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

Tessa got out of the cab and she attached her arms around his neck, legs clutching his body.  After one last look at myself in Marley’s mirror, checking my hair and face carefully, I went downstairs, into the kitchen where I could already hear Hallie meeting Ben in the other room and welcoming him to Michigan.  Instead of joining them, I busied myself with arranging a tray of dips and chips and veggies.  I moved the carrots into an organized stack, one by one, still listening to everyone in the living room.  I was working on the celery when Ben and Tessa walked in.  He stopped dead when he spotted me, but she wriggled out of his arms and ran over.

“Gaby!”  She threw herself on my legs and I scooped her into my arms.

“Hi, kitty cat!  I’m happy to see you again.”  I looked up at her dad.  “Hi, Ben.”

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” he greeted me.

I felt a little heat in my cheeks.  Was he saying he wouldn’t have come or something?  “Hallie, Gunnar’s wife, is my best friend,” I explained.

“But there are players here, too.  Will the Woodsmen cheer coaches—”

I rushed over to him, Tessa in my arms.  “Shh!  No one here knows that I’m trying out for the squad.  It’s…a surprise,” I finished lamely.  “I don’t think one friendly dinner will matter, not when I’m not even officially on the team.  Please don’t say anything about cheerleading tonight.”

He nodded slowly, and Tessa reached for him, one arm around his neck and one around mine.  I lurched forward a little, bumping against his hard chest.

“Sorry!  Sorry.”  I stepped back, away from his body.  It had been like running into a stone wall.  “Tess, come with me and we’ll meet some of the other kids.”  She looked very apprehensive, but did slide down to take my hand, and she let me lead her toward the Woodsmen center and his family.  I knew them from prior nights over here, and they were all great.  They were very prepared for an evening out with kids and already had a ton of crayons and a stack of papers ready for their girls to draw on.

I sat on the deck with Tess on my lap to join them.  It wasn’t long before two of the Uchida girls were talking to her, and she was nodding back, and then they colored together.  I eased her off me and stood, watching them.

“You’re not on the clock.”

I turned so fast that my hair flew out in a circle around me, and Ben was close enough that it caught him in the face.  He cleared the strands from his mouth.  “Oh, gravy!  Yuck.”  I smoothed it back down.  “Sorry about that.”

“That was on me.  I was trying to tell you that you don’t have to watch her.  Have fun tonight.”

“I am.  I like being with Tessa,” I explained.  “I really want her to make friends with the other kids.”  I tilted my head when his forehead crinkled.  “Do you mind that?”

“No, of course I want her to make friends.”  He watched his daughter for a moment.  “She talks about you all the time,” he mentioned.  “Gaby and I did this, Gaby said that.  You’ve made yourself a presence in her life.”

“Oh.”  I thought I understood.  “You think I’m a bad influence.”

“Not at all.  Why would I think that?  But I worry, sometimes, about her getting so close to you.  You’ll be moving on soon enough to go back to real estate and do your cheerleading for the team, and she’ll miss you a lot.  She’s had a lot of losses in her life already.”

“Daddy!”  Tessa held up her paper and Ben smiled at her.

“Very nice.  Is that our old house?” he called, and she nodded and went back to work.

“No matter what I do next, I wouldn’t just ditch her or something,” I told him.  “I don’t think I’m the kind of person who hurts other people…”  I swallowed.  Wasn’t I?  “I wouldn’t do that to Tessa.”

“Good.”  He nodded at me.  “I’m going to get her some dinner.  Do you want anything?”

“I already ate,” I said, the same lie I’d told my whole life when it came to mealtimes.  I watched him as he got food for both of them, then, as the night went on, I watched as he talked to the players, and to Hallie, and to Danielle, Freddy’s girlfriend, and to everyone else but me.  I couldn’t seem to stop myself from watching, even when I was talking to other people too, or cooing at Davis Blake’s new baby, or even when Marley came back and told me that the dinner with Cavin had been nothing and it was fine and to leave her alone.  But she had a very big smile as she said those things and she hugged me.

I smiled my way through the night, too, despite a headache that was growing behind my temples—probably from the anxiety I felt every time I saw someone’s phone out and from the constant loop in my mind telling me that I was breaking a cardinal cheerleader rule by being here with Woodsmen players.  And the steak smelled so, so good, as did the baked potatoes, and the chocolate cupcakes that Gunnar carried out later looked delicious, making my stomach ache to be filled up when I knew that I couldn’t do it.

I sat on the steps that led down to the path to the beach in order to separate myself from the dessert platters, and I shivered some in the brisk wind coming off the water.  If I twisted a little, I could still see Ben as he talked to Davis and his wife, and I saw the three of them laugh at something.  He turned every few seconds to check on Tessa, who was curled up in a pile of blankets with her new friends.  She still wasn’t saying a lot, but she was listening hard as they chattered.

Then Ben caught my