Crush

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Ben

“Yes, Mom, I promise I’ll be careful.” I tried not to sigh audibly. She would get pissed off at me. “I’m flying to Chicago O’Hare and renting a car there. It’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure that’s safe?” she asked for the fifteenth time. “What if—”

“Mom, you know I fly for work all the time. The odds of something going wrong are—”

“Benjamin, the odds of your cousin dying like he did—”

“Right, right, I know.” I rubbed my forehead. I had loved my cousin Henry when we were little. His death in a school shooting when we were in our teens had changed everything for his family and for mine.

I could hear something in the background and then heard my father’s voice.

“Look, sweetheart, just…stay safe for me, all right? Dad’s home and we’re having dinner with the Hewitt’s.”

Saved by the Hewitt’s; who would’ve thought. “Okay. I’ll call you once I’ve settled in Joliet, okay?”

“Sounds good. Bye!” She ended the call before I had time to do anything else.

I chuckled humorlessly. My life had been like this ever since Henry died, and it hadn’t been much easier before that.

Looking around in my spacious room of my shared house in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh, I felt…odd. It was like a mild discomfort I couldn’t place. I knew it had nothing to do with Mom, or the house itself, even if she’d hated the place ever since she’d heard the name of the neighborhood, silly as it was. No, this had more to do with a feeling of not belonging.

At first, when I’d moved here a bit over a year ago, I’d felt fine. I’d been happy with the place, the area, the roommates, even. I loved my job as an editor for a big publishing house, and I really enjoyed working with most of the authors assigned to me.

Earlier this year, we’d lost one of our authors, Ruth White, to some sort of congenital thing nobody knew about. I’d only been editing for Ruth—who wrote as Anneliese Harris—for the last two books of her excellent thriller s***h western romance series that did all sorts of bending the genre norms and sold a lot. Like a lot lot. They were even doing a Netflix series based on it soon, which I was waiting for more than Christmas.

Since Ruth passed, her agent, who worked as the liaison between Ruth and the publisher, contacted me to ask if I was willing to help Ruth’s nephew finish the manuscript Ruth had been writing before she died.

Now, as much as I wanted there to be more of Ruth White’s words out there, I was hesitant, initially. I didn’t know this nephew from Adam, and frankly I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.

I’d always been picky about people. That’s what my mother called it anyways.

In school, when I was little, I had one friend who I didn’t even call a best friend. Her name was Noora, with two Os because her family came from Finland. We were friends because she had a weird accent, and I was the chubby, little, ginger boy with the glasses and crooked teeth. Losers unite, or something. It was a sad thought now, to think that we bonded over that sort of thing when we weren’t even ten years old.

Then, when I was eleven, she moved away, and I never spoke to her again. I hoped she’d found happiness and a place where she wasn’t considered weird.

Anyway, when I went to high school, there were new kids everywhere. There was one thing I liked though; I wasn’t the most obvious choice for others to pick on. There was more individuality, and those who didn’t like that had easy pickings—pun intended, I guess.

I learned to keep my head down and concentrate on studying. The only thing I was truly good at, where I felt somewhat of a tug or a “calling” like my mom called it, was English. Language just made sense to me on a level that other things, say math, never did. I could learn languages easily, too. Whatever had happened with my brain when it was forming to make it so, I was happy.

Now, if I could only care about people as much as I did about books and words, it would’ve maybe made me different in a way that was more widely appreciated in the world.

Since I’d finished packing already and had several hours before I could go to bed and know I wouldn’t wake up too early, I decided to do what I loved the most: I picked up the novel I’d been reading and curled up on my couch.

The book wasn’t as good as Ruth’s had been, but it was definitely one of the newer ones that had been influenced by her series. Something about the setting and my earlier musings made me think that maybe one of the friends I’d had in high school, River, would’ve liked it.

We’d always talked about books. He’d been an avid reader, too, but he liked science fiction where I leaned more towards historical back then. I’d always liked to read autobiographies, because it felt like I was getting a glimpse into lives and worlds I’d never get to experience myself.

It was exciting to me to read about someone who had grown up in Africa or Europe or Asia. Someone whose life I couldn’t even imagine. I guess, in some ways, I was one of those people who couldn’t really write myself so I did my best to make sure others had the help they needed.

I wondered what had become of River. He’d been the skinny, clearly not straight kid that defied the odds. He hadn’t been bullied much, mostly because he didn’t allow anyone to do that.

After we were put together on a group project in history once, we’d become fast friends. Well, to the point I knew how to, really. I liked to hang out with River, because he knew I liked quiet stuff more than the loud, boisterous things like sports or music.

