effie yaxley (euphemia) wrote in cultureic, @ 2016-06-21 17:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | benjy fenwick, euphemia yaxley |
WHO: Benjy Fenwick & Effie Yaxley
WHEN: From Hogwarts to Monday, June 20
WHERE: Various places!
SUMMARY: Benjy and Effie through the years.
WARNINGS: Purism?
You wouldn’t dare, they’d said, laughing, but Benjy Fenwick always dared. The problem surrounding the challenge wasn’t mustering up the nerve, as Effie Yaxley was, unfortunately, in his thoughts more often than not. The heavens never parted when he caught a glimpse of her, and there was never any grand swell of music—”Love Is Strange” by Mickey and Sylvia didn’t play when their eyes met, for all the comparisons to Sharon Stone he could make. But she still featured heavily in his thoughts, despite her, well, meanness. Really, it was just hard to find a time when she wasn’t surrounded by a coterie of viper-like Slytherin girls. He could do this, he just needed to stick the landing. Eventually, Benjy stumbled upon her by complete accident as she was leaving the library. His mouth immediately jerked up into a crooked smile at the sight of her, and he shoved his hands in his pockets as he rocked on the balls of feet. He could do this. “...hey there,” he said, grinning widely. Because she wasn’t always mean, Effie gave Benjy a crooked smile of her own. “Hi,” she said back, tilting her head to the side as she let her eyes drift appraisingly over him. He was a year older than her and some girls might’ve found that intimidating, especially with him smiling at her like that, but Effie didn’t bother with things like nerves. After a quick glance past to the library entrance past her shoulder, Benjy leaned forward, his voice lowered to a hushed, conspiratorial tone. “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” he asked, jerking his head toward the library’s entry way. Just like that Effie’s head snapped up straight and she glanced at the library behind her, then back at him, her smile gone amused and slightly bewildered. “The library?” she asked with a laugh. She had some idea what he was actually getting at, but the library didn’t really have any business being a chat up line. Benjy blinked. “No, it’s like — like in the movies, when the dashing romantic hero talks to a pretty girl, they’re always like…” He trailed off, rolling his shoulders as he remembered who he was talking to. His smile faltered, just a bit. “But I reckon you don’t watch a lot of movies, do you?” Annoyance flickered briefly across Effie’s features. She didn’t like not knowing things. “No,” she said slowly, the single word a little condescending to put them on equal footing again. But then, he’d called her a pretty girl and named himself the dashing romantic hero. Those concepts were both familiar enough to Effie. She tilted her head to the side again, tucking a long strand of hair behind her ear as her lips curved into a smile she hoped was inviting. “What are you saving me from? Madam Pince?” “I’m saving you from the monotony of homework,” Benjy said breezily, extending a hand. It was, in the language of fifteen year boys, an offer to carry a girl’s books. “The tyranny of essays. The subjugation of like, History of Magic reading or whatever. Sooo….” In his attempt to do a terrible impression of Michael Biehn circa The Terminator, his voice dropped into a much lower register. It didn’t matter that the reference would be completely lost on Effie — he had time to fix that. “Come with me if you want to live,” he said, punctuating the offer with a wink. The reference was, once again, lost on Effie, but it was silly and out of the blue enough for her that she laughed anyway and passed her books to Benjy with the endeared smile she saved for the people she liked. “All right,” she agreed. “But where are you taking me?” Warmth reverberated through Benjy’s chest as he guided Effie down the hall. “I don’t actually know yet. I’m kind of making this up as I go. But…” He shifted her (heavier than they looked) textbooks to one arm so he could grab hold of her hand. Lifting an eyebrow to make sure non-interlaced-fingers-hand holding was acceptable, he flashed her a sheepish smile. “I’m sure it’ll be grand when we get there.” Effie hadn’t called Dearborn a mudblood — that wasn’t really a word she used, especially with Annie in her dorm and most especially now that Annie had a prefect badge — but she had called him the human equivalent