Ben (The Sherwood)

“Why is she sad?” I asked Disa again.

She chewed on her lower lip. “Because I felt like I would always be the wallflower that you would never notice.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “I don’t know where you get the idea that you are a wallflower, because you aren’t one.”

“Then why Jasmine?” She sniffed back the tears that threatened to consume her. “Why did you break up with me? What was the real reason Ben?”

We could rehash this now. Get it out in the open and move forward, I hoped and become friends again. I missed this girl. This woman. I wanted to know her, the woman she was now. The girl she was at twenty-one had been so special to me.

I stuttered a few minutes then I told her about the girl who was flirting with me at the bar that day. The lecture dad gave me about being like him. “He told me not to settle down too quickly.”

She gasped. “I thought we were falling in love.”

My eyes shot up to hers. “We were. I thought so too,” I agreed. “Disa, I was twenty-two years old. Still trying to find my way in life. I thought Dad was right. I thought I wasn’t good enough for you.”

She shook her head no and wiped her tears. “Ben, you are a good man no matter what you believe or let your dad make you believe about yourself.”

I grunted acknowledging her statement.

Disa moved down by me. She laid her head on my shoulder and I inhaled, holding in the scent of her in my nostrils.

“Ben, you are good. You shouldn’t have listened to him.”

“Tell me why you broke it off with Kevin,” I said.

Her face turned up to me. “Why is that so important to you?” She asked. Then she wiped away another tear.

“Because for the entire year that you dated him, I had to watch him come to the pub and caress your cheek the way that I wanted to. I kept telling myself it should have been me.”

Disa lowered her eyes and wiped away more tears that flowed from her eyes.

“Then I kept waiting for an announcement that you were engaged to him but instead I heard that you were broken up. After a year, the relationship ended.” My voice was husky, and I knew why. I was relieved. She was still available. She might never be mine, but she didn’t belong to somebody else either.

Then, Disa’s eyes traveled up to my face. “I was so jealous when Jasmine told me about your first date. I was dating Kevin,” she told me, “but I kept thinking, Ben is mine.”

I wanted to reassure Disa that I understood her, knowing that over the years I had been jealous of her too when I saw her with another man around town or in the pub, especially Kevin because I was so sure that she would end up marrying him.

“That’s why I broke up with Kevin.”

I didn’t get it at first.

“Ben, he wanted more. He wanted commitment and I couldn’t give him that because I was still thinking Benjamin Hatfield is mine.”

I turned a little to face her. I wanted to put Asia in her carrier, so my hands were free, but I was afraid she would wake. I leaned in ready to kiss this woman who had been haunting me for a long time now, but her eyes were warning me. They were telling me to give her time. I sighed and leaned back into my own space. I could see that Disa was grateful to me for giving her that.

“I’m sorry she lied to you about her age. You and I weren’t speaking, or I would have told you the truth.”

I believed what she was saying. “I could have handled things better Disa. I just wasn’t good with things like that.” Confrontation. Open honest relationships. Friendships with women. Disa was my friend before I dated her. She should have been my friend always. “It was easier to run away than to talk about things like emotions. I guess I’m more like Dad than I realized.”

She shook her head no as she gazed at me. “Some ways, you are like him, but you aren’t too. He was wrong about you then, Ben. He shouldn’t have interfered.”

I smiled at her. “He liked you. His heart was in the right place, Disa. He thought I would hurt you and he wanted to save you that.” I hesitated just looking at her. She hadn’t changed much in the six years that we had been apart, but I knew what she felt like in my arms. I knew what her lips felt beneath my own and I wanted so much more with her than just a friendship.

I looked away to keep from kissing her. “I’m trying Disa to be better for Asia. I want her to be proud of me. I don’t want my past reputation to be what she hears about me. Mom already confronted me with that.”

“So, you just stopped sleeping around,” she declared.

“I did.” I explained to her at first, I was kicking myself in the ass for not using a condom when Jasmine told me she was on birth control pills.