Movies I could do, even though sometimes I had earplugs in for the more actiony stuff River had liked to go see in the theater. He came with me to see the occasional historical film, and we both loved disaster movies. Those could get loud, too, but I didn’t mind it so much when I had my earplugs and the movie itself was more interesting to me.

Mostly though, we’d hung out in the library. We did our homework there together on most days, and I really enjoyed the peace and quiet.

He used to laugh at me when I glared at kids who came in and were too loud. He said I was exactly like old Mr. Cunningham, the librarian.

Smiling, I tried to guess what River might be doing these days. The boy I remembered had been determined and kind, patient and really caring. Several times, he’d used his allowance to buy snacks for a couple of kids who didn’t have lunch money because he got so worried.

He’d always been the one to make sure I wore warm clothes in the colder seasons and remembered hats and sunscreen in the summer.

In some ways, River had made me feel much safer than anyone else, including my own parents, ever managed.

I’d only had him in my life for a little over two years when Henry died and my mother pulled me from school to homeschool me instead. I understood her fears, but when she didn’t want me to go out to the library anymore and didn’t want visitors at the house either, well, I lost contact with River like I did with everyone else.

Besides, around the time I saw River for the last time, it was from the car. Dad was taking me to the optometrist, and I saw River and his new boyfriend walk together toward the record store the boyfriend worked at after school.

Sighing, I put down my book. I hadn’t been reading it in a while anyway.

I left my room and went downstairs into the shared kitchen.

“Hey, Ben, how’s things?” Shelly, one of my housemates, asked from where she sat at the kitchen table, eating something I couldn’t identify.

“It’s okay. I’m leaving tomorrow for a while. Not sure I told you?”

“Another job?”

“Yeah. I’ll be gone about a month, I think. Something like that.” I grabbed some stuff off my shelf in the kitchen that would go together and made a couple of sandwiches. “So tomorrow, feel free to raid my shelf if you need anything.”

She grinned. “Will do. You have the best stuff.”

“Did I hear something about getting my grubby paws on your stuff?” Cade, one of our other housemates appeared out of thin air. Or his room, which was downstairs by the kitchen.

We laughed. Yeah, there had been some confusion when Cade had first moved in, and I might’ve told him to take his grubby paws off my food.

At the moment, it was just us three, but there was another bedroom free upstairs next to mine. Shelly’s was on the other side of the hall from the empty one. I had liked the relative quiet, because my room was also above the dining room that was mostly used as a gaming room these days.

“He’s going to be away for a month,” Shelly told Cade, pouting. “Who will call us out on not wearing sunscreen now?”

Okay, so maybe River had rubbed off on me back in the day.

“Don’t worry, darling, I’ll rub lotion on you any day.” Cade winked and leered at her.

I snorted as they continued their banter. They seemed to be doing this weird mating dance around each other a lot, and they both liked flirting, so it was kind of funny to watch even though I didn’t really understand the whole deal. They needed to get over it and get together already.

I grabbed a glass of water and sat by the table opposite from Shelly, then ate as I followed the verbal tennis match between my housemates. I liked these people. I wasn’t sure if I’d call them friends, but I was certain they’d call me one. That was how most of my relationships with people had always been. I had trouble connecting with them on a personal level.

I also sank into my work in a very single-minded way, which was a blessing and a curse. If I was working on my own, I sometimes snapped back to reality just to rush to the bathroom because I hadn’t realized I needed to pee. Oftentimes it was my stomach making monstrous sounds that alerted me to the fact that there were, in fact, more important things than words on paper.

After I finished my meal, I told Shelly and Cade goodnight and to feel free to eat my food once I’d left the premises the next morning.

They wished me safe travels, and I returned to my room.

Since I had my own bathroom, I took a long shower and tried to get my brain to calm down enough to rest. I didn’t hate flying, but it was still icky to be either in the air or on a boat over water for some reason. I preferred my feet firmly on the ground, thank you very much.

Eventually, I did manage to get to sleep and woke up early enough to have a semi-nice breakfast and a very nice coffee before my ride was there.

I’d packed efficiently and as lightly as I could. I didn’t need much, but I had my laptop and my backup laptop, my wireless keyboard, mouse, and headphones, and of course my iPad I used for anything during my off time.

Because I liked to dress simply in slacks and shirts or chinos and T-shirts, I didn’t need to pack much clothing. I knew there’d be laundry options at the house, and I’d live right upstairs from Ruth’s, now Lake’s, office. I enjoyed the idea of having it all there in one place. No commute was the best commute.

I wasn’t always so lucky, and while I hadn’t been at the Twin Star Rescue before, my predecessor had told me that the place was great, because she’d visited a couple of times over the years.

