Page 6 of More With You

“You running from something?” The blunt question jars me, but there’s no accusation in his tone. Just interest.

I don’t know. Am I? If it looks that way to an outsider, maybe there’s some truth in it. I’ve never thought of it that way. I figure I’m just chasing the good money to help out back home. There’s another word that jars me, far more often than it should: Home.

I shrug. “No warrants I know about.” I flash him a grin, more to hide the true effect of his question. “I prefer to call it financial traveling. I go to one place, work for a while until they recommend me to another place, then I pack up and head out. It’s nice here, though. Feels like…”

I don’t finish the sentence. I can’t, because it doesn’t. Nowhere does. Still, at least here in the South, my old life feels graciously far away.

“Yeah, this is a good place. An easy place to live.” He pauses. “Can I ask where you come from originally? You don’t have much of an accent.”

“Got rid of that years ago,” I reply, chuckling. “I’m a Wisconsinite.”

His eyes widen. They’re a dark blue like the color of the Gulf at sundown. “Damn. The heat must’ve been a shock when you first got here.”

“I’ll take sweating my ass off in million-degree heat to bundling up in twenty layers and still being frozen solid.” I gaze across the water, watching the ripple of moonlight reflected on the slow-moving surface. The current bends and stretches the silvery glow, distorting it over tiny wavelets that glitter as they catch the light. The warm, salty air hangs over my shoulders like a sweater, draped there by a considerate lover. June on the coast might be my favorite month so far: hot in the day, balmy at night. I tell him as much.

“You can still breathe in June,” he agrees. “The air isn’t syrupy yet.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself. “How long have you been here?”

“All my life,” he replies. His expression clouds over, and I can’t tell if he’s happy or annoyed by the fact. His quick change of subject suggests the latter. “Do you make it back to Wisconsin much?”

I shake my head. “Not really.”

Not ever, unless it’s for my grandma. From the age of eight or nine, up to sweet sixteen, I dreamed of getting out of that cold, bleak life. I don’t just mean the weather, either. After all, my childhood home was nothing more than a halfway house for my mom’s latest strays, who’d drain her dry and vanish without a trace. That’s if she was lucky. The ones who hung around were worse. Far worse. Sometimes, I can still smell phantom cigarette smoke on my clean clothes, or hear the yelling, late at night, that used to drive me underneath the bed. Maybe if I’d hidden in the piles of trash littered everywhere, bringing in blowflies, fruit flies, all the flies, I’d have stood a better chance of not being found and getting dragged into whatever argument had my mom in messy, mascara-streaked tears. Like I was the mom.

We both seem pensive, Ben and I. His kind blue eyes scan the opposite shore, which has morphed from the gaudy strip of casinos to peaceful domesticity. I watch his gaze move along the beachfront properties that look back with their glowing eyes of ambient lighting. Every now and again, there’s a shadow puppet show as their inhabitants walk past the windows, oblivious to the fact they’re being observed. His gaze lingers a moment longer on one particular house, though “house” is something of an understatement.

“How many organs would I have to sell to buy one of those?” I ask, slowing my pace to match his. It’s supposed to be a joke, but he either didn’t hear me or he doesn’t think it’s funny.

He’s still looking at that mansion. That’s the right word for it. Mansion. Although, none of the houses are what a real estate agent would describe as “quaint.” But this one is different than the others. It sits on the ground on a solid foundation, set back from the water, nestled in a forest of live oaks, bay cedars and cypress trees, with an immaculate lawn coming down to meet the beach. Although there are other stately properties that line the shore they lack the character of this mansion, its age and stateliness suggesting a life and history that has probably seen a few hurricanes, literally and figuratively.

Just like that, he snaps out of his trance and smiles down at me. “Well, this place is happy to have you. I hope, just because you’ve been here six months already, you’re not planning to head off again soon?”

“No plans to,” I reply. “Depends who makes me a good offer.”

His pace picks up, our footsteps crumbling the wet sand, leaving a trail that will show we were here, until the tide washes it away. “Now, this isn’t me being corny, but do you drink at the Quarter Mile a lot?”

“It’s pretty much the only place I go,” I confirm.

“In that case, how the hell have we not met before?”

I laugh. “I don’t actually go there much. Don’t get out much at all, honestly.” He loses his balance a little in the sand, bringing him closer to my side. “I usually get the two-to-ten shift, and sometimes hang on longer if the tables are busy. Other than that, I sit on my porch and read, or go to the bookstore when I need a new fix. I’ll go to the Quarter Mile maybe… a couple of times a month, when a bad night makes me crave a whiskey sour.”

“So, you work in the casinos then?” He nods as if it makes sense.

“I do.”

“Do you like it?”

I tilt my head from side to side. “Mostly. I’ve worked the high limit blackjack tables for a few years, in a few places, and it can get pretty exciting. The perks outweigh the drawbacks.”

“Drawbacks?” He raises an eyebrow, like he already knows what I’m going to say.

“The Levis of the world,” I reply, his name bitter in my mouth. “He sits at my table, without fail, at least once a week.”

Ben hunches his shoulders, turning his gaze out toward a cluster of reeds that seem to be bowing to the incoming waves. “I’ve known him my entire life. In fact, we used to be good friends.”

I pull away instinctively, putting more of a gap between us. Were my instincts wrong about this guy? My grandma’s words of warning return to the forefront of my mind. Of course, he’s too good to be true. I’m my mom’s daughter, after all.

---