And this is the wrong way to try to make up with the woman whose heart you cleavered yesterday, asshole.
“Touchy about our knives, are we?”
Ah. That explained what she was doing with it. Abusing his knives—a small “fuck you” at absent Ben. Was it sick that it pleased him she would even bother?
“Are you making cookies?” he guessed.
“Chocolate-crinkle chocolate chunk cookies. They have pretzels,” she said. “Hangover special.”
May looked like she’d come through last night’s debauchery better than Allie, but just barely. She wore her hair in a sloppy ponytail, an oversized pink T-shirt advertising her participation in a charity walk—or possibly Einarsson’s participation, given how far the shirt hung down her thighs—and red pajama pants with little white hearts all over them. She had dark circles under her eyes.
“I like your pants,” he said.
“Thank you. They’re my sad-panda pants.”
“For when some dickhead screws her over and then dumps her without an explanation,” Allie chimed in.
“Allie,” Nancy said chidingly. “Language.”
Nancy looked like she always did. Big hair, sweatshirt with necklace, dress pants.
“Sorry, Mom.”
“Hi, Mrs. Fredericks,” he ventured. “Mr. Fredericks.”
May’s father grunted.
Nancy said, “We didn’t expect to see you again.”
“I owe you an apology,” he told her. “I’m sorry I was so rude to you before I left. I’m not sure if anybody told you this yet, but I don’t work for Dan’s agent. That was a lie. I don’t know Dan at all. I’ve never been antique shopping with May, either.”
“I’ll admit, I had some doubts about that.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Sorry. I actually am a beekeeper, though. For what that’s worth.”
“That part would’ve been tough to fake,” Allie said.
“So how did you—that is, how did you come to be driving May back from New York?”
“I’d spent most of the week with her.” He glanced at May, unsure what she’d told her mother and what she wanted him to say. The truth? Some part of it?
She went back to chopping chocolate.
You’re on your own, buddy.
“I met her the day after the—uh, after she and Dan broke up. She needed someone to help her out, and I gave her a place to stay. It’s kind of a long story.”
May’s father had lowered his newspaper while Ben was speaking. “How about you tell us the short version?”
Ben cast his eyes at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to bowdlerize the story on the fly without being actively dishonest.
He settled for “I’m in love with your daughter.”
The knife clattered when it hit the cutting board, then fell to the floor, landing an inch from May’s foot.
“Oh Christ—” he said. At the same time, Allie said, “Mom, the bacon’s starting to smell done,” and May said, “You’re what?”
“Can I pick that up?” The knife really was wicked sharp, and if May stepped on it—actually, he couldn’t even think about that. He dropped to his knees and crawled past her, took the knife by the handle, and crawled back to his former position.
“You’re what?” May had moved. She stood directly above him, arms crossed, whip-mouth activated.
Ben sat back on his heels, short of breath from crawling. “In love with you.”
First there was a long pause. Then everyone started talking at once.
Nancy: “—understand what this is all about. Is he saying that after you had that incident with Dan, somehow you met Ben? And stayed with him? I’m not—”
Allie: “—tell them the part about how you got robbed, because otherwise it doesn’t make any sense how you were—”
Bill: “—women really need my help with this? Because—”
Ben started talking, too, tuning out all the other voices and May’s father’s slow passage around the table, in order to focus on May. “I’m sorry I left,” he said. “I botched that, but I think I needed to, actually, because it was seeing my father that made me realize—”
May held up her hand, palm out, and said, “Whoa.”
“—she mean you were robbed? Like by a mugger? I warned you about those men, May, but neither of you ever listens to me, you only—”
“—not a regular mugger, Mom, he was a specific mugger. Remember how we were getting all those phone calls from sleazy—”
“—let you all handle this, and if you need me I’ll be down in the—”