“No shit?” Ben asked.
“No shit,” I answered.
“Excellent, baby,” he said, deep, easy, and happy.
I clicked on my computer, bringing up my schedule, talking into the phone, “Looks like…” I paused, doing a scan. “I could drive up Friday night after I get back from Atlanta, just under three weeks from today. And I can stay…” I clicked, scanned, and told him, “at least until the next Thursday. I have a meeting in the office on Friday, but I can ask if they can conference call me in. That’ll give us a whole week.” When I finished, my voice had pitched higher with excitement.
“When do you get back from Atlanta?” Ben asked.
“Flight lands at 7:45.”
“At night?”
“Yep.”
“Drive up on Saturday,” Ben commanded.
I sat back in my chair and blinked. “Why?”
“You land at 7:45, you aren’t on the road until well after eight at least, and you’re a woman alone on the road at night until late.”
“I can hack it.”
“Bet you can, but you aren’t.”
“Benny.”
“Frankie,” he said low and in a tone I’d never heard from him.
Hearing it then, I stared unseeing out the window that made up the wall of my office and listened closely as Ben kept going.
“You give me attitude over shit like this, I’m not gonna think it’s your normal cute. I’m gonna find it frustrating. Because straight up, this means somethin’ to me. You can take care of yourself, but there are assholes out there who, wouldn’t matter how good you were at it, they’d be better at doin’ the shit they do. You gotta stop to hit a bathroom. You get a flat tire. Whatever. You’re vulnerable, even though you think you got your shit tight. The freaks come out at night, Frankie, and no freak is gonna get to my baby. I wanna see you as soon as I can see you, but I’d rather it not be after I’ve worried for hours that you’ll get to me in one piece. So come in the morning, yeah?”
After he quit speaking, I sat frozen in my seat.
Night after night, hell, day after day, growing up from age twelve to when I got the hell out, I could be anywhere with anyone doing anything and neither of my parents cared. My sisters didn’t care. My brother didn’t care.
As for me, I was the big sis, got in my siblings’ faces and kept track of them. I knew where they were all the time, and sometimes, I even went out to check they weren’t lying to me (they often lied to me, which meant, when I’d find them, I had to go bat-shit crazy in front of their friends—so they quit lying to me).
But no one worried about where I was. No one worried about how I got there. No one worried about me getting there safe.
I loved him for it, but Vinnie knew I could handle myself. He knew the kind of woman I was and the one I was aiming at being. He could be macho and protective, but mostly, he let me be me. He didn’t even try it, probably because he didn’t want me to go bat-shit crazy.
Benny didn’t care if I went bat-shit crazy.
Benny wanted me to be safe and get to him healthy. Benny cared where I was, where I was going, and how I got there.
Right then, experiencing that for the first time in my thirty-four years of life, my throat felt scratchy and my eyes felt prickly, and I had to put everything into keeping it together so I wouldn’t start crying at work.
“Frankie,” Ben said softly when I didn’t say anything. “Don’t be pissed, baby.”
“Hush, Benny,” I whispered, my voice croaky. “I’m figuring out one of my ‘I don’t knows.’”
He grew silent.
I closed my eyes and pulled in a deep breath.
After giving me time, Ben prompted, “You gonna share that with me?”
I opened my eyes. “Yeah, honey, but I’m at work and things are kind of crazy. Huge schedule and I’m everywhere the next three weeks. And it’s one of those things that I wanna share with you when I have you with me. But I will say it’s good, you bein’ the first person in my life who gives a shit that I get where I’m goin’ and do it safe.”
He grew silent again, but this time, the silence was loaded. Loaded with warmth. Loaded with goodness. All of this beating into me after pinging off cell phone towers over hundreds of miles.
When his silence lasted, I called, “Benny?”
“Hush, baby, I’m tryin’ to figure out if I’m more happy that I gave you that or more pissed that you’d never had it.”
“Well, I’m happy,” I told him.
“Good,” he replied quietly.
I pulled in a deep breath to keep my emotions under control while Ben kept speaking.
“Now is one of those times when a day away from you seems way too fuckin’ long, and before that, a day away from you was way too fuckin’ long. Three weeks is gonna kill,” he told me.
“I’m a phone call away, honey.”
“Yeah, and that sucks, ’cause that phone call won’t hit you at the market and end with you askin’ me what I want for dinner.”
“You work through dinner,” I pointed out.
He had a smile in his voice when he returned, “Shut up, Frankie.”
I had a smile in mine when I said, “I gotta get back to work, honey.”
“Right. Talk to you later.”
“Absolutely. ’Bye, Ben.”
“’Bye, baby.”
We disconnected and I gave myself the pleasure of feeling the goodness of all of that, including coming to my epiphany. The goodness of the last part wasn’t coming to understand I’d never had anyone who gave that kind of shit about me. It was coming to that understanding when I had someone who did.
That goodness ended when my attention was taken by Travis Berger walking into the Director of Research and Development’s office.
Travis was the Executive Vice President of Operations. I liked him. He was driven and aggressive and built like a pit bull. But he’d also taken me out to lunch on my first day at work, took his time to get to know me, told me in a way that felt genuine they were happy to have me on their team, and shared how brave he thought I was about the whole kidnapping/getting shot thing. In other words, generally folding me in the arms of Wyler Pharmaceuticals.
But now he looked ticked as in ticked.
I couldn’t say I knew him very well. He was around but I was not, and he was five steps above me—me as Manager of Eastern Sales, reporting to the Assistant Director of US Sales, who reported to the Director of Sales who, in turn, reported to the Assistant VP of Sales and Marketing, who reported to the Vice President, who reported to Travis Berger.
I did know he was young. I’d never known a man in his position at his age. Our company was massive and multinational, employees numbering in the thousands, and he was in his late forties.
I did know that when I wasn’t on the road, I burned the night oil when I started because I had a lot to do, a lot to learn, and a lot to prove, and I never went home when he wasn’t sitting at his desk behind his own (much wider) wall of glass.
He was not always affable. From what I could tell, that just wasn’t his nature. But he seemed one of those quiet, watchful types who didn’t miss a trick, controlled his emotions, and would have no problem telling you that you’d fucked up, but he’d do it quietly.
So him looking ticked surprised me.
My phone ringing in my hand took me out of those thoughts, and the name of my Chicago rep on my screen put me into less reflective ones and more annoyed ones.
But I made the big bucks; I had to take the shit along with it.
So I didn’t have time to think about how much I was falling in love with the process of falling in love with Benny Bianchi. I didn’t think about what it might mean that the Executive Vice President of our company was walking around ticked.