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After giving me a big squeeze, Jason backed off and flipped up his hands. “Where the hell have you been, Bennett?”
Cringing a little at the thought of dampening the good mood as I backed to the chair Dom set out for me, I set my cup on the ground. “Um, you know, around.”
Jason bent his fingers at me, scooting his chair a little closer to the one Carolyn sat in. “Well, go on. Start from the beginning.”
Lifting his hat enough to scratch his head, Dom raised his eyebrows at me to go on, too. So I cleared my throat as I sank back into the lawn chair. “Let’s see. I graduated from college, and” — my hand flipped over — “then I went to work. And now I’m here.”
Sticking his tongue out, Jason blew air through his mouth around it and gave me a thumb down. “Boo. That’s the worst story ever. Try again.”
My fingers went through my hair, and I took a deep breath as I tried to decide how much to tell them. “Okay.”
I could’ve said a hundred things about how terrified I was, how I slept in my car sometimes, and how there were weeks I ate nothing but bread and butter sandwiches for all three meals. But when it came to me, there were some things I knew Dom could never handle hearing, especially now that he knew his mother’s workings were all over it. “I went to stay with my mother at this damn hippie nudist commune she lived at.” Knowing me as they did, they all laughed at how mortified that must have made me, and I jerked my eyes at them. “Yeah. That didn’t last long, as you can imagine.”
Dom’s arm came around the back of my chair as he leaned into me more. “So, I took a job caring for this little boy with Cystic Fibrosis in exchange for room and board.” Carolyn gave me her pouty lip, and I teared up just a little as I envisioned my patient’s face again. “He couldn’t go to school with other kids because even a cold could put him in the hospital for weeks at a time. But his parents had to work, so I homeschooled him and took him to appointments and stuff like that.”
Leaning down to grab my drink, I flared my eyes at them. “Sometimes kids like him don’t live very long, though. So when he passed away, I was scrambling for a place to live again.” I sipped my beer and crossed my legs as I relaxed a little more. “But at the funeral, one of his therapists, who was aware of my situation, asked me to come work with him.”
Flicking the lip of my cup a little more the closer Dom’s fingers came to my shoulder, I lost my train of thought for a moment. “Uh, he was super nice but had a terrible alcohol problem. So he pissed away every dime he made and didn’t know a computer from a hole in the ground.” Only a few people ever went out of their way for me, but the man who trained me saved a scared little girl’s life with the floor he let me sleep on. “So we kind of worked out a deal for me to stay in the room above his practice and run his business for him while I went to college.”
His thumb landed on the back of my shoulder, teasing me as he gently rubbed it back and forth, and I nearly dropped my cup in my lap as my hands started shaking. “Then I took over his practice when he finally drank himself to death and sold it last month to move back here.”
Sitting together in uncomfortable silence for a few seconds, I finally reached out and kicked my foot at Jason’s. “Anyhow, you wouldn’t have anything in the way of a two-bedroom, two-bath, modern farmhouse on the market? Would you?”
He kept his eyes on me as he reached over to set his beer on the cooler. “You looking?”
“Hell yes, I’m looking. Are you kidding?” I gurgled air through my throat as I rolled my eyes up. “It took me a hot second of being home again to figure out I’m too damn old to live with my dad.”
Dom took his arm away, slowly dragging his fingers over my back on his way to lean over his knees and rub his hands together. “You got that right.”
“Yeah.” Rubbing his beard, Jason nodded as he and Dom shared a look. “I’m showing a house just like that tomorrow if you want to tag along.”
Clapping her fingertips together, Carolyn bit her lip and grabbed his arm. “Oh, can I come, too, please? I love home tours.”
He was a little on the heavy side as a kid and never thought he stood a chance with her. But everybody in our group knew Jason was head over heels for Carolyn throughout high school, and it was cute as hell to watch him still squirm when she was around. “Yeah, that’d be great.”
Dom peeked up at me before rolling his eyes away and sliding his hand over my knee. “It’s getting a little crowded in here.”
I don’t think there was a single party we ever came to here that didn’t end up with us making out at the picnic table. So when he pulled at my fingers, I nodded at him and set down my cup to see if that magic was still there. “Okay.”
Motioning toward the river with his head, Dom slid his fingers through mine as we passed them. “Keep Jason company while Faith and go for a walk. Will you?”
Every step further we got away from the bonfire turned back the clock on us. Just as weak-kneed and breathless as the first time I took this walk with him, I shrunk under the weight of the anticipation of that deep conversation I knew awaited me and his mouth on mine again.
For months, I struggled over my decision to move back home again. But when Dom ducked his head to enter the worn dirt path into the woods ahead of me, I knew I’d definitely made the right choice for once.
24
The Picnic Table
Faith
He backed out onto the hill on the other side of the tree thicket and pulled me with him. “I didn’t have a chance to ask when you start working.”
The moon cast a white glow over everything, making his eyes twinkle down at me when I stepped up onto the path behind him. “Bright and early Monday.”
Slowing his pace to almost nothing, he rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand. “That’s good. None of my stroke patients have had proper treatment for I can’t tell you how long. It’ll be nice to have someone evaluate them before discharge for a change.”
When we came to the opening where the picnic area was, he took his hand away and set it in the middle of my back. “Step into my office.”
