The Purity of Blood: Volume I (47 page)

Ben
was
very good looking, that was for
sure.
 
He had that tall, athletic build
and strong broad shoulders I found so attractive.
 
I watched him for a few minutes as he turned
the pages of the book, pausing occasionally to make a note on a scrap of
paper.
 
He had a thick head of wavy brown
hair that looked soft and made me wonder how it would feel if I ran my fingers
through it.
 
Even under the harsh
florescent lights of the library his skin had an unnaturally healthy glow to it.
 

Why
didn’t
he have a girlfriend, I
wondered.
 
Suddenly he put his book down
and reached for his bottle of water.
 
Not
wanting to be caught staring, I quickly averted my gaze.
 

He got up and
walked around the table to take a minute and look out the window at the view of
Mount Mohonk.
 
After stretching out his
arms, he turned around to peer over my shoulder at the images on the screen.

“I like that
one,” he said as he pointed to a painting on the screen.
 
“She has nice lips.
 
They’re like yours.”

“Mine?” I
scoffed.

“Yes, they’re
not too thin or too full, they’re just right.”

I blushed, relieved that he was still standing behind me and
couldn’t see my now crimson cheeks.
  
Then without a word, he circled around back to his chair, took out his
notebook and started scribbling down some more notes.

After another hour had passed
we’d outlined most of the paper and had made good progress.
 
Time passed but working in comfortable
silence together, neither of us seemed in much of a hurry to get up and leave.

An hour or so
later, I was working on finalizing the list of pictures we would reference in
our paper.
 
I kept coming back to The
Kiss, one of Klimt’s most famous works.
 
I kind of didn’t want to use it because it was so expected, but it
really was enticing.
 

As I stared at
it, I thought of Daniel.
 
The couple in
the work were intertwined in an intimate embrace, and part of me couldn’t help
but wonder if Daniel would ever hold me like that again.
 

I hated to admit
it, but things between us had happened so quickly, and in the past few days
they seemed to be falling apart just as fast.
 
There had always been a passion in his voice before, a longing that I
could hear in its undercurrents.
 
Now on
the phone it was flat.
 
He said he would
get home as quickly as possible, but it didn’t seem like he was trying that
hard in my opinion.
 
He must have lost
interest in me was all I could think.
 
I’d always known it was going to happen sooner or later, but I’d buried
those thoughts deeper and deeper every time I’d looked into his eyes.
 
Could it really be coming to an end so
soon?
  

Suddenly as the
tears began to whelm up in my eyes, I got up and hastily walked down and around
the hallway to escape Ben’s line of sight.
 
Making a sharp turn to avoid one of the librarians, I ducked into one of
the private study rooms.
 
The small
soundproof room was a glorified closet really with a small built in desk and a
chair.
 
I sat down on top of the desk,
and pulling my knees to my chest, started to cry.
 
I wasn’t really a crier so my sudden
emotional outburst took me completely by surprise.
 
I balled myself up into a corner on top of
the desk, but as hard as I tried the tears wouldn’t stop flowing.
 

I don’t know how
long I’d been in there when I heard a quiet tap on the door.
 
When I didn’t respond, I looked up to see
Ben’s face as he peaked inside.

“I wondered
where you ran off too.
 
Are you alright?”
he asked tenderly.

“Oh, yeah, I’m
fine.
 
I always cry in the library.”
 
I tried to smile but a sob came out instead.

He stepped in
and quietly closed the door behind him.
 
Swinging my feet over the edge of the desk, I took a deep breath and
tried to pull myself together.
 
I wiped
my eyes, but it didn’t do much good.
 
The
tears wouldn’t stop.
 

“It’s him, isn’t
it?” he said softly.
 

Before I
realized what I was doing, I leaned forward and buried my head in Ben’s chest,
and as he put his arms around me, I lost it.
 
He didn’t try to stop me, but gently began to rock me back and forth in
his strong arms.
 

After a while
when I must have cried myself out, he finally let go.

“I must look
terrible,” I muttered, sure that my eyes were horribly swollen and red.

“Impossible,”
was all he said in reply as he opened the door for me and we started back towards
the table.
 
“I think we have a good
start.
 
Let’s say we pack it in for the
day.”
 

I agreed.
 
I needed some fresh air.

Walking out the
front doors of the library, I found myself thinking what a decent man Ben truly
was.
 
He really had every right to say I
told you so.
 
He’d warned me about
Daniel, that he would only break my heart, but he never said a word.
 

Ben was nearly
perfect as far as I could tell.
 
I mean I
knew he wasn’t, who is?
 
But he seemed
pretty close in my opinion.
 
His only
main fault that I could tell was ironically the same as Daniel’s.
 
He was secretive.
 

The day she’d
found out about Daniel and I, Tabitha had told me men aren’t like women,
especially when it comes to relationships; that they don’t feel a need to share
things.
 
But to me, there was a
difference between not sharing and keeping secrets, and both men were guilty of
this sin in my opinion.
 

Daniel thought
he was protecting me with his secrets.
 
Was this excusable?
 
I didn’t have
enough experience with men to say with any certainty.
 
Of course, Ben was only a friend, we weren’t
in a relationship.
 
He was under no
obligation to share things with me that he didn’t want to.
 

I was quiet on
the walk back and when we got to the front of Capen Hall he stopped.
 

“So what are you
going to do for the rest of the day?” he asked.

“I don’t
know.
 
Call Tabitha I guess and see what
she’s up to.”