If I was completely honest, the only thing I was nervous about—in addition to the traveling—were all the animals. My mother was allergic, so I had never had any pets, and because I’d been bitten by a dog when I was a toddler, something I couldn’t remember myself, she’d kept me away from all dogs since.

In the place where I was going, there would be mainly horses but also a lot of other animals. I hoped I’d be fine there.

* * * *

The airport was familiar to me by now. It still didn’t mean that it wasn’t horribly noisy and full of everything that messed with my senses. By the time I got through the security check after having been in the line between two different very strongly perfumed individuals, I was about done with humanity.

Sadly, that was just the beginning. There were kids running and screaming, an infant who was clearly getting on the same flight with me, and an elderly couple who I assumed would’ve both needed hearing aids but had none between them.

I started to feel that itchy not-quite-pain under my skin, and it kept climbing higher towards my head with every passing minute.

Luckily, I’d brought my noise-canceling headphones, so I put those in and turned on the audiobook of Ruth’s last novel. It was both a comfort listen and work in the sense that I could use it to reacquaint myself with her work.

I hadn’t read all of the unfinished manuscript she’d left behind; I needed to still read the stuff she’d written right before she passed, but the cadence of her words even read by someone else lulled me into a state of if not calm, then something close to it.

At least the flight itself was short, but then, once I had my luggage and went to find the company I had my rental reservation with, there were lines of people because something had gone wrong with the power or something. For all the rental places, so it must’ve been that side of the airport maybe?

I wondered if I really should’ve just taken the offer from Lake to have someone pick me up. He’d made the offer earlier through Maria, Ruth’s agent, but I didn’t want to disturb the rescue’s daily operations. Their work was much too important to interrupt.

And so, it took me longer than I’d thought to get into a car and start the hour or so drive. At least there wasn’t too much traffic going toward Joliet, so I could listen to the radio and chill as I drove.

The funny thing was, my mom hadn’t let me get a driver’s license, so I hadn’t had one until I gained my independence when I went to college.

I’m glad I got a license, because it allowed me freedom when I went on these jobs on location every so often. It wasn’t common for me to leave my home to go to an author’s chosen workplace or home to help them out, but it happened. There were also some events I went to even though I didn’t necessarily enjoy most of them.

The route the GPS directed me to bypassed Joliet, but I didn’t mind in the least. I hadn’t driven with such concentration in a while, and I felt that getting away with not going through a city was better for now.

Even though I’d wondered about being in the countryside, I found the right place pretty easily in the end. The property was fenced in, and there was a pond by the road, with some cabins behind it. On the other side of the driveway sat a small building and some ways behind it the main house where I assumed Ruth had lived.

I parked in the lot that the two buildings shared and got out of the car. I noticed two men and a couple of horses nearby inside some sort of a fence. An arena, maybe? My horse-lingo would take some training despite horses having always been a part of Ruth’s books. When I glanced around again, my eye caught one, no three, oh s**t, five large dogs guarding the yard in different shady spots. In my mind, I saw my mother freaking out over them.

Swallowing hard, I forced myself to move past them and toward the men.

“Hey, I’m Ben Harries.” I tried to sound casual and leaned on the fence. “Is one of you Lake White?”

The younger man who had a giant gray horse on a rope smiled. “That’d be me. I might’ve forgotten it was Wednesday today.”

“Oh, that happens; it’s okay.” I couldn’t help but to smile back at him. I I understood more than he probably knew.

I caught one of the dogs, a black one, getting to its feet and ambling over. I tensed; I couldn’t help it. The fear reaction was as imminent as it was annoying.

“Not a fan of dogs?” The older man who had a lighter colored, sort of dappled gray horse on a rope asked with no judgment in his tone.

How did they stay inside such a flimsy looking fence? Sure, the boards were sturdy to lean on, but these animals must’ve weighed more than the vehicle I’d driven there, each.

“Uh, I’m wary of them. I got attacked as a kid. I’ve gotten over it some, but…” There was no need to explain how the fear wasn’t mine as much as it was embedded in me by my mother.

“But they’re still five pit bulls you don’t know,” the guy concluded.

I wince-smiled. “Yeah.”

Lake looked over my shoulder, and I heard steps crunching on the gravel.

“Hey, I thought I heard a car.”

I turned around. A man with bleach blond hair stumbled to a stop, his jaw dropping as he stared at me.

“B-Benji?”

There was only one person who had ever called me that, but my mind couldn’t really comprehend what or rather who I was seeing.

“River? What are you doing here?”

I watched as my old friend’s face lost all color, he turned around, and booked it back toward the house.