Lochlan is not impressed. I'm recovering from a cold. We could have been seen, maybe by the Devil even. Ben isn't known for being gentle, what if I got hurt? On and on and then he makes a pointed comment about not needing to parrot random acts of romance from the movies to make me swoon.
Burn, baby.
Ben didn't like that comment. He said he's trying to do things differently because yeesh, if he brings me home a bouquet of wildflowers, he gets a story from me about how, once upon a time when we were on the midway circuit, Loch planted a garden of wildflowers around the camper and on the last day as we packed up the final flower bloomed, the garden complete.
That if he serenades me under the moon? He gets a story about how Lochlan lit the sky on fire and then pulled some acrobatic stunt in which he throws me up over the moon and then catches me on the way back down, with a double twist and a hang to thunderous applause.
If he makes me a cup of coffee? Yeah, Loch probably traipsed all over Romania for a square of organic muslin in which to filter hand-picked beans traded for a card trick in a boxcar from a traveler from Sumatra. The coffee tasted so good in the shadow of a Transylvanian sunrise. Oh, and I didn't like it black so Loch milked a nearby goat, probably.
He's not that bad, I tell Ben.
Oh he's not bad at all. He's the golden boy. I'll never win, Bridget.
He never held me upside down and dunked me in the snow.
Really?
He never lay beside me until I woke up and stayed until I could breathe normally when...Jake...
Yeah. Ben thaws a little. His chest puffs out a tiny bit.
He never wrote a sort-of famous song about me.
I couldn't use your name.
I knew who you meant. Everyone did.
Yeah. I bet he never fucked you on a beach or a motorcycle, or even-
Hey, let's not get carried away.
Jesus Christ. I don't even get that?
Sorry?
Man.
Thirty-nine years! You can cover a lot of romance in that long a time period, Ben.
It's not over yet.
I thought we were all in this together.
We are, I just want to be the Alpha Romeo.
That's a car, Ben.
Not the way I mean it, it's not.
