Kristen Ashley - The Promise

“That one’s the goofy one,” she declared. “You get the good stuff second.”

He’d already had the good stuff.

She knew that so he didn’t tell her. He just opened the present and he did it with her talking.

“The first one may be goofy, but it was way harder to find. I had to order it off the Internet since they don’t sell them this time of year. I also had to find one you’d like, but they kinda don’t make those things for guys. Or, not guys like you. Still, it isn’t about tits and ass or muscle cars, which would be something I wouldn’t want to look at, but it isn’t too girlie, which is something you would toss in the trash, so I think I did all right.”

The paper off, he turned it in his hands and saw a calendar for that year, its theme: photos of Lake Michigan.

There was no cellophane on it. It had been opened.

Ben held it in his hands, stared at it, and stopped breathing.

“See? Totally goofy,” she stated, not sensing the change his mood was making in the room, just reaching out to pull the calendar from his hand and babbling. “Yours is, like, ten years old. Crazy. So it’s kind of a joke but kind of not.” She started flipping through and found what she wanted, showing him a month that had her writing in the little squares and flipping to the next, which had more of her writing. “See, I wrote all the birthdays in: Man, Sela, Vinnie Senior, Theresa, Carm, Ken, and the kids. I put Vi and Cal and all the girls in there, and Manny and Sela’s wedding date.”

Benny’s eyes looked at the calendar and his heart started jackhammering.

“And here,” she said, flipping back. “I put all my travel schedule in that I have set, all the times and flight numbers and hotel stuff and everything. You can write in the stuff that comes up.”

She stopped yapping, finally looked at him, and when she did, she went visibly still.

They stared at each other a couple of beats before she said hesitantly, totally not reading him, “The other present is a lot better, Benny.”

“Only one thing I want in my life,” he declared.

“Wh-what?” she stammered.

“All my life, didn’t have big hopes and dreams. Only one thing I wanted.”

“I…” She swallowed, kept her eyes locked to him, and asked, “What was that, honey?”

“A life that meant I’d have a calendar on my kitchen wall filled in with birthdays and anniversaries and parties and practices and special occasions. All the shit that makes a good life scribbled in the blocks printed on glossy paper hangin’ on a wall.”

Her eyes grew bright and her breath grew shallow.

“You gonna give that to me?” he asked.

“Yes, Benny,” she responded instantly.

Instantly.

Yeah.

She was going to give that to him.

And he was going to give it to her.

The…best…fucking…birthday…ever.

“No lip, no shit, come here right now, Frankie,” he ordered.

She tossed the calendar aside to land on the bed and she came to him immediately.

And Ben crushed her in his arms, rolled her to her back, and found reason again to get rid of her nightie.

In the end, she slept beside him in a hot pink one with black lace.

Her second present was an expensive, handsome watch that had an inscription on the back that said, For Benny, Love Frankie.

It was fucking kick-ass.

But it wasn’t better than the calendar.

Not by a long shot.

“You okay?”

I looked from the computer screen, on which I was obsessively watching the time change in the bottom right corner, to Tandy standing in the doorway of my office.

The answer to her question was, no, I was not okay.

It was Monday after spending the weekend with Benny for the sake of spending the weekend with Benny, as well as being there for the family celebration that consisted of him blowing out birthday candles on a pizza pie that he made and everyone on staff getting to suck back quick sips of Chianti while they worked. Ben opened presents in between making pies and getting out orders. Theresa, Vinnie, Manny, and Sela all were around, mostly being loud, giving Ben shit, and getting in the way.

I hung with Ben the entire night in the kitchen, my ass taking up counter space since I sat on one with a wineglass in my hand, and alternately gabbed with my man, gave him my own shit, and communed with what he called his “kids.” I took this time to get to know them, something I liked a whole lot since they were good kids and fun to be around.

In fact, Ben ran a fun kitchen. It was work, definitely—hot work with the ovens going and the stoves on, people rushing around, always busy.

But I’d been in those kitchens when Vinnie ran them, and although he wasn’t an asshole, he was a taskmaster.

It was strange knowing a father’s way and then seeing his son’s.

They both took what they did seriously. They both communicated that. But Ben was far more laid-back about it and the kids responded to it.

Watching him work, firm in woman-in-love mode, I fell more in love, my already immense pride at being Benny’s woman growing, watching him run his kitchen. His kids liked him. He organized chaos without any apparent effort. He wasn’t about shouting and bossing. He was about quiet words and direction. And every pie or dish put on the warming shelf to be taken out looked mouth-watering because I knew it was.

It wasn’t like he was organizing a disaster relief effort.

Still, it was awesome.

Saturday during the day and Sunday before I left to drive home, Ben and I tackled his office. On Friday, Ben had called the cable company to have Internet jacks installed. On Saturday, we went out and bought a filing cabinet, shredder, and a desktop computer. It took us hours, but we got a system down that might (might) make the rest of our efforts throughout the house easier. We tossed a bunch of crap, filed some away, and in the end, the office looked more like an office and less like a dump. The kind of room you’d find in a home, not a bachelor’s pad.

In other words, I thought every minute was worth the effort.