of ink drying for no real reason. And one of the other girls had called him a mudblood and Effie had laughed. And the strap on his bag had mysteriously broken, spilling the contents across the hallway. That hadn’t been Effie’s fault! Except for the part where it most definitely had been. She was getting very good at non-verbal spells. He was just lucky she hadn’t used a trouser-splitting jinx when he’d bent over. He probably wore embarrassing pants. Pants or no pants, Effie knew she was going to be in trouble with Benjy. So when she approached him waiting for her at their spot by the one-eyed witch statue, she smiled extra sweetly, but didn’t try to reach for him. She was not in the mood to be rebuffed because she and Dearborn didn’t get along. “Hiya,” she said, folding her hands in front of her. “How was your day?” “Oh, just grand,” he replied dryly, drawing out the vowel on the last word as he folded his arms across his chest. Benjy’s irritation, not to mention his reluctance to have this argument (this same tired argument), was made obvious by the stiffness of his shoulders, the stubborn jut of his jaw. He eyed her warily for a moment, his gaze lingering longer than necessary. He determinedly forced himself to stare at the one-eyed witch statue as he said, “Then I ran into Caradoc, and I’m sure you know that went, what with you making his life hell and all.” “All I did was point out how boring I find him,” Effie said with an innocent shrug. She didn’t really want to have the argument either. So she reached for him, brushing her fingers over one of his biceps appreciatively as she stepped between him and the statue. “You’re hot when you find me annoying, though.” “Don’t,” Benjy warned her, though he didn’t move, nor did he try to brush her hand away. A muscle in his jaw twitched as he looked down at her. “And don’t pretend that’s all you did. You shouldn’t be calling him boring, because he’s not, but you really shouldn’t be laughing when someone calls him a—” A pause. He made no effort to hide his disgust or his anger as continued, “Well, you know what. There’s nothing funny about that.” As she reached to cover the twitch in his jaw with her other hand, Effie managed to give Benjy a contrite pout. “What if I told you I was very sorry,” she said, swiping the pad of her thumb over the grumpy corner of his mouth. “I’d say…” Benjy trailed off, swallowing hard. He reached for her wrist, frowning as he tried to weigh his options. Maybe this was a conversation they should’ve had over the journal network — in-person lectures were always such a challenge. “I’d say you don’t seem very sincere,” he said, in a low voice. “My aunt’s muggleborn. My ma’s muggle. You know all this.” “But I don’t hate your aunt or your mother,” Effie offered, taking a step in closer to him. The hand at his arm slid to his shoulder, then to the side of his neck. She didn’t smile yet, even though the hand at her wrist told her she was already winning. Then, to shift the conversation away from his family, she added, “Caradoc doesn’t like me much either, you know.” Benjy arched a dark brow. “Yeah, I wonder why,” he said, then internally kicked himself. Something in his voice had changed, and his gaze softened as his mind began funneling its focus to the warm palm on his neck. He shifted his weight as he exhaled through his teeth, though that didn’t keep his hand from abandoning Effie’s wrist in favor of her waist. “Don’t think I don't know what you’re doing, Euphemia.” “Benjy,” Effie murmured, stepping in even closer, so close the one-eyed witch might’ve been scandalized if she weren’t just a statue. She smiled now, the entreating one she saved for moments like these, when she wanted Benjy to forgive her without actually saying she was sorry. With a calculated flutter of her eyelashes, her gaze dropped from his eyes to his mouth. And when she lifted her eyes to meet his again, she leaned in and left a soft kiss on his lips. One by one, almost all of Benjy’s thoughts seemed to abruptly halt, his world narrowing down to the sensation of the delicate kiss lingering on his mouth. The rest of his lecture was swept aside as he closed the meager distance left between them and kissed her, firmly and deeply and, at first, a little angrily. His free hand settled on her jaw as he instinctively steered her backwards, until her back was flush to the stone wall. They could get caught — they had been caught in the past — but Benjy was