“I do,” he informed me.

“Why?” I asked.

He leaned slightly into me and I tensed because Benny close was bad. Benny very close was very bad.

“Tell me this, cara,” he started. “Why does a woman ask ‘why’ about shit a man does? I’m not askin’ just to ask. I honestly wanna know the answer to that. He does what he does. If it doesn’t hurt anybody, why does there have to be a ‘why?’”

It was more than a little annoying that he had a point.

“We want to understand you,” I explained.

“Half the shit any woman I know does I do not get. Not even a little bit. And I do not care that I don’t get it. She does what she does. She doesn’t get in my face doin’ it, who gives a f**k?”

“So you’re sayin’ you don’t give a f**k about how women think?” I asked.

“I’m sayin’ I don’t need to know how you think,” he replied.

“Is this why you’re thirty-five and single?” I went on snottily.

“No,” he returned immediately. “I’m thirty-five and single because I am not gonna settle for somethin’ that doesn’t feel right, doesn’t feel good, doesn’t bring me joy, doesn’t have my back, doesn’t know how to cook, keep house, listen, laugh, make me laugh, give great head, or ask me why I do shit.”

“I’m not sure that woman exists,” I shared, and something changed in his eyes that I could probably read if I tried. But I didn’t try.

“I’ll find her,” he replied.

“I’m thinkin’ you won’t,” I told him, no longer being a bitch. I really didn’t think he would. The giving-great-head part especially. It was my experience, both personally and anecdotally, that most women found that a chore. It had to be done occasionally, but you went through the motions to do it.

He leaned in even closer. “Then I’ll train her.”

I felt my eyes get squinty. “We’re not dogs, Ben.”

“A woman gets in a relationship, you’re tellin’ me she doesn’t do her thing to train her man?” he shot back.

She did. Absolutely. She started building her lesson plans the day after a first good date.

On that thought, I decided a change in subject was in order so I brought us back to priority one.

“So you fixed your TV. Why were you still in bed with me?”

“You felt good. I like you close. And when you aren’t sawin’ logs, you’re makin’ cute little noises, like little whimpers, that I like hearin’ nearly as much as I like you close.”

Suddenly, we were catapulted into dangerous territory, and that dangerous territory was that what he said was making me feel warm inside.

“Benny,” I whispered, but said no more.

Benny didn’t need me to. He had plenty to say.

“Seven years, f**ked around. I knew. I figure you knew. Told you before I left, not f**kin’ around anymore. Playin’ it straight. You asked, I gave it to you straight.”

I decided not to ask Benny Bianchi another question in my life, which meant I fell silent.

Benny held my silence for long moments before he asked, “You hungry?”

I was, so I said, “Yep.”

His eyes changed again, they grew warm with concern, and he went on quietly, “You got pain?”

I absolutely did.

I didn’t answer verbally. I nodded.

The skin around his mouth tightened momentarily before he muttered, “Right.”

Then he moved. Carefully extricating his arm from under me, he rolled off the bed and immediately shoved his hand in his back pocket. He pulled his phone out, then nabbed the remote from the nightstand and shoved it in his pocket, taking away any further opportunities of TV revenge.

Since he did this, he clearly didn’t know I considered the first try spectacularly unsuccessful. I wasn’t all that smart, but I was smart enough not to repeat an ineffective maneuver.

He started walking toward the door with his thumb moving over the screen of his phone.

He was out the door when I heard him say, “Man? That pie I made? Put it in the oven and have someone bring it over when it’s done. Breadsticks. Salad. Yeah?”

I heard no more as I figured either Manny agreed to what his big brother ordered and/or Benny was going down the stairs.

I moved a hand to rest just above the bandages at my midriff and stared at the ceiling.

I wanted to think about the fact that I was soon going to experience a pizza pie created at the hands of Benny Bianchi. This thought was too titillating, so I couldn’t think of it and opened my mind to find something else to think about.

Seeing as I was lying in Benny’s bed, where my mind took me was to the fact that, growing up, the Bianchis went to the same church as my family. I used to watch them, even as a little girl. All six of them.

I watched them because I liked what I saw.

Ma, being a crazy, rowdy, trouble-making, fun-loving, adventure-seeking slut (the last part was not nice, but it was true and she’d say the same damn thing with crazy, rowdy, fun-loving, pride), weirdly did not miss church on Sunday.

“Gotta wash away the sin, my precious girl, so you can sin again,” she’d tell me frequently on a flashy smile.

Watching the Bianchis, and having years to do it, truth be told I’d had my eye on Ben way before I even thought about Vinnie. Vinnie was five years older than me, so back in the day, he was out of my league.

Ben was not. He was one year older than me. I went to school with him and every girl in school had their eye on Benito Bianchi.

Way back then, Ma had her eye on Benny too. For me. She used to don a tube top and a pair of short shorts, put hot rollers in her hair, tease it out to extremes, spray it so it barely moved (in other words, her normal routine), and then drag my ass to his baseball games.

Even though Benny was not hard to look at, and back then (and now) he had that thing—that thing the cool boys had which set them apart and made you want them so much it was like an ache—I avoided Ma’s many and varied plans to throw me in his path.

This was because he played the field, even in high school, and I wasn’t talking about baseball. Stealing bases in all the ways that could be implied was definitely a specialty of Benny’s. By his junior year, he’d gone through all the available, easy girls in our school and had started to concentrate on casting lures more widely.

Even in high school, I knew I didn’t want to get involved with a boy like that, no matter how cute he was. No matter that he had that thing. No matter that I’d secretly watch him and wish so hard he had that thing in a one-girl type of way (instead of an any-girl-who-would-give-it-up type of way) and ache for him to be mine.