fixed on the snow-covered evergreen trees in the distance. The snow is starting to melt and slide off the branches, sending blooms of snowy glitter into the winter sun. “I don’t think he did. He didn’t know me well enough.”
“A part of him had to. People don’t just get married if they don’t like the person,” Bennett argues.
“That’s a misconception,” I say. “Some people do.”
Bennett laughs a little, but it’s less of ayou’re-funnyway and more of ayou’re-probably-rightway. I stare out at the snow-covered hill in front of us as the neighborhood kids ditch their hot chocolate and race to the top of the hill with their brightly colored plastic sleds.
“Hey, in those dreams, am I ever there?” Bennett asks beside me.
“Once,” I answer quickly, not ready to process the last thing Bennett said to me in a dream and the last thing Colin said about Bennett.
Not since the accident five years ago at Christmas.The words echo into the unknown of what happened to him and why it means I haven’t seen him.
“You were very grumpy,” I say, downplaying the extremity of the interaction. The limp. The silent cookie baking. Then I laugh a little. “You dragged me out of a bar.”
Bennett smiles in a way that I’m certain if he were a normal human, he’d be laughing. “Really?”
“Yes. I got drunk—convinced you can’t do that in a dream—”
“You can’t,” he interjects with agreement.
“You can. I did,” I counter, and then my mind gets lost in that dream. The bar. The pickle back shots. The songs. The anger. The cookies. The words that followed. “Then I sang a bunch of Celine Dion karaoke. Someone named Jonny started getting fresh with me and you dragged me out of the bar and made me go home.”
He frowns. “Dream Bennett is lame.”
I should laugh, but I can’t. “Dream Bennett doesn’t seem to like me.”
“Impossible,” he says.
I shrug. I don’t understand it either.
“You should find me again.”