operating on autopilot until he withdrew, his eyes narrowing as he tried to catch his breath. “I’ve not forgiven you yet,” he told her in a soft voice. “We’re just tabling this till later.” “Consider it tabled,” Effie said, breathless and exhilarated. And then, because the subject of Dearborn was tabled, she did smile, the hand at his jaw sliding up and into his hair. She threaded his curls around her fingertips and added, the edges of her smile going tentative, “I love you.” It was almost nearly a question. Did he still love her? Barely a second passed before Benjy answered: “I love you too.” And he did. He returned her smile with a small one of his own, confident in his ability to eventually get her to play nice with Caradoc — to be less purist. But as he descended again, his mouth connecting with the hollow of Effie’s throat, he told himself that was an undertaking that could wait until later. Much, much later. As the long summer day crept to a close, a rare moment of quiet had fallen over the Fenwick home. Benjy’s father was in his study, his mother had gone back to her shop, and his flock of sisters had retreated to their rooms to gossip about whether or not the family dinner with Effie Yaxley had been a success. It was a question Benjy barely had to consider as he tugged his girlfriend toward the leather sofa, the DVD case of You’ve Got Mail tucked under the crook of his elbow. “So you survived dinner,” he said with a grin, gesturing for her to take a seat with an elegant little bow. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the urge to tack on with a muggle bubbled up from nowhere. “And now it’s time for the most important part of the evening: the movie.” Benjy sunk down on the couch beside her, fumbling around for the television remote with one hand while the other wrapped itself around Effie’s shoulder. “I mean, the food’s good too,” he continued, somewhat distracted by his search for the remote. “I mean, if you like Filipino food, which you didn’t seem to dislike, so…” “Oh, yes, the food and the movie are what I’m here for,” Effie said dryly, the corners of her mouth lifted skeptically. As an aside, though, she added, “Though, the food was very good and I’m sure the movie will be…” Her eyes flicked to the unfamiliar DVD cover and then back to Benjy. “About mail.” Still, neither thing was all that important to Effie at the moment. She’d been on her best behavior and she wanted praise. “Do you think they liked me?” “Of course they liked you.” Benjy paused his search for the remote, swiveling around so he could beam at her. “You were grand. Dinner was grand. It was all…” He reached for Effie’s chin, leaning forward so he could give her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Not a complete disaster like that one nightmare I had about it.” “I love featuring in your nightmares,” Effie laughed. But she was glad to hear the dinner hadn’t been nightmarish. She hadn’t thought it was, of course, but it had been Benjy’s parents she’d wanted to impress and if Benjy thought she had… The fact that his mother was a muggle didn’t faze her. On some level, she knew it ought to have. But Effie did what she wanted. And his mother seemed nice. “I mean, you’re usually not in my nightmares,” he replied with a wink. A smile curled one corner of Benjy’s mouth as he laid his head on her shoulders, just for a moment, before his maneuvering so he could rest his head in her lap. With a soft little hum, he adopted a casual, nonchalant tone as he said, the words half-directed into her thigh, “So the muggle thing! Also cool?” Effie’s fingers had gone automatically to his hair and she focused on drawing her fingers through his curls while she considered his very leading question. “I liked your mum,” she said carefully. She tilted forward in an attempt at catching his eye. “If that’s what you mean.” And she’s a muggle. So you could like other muggles. There’s nothing wrong with any of them The words never left Benjy’s mouth. Instead, he leaned into her touch as he stretched out an arm behind him, clumsily grasping about for the DVD case. “It’s sort of what I mean,” he said quietly, contemplating whether he wanted to potentially ruin a nice evening with a potential argument. “But she’s not that different from any other muggle. There’s good ones and bad ones, same as wizards. Most wizards are like, inherently good. Same goes for muggles.” “Okay,” she said, sounding far away. The truth was Effie