Friends With Benedicts - Staci Hart Page 0,4

his eyes. “Goddamn, men are dense.”

“Anyway, who’s telling Marnie?”

That earned me a look. “Funny. If you don’t think the whole town will know if you see Presley Hale the minute that it happens, you’re dumber than most.”

“Fuck it, then. All the more reason for me to do what I want. Give them something to talk about and all that.”

“Your divorce isn’t even final—”

“Dammit, Wyatt—whose side are you on?”

“Well, yours, obviously. Marnie’s a dick.”

“Then here’s where you say, Pretty slick you get to see Presley since you’ve been missing her for a thousand years.”

“Needy.”

I picked a chip out of the basket between us and stuck it in the yolk of one of his fried eggs, smiling as the yellow goop bled onto the plate.

“Really?” he asked flatly.

I shrugged.

“Fine, I’ll bite. What are you two gonna do tonight? Besides what you always do.”

A laugh shot out of me. “I don’t even care what we do. I just want to talk to her.”

He leveled me with a look.

“Don’t get me wrong, I just …” I sighed. “Five years. So much has happened that I want to tell her about. I don’t know when there’ll be time for kissing.”

“Oh, I think you’ll find time.” He pushed the yolk into a corner and hedged it in with rice. “Anyway, you wouldn’t have to catch up if you’d get on social media like the rest of the free world.”

“After everything that happened in the Corps, it just seemed pointless, empty. I broke up with social when I left, and when I came back, I didn’t care to get back on. I was too busy with Mom, anyway. When every day’s spent dealing with life and death, that’s the only space you’ve got. For anything.”

“You found time for Marnie,” he noted.

I sighed again. Marnie and I dated off and on in high school—more off than on, and more fighting than loving—and when I came back from Zambia, she was here, nursing in San Antonio in oncology. And that was probably the glue that held us together—she understood. She was familiar to me, to my family. Safe. Comfortable. When my mother got sick, Marnie was here, not only caring for Mom, but caring for me. When we moved to Houston, she came with us, Abuela too. For once, things with me and her and I were good, steady, probably because we were both focused on Mom and not each other. Next thing I knew, we were at the courthouse getting married.

I didn’t know why we always drifted back together. There had always been a spark between us, but it wasn’t warm, wasn’t inviting. It was devouring. It would consume us until nothing was left but ashes and disappointment. But still, I loved her. More than ever, in the beginning of our marriage.

But she’d ended up betting on the wrong horse.

Marnie knew I didn’t want kids—everyone did. Abuela had had ovarian cancer and ended up needing a hysterectomy when Mom was little. Mom’s first fight with breast cancer when I was seventeen was hard enough … the second time almost killed her. I’d spent too much time holding her hand, watching her wither away, not knowing if she’d live to see another Christmas, another birthday, another sunrise.

And I carried the gene that had a fifty-fifty shot at passing that fate on to a child.

I couldn’t stomach it. Not after watching what Mom went through, and certainly not after almost losing her again a few years ago.

“Marnie was good to us when we needed her most,” I finally said. “She nursed Mom, bathed her, changed her lines, comforted her. Comforted me.” I swallowed hard. “But we weren’t meant for each other, and deep down, we both knew it. She wanted to be meant for me, but I … I couldn’t love her like she needed, and I couldn’t give her what she wanted. I didn’t realize I was taking advantage, and I’ll never be able to make that up to her, not after everything I put her through.”

“She’s still a dick,” he said, laughing when I threw a tortilla at his face. “I mean it. God, she was insufferable in high school. Mean as fuck, manipulative as the devil, and pretty enough to see from a mile away that she was trouble. I can’t imagine her bedside manner is anything short of Nurse Ratched.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He eyed me.

“Come on—we all grew up, Marnie included. We were all dicks in high school.”

“Sure, but she was an extra big dick.”

“I’d like to