He’s not there.
I’m not all that surprised, but I really was hoping that a ten-year-old boy had found his way through the snow, the cold, and the wind, to end up here and wait for me while reading Lord of the Flies.
Silly me, thinking that something could turn out right, when luck’s never on my side no matter what I do. I didn’t even manage to get Benedict to love me, even though he doesn’t have all that many options for miles and miles around. He looks at me like I’m not all human, like I’m beyond him. When our hands touch at the table, he jolts. Does he not think I’m real? Sometimes when he has more to drink than he ought to with Cole, I feel like he looks at me differently. There’s something darker in his eyes. I’ve hoped it was lust, but all he’s ever done is kiss my neck in July on his birthday. We had a bit to drink at lunch to celebrate. I was a bit tipsy. I was sitting by the lake, wrapped in my bath towel, because I knew Clifford couldn’t be far off, watching me. Benedict was sitting next to me. We didn’t say anything for a minute, and just being with him was enough while the kid was yelling since Cole had splashed cold water on him. As I was hoping that Cole would end up falling into the lake and drowning, Benedict leaned over and planted a kiss on my neck. It was a stolen kiss, like a teenager’s, but a kiss that must have burned him because he jumped down to the water, pulled off his T-shirt and pants, and dived in so fast, all I saw was his back and that skin that was so pasty, considering that he was an outdoorsman.
Now that I’ve lost the kid, there’s no chance of other kisses, other touches here and there, unless it’s so he can choke me—not that I’d blame him for it.