didn’t really care either way. But she didn’t like to be told what to think or feel. At the same time, though, she didn’t want to ruin a nice evening either. She scratched her nails over his scalp and jutted her chin at the television. “Why don’t we start the movie? I love mail.” “It’s not really about mail,” Benjy protested, but then he stopped himself. “I guess it kind of is, but it’s like about e-mails and—I’ll probably do a shit job explaining it.” Pushing himself up with a sigh, he opened his mouth to get back on the topic of muggles — then promptly shut it. They were going to watch a movie he loved. A muggle movie. That was a small step in the right direction, right? There was an explosion of girlish laughter from upstairs, and Benjy’s gaze snapped up, his brow furrowing in annoyance. “Oi!” he yelled, standing up to glare at the ceiling, as if his sisters would be able to feel it through the floor. “Belt up!” “Ooooh, are we interrupting your snogging?” Felicia called back. “You’re interrupting our movie, you little—hey, there’s the remote,” he said in a much quieter (and brighter) tone, snatching said remote from the top of the television. Irritation at his sisters momentarily forgotten, he flashed Effie a victorious smile as he tossed her the remote control. “So. How about coffee, drinks, dinner, a movie, for as long as we both shall live?” Benjy’s victorious smile was contagious and Effie caught the remote with her hands, but mostly her lap. “I do!” she said. And then he lost her attention entirely when she focused on the unfamiliar remote, passing it between both of her hands and holding it in various positions to see if one made more sense to her. She wasn’t really sure why he’d been looking for it. When she had it held with the buttons against her palm and then sensor aimed at her stomach, she looked up at him with a question on her face. “Eff, love, no.” Face lit up with fond amusement, Benjy crossed over to the couch, his hand covered hers for a brief second before he maneuvered the remote control so it was facing the right direction. “Press the big red one.” “I knew that.” She hadn’t, but Effie managed to look lofty about it. Until the corners of her mouth twitched into a smile, anyway. She pressed the big red button and then the other buttons Benjy told her to press after that. When the movie started playing, finally, she turned a triumphant smile on him and asked him to show her how to stop it for a second. And then she pulled him in for a victory kiss. “And long distance relationships never work out,” Benjy was explaining, staring not at Effie but at the pillow beside her. It seemed safer. He could feel tension winding up his spine as he paced around his dormitory, wondering when the emotional fall out of what was happening would fully hit him. He dragged a hand through his hair, then leveled a stare at his girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend. His It’s Complicated. “I mean, they sometimes do, but that’s not us, so like…” There was a dull ache in his chest as he said, flatly, “That’s my piece. That’s why I think it’s best to end things.” “You don’t know that,” Effie spat, struggling to keep her expression anything but vulnerable. She could feel her hands start to shake, so she kept them balled into fists in her lap and stared hard at him and only him. Maybe if she looked at him, looked at him trying to feed her his lines with a straight face, she wouldn’t say the thing that kept cropping up in her mind. I thought you loved me. Instead, she said, “You can shove your piece right up your ass.” “Eff, we’ve done the on-and-off thing while we’ve been here,” Benjy pointed out, folding his arms across his chest. “That’s not something I want to deal with when I’m just starting out at St Mungo’s, and you know it’s bound to happen, since you won’t—” He bit his lip. “Since you keep—” He threw his hands up in exasperation. “You know what you keep doing,” he said finally, with a miserable sigh. “And between that and everything else that’s going on, I just don’t want to deal with any drama when I’m trying to like, not fuck up at being a Healer.” “Oh, good, not only am I the villain for hating your boring friends, I get to be responsible for ruining your career.” Effie scrambled off his bed and to her feet, if only to get away from him looking down on her. But he was still taller than her and it made her want to punch him. “I’ve never been good enough for you. It’s