What was it about talking to her mother that made her feel like she was sixteen years old again? She’d moved across the country to escape the phenomenon. Yet all it took was a phone call to bring back all the feelings of being less than.
The tears caught her by surprise. They were followed closely by sobs that made her shoulders lurch. The more she cursed and fought the show of weakness, the more torrentially it manifested itself. After a while, she just gave in.
The sound of the door opening couldn’t have startled her more if it had been a gunshot.
Shit. She wiped desperately at her puffy, tear-swollen face, trying to erase the evidence of her breakdown. The man had the worst timing of anyone she’d ever met.
“Chloe? You should have seen the lineup for the restaurant. It’s a madhouse down there, so I had to improvise. Also, I added my name to the cot waiting list. Which is hilarious because— Hey, what’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” she lied, willing him to turn around and give her a minute so she could pull it together.
He came closer. Chloe kept her eyes down and her body still, but he wasn’t deterred by her attempts to ignore him. She hiccupped as he set an ice bucket on the nightstand and then sat on the bed beside her.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” She shot him a watery smile, with every intention of leaving it at that. But when she saw the genuine concern on his face, felt the warmth of the reassuring hand he’d placed on her back, she spilled her guts.
“It’s just, today has sucked,” she said with a sniffle. “I’m talking monumental amounts of suckage, and I’m tired, and moody, and people have really been getting on my nerves. All I want is to go home, but I’m stuck sharing a hotel room with a complete stranger who must think I’m mentally unbalanced. And you’ve been really nice to me anyway. And now I’m crying again. I hate crying,” she finished on a shaky sob.
Ben reached past her to the nightstand and snagged a tissue, handing it to her.
“You see? You barely know me, you have every reason to believe I’m deranged, and still you have the decency to hand me a Kleenex.”
“It’s really not that big a deal.”
“Yes, it is, Ben. You’re nice. And you’re tall. You’re very tall.” She wiped her nose with the tissue. “How tall are you, anyway?”
“Six-three.”
“That is very tall.” Chloe shook her head, looking down at her hands. She picked resolutely at the flaking black nail polish on her right thumbnail. She must have been chewing on it—she did that when she was stressed.
She expected him to bail then, distance himself from his sobbing lunatic of a roommate with some teasing remark about how tall guys are known for their big wangs or something equally ridiculous. She’d laugh, and he’d laugh, and they’d get back to the superficial banter that befitted two strangers stuck in a hotel room together.
But he didn’t.
He just sat beside her, respecting the silence. And her thoughts slipped out. “Honestly, Ben. How is it possible for one person to mess up her life so monumentally?”
“Hey, I’m sure it’s not as bad as it seems right now.” He rubbed her back, his big hand hot against her T-shirt. “You’ll figure it out. You’ll fix it.”
Tears brimmed in her eyes with a vengeance. They burned like acid. “No. I won’t. And do you know why?”
Ben shook his head.
“Me, neither! I mean, do you see this? Do you see my hair?” She grabbed a handful and held it in his direction.
“Yeah...”
“I did this for them!” she exclaimed, dropping the strands back into place. “I colored it boring old brown so they wouldn’t be embarrassed by me, but it didn’t work! I’m not even at the wedding yet, and I’ve already disappointed them. Nothing I try ever works, Ben. I don’t know what to do.” She’d never said that to anyone before and admitting the truth hurt so badly she thought her ribs might crack.
Chloe dropped her face into her hands. Ben’s arms came around her, pulling her close, tucking her cheek to his chest. She gave in and greedily took what he was offering. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she leaned into him and let herself cry.
She wasn’t sure if it was minutes or hours, but he held her until she had no more tears.
“You know what, Chloe?” His voice was soft and deep, breaking the silence she’d been measuring with the rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek. “Maybe there’s nothing to do. I mean, I realize I just met you, but you seem okay to me.”
That tiny reassurance allowed Chloe to muster enough gumption to reach up and wipe the wet tracks from her face. She couldn’t quite bring herself to lift her head off his shoulder, though.
“And they’ll see it. One day, they’ll see it. You just gotta give them some time.”
Her lip trembled, and she bit it, fighting the sadness. “They’ve had twenty-six years, Ben.”
She felt him exhale. “It’s a really hard thing, you know, not taking the people we love for granted.” She looked up at him then and he smiled, a sad-but-reassuring little half smile that made her believe there was a chance that the despair she felt in that moment might not be insurmountable.
Chloe pulled away with a final sniff. She was trying desperately to hold onto that moment of comfort even as the embarrassment of her epic cry-fest in front of a virtual stranger began seeping in at the edges.
She exhaled shakily. “Sorry I got mascara and snot on your fancy shirt.”
“It’s just a T-shirt,” he averred as he pulled the black-smeared wet patch away from his chest. He even managed not to look horrified.
“Yeah, but I bet it cost, like, fifty bucks.”
“Seventy-five,” he corrected. “But I’ll accept it as punishment for being douchebaggy enough to have spent that much money on a plain white T-shirt in the first place.”
Chloe’s chuckle was waterlogged.
“C’mere,” he said, tucking his thumb in the hem of his shirt. She leaned ever so slightly forward and let him rub the cotton-covered pad of his thumb under her right eye, then her left. She’d be surprised if she had any makeup on at all at this point. Some warrior, she thought, choking in battle and crying off her armor.
“There,” he said, showing her the black smudges on the fabric. “All cleaned up.”
She frowned, letting him know she wasn’t buying his bullshit.
“Okay, you should probably go wash your face before we have dinner,” he admitted. “Unless the raccoon look is a thing now.”
Grateful for the reprieve, Chloe headed for the bathroom, pulling her suitcase into the tiny room with her. She groaned when she caught sight of herself in the mirror.
Apparently in addition to being an all-around good guy and world-class hugger, Ben Masterson was also the King of Understatement. She looked like a comic-book villain whose face was melting off. Chloe shut the door and set her suitcase on the toilet, rifling through it for her toiletries case.
A couple of swipes of a makeup remover pad later, her cheeks were clear of black streaks, and her eyes were bare, if a little puffier than they had been this morning. She’d have liked to take all her makeup off and start again, but snotting all over Ben had been all the weakness she could handle. No way was she going to be bare-faced in front of him. She didn’t even start the makeup videos on her YouTube channel that way.
“Hurry up in there, Chloe. I’m starving!”
“Almost