On Sale for Christmas

Gus only gave me a feral grin, then walked away.

When we were alone again, with the awkward steam of our two frothy mugs, I said, "I'm sorry, Ben. About before. My panic-induced rant was pretty bitchy and presumptuous."

"It's fine," he said, sipping from a cup that left a little foam on his lip that I wanted to lick clean. "Message received. You're drawing boundaries. But I'd really love to know what you've got against small-town romances."

I gave a playful smirk. "I don't like anything small."

His lip quirked up at the corner in half-amusement. "Size queen?"

"Sort of," I mused, remembering that what I'd felt of him had been thick and enticing beneath his pants. What I'd seen him stroke looked like more than enough to satisfy. But then I turned serious. "If I'm gonna make it in acting, I have to have big expectations, big ideas, and big dreams. Small towns don't really fit into that equation."

"Okay," he said, thoughtfully. "But why panic?"

"My mom married young, divorced and ended up stranded in this town. That's not gonna be me."

"Slow down, Slick. You just jumped from romance to marriage and divorce…"

For some reason, this made me blush. As if I was the one who had conventional ideas about relationships. "That's not what I mean! I just mean that Geece Grove can be suffocating—"

"Also quaint, filled with great memories and people who care about you," he interrupted. "You don't have to live here to appreciate its quirky charm, because there's no prison bars at the city limits that keep anybody here. I've been halfway around the world on Uncle Sam's dime, and I plan to see a lot more of the world before I die. I'm gonna travel and experience whatever life has to offer. Maybe I'll settle down here; maybe I won't. But I don't have to hate the place I came from to become the guy I wanna be."

It was such an unexpected, and well-deserved rebuke, that it left me speechless in its aftermath. Biting my lip, I just stirred my candy-cane in my white chocolate and wondered if maybe it was time for a serious attitude adjustment.

I tended to see things in black and white. Things were all good or bad. People were naughty or nice. Ben was telling me that the world was a lot more nuanced than that.

"Point," I said, a little sullen at the realization that I wasn't nearly as sophisticated as I wanted to be. That maybe I'd been kind of an insufferable jerk. "So, Ben, how is it that you're single, again? Because in addition to being sweet, and sexy, you might also be kind of wise."

That made him grin. "Yeah, I could write fortune cookies."

I wrapped my cold fingers around my mug, luxuriating in the warmth of it. One sip and I groaned. "Oh God, I forgot how good that is…"

Ben groaned, too. But it wasn't a good groan, and it wasn't directed at me or the cocoa. His eyes had settled upon one of the newest customers in the Sweet Shack—a woman curly blond hair wearing a pink tweed coat and matching hat. Ben gave her a tight smile and a little wave. She waved back, with just as tight a smile, and that's when I recognized her.

Maureen

Campbell.

One of Ben's bouncy blond cheerleaders. Except she hadn't been very cheerful. Kind of bitchy, actually. I hadn't liked her in high school and wasn't about to pretend now. Especially since Ben looked like he wanted to crawl out of his ski jacket. So I didn't wave to Maureen. I just asked, "Your ex?"

"Yup."

"Things ended badly?"

Ben's eyes dropped to his cup. "You could say that."

He was being so unusually evasive that I raised a brow. "Not gonna tell me?"

He just grimaced.

"Oh, c'mon, Soldier. How badly could it have ended?"

He stared at his hands on the mug. "Wanna get out of here?"

That bad, huh?

But I wasn't about to let him off the hook. "It was your idea to come here! Now you want to leave before my whipped cream has even melted into my cup?"

Ben looked chagrined. "We could get a cup to go."