always ‘Effie, change this’ or ‘Effie, stop doing that’. I’ve never once asked you to stop being Carrion’s friend because just thinking about him makes me want to take a nap.” “Caradoc,” Benjy snapped. His gaze turned harder as he looked down at her, his eyes narrowing. “And don’t act like it’s fucking unreasonable for me to ask you to stop being a bigot who laughs at slurs! Not when my best mates are muggleborn, Eff.” He shook his head. “Not when my ma’s a muggle.” The argument was tired and so was Effie. He was breaking up with her. Seemingly for good this time. “I don’t hate your mother, though. I hate Dearborn. He’s weird and I think he eats burnt potion chips.” Bewildered by the turn this conversation had taken, it took Benjy a moment to process Effie’s last comment. But his bemusement gave way to hot anger, and, with his jaw set, he told her, “I don’t care how you feel about Dearborn. It’s not my problem anymore, because Doc and I are getting the fuck out of here.” Effie stared at Benjy for a long moment, taking a long, deep breath and stretching her fingers out before balling them into fists again. She didn’t have to listen to this anymore. Wasn’t that the crux of what he was saying? If she wasn’t his problem anymore, then he didn’t have to be hers. Nevermind that it was for a stupid reason and she still wasn’t ready for them to end. Nevermind that she would go back to her own dorm and hide behind her curtains to cry about it. She wasn’t going to beg him not to leave her and she wasn’t going to cry in front of him. “Me too,” she said, finally. She shoved past him, careful to ram her shoulder into his arm as she passed, and she got the fuck out of there. Benjy jerked like someone had run a sword through him. It took all his self-restraint to stay silent as he watched her go, pressing his lips together and swallowing back all the things he wanted to say. He took a breath. He throttled his anger. He scrubbed a hand across his face, and it only briefly distorted his pained expression, which snapped back into place as soon as he sank onto his bed. That’s that, he thought to himself, trying his best to ignore the sharp twisting in his chest. That was the last of the Effie-and-Benjy story. When Effie spotted Benjy at the other end of the bar, her stomach twisted and she felt a flash of an old anger that had almost nearly gone cold, but she scooped up her drink anyway to join him. That had always been the appeal of Benjy, after all. As teenagers, he’d made her feel things not many people could. Plus, her day at work had been long and annoying and she wasn’t on her first drink. “So,” she said, sliding onto the empty barstool at his side. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Benjy wanted to say as he glanced over at the familiar blonde, but he wasn’t in the mood to waste a perfectly good movie reference on Effie Yaxley. He hadn’t shown her Casablanca and he highly doubted she’d watched it of her own volition. He was visibly coiled, half ready to get up and leave, before he downed the last of his whiskey and motioned for the bartender to give him another. “So,” Benjy echoed, directing a piercing look to the woman beside him. “Hi, Euphemia.” There was a pause as his expression softened, his dark eyes lighting up. “You look good.” “Hello, Benjamín,” Effie said, smirking at the compliment. She reached for her drink and took a sip, her eyes roaming over him appraisingly. When she returned her glass to the counter, she added, “You look good, too.” She tilted her head and gave him another appraising look. “I guess St Mungo’s agrees with you.” “I guess it does.” Benjy didn’t feel like it did, but that wasn’t something to get into now. Swiveling his body toward hers, he propped an elbow up on the countertop and gave her a small smile he would later attribute to the three glasses of whiskey he’d downed before Effie had sidled up next to him. She was still a purist. Pre-Effie, he had been eyeing a brunette across the bar, but now it was hard to focus on anyone else. That brunette likely wasn’t a purist. “Am I buying you a drink?” he asked. Effie pretended to consider the question, but only for a moment. She reached for her glass and emptied in one swallow before discarding it on the countertop, her focus sliding back to Benjy almost immediately. “It looks like it,” she said. She took another moment to take him in, his body angled towards her and her own turning to do the same. “Well. If