What I Miss About You

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow - Ben

I slowly and quietly closed the door, then leaned my forehead against it. The whole situation was just so...God damned...fraught. I heard a small moan coming from the direction of the couch and I straightened and turned quickly. Shane was moving and talking in her sleep. I went to her side and bent over her.

"Shane?" I said as softly as I could.

She turned her head and looked up at me. Her face was still tear stained and her eyes red. She winced as she tried to turn over. I stopped her.

"No, no, don't," I said in a low voice. I slid my arms beneath her and carefully picked her up. She melted against me with a sob that felt like a thousand splinters in my heart. Her head lolled on my shoulder and she loosely draped her arms around my neck. I carried her to the bedroom, intending to lay her down and let her sleep the night undisturbed while I worked in the living room and eventually crashed on the couch.

As I settled her on the bed, however, she reached up and grabbed my shirt. "Don't leave, Ben," she pleaded. "Stay. Hold me."

I had one knee propped on the mattress where I had laid her down and was preparing to leave. But her plea and her hands fisting in my shirt stopped me. I hesitated, then hoped she didn't notice my hesitation. I cautiously climbed onto the bed and laid down beside her. She burrowed into me, resting her head just under my chin, her fingers still tangled in my shirt. Instinctively my arms went around her. Praying she wouldn't ask for more than that, I held her until I heard her gently weeping and felt the moisture of her tears soak through the fabric of my shirt.

"Ben," she whispered brokenly, her voice hoarse from crying. "Can you just hold me all night? Please?"

I didn't say anything, just tightened my arms around her in response.

And all the while I stared up at the dark and stealing, feeling conflicted and hypocritical, missing Natalie, and feeling horrible for Shane. My parents had raised me to be a gentleman, and I had never in my life been a player by any stretch of the imagination. I wasn't leading Shane on, I reasoned. But how could I have guessed I would come home to a situation like this? I wasn't a cold, heartless bastard. Shane was grieving; she needed consolation. It would have been an egregious thing to have not offered her that especially after all she had been to me. So as we lay there in the dark, Shane's shoulders occasionally jerking with a sob, I stared and stared into the dark and held her and didn't say anything, while half my heart was walking home by herself, in a fragile state. There was no help for it, but all the same I felt like a low life piece of shit.

A feeling that only intensified when I felt Shane's hand slipped between us and down my abdomen. I remained perfectly still, swallowing hard as her hand slid underneath my shirt and her fingers begin stroking my skin underneath. I remain perfectly still, trying not to convey to her what she was doing to me, but my ragged breathing betrayed me. Her hand traveled lower and I closed my eyes, sucking in a deep breath. I suddenly pulled her flush against my body so that her hand couldn't travel any further. 

It was a dirty ploy, I knew, but it seemed to work for the time being. She relaxed against me, even sighed contentedly, as she burrowed her head further under my chin and clung for dear life to me.

We stayed like that for hours, Shane the only one of us who actually slept. but perhaps of the two of us she needed it the most. The guilt was slicing through me like a knife as I dealt with both her pain over her loss and the way she had been there for me during those confusing months with Natalie, and after. For once in my life I was at a loss as to how I was going to handle this newest and most difficult challenge.

Shane's loss of her father brought my own father to mind. Over the years, he and I had butted heads over several issues, but there was one thing he taught me that had always stuck with me. He had always told me never to toy with a woman's emotions. And here I found myself in the unavoidable position of doing exactly that, and to a woman who didn't deserve it. Holding Shane to me that night I realized not only did she not deserve what I was about to do, she deserve nothing less than my loyalty and fidelity. I had broken her trust and she didn't even know it.