Friends with Benefits - Nicole Blanchard Page 0,55
them in it.
These thoughts and more revolved around my thoughts as I heated up a frozen dinner instead of making myself a meal. I didn’t really see the point when there was no one else to enjoy it. My mother had instilled in me a love of cooking, and one of my favorite things was to cook meals for my own personal judgment panel, but it simply wasn’t the same without my girls.
That’s what the three of them were.
My girls.
And I wouldn’t be giving them up without a fight.
I finished my pitiful frozen dinner and daydreamed it was the filet mignon we’d grilled at my parents’ house during spring break. While the rest of my classmates headed down to the beach to exchange saliva and STDs, we’d taken the girls to a water park and ate too much pizza. The weekend before school was back in session, we’d packed up the girls and hauled them to my parents’ house for the weekend. Ember grilled steaks and made baked potatoes and a salad. My mom gave her tomatoes and cucumbers from their backyard garden. They’d talked for hours while the girls, my dad, and I had taken turns jumping through a beach ball with a built-in sprinkler.
My dad surprised us all with baseball gloves for the girls. Call me a fucking chick, but it made my chest hurt to see them throwing a ball around with him. Molly could only make it halfway to him, but she caught like a champ. Tillie, however, might have a little Wilder in her because she could throw the ball with a bit of heat behind it. My dad and I had shared a glance. Maybe I could talk Ember into signing her up for ball next season. The girls could use more extracurriculars, and they’d liked playing catch.
I fell asleep on the couch, daydreaming about teaching them how to play.
I still hadn’t heard from Ember.
It was lunchtime the next day when I finally gave up waiting on her to text me back or answer my calls. It wasn’t like her to ignore a message, which could only mean that something was wrong. I wasn’t the kind of guy who had to be involved in absolutely everything. I didn’t like to be smothered, either, but I also knew Ember, and this wasn’t like her.
I gave her until after I’d cleaned up the kitchen from the night before, eaten breakfast, and taken a shower before I grabbed the spare key she’d given me and used it to let myself into her apartment. It was dark as night, so I flicked on the lamp by the sofa.
“Ember?” I called. It was possible she’d passed out after her shift, but even then, she’d normally text me before bed to come over or to tell me good night.
No one answered.
The apartment was dead silent. The twins must have already gone to school. The kitchen and hall bath were empty. I poked my head in the girls’ room, but they weren’t there. Ember’s was the last on the right, and I pushed the door in to find it as dark as the living room. Using my phone as a guiding light, I picked my way to the bed.
The lump in my chest eased as the halo of light from my phone showed her bundled under the comforter on the bed. Setting the phone on the nightstand on what I considered my side of the bed, I slipped out of my shirt, toed off my shoes, and climbed into bed next to her. From her breathing, I could tell she wasn’t asleep, but I’d already barged into her apartment, so I wasn’t going to demand she tell me what was wrong, too.
Eventually, she relaxed against me. We dozed in and out for a while, with her as my little spoon. At some point, she must have grabbed my hand because I woke up with our fingers locked together. I liked it. More than I should. It didn’t terrify me to be linked to her. In fact, it wouldn’t bother me to be linked with her for the foreseeable future. But this wasn’t the time or place to renegotiate our rules.
“They’re gone.”
I almost couldn’t hear her because her voice was so low.
“Who’s gone?”
“The girls.”
I didn’t understand. “Are they at school?” I asked.
“Mom took them.” Her voice was dead. Like there was no emotion or even the energy to infuse it with life.
“The hell do you mean your mom took them?” I urged