you think that’s the best you can do, anyway.” Their knees were almost touching. Benjy inched a little closer, and now their knees were touching. In the back of his mind, there was a voice that sounded suspiciously like Caradoc Dearborn telling Benjy to stop. Do not pass go. Do not buy Effie a drink, or initiate any other sort of regrettable contact. But his mind was swimming, and it was difficult to resist the magnetic pull she had over him when he was close enough to smell her perfume, her shampoo. “You know damn well it’s not,” he said, smiling crookedly. His eyes dropped to the place where their knees met, then bounced back up. It had been presented as a challenge, and that was all he needed to drown out the voice in the back of his head, leaning over to kiss her, hard and inelegantly. It didn’t matter that there were other people around. Effie kissed him back anyway, just as hard, her fingers automatically finding the familiar swoop of his curls. “Forget the drink. Come back to mine,” she mumbled against his lips in the space between the first kiss and the next. She ignored her own warnings, the ones that sounded like Elsie and told her no. Benjy Fenwick was a bad habit, but he was hers. It felt like the punchline to a terrible joke — one that was too terrible for even Benjy to share. And then I ran into my ex-girlfriend at the bank. But there she was, striding across the stone floor of Gringotts. A crease spread across his forehead as he watched her, all other thoughts scattering as his stomach clenched. Warning signs, alarm bells, and the Caradoc Dearborn voice were all firing off in unison: do not engage. But he found himself moving toward her despite the confused maelstrom of emotions swirling in his mind: anger, disgust, hurt, affection. It wasn’t too late to walk past her, he told himself as he approached. But it was a futile observation. “Well, if it isn’t the future Mrs. Goyle!” he said, mockingly. Benjy gave the future Mrs. Goyle a sharp and unfriendly smile. “I’m not in the country for long, but I’m glad I get to congratulate you on sinking your claws into a shitty purist in person.” While she certainly didn’t look it, somewhere deep inside Effie was a deer caught in headlights. Benjy hadn’t caught her doing anything wrong, after all. Gavin, purist he may have been, didn’t run away from her every chance he got. Instead, her eyes narrowed and she swept them over him like he was something distasteful she’d found on the bottom of her shoe. “Oh,” she said finally. “So you didn’t get eaten by a carnivorous plant. I guess owe Elsie money.” Her fingers tightened around the strap of her purse, a white-knuckled grip the only outward sign that she was unsettled. “Elsie Flint can go fuck herself,” Benjy said flatly, folding his arms across his chest. “And so can Gavin Goyle, for that matter. How’s the engaged life treating you so far, ‘cause he looks like his cock smells awful.” “His cock smells fine to me,” Effie said with a shrug. “Tastes fine, too.” “Ah, well,” Benjy replied with a forced casualness that didn’t line up with the way his jaw clenched, “they say you can get used to anything. And I guess downsizing from a mouthful to a wee little thing’s probably a relief for you.” Effie sighed heavily, shifting her weight impatiently from one foot to the other. “Do you have anything interesting to say, Benjy? Because I’m not really interested in a dick measuring contest. It’s tiresome. And this one is just sad.” Suddenly rendered speechless, Benjy seemed shocked that Effie wasn’t being more combative. He wanted her to be more combative. He recovered after a moment, though, and looked at her meaningfully, tilting his head as his anger cooled into the thing that bothered him the most about this engagement with Goyle. The thing that felt like a blade slipped between his ribs. “I just don’t get it,” Benjy said at last, looking down at his feet. “I know you’re friends with the likes of Flint, and the Burkes, and all the rest, but to marry into the whole purist life and just… ignore everything that’s happening.” He met Effie’s eyes again. “Is that really what you want to do?” Because she was out in public, Effie smiled. But it was sharp-edged smile. There was always going to be a part of her that felt abandoned by Benjy, whether it was fair of her to think or not. So his asking her that, a criticism of the life she’d tried to make for herself without him in it, felt like its own blade