Rum Punch Regrets by Anne Kemp Read Free Book Online Page B

Abby to the bar so she could give her a bottle of water and some wet rags to wash her face with. Abby nodded a quiet “thank you,” and plopped down sheepishly on a barstool.
    As if on cue, a food-runner came racing down the stairs from the kitchen to bring Ben his dinner and Abby her conch fritters. Miss C. intercepted them before the runner could put them on the bar in front of Abby, in the fear that she could have another episode. Instead, she found some crackers behind the bar and hurried around to place them in Abby’s sweaty hands so she could bring her tummy back under control.
    As Abby sat chewing the saltines and sipping her water, Ben grabbed his medium-rare cheeseburger and sat down on the barstool beside her. Abby glared at him over her water bottle.
    “I just threw up, you know.” She sounded harsh and didn’t care.
    “I’d have to be deaf to have not heard you.” Ben took a big bite of the juicy burger. It was dripping with blue cheese and had hunks of bacon on it as well. Abby thought she was going to be ill again. She found herself chewing her crackers harder.
    “Well, this is all going just as painfully as I had hoped,” Abby said as sarcastically as she could muster .
    Abby slid her frosty water bottle across her face in a sad effort to bring her body temperature down to a more normal degree. She could feel Ben’s eyes on her, taking in her every move.
    “Abby, this is going to be tough for both of us. I’ve been living alone for a long time, so for me to suddenly have a stranger in my home is just weird.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin, took another swig from his bottle and nodded to Miss C. that he was ready for another. “But I can’t afford to say no on many levels.”
    “Trust me, I understand. I can’t afford to go somewhere else. And it’s not like I can stay with Maria and Ziggy, since they have the maids’ quarters and it’s not like it’s the biggest of spaces either.” Abby chewed her crackers thoughtfully.
    Miss C. had shuffled over and was presenting another bottle of beer to Ben and a fresh bottle of water to Abby. She smiled at the two and patted them each on the head.
    “You two will get along jus’ fine. You’ll see.” She chuckled and went back to join Cutty and Ziggy in a card game at the bar.
    Abby and Ben sat in silence for a few minutes, the only other prevalent sounds being the slapping of cards as they hit the wooden bar or the lapping of the waves as they splashed the rocks beyond where they sat. This has to be what it feels like to be on a reality show and everywhere you turn people are playing tricks on you left and right, she thought. The underlying animosity from Ben would eventually go away, or so she hoped, but in the meantime, she had a lot to do to prove herself, since technically she was the invader.
    “I’m going home.” Ben finally broke her thoughts when he pushed back from the bar. “Well, we can go home. I can drive you.”
    Abby caught a glimpse of something new in Ben’s eyes. Not animosity or irritation, more of a thoughtful nervousness. Like he needed to impress or take care of her, maybe? That could be what this is all about, she thought. He may be freaked because I’m his landlord’s sister and he thinks I’m going to ruin something for him. Abby had been forgetting that even though Ben seemed mature and experienced, he was also a kid on his last leg of college and still in the process of learning about the world.
    Abby relaxed in her seat, letting her shoulders drop slightly, and could feel a small amount of weight coming off them. She knew her approach needed to be different, that she had to take her time and let him learn to trust her. But who knew how long that would take?
    Her thoughts were again broken by Ziggy’s loud cackle and the crash of an ashtray as it hit the cement floor. It seemed that Cutty had just lost his card game and was drunkenly stumbling home, flipping the bird over his shoulder to the group as they