I stifled a smile. “Please don’t.” We might not stop.
“They don’t appeal to you?” he said, pointing at his lips.
“I didn’t say that. Just…it’s a weird time for me.”
“If you hadn’t met Cyrus, would you still be unsure?”
His question took me off guard, and he watched my hesitation with waning hope.
“Yes.”
“What is it about me that gives you pause?” he asked before drinking the rest of his second cup. For a quiet mama’s boy, he sure could drink like a frat boy.
I took another sip. “I don’t know why you’re interested in me, for one. We don’t really”—I pointed back and forth between the two of us—“make sense.”
“Who says?”
“Me.”
“You’re wrong. We make perfect sense.”
“The White Stripes tee and the yellow oxford. Yeah, makes perfect sense,” I said before taking another drink. Somehow, in my nervousness, I’d managed to drink the entire cup of beer.
“Want another, or are you done?” he asked.
“No, I’m definitely not done. We came to party, didn’t we?”
“That we did.” Benji left and then came back with three more cups filled to the brim. He was already half finished with his third.
“I will not be outdrank by an oxford shirt,” I said before taking several gulps.
“Whoa, there. Slow down. I don’t want to be blamed if you don’t make it back to work.”
“Do I seem like the kind of girl who makes everything everyone else’s fault?”
“No. No, you do not.”
We both drank to that.
“Where were we?” I asked, feeling pretty good. “Oh, yeah. Our shirts don’t go together.”
“It’s not the outside, Rory. I mean, you’re obviously beautiful and unorthodox. I wear button-ups and get nosebleeds, but it’s the inside where we make sense.”
“What inside? I haven’t been nice to you, Benji.”
“I’m talking about the inside that is nice to me. The girl who tells me where freshman orientation is on the first day. The girl who let me sit next to her in class even though she wanted to be left alone. The girl who pushes everyone aside so that she can help me stop a nosebleed. The girl who walks me home after said nosebleed. The girl who let me hold her. The girl who asked me to this party. The girl who is going to at least try to give me a chance. And more importantly, the girl who had something so awful happen to her that it changed her life, but she didn’t use it as an excuse to fail.”
“I caused that nosebleed,” I said, intentionally ignoring his last comment.
“You could have walked right past me. Some people would have.”
I stared at him. His brown eyes were sleepy but happy, and he looked so in love with me.
I put my elbow on my knee and let my cheek rest on my fist. “You’re kind of cute when you’re buzzed.”
Benji leaned forward, put the half-empty cup and the full cup on the coffee table, and then rested his elbows on his knees. “May I kiss you?”
“No,” I said, “but you can get me another beer.”
He looked down, surprised. “Already?”
I took the cup he had on standby. “Let’s play a game. We ask the other a question. If you refuse to answer, you drink.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
I took a drink and winked at him over the cup.
“Okay, I’ll start,” Benji said. “What’s your middle name?”
“Ann. Boring, right? What’s yours?” Benji started to drink, but I grabbed his wrist. “No way! That’s an easy one! C’mon.”
“My middle name is Benjamin.”
“So, what’s your first name?”
“It’s my turn.”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”
“What’s your favorite flower?”
I laughed. “I don’t know!”
“Drink!”
“No, wait. I like those globe amaranths. They’re beautiful and vicious.”
“Like you,” Benji said with a mischievous grin.
“So, what’s your first name?” I asked.
“Aw, man!” Benji groaned. He started to take a drink and then changed his mind. “It’s Franklin.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Your name is Franklin Benjamin? Your mom is mean!”
We both laughed hysterically. Two cups of beer and twenty-seven questions later, we were both asking questions we would normally be too embarrassed to ask.
“Are you a virgin?” I asked.
Benji nearly spit out the beer he’d just drunk. “Seriously?”
“Yes. That’s my question. Answer or drink!”
He leaned in. “Do I kiss like a virgin?”
I leaned in, too. “You can’t answer a question with a question.”
“No,” he said simply. “Are you?”
I shook my head but drank anyway. “Did you have a good childhood?”
“I did. My parents are great. Maybe a little overbearing, but they mean well. I’m really close with my dad.”
I smiled. “That’s great.”
“Why aren’t you close with yours?” he asked.
I touched the rim of the cup to my lips, seriously thinking about telling Benji everything, but then I tilted my head back and let the amber liquid slide down my throat. “Why do you hate Bobby Peck?”
Benji narrowed his eyes. “Remember when you asked me if I was a virgin?”
I nodded. “Oh no, you lost your virginity to Bobby Peck?”
Benji threw his head back and laughed. “No!” He chuckled again. “No. He caused a fight between her and me. She dumped me, and now she’s with—”
“Bobby Peck? No way.”
“Way. I guess I shouldn’t be mad at him. He clearly did me a favor.”
I smiled at him. “Who’s going to drive me back to work?”
“That’s,” Benji said, pointing at me with the same hand his cup was in, “a very good question. Not you and not me and not just because I don’t want you to go back with him. I want you to stay here with me. Do you know how maddening it is to know you like him and that you spend hours with him every night?”
I just shook my head.
“It is. Sometimes, I feel like I’m going to go out of my mind and just storm in there and steal you away.”