The cool thing in doing this was that I found Benny wasn’t a hoarder. He just didn’t bother to throw shit away when it should have been thrown away. There were no battles about keeping stuff. He also didn’t get into the project for fifteen minutes, then get sick of it and try to find an excuse to escape. Except for me giving him guff about being a lazy ass and Benny grinning through it, we worked beside each other in harmony.

It was kind of fun.

Domestic bliss, Frankie and Benny style.

So now it was Monday. The Monday after being awed by Benny’s kitchen prowess and gaining another promise from Benny that a life at his side would be good, seeing as I wasn’t buying one with a hoarder or someone who would dump all the crap work on me and go his merry way.

It was also the Monday after I gave Benny what I considered lame birthday payback and he considered it something else entirely. And the something he considered it made me fall even deeper in love with him, because as simple as it was, it was everything to Benny and I liked that. A whole lot.

And last, it was the Monday after I gave a goof gift I expected Ben to laugh at and toss aside and it would be me who tacked it on the wall in the kitchen and wrote stuff on it, but it was very much not.

I liked that it wasn’t. Actually, I liked why it wasn’t.

It was a gift I had a feeling changed both our lives.

Because, unexpectedly, we’d made plans to move in together.

But when I gave him that calendar, we’d made plans to spend the rest of our lives together.

I was down with that. I didn’t think twice about it and I knew I didn’t in a way that I never would.

This was because Benny Bianchi was always going to be a promise at the same time Benny Bianchi was the prize at the end of a crazy life.

So there was no reason to think twice about it.

And I was also never going to feel stupid about my goof gifts again.

Now it was Monday and I had a four o’clock meeting with my boss to ask if there was a possibility the company would consider letting me work from a home office in Chicago starting in October.

I was nervous because I expected the answer to this would be no, since everyone who was management worked from our head office in Indianapolis.

I liked that job. I made great money. My reps (all but one) were awesome. They did good, and in doing it, they made me look good. And I had a great assistant. I didn’t want to lose any of that.

Further, job hunting sucked.

So a lot was riding on this meeting.

If they said no, I still was going to quit. I just was really hoping I wouldn’t have to do that.

“I’m fine,” I answered Tandy on a lie.

“You seem weird,” she noted, walking in, eyes to me. She sat across from me and went on, “I know it’s nosy, and it’s cool if you don’t answer, but Friday you seemed to be in a really good mood. But you went back to your guy this weekend and now you seem, well…not in a good mood.”

She was so sweet.

It would suck if I had to lose her.

Another reason for me not to be okay.

“We’re fine, Tandy,” I assured her, and at least that was the truth, though it was an understatement.

“Okay,” she replied, sounding like she didn’t buy it.

“I just have this meeting with Lloyd on my mind,” I explained. “Once I’ve had the meeting with him, I’ll give you the full story.”

She tipped her head to the side and I didn’t like the look on her face when she did it.

“Should I be worried?” she asked, explaining the look.

“No,” I said quickly, reaching a hand toward her and tapping it stupidly but hopefully comfortingly on my desk. “Absolutely not. It’s not about you.”

She suddenly looked evasive (thus, clearly the desk tapping didn’t work) as she murmured, “I just thought you might have found out…” She trailed off, twisted her neck to look to my wall of window, then back to me, but she said no more.

“Found out what?” I prompted.

“Nothing. It’s stupid. It’s probably not anything,” she stated.

“What’s probably not anything?” I pushed, not getting a good feeling about her manner, which wasn’t like her at all.

She drew in a breath, then rocked her ass in her chair like she was settling in and leaned toward me. When she spoke again, her voice was lower, quiet, conspiratorial.

“It wasn’t a big deal. I told Lloyd and he took care of it, so I really didn’t want to worry you, but Thursday, when you were taking a personal day up in Chicago, Mr. Bierman came and asked me to give him a copy of your schedule. He asked how many times you’d been up to Chicago on company business and how many days off you’ve taken.”

Oh my God.

“Why would he do that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “And I didn’t give it to him. I told him to talk to Lloyd if he had questions about your schedule. He got kind of dicky, as is his way, and Heath saw it happening. He came out and intervened. Mr. Bierman backed down and took off, but Heath told me I should report it to Lloyd and went with me when I did. When I told him, Lloyd looked really pissed off. He promised me he’d take care of it. Then he and Heath were in his office forever and it didn’t look like the conversation was happy. Later, Sandy told me when Heath was in San Francisco last week, Mr. Bierman asked for the same kind of information about him.”

Sandy was Heath’s assistant and Sandy was like Tandy in the sweet, smart, on the ball, and very pretty department.

I also had a feeling Heath was nailing Sandy, which wouldn’t be good, dipping your toe in the company pool with someone who worked under you. But if he was, she wasn’t talking and, obviously, Heath wasn’t. If she was talking, Tandy would tell me.

That said, they had a lot of closed-door meetings where you could see through the windows that they were smiling at each other and laughing a lot. In these times, Heath was not looking at her like he thought she arranged his flights to Seattle so well, it was worthy of a belly laugh but, instead, like he enjoyed having her in his office the same way that he would enjoy sharing a glass of wine with her later and getting a blowjob from her after that.