XXI: Now

“‘Cause I
love the way you call me baby
and you
take me the way I am.”
-“The Way I Am” by Ingrid Michaelson

I turned over, half asleep half awake, and found the other side of the bed cold and empty. My eyes popped open and I looked to see it was only me in the bed. A memory and fear struck me like a bullet and I panicked.

“No,” I ripped out of the bed, feeling tears in my eyes.

Not this time. Not now. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t. He was not gone.

I tore through the house, my eyes going in every which way, checking every corner, until I reached the kitchen and stopped dead in the doorway.

“Bennet,” I said before I could stop myself.

He looked over his naked shoulder at me from where he was sitting on the linoleum floor, in front of the trashcan and half buried in open envelopes and unfolded papers.

“Hey baby,” he whispered. “You okay?”

Without thinking, I rushed to him, fell to my knees and wrapped my arms around his neck, hugging him so hard I thought we both would shatter. He wasn’t gone. He was still there.

“Don’t scare me like that,” I said.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he whispered, rubbing my arm and then kissing it. “I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t want to wake you. I’m sorry, baby.”

“It’s okay,” I said, loving how I was hearing him call me “baby” again. The nickname always made me sick when other couples used it, but when he used it on me I was a goo puddle. Sad, but true. I pouted a little and he grinned at me.

“But if I keep doing it, will you keep rushin’ up to me buck-naked and ready to hug me like a fool? ‘Cause I might hafta make it a habit if that’s the case,” he smirked.

I couldn’t help it. I had to kiss the bastard. I did walk right into that one, I guess, since I was in fact ass-naked and clinging to him like my life depended on it. I couldn’t even turn it back on him, because he had slipped on his boxers at some point.

“Course, it’d also be cool if you came out wearin’ my shirt, like you used to,” he said. “That was always sexy as hell, really.”

“Sexier’n butt naked?”

“Course, then I can undress you.”

“Ah, well, next time,” I relaxed my hug on him and suddenly my brain registered what he was doing. He had dug the Bennet Box and its letters out of the trash and had read a good amount of them, judging by the number of opened envelopes. I stared at the mess of white paper on the floor and he noticed.

“Don’t get mad, Natty,” he said carefully. “I had to read them.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re letters,” he replied defensively, “letters addressed to me, that’s what you do with letters addressed to you, you read ‘em.”

I sunk down until my butt was on the cold floor. My arms slid down from his neck and rested into the crook of his arm. I didn’t speak. He gave me a look.

“Don’t be mad, I had to,” he whispered again. He had an almost desperate-sounding tone in his voice.

“I’m not mad,” I said, finally, “not now.”

Not now since I had reason to forgive him. Not now since I was able to cuddle up to him naked and vulnerable and not feel guilty or bitter. Not now that I finally had him back and my gigantic heartbreak of the last sixteen years had healed a whole lot.

“So,” I said, resting my cheek onto his freckled shoulder, “what do you think of ‘em?”

He smiled at me, relieved I wasn’t mad I think, and then held one of the open letters up.

“They reminded me how bad your handwritin’ was.”

I punched his arm and he chuckled, scooping me up in that same arm and putting a kiss to my head. He settled and looked at the letter again. I looked too and, after only a few seconds, I knew it was one of the last ones I had written, when I was beginning to doubt my fantasy that he was coming back. It was a classic note written by a young and stupid broken-hearted girl: with big, mushy and dramatic words, declarations of not being able to go on, even a few smudges in the ink where tears fell. At the time I was pouring out my heart and pain, letting it out on my poor pen and paper, probably crying my eyes out, scared and alone. Now it seemed overdone, “melodramatic” Della would’ve called it. The usual teenage girl lamentations.

“And,” he said suddenly, adding on to his last comment, “it made me see just how scared you were and how much you really missed me.”

“Because you doubted I was or I would?” I said, hardly believing him.

“No,” he said, “I knew you’d miss me, but it’s a lot clearer when you see it like this.”

“Well, there you go,” I said, sitting back, “there’s your proof.”

He folded the letter up and slipped it carefully back into the envelope. He set in on the floor, in the middle of the mountain of paper. Turning his entire body, he faced me, looking at me. I could see the color of his grass green eyes through the shadows.

“It feels good to know I was missed so badly,” he whispered. “It feels real good.”

He leaned forward and put his lips to my neck and then my jaw, making a trail along my skin.

“Was I missed that bad?” I breathed, barely able to speak as his hands began to wander over me.

“Like a drownin’ man misses air,” he grunted as he bit at my shoulder.

“Good,” I said, and let him push me back until I was lying on top of the mountain of letters, with his hand underneath my head and his body mixing with mine.

A/N: And for those of you who are anxious and/or pissed, Stanley's secret will be revealed in upcoming chapters. You will soon know everything that happened. :)