The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

she sat on the edge of the vanity in the very poorly-lit bathroom at her house and watched me finish my look for the evening.

“Want some?” I offered, and put a tiny dab of clear gloss on her mouth when she nodded.  “Very nice.  In the winter, you might need it on again so your lips don’t chap.  The wind gets pretty chilly.”

Tessa watched me seriously and I started to feel a little guilty about saying she would need lip gloss and about her seeing all my prep work.  I put down the powder brush and turned to her.  “You know, you don’t have to wear makeup if you don’t want to,” I said seriously.  “You can look however you want.”  Then I swiped on more mascara.  Maybe that was true for some women, but I didn’t think it applied to my own life.  “I always wear a little something,” I admitted.  A lot something.

“Why?” she asked me, in her quiet way.

That made me pause.  “I just…I’m just used to it.  It’s important for my job.  And tonight, I’m going over to my mom’s house after your dad comes home, and she expects it from me.”

She picked up the fluffy brush and tickled her face with it.  “Why?” she asked again.

I didn’t have a good answer for her.  Because my mom always insisted that I show at my best, because makeup and hair and looks were what I was good at.  I put down the mascara, frowning.  “Actually, I’m done,” I decided.  “Want to play school?  I feel like your baby in the blue onesie didn’t really pay attention when we did the letter sounds last time.”  I had read up on the skills she’d need for kindergarten, and Tess and I were all over them when we played.

“She’s a bad baby sometimes,” Tessa agreed, and we set up the class in the living room.

We were still at it when Ben got home.  The moment Tessa heard his truck, her whole face lit up like the sun came out, and she raced out onto the porch.  When I arrived, she was hugging him and kissing his cheek, with both of them smiling.

“Hi, Gaby.”  His eyes moved from his daughter to briefly sweep over me.  “You look…”

“I got dressed up because I’m going to my mom’s house for dinner with my family,” I explained.  When I thought about it, Ben had never really seen me at my finest.  I had been over after practices, after working out at the high school, after going on runs, after taking a nap at the Woodsmen practice facility.  In other words, he had seen me at my worst, not my best.  And now, maybe he would think of me differently—not just a babysitter for his daughter, or a sweaty mess.  I thought he might see me as a desirable woman, and I realized that I wanted him too.

“Yeah, you look different,” Ben said.  “There’s a lot of stuff on your face.”

That hadn’t been the reaction I was expecting.  “Just makeup.  I put on a little.”  A lot.

“You don’t have to,” Tessa told him, and patted the cheek she’d been kissing.  “Only if you want.  It feels pretty tickly.”

“Does it, kitty cat?” he asked her.  “Like this?”  She squirmed and giggled as he tickled her ribs.

I watched them for a moment, smiling at how glad they were to see each other, before I remembered that I had to go.  “I’ll see you guys next week,” I said, and let myself out.  The door closed behind me and I looked at my—my brother’s—wrecked car.  I wished it were later, darker, so the damage wouldn’t be so obvious when I first pulled into my mom’s house.

The front door opened again behind me.  “Gaby, hold on,” Ben called, and I turned expectantly, waiting to hear what he wanted.  Maybe it was to say that he did like the way I’d cleaned up.  I found myself eager to hear it.

He jogged over to me and held out an envelope.  “It’s payday.”

“Oh, right.”  I shoved it into my purse.  “Thank you.”

“Dinner with your family, you said?  Is this going to be the first time that they’ll see what happened to the car?”

I nodded.  “Dinner with everyone, my mom and my brother and his family.  I can’t avoid going anymore and they’ll definitely see the damage.  I’ll probably hang with my nephew as much as I can, because he’s very…forgiving.”  He was only six but seemed to already grasp that no one was perfect, himself included.  For example, he had a terrible time with tying his shoes and while he said it didn’t bother him, I planned for us to work on that skill tonight if he wanted to.

“It was an accident,” Ben said.  “You didn’t mean to hit my truck, and you couldn’t have controlled where that woman was going to set another car on fire.”

I nodded, knowing that none of those things would really make a difference tonight.  “I hope Vanessa turns herself in soon,” I mentioned.  “It’s for the best that she takes some responsibility, and I can’t imagine that life on the lam from the police is very fun.”  Not to mention, it was scaring me to death, imagining she was out there somewhere hiding and hating the Woodsmen dancers.

“You don’t seem convinced,” he told me.  “Not that the cheerleader should give herself up, but that your family will be forgiving like your nephew.”

“Families can be tricky.”  He’d said the same thing to me before.  “They won’t be ok with this for a while.”  If ever.  “I’ve messed up a lot lately—maybe throughout my whole life, and I have a lot to make amends for.”

“Amends,” Ben repeated.  “What have you been doing that’s so bad besides parking in the wrong place?”

He had no idea.  What about losing my job and almost ruining a wonderful family because of my own selfish desires?  I swallowed.  “There’s a lot of history.  My brother and I have always been in competition, except