The Promise(106)
“I’da known about the crunchy top, I wouldn’t’ve bitched.”
I looked over my shoulder to see if he was giving me shit and grinned at him when I noted he was serious.
A man who appreciated a crunchy-topped tuna casserole.
I liked that.
The insanity in that was, I was thinking about tuna casserole, which meant I had officially entered woman-falling-in-love zone, a zone that made women crazy.
Since I was already crazy, this was a dangerous place for me to be.
As if reading my thoughts about being crazy, Ben said, “Three weeks.”
At first, I didn’t get him, so I looked back to what I was doing and asked, “What?”
“The answer to your ‘I don’t know.’”
That was when I got him.
I stopped smushing the Pringles and cheese and, spoon in hand, turned to Benny and asked, “Can we talk about that when the casserole is in the oven?”
“You get I’m into you?” he asked back crazily.
I thought about the four orgasms I’d had that day and answered slowly, “Uh…yeah.”
“Okay, you get that. Do you get that I’m into you?”
My breathing stopped coming easy.
Still, I managed to get out, “Yes, Benny.”
“Right. So you get that, then you’ll get that you came to an understanding about yourself that was meaningful. I’m into you, so whatever that was means something to me too. I gave you time to give it to me. I can give you another ten minutes, babe, what I’m askin’ is that you don’t make me.”
What he was saying was that when I freaked out on him, we nearly lost what we were enjoying right then, the hours before, and even apart, the weeks before that. I had no reason to give him that explained what I did to tear us apart. I hit upon part of that reason. And he needed that reason in order to have some hope that I was working on it so I wouldn’t do it again.
I’d made him wait.
He was done waiting.
Getting all that, I was powerless not to blurt, “No one gave a shit about where I was or what I did growin’ up.”
“That part I got, and in gettin’ it, realized I pretty much knew it already,” Ben replied.
I drew in a breath and turned back to the Pringles.
I went back to smushing but did it speaking.
“It was my life. I didn’t really think about it until you said that to me over the phone.”
“Okay,” he said when I stopped speaking. “Now, where does that lead you, cara?”
“It leads me to the fact that I don’t have the training to be good at this.”
“Good at what?”
“Anything,” I whispered to the bowl, then saw the pot with the noodles was near to boiling over, so I went to the stove and turned it down.
On my way back, I ran into Benny.
His hands came to my hips and I tipped my head back to look at him.
“You know that’s whacked, right?” he asked softly.
“Rationally, maybe. Crazy-Frankie, which is who I happen to be, no way.”
“Rewind,” he stated. “You found a man you fell in love with, shacked up with, and stood beside, even when he decided to get involved with the mob.”
I pressed my lips together.
Benny kept going.
“Through that, though, you lived clean. You stood beside him all the same.”
I unpressed my lips to remind him, “I already admitted to you I was givin’ up on Vinnie.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” he returned.
“Do we have to go through this again?”
“I don’t know, do we?”
“She bailed,” I declared, and Ben’s brows drew together.
“Come again?”
“Ma. She bailed,” I told him. “Repeatedly. On Dad. On her other husbands. Boyfriends. It wasn’t the same, but it was in a prolonged way, a very prolonged way, bailin’ on her kids.”
“Keep goin’,” he urged.
“Same with Dad. Women in, women out.”
“And?”
“No connections. No roots. Nothin’ to drag them down.”
“I’m tryin’, honey, but I’m not followin’.”
“That’s what I learned. That’s how I was raised. That’s what I know.”
“Fuck,” he whispered, getting it.
“Yeah,” I replied.
He put it out there verbally, “So that’s why you’re kickin’ your own ass, thinkin’ before he was killed of givin’ up on Vinnie.”
“I didn’t want to be like them.”
“And you think you’ll do the same to me?”
I shook my head but said, “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You need to reason that out, honey.”
I didn’t know what he meant, so I asked, “What?”