between her ribs. “I don’t think it’s really any of your business what I want to do, is it?” she asked, her words dripping with a faux sweetness. Benjy blinked, swallowing hard. Then: “Right.” His expression hardened as he bent slightly, in a mocking little bow. “I’ll let the future Mrs. Goyle get back to her pressing purist business. I’m sure you’ve got some muggleborns to laugh at.” He stomped off before she had to say another word. It was Monday morning, and Diagon Alley felt noticeably tense — ready to ignite at the slightest spark. The war, someone on the wireless had said, could now be divided into two sections: pre-Azkaban breakout, when there had been some glimmer of hope, and post-Azkaban breakout, also known as the very grim present. Benjy had spent the night at St Mungo’s and looked sufficiently exhausted as he stepped into the coffee shop, ready to pick up an espresso and head on back to work. He was practically a zombie as he stepped into the queue, and he only came to life when his eyes fell on a familiar head of blond hair walking toward the door. Unthinkingly, Benjy reached out to stop her. “Hey there, Eff.” “Hey,” Effie said, caught off guard. She’d been so wrapped up in her own thoughts she hadn’t even seen him there. She swept her eyes over him, landing on his face with a sympathetic smile curving her lips. “You look like shit.” Benjy gave a dry chuckle as he clasped a hand to his heart. “There’s that Yaxley charm. And right when I needed the ego boost.” But then he shrugged, raking a hand through his hair as a tired smile spread across his face. “I feel like it, too.” The memory of their last conversation nagged at him, but Benjy told himself he wasn’t going to bring it up. “That’s what happens when you’re up all night dealing with the fallout from all hell breaking loose,” he said instead, shrugging. Effie only nodded. She was thinking about their last conversation, too, and the subject of the breakout didn’t feel as safe to her as it felt to him. Not before she’d made more of a dent in the coffee cup clutched in her hand. Her mouth twisted in thought and then she said, “You’re being careful, though?” There was a playful scoff from Benjy as his gaze shifted to the counter ahead, shoving his hands in his pockets as he bit back all the things he wanted to say. It wasn’t any of the escaped prisoners he was worried about, but Antonin Dolohov. The queue inched forward, and so did Benjy. “You know me,” he said simply, shrugging again. “When am I not careful? It’s not like I go out of my way to draw attention to myself.” “Oh, yes, you’re a regular wallflower,” Effie said, laughing. And she was surprised to find herself sounding so fond when she laughed. She’d had an awkward weekend with Elsie that she endeavoring not to think about, especially in Benjy’s presence, but it had washed away her bitterness and longing for Benjy in a way Gavin had never really been able to. She reached for Benjy’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “I’m serious, though. Be careful.” Benjy’s eyes dropped to the hand on his arm, and his gaze lingered for just a moment before he placed his hand over hers. “You too,” he told her, though he knew Effie Yaxley was in no serious danger. And he opened his mouth to say so, the barb on the tip of his tongue—and then he changed his mind. He was tired, and it was a tired argument. You couldn’t fix someone if they didn’t think anything was broken. He let his hand drop to his side, and his smile almost seemed rueful. “If you ever change your mind about what we’ve talked about,” he said, quietly, “then you’ve got my number.” The words weren’t pressuring or accusatory. He just wanted to let her know that the offer was always there, just in case. “But my purist hassling days are behind me.” Effie bit back a sigh and only nodded again, letting her own hand fall back to her side. She was never going to give Benjy the concrete information she had. “I have to get to work now,” she said after a beat, gesturing at the door before turning on her heel to follow the gesture. Over her shoulder, she added, “I hope you stop feeling like shit.” And with that, she was at the door and then she was gone. Benjy stared after her for a moment, a rush of memories hitting him all at once, before his attention swiveled back to the queue. His gaze caught on the edge of the counter without any real concentration, and a full minute passed before he finally said, “Me too.” |