“I think she
went to Poughkeepsie with Mike to go to the mall for the afternoon.”

“Oh, then
probably not much.”
 

I watched as the
breeze blew some leaves in a circle at my feet.

After a moment
he said “Well, I’ve got nothing planned.
 
How about you go drop your books off, put your hiking boots on and meet
me out back in say fifteen minutes?
 
I’ve
got something I’d like to show you and it will get us out of town for a few
hours.
 
What do you say?”

“Sure,” I said for lack of a better answer.

Fifteen minutes later I walked
out the back door just as an old mustang convertible sporting faded red pain
pulled up in front of me with Ben in the driver’s seat.
 
We drove through town and up County Road
Seven off in the direction of Kingston.
 
Shortly after passing a sign for High Falls, in what seemed like the
middle of nowhere, he pulled off to the side of the road and parked the car.

“We’re here?” I
asked.

He nodded
yes.
 
“You’ll see,” he said with a smile.

Trusting he knew
what he was doing, I got out of the car when he opened the door for me and
followed him up the embankment into the woods.
 
Just out of sight from the road, we came across a huge cave like opening
rising out of the hillside.
 
It had large
stone pillars holding up the ceiling and a small lake at the base that looked
like part of a set from some old 1970’s caveman movie.
 

“What is this
place?” I asked, as I heard my voice echo down towards the lake below.

“It used to be a
mine.
 
They did a lot of mining in these
hills years ago.
 
There’s a bunch of
caves and old mineshafts scattered throughout these woods.”

We made our way
carefully down the rocky floor of the manmade cave towards the perfectly still,
black waters of the lake.
 
When we
finally navigated our way down to the water’s edge, we stopped to throw stones
in while we tried to guess how deep it was.
 
Of course calling it a lake was a bit of a stretch.
 
It was really more of a glorified pond.

“I’ll bring you
back in January when it’s frozen.
 
You
can walk out on it then,” he said as he threw the last stone and smiled my way.

Then we started
up the hill at the outer edge of the cave.
 
It was steep, and as we made our way, Ben kept glancing over his
shoulder; presumably to make sure I was still there.
 
We curved around to the left as we walked up
to the top edge of the mouth of the cave and looked down the vertical drop at
the view below.
 
Through the canopy of
leaves in front of us, I could just make out his red car off in the distance.

“How did you
find this place?”

“One day I was
driving by and spotted it.
 
It’s easier
to see from the road when the leaves are all off the trees.”

Then we hiked
farther back into the woods and spent a few hours exploring a few more caves
and relics of old mining equipment from the distant past.
 
It was chilly out today.
 
The sun was shining, but the persistent chill
in the air made me think it wouldn’t go away until we were well into
spring.
 

I liked getting
away from the dorm and campus, especially to a place where memories of Daniel
didn’t fall thick at my feet.
 
NPU always
had a buzz about it, constant voices and sounds that seemed to echo like our
voices in the cave.
 
As we walked through
the woods, I could hear no voices or sounds of modern life, just the reassuring
silence found in the wind, the crunching of the leaves beneath our feet and the
sound of my steady breathing.
 

Ben was right;
this had been a good idea.
 
Did it take
my mind off Daniel?
 
No, I couldn’t help
but think of our hike together, the day I fell.
 
That had been the day everything had changed for me, the day I began to
develop a different kind of feeling for him.
 
Walking along behind Ben, I couldn’t help but wonder what would have
happened if I’d said no and gone hiking alone as I’d originally planned.
 
These thoughts were agony.
 
I loved Daniel, loved him heart and
soul.
 
Even if he had finally decided
that I was only a temporary thing to be discarded for the woman with the high
pitched laughter, I don’t think I’d have changed a thing.

I must be crazy
for thinking that I’d rather have this pain than to never have loved.
 
I knew even this was folly because I would
always love him.
 
Love would never be
used in the past tense when it came to my feelings for Daniel.

I tried to focus
on Ben and shoved Daniel to the back of my mind.
 
We talked a little about our project and the
odds of us being paired up together.
 
It
didn’t take long for me to begin to feel better.
 
Ben’s steady calmness had an almost analgesic
effect on me.
 

After a couple of
hours of wandering the surrounding hills, we turned around and started
back.
 
When we got to the cave, we
climbed the hill that led to the top of the cave entrance and sat down on the
top rim with our feet dangling over the edge.

“You seem better
now,” he said, staring straight ahead.

“You mean
compared to the person who lost it in the library?”
 
I tried to make a joke of it, but it wasn’t
really working.

He didn’t reply,
but just kind of smiled.
 
After a minute
of what looked like interior debate on his face he said “Just tell me one
thing.
 
Tell me he never … that he never
laid a hand on you.
 
I swear to God, if
he ever touched you …”
 
I could see the
angry tension he was holding in his body.

“No, nothing
like that.
 
He’s always been a perfect
gentleman,” I interjected quietly.

“Perfect, my –”

“I think that’s
quite enough,” I said cutting him off.
 

We both sat
there for a while in silence watching the birds dart from tree to tree in front
of us.
  
The birds looked so carefree, as
if they hadn’t a bother or a care in the world.
 
Something about the way they fluttered about made me remember part of a
sermon I’d heard in church last summer.
 
Something along the lines of
Consider
the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your
heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
 
I think it was from the book of Matthew if I
recalled correctly.
 
Perhaps God was
trying to tell me that I needed to put my faith in him.
 
He’d work everything out in a way that seemed
best to him.
 
After all, I hoped I was
more valuable to him than one of these birds.