Page 2 of Careless Whisper

Beyond the obvious. It never feels good to get trashed by people.

I close my eyes and whimper, then open them, staring at my laptop sitting on the desk in the corner. The damn cursor blinks at me, mocking me for my lack of any new writing.

I’ve been trying and failing to come up with even one sentence that I don’t immediately want to delete.

And the publishing house is getting desperate to have something new coming out to show for the shit-show that is my life. To have something to show them that they can tout to kinda counteract the rumors that none of my story is true.

It’s all too real and all too fantastic all at the same time.

And now I’ve got to try and get myself back on track and give my editor something to get excited about. To hawk before he gets down to the brass tacks of what’s going on here.

And hope like hell that it knocks the crap these people are saying about me out of the headlines.

But there’s something else and it stutters along my nerve endings and all I can think about is Benjie.

I haven’t thought about him in so long and it now seems imperative that I find him and talk to him, explain to him what happened and why I left so abruptly and never came home.

And if he’s the same boy that I remember, the only person that I’ve ever fully trusted in this crazy, mixed-up world.

I want to see if he’s missed me as much as I’ve missed him.

Chapter 2

Ben

Iset the book down on my end table once again, sighing when I hear her voice saying the words in my head.

I’ve been waiting so long. Five long years. Stephanie went away to college and I knew she needed to do it. Knew she needed to get out of this town and find herself away from the judgemental eyes of the people around us.

Then I waited. And waited. And waited. But by the time she was graduating from college, she was already famous. Or infamous as the case may be.

And all because of this book.

I pick it up and can’t decide whether I’m more proud of her or I want to pitch the damn thing across the room. If she hadn’t written this thing, she might have come home to me and we might be married right now and looking forward to our life together and building our family.

Instead, I’ve reread it about a million times. Until I had to buy another copy because the first one fell apart.

“Hey, Ben!” My best buddy comes tearing in my door, not even bothering to knock. “What are you doing in here? We’ve got to get going. I promised Angela that we’d meet her at the movies. She’s got a friend she wants you to meet.”

I groan and scrunch my lips up. “I’ve told you two over and over again that I’m not interested. Listen to me and realize that I’m serious”

“Come on, man,” he wheedles. “Just meet her. Angela said she’s super-nice and really pretty.”

I roll my eyes. “Next she’s gonna say that she’s got all her own teeth and she’s fun to be around.”

“Man, you could meet the girl of your dreams.”

I shake my head. “I already did. She just never came home so I could tell her.”

He groans and smacks my shoulder. “You need to get over her. She’s not coming back. The woman’s fucking rich as hell and so damn famous that they named a road after her here. Even if she did trash the place.”

“Yeah. I don’t know about that. But I can’t just let her go. She’s mine. She’s always been mine and she’ll always be mine. I just never got the chance to tell her that. But if she ever comes back, I intend to.”

He shoots me a sad, sorry look. “Dude. She’s not coming back. This place was never good for her. She could go anywhere in the world. What the hell would bring her back here?”

I want to say me. But I honestly don’t know.

I lift my eyes to the photo that I had framed and now hangs over my desk. Her sapphire eyes look so serious. Of course, she always looks serious. Her soft, short blond curls glisten like gold coins in the sun. She’s still pale and there are still the same number of tiny freckles that dot her nose and there’s still that tiny beauty mark that sits right beside her right eye, disappearing when she laughs and smiles.