Because she was May.
Of course.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
South of Milwaukee, the highway opened up and emptied out, and it was just the two of them, riding high with the windows down, and Ben drumming his fingers against the side of the van to the rhythm of a song about working at a car wash.
She didn’t know the song, but she knew that look on his face. That light behind his smile.
May let herself savor the moment. It had taken two days to extricate herself from her family—to reassure her mother without compromising the position she’d taken, to reassure herself that Allie would be all right. She’d moved into May’s house temporarily, grateful for a place to stay while she tried to gather the pieces of her life.
May had taken a walk with Matt, spoken again on the phone with Dan, even had a heart-to-heart with her father that made both of them awkward and uncomfortable until finally it was over and they could hug and go back to talking about football.
All that, plus some packing, and now she had Ben to herself at last. Ben, and the road, and the future spreading out in front of them.
She couldn’t remember when she’d ever felt so good, or so full of hope.
“I’ve been thinking,” Ben said.
“Oh yeah?”
That earned her one of his infinitesimal smiles. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking you’re right.”
“What am I right about?”
“I don’t want to be a chef. Or at least, I don’t want to have a restaurant. But I don’t know if I want to be some other kind of chef, or suss out some way to make a living on the bees or what.”
“I had this idea about that,” she said. “Like maybe you could have a shop that sells honey? And you could cook a little, but just whatever you wanted that day, and I could be in charge of all the advertising and draw in the customers. And the sales stuff, too—I can tell them how great your honey is.”
“You want to be my marketing team?”
She smiled. “Wouldn’t it be fun?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
That deflated her bubble a bit, but she rallied quickly. “Okay. Well, we can figure out something else. When you’re ready. I mean, maybe you don’t want to have a shop. Maybe we could—”
“May.”
“What?”
“I’m not going to be Dan, here. Whatever it is I end up doing, you have to decide what you want to do. It would be cool if you could go back to your illustrating, if you still want to. I hate that you had to put that aside.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“So?”
She looked out the windshield at the open road.
So?
It wasn’t as though she’d forgotten how to draw. She’d never stopped drawing, she’d simply pushed it to the edges of her life—onto grocery lists, into the margins of corporate memos and restaurant napkins. This morning, she’d drawn Ben an extraordinarily sappy pair of cartoon hearts with arms and legs, hugging each other. She’d stuck it on the bathroom mirror while he was in the shower so he would find it afterward and know she had that many sappy feelings about him, all tucked away in the recesses of her heart.
Then, when he’d brought it to her, wearing nothing but a towel and a smile, she’d unwrapped the towel and dropped to her knees in front of him, proving to herself that she could, in fact, be the kind of woman who sucked her man off in the hallway, just because she wanted to.
Just because his smile made her heart melty, and his drugged eyelids and gasping breaths made her pussy warm, and everything about him made her feel known and loved.
He’d been right about so many things. Maybe he was right about this, too. She’d thought once that she wanted to draw for children, to capture feelings in greeting cards. Maybe she could draw the book that no one had ever given her. She could write down all the messages she would go back in time and tell herself, again and again, if she were able to.
You’re not perfect, but I love you anyway.
I think you’re beautiful.
I see your limitless potential.
Be jealous. Be angry. Be stupid. Be outrageous.
Be.
She reached across the gap between the seats and squeezed Ben’s hand. “I’ll think about it.”
“Do more than think about it.”
“Okay. I’ll do more than think about it.”
He glanced at her. “Promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
They drove in silence for a while. He took his hand back to steer, and May let out an amused huff.
“What?” he asked.
“I was totally going into old May mode there with the imaginary honey shop, wasn’t I?”
“You totally were.”
“Nice catch, keeping me from backsliding.”