But I couldn’t do any of that so I did what I could do.
I went to dinner alone.
Then I went to the bar at the hotel and had a drink. One drink turned into two, then three. Closing in on midnight, plenty of time after the pizzeria shut down for Ben to get to me, I left the circling men who’d either tried to come onto me or who’d drank and tried to get up the courage to come onto me—easy target, lone woman in a hotel bar, drinking.
I went up to my room and kept my phone close.
An hour slid by before I gave up.
I put on my nightie, brushed my teeth, washed my face, moisturized, slid into bed, and turned out the lights.
I rolled to my side and settled in.
When I felt the single tear hit the side of the bridge of my nose and slide down, falling off and salting my lip, I touched my tongue to it. Then I reached out, hugged the unused pillow to me, and closed my eyes. It took a while, a long while, longer than normal, but I guessed you eventually got used to your heart perpetually breaking.
So eventually I found sleep.
* * * * *
I jolted awake when I heard a loud knock on the door.
I lifted up to a forearm in the dark, blinked away residual sleep, and the knocking stopped.
I listened.
Nothing.
Did I dream it?
The answer came when the knocking resumed—three firm, loud pounds.
I twisted, switched on the bedside lamp, and threw off the covers. I got to my feet and moved quickly to the door.
I looked out the peephole and stopped breathing.
Ben, head bent, and from what I could tell, both hands up. He was leaning into them, resting on the door.
This killed me. The man could be hot just leaning.
As I watched, he pulled back, then I jumped back when three more pounds came at the door.
Without thinking, not knowing what time it was, not considering the fact I was wearing nothing but a lilac nightie that was made of near-sheer, stretchy material in the body, had cups made of delicate, rosy-pink lace, the same lace skimming the just-over-the-booty hem, I unlatched the door and threw it open.
Ben’s head jerked when I did and I remembered to breathe, only to suck in more and stop doing it again.
We stared at each other.
It was me who pulled it together first, and this was only enough to say, “Benny.”
That unlocked his frame and he pushed in, through me, forcing me back two steps. I took two more when he grabbed the door, threw it closed, and flipped the security latch closed.
Oh God, I wasn’t sure how to take that.
On a new kind of rocky ground with Benny, tentatively I greeted, “Hey.”
His eyes narrowed in a scary way when he asked, “Seriously?”
I pressed my lips together.
I unpressed them when his entire face went scary, this being when his eyes did a slow scan of me in my nightie.
“How did you know my room number?”
His eyes cut back to mine. “Brett Rizzoli is night shift maintenance. I called him. He got it for me.”
I was surprised Brett Rizzoli had a job, seeing as he spent his high school years, and a number after them, on a mission of scoring the best weed in order to smoke it.
“What time is it?” I asked.
“Late,” Ben answered.
“Ben—”
He cut me off with, “Serious as fuck, Frankie…cookies?”
I snapped my mouth shut because I knew what he was talking about and my what-I’d-hoped-would-be-thoughtful gesture didn’t seem so thoughtful anymore. It seemed stupid, even callous.
“You’re pissed,” I noted inanely.
“Uh, yeah,” he agreed sarcastically.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“You didn’t come back to me,” he clipped.
I clenched my teeth.
“Waited, Francesca. You didn’t fuckin’ come back to me. Then you send me fuckin’ cookies?”
I felt my heart hammering in my chest as I stared at Benny.
Pissed off, small drops of wet in his hair, which told me it was raining or snowing, more wet on his leather jacket, tall, built…beautiful.
Benny.
Taking in all that was him, feeling his angry vibe filling the air and pressing into me, there was no thought. There was nothing.
There was only action.
And that action was me rushing the four feet that separated us and throwing myself in Benny’s arms.
The next action was to drive my fingers into his hair, tilt his head down, then me going up on my toes so I could slam his mouth on mine.
And the next was me touching my tongue to his lips.
The next actions were all Benny’s.
I was up, legs around his hips, his hands at my ass and his tongue in my mouth. He was walking and turning. Then we were down, Ben sitting on the end of the bed, me straddling him.
We did all this kissing, tongues sparring, heads shifting one way and then back, both of us drinking deep, hard, wet, desperate.