Page 61 of Teach Me To Sin
“You’re right, that is cheesy.” I grab my phone protectively before he can steal it.
“I know.” He rubs a hand slowly down his face, searching for words. “I’m worried about Benji. He seemed better yesterday, but during the night…it wasn’t good. I think all three of us are going to crash and burn if we don’t get away from everything for a few hours.”
“I’m sorry he’s so guilty over the thing that’s his fault,” I snap, feeling wretched and cruel and overwhelmingly sad. “My life is in literal ashes, but the boy who helped set it on fire gets a little hurt arm and cries and everyone’s tripping over themselves for his mental health.”
Colson doesn’t say anything. My words grow in the silence, getting uglier and uglier. “Fuckthis.” I throw my phone as hard as I can out into the yard, where it disappears among the knee-high bunches of grass. “Happy? What was your second point, Mr. Strickland?”
His eyebrow quirks slightly, but his face stays serious. “I’m not sure you’re in the mood to talk about this right now.”
“Please just lay it on me. This can’t get worse.”
He sets down his empty mug and leans back in his seat, looking unsure. “I don’t know how much, but I want to help pay for the restoration.”
I blink at him, the bitterness in my gut making my stomach churn. “Why would you do that? You don’t give a shit about the place.” I’m drowning and grabbing for anything that can make me hurt less, even if it means being an asshole. Colson of all people should understand.
“The same reason anyone else donates to your organization. I think you do great work, and I believe in your mission.”
“Don’t you need your money to sail around the world and, I dunno, buy a villa or something?”
He hesitates, seeming lost in a way I don’t understand, then shakes his head. “I have enough money to pay for more than one thing. I’ll have to look into my investments before I give you a number, but it might help you get started.” When I don’t answer, he looks away toward the dogs yelping and wrestling in the dirt. “Just say no. I can see that you want to.”
“I don’t know what I want,” I murmur, staring at my bare feet against the dusty paving stones.
We both glance up when the door slides open. Benji’s wearing another Colson-curated ensemble, this time black running shorts and a red WSU Cougars t-shirt. The thought of Colson wandering blindly around some generic big box store grabbing whatever clothing catches his eye is the first thing to cheer me up all morning.
Benji has on his sunglasses, making it impossible to tell where he’s looking. He freezes just outside the door, like the empty space in every direction scares him. “It’s so bright,” he croaks. “I can see a lot better, though.”
“Colson’s confiscating our phones,” I announce. “He’s turning into a power-hungry vacation dad.”
Benji coughs a dry laugh, but he doesn’t move. It’s like he’s not sure where his place is, whether he’s allowed to sit with us. None of us know. We’re just fumbling through, one word at a time. “My phone is, um…” Grimacing, he tries to tidy his filthy-looking hair. We all need a good, hot shower.
“Is what?”
He points at the pool. When he doesn’t elaborate, I get up and go back to the edge. Sure enough, one of the newest models of the most expensive phone available is sitting at the bottom of the deep end, where I didn’t notice it earlier. “What the fuck, Benji?”
Cocking his head with a shadow of his old playfulness, he shrugs his unhurt shoulder. “My dad wouldn’t stop calling me.”
I can’t help it; I burst out laughing.
“Isn’t someone going to get it?” Colson complains, like a bag of rice could save something that’s been underwater for hours.
I gesture from the man who can’t get his cast wet to the man who can’t touch water to the man who I don’t think even knows how to swim. “Pretty sure the phone is out of luck.”
With a tired, subdued grin, Benji crosses to the pool and settles his ass on the edge, dangling his bare legs in the water. I sit back down and study the slope of his shoulders, his soft profile, the untidy bits of hair along the back of his neck. My fingers remember the dips and ridges of his smooth skin, and my phone still has our two AM conversation about pizza toppings. I’m angry at what he did to me, but mostly I’m losing my mind because I just want my Benji back, not fucking Bennett Atwood. I believe Benji would never want to hurt me, and I think I could forgive him when he told me he was sorry. But my heart doesn’t know what to trust.
“Someone with a phone should look up whether there’s a seaside hike near here,” Benji demands, kicking his legs back and forth to make water splash onto the deck. “The weather’s perfect.”
We both look at Colson, who groans. “Is this how it’s going to be for the rest of the trip? You both ruin your phones and now I’m your personal secretary?” Despite his complaining, he settles in to research nearby hikes with a cute little frown line of concentration between his eyebrows. “We’re surrounded by state parks. Here’s a path that overlooks the water. But can you walk that far, Benji?”
“If it involves something besides sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves and listening to my stomach growl,” he comments, tilting his head back to look at the sky, “I can do anything.”
* * *
Even though the dogs played outside for an hour, they still go berserk at the sight of their leashes. We don’t have anything useful–sunscreen, lunch, water bottles–so we just get in the Land Rover and drive in the direction of the trailhead, pulling through a coffee stand for sandwiches and more caffeine.
“What now?” Colson asks when he hits the four-way stop next to the coffee shop, idling until I find an answer. Good thing it’s quiet out here. I rotate the local map we borrowed from the house in a full three-hundred-and-sixty degree circle, then do it again. “God, do you not even know which direction we’re facing?”
“If you decide to leave all the phones at home,” I murmur, tracing my finger up and down unfamiliar roads, “you will take what you can get and you will be very nice about it.” Benji’s phone is still in its watery prison, but I hunted mine out of the grass, dusted it off, and left it on the kitchen table next to Colson’s.