I stand there, just staring at the two of them for so long that my legs start to go numb below me.
Ben must be feeling it too by the way he finally starts to shuffle his feet a little beneath him, shifting Elizabeth in his arms, pulling her closer to his chest.
Ben cuts his eyes over at me below his mess of curls and then quickly averts his eyes again, staring intently back down at the baby in his arms.
It's at this exact moment that I realize I am in fact just standing in this man's living room staring at him and my niece while I'm wearing nothing but my jeans and bra.
"Oh shit." I curse, quietly, but urgently.
I spin around, covering myself as I search for where I had discarded my shirt. I find it on the floor and quickly yank it back over my head and pull it down over my body.
My cheeks are fire hot and I can't turn back around and face him. It was one thing when there was the chaos of Elizabeth screaming and the urgency to calm her, but now that she's snoozing hard, being half naked in front of Ben just feels wrong.
It's not like I'm a prude or anything, and really, my bra covers more than my bikini tops usually do, but still. It's too intimate. Not only because he's the father of my sister's baby, but because he doesn't know I already know who he is.
I stare at the wall in front of me, searching for something to say. My eyes catch on a picture in one of those large frames that holds like a dozen photos at once.
I step in closer, leaning over the couch to get a better look.
"You've been sky diving?" I ask, lightly touching the dusty glass covering with my finger tips.
He laughs a little. "Yeah, it was the most exhilarating thing I've ever done." He says. "Have you ever been?"
I turn around to scrutinize his face. "Of course not." I shake my head quickly. "As if being up in a metal man made flying death trap up in the air isn't bad enough, you actually willingly chose to just jump out of it?"
He furrows his brows at me. "It was fun." He shrugs one shoulder lightly. "I take it you're not a fan of flying then."
I scrunch my face. "I just don't trust it." I say, sitting down on the edge of the couch. "So many things can go wrong. The whole thing is barely held together by, again, man made things, that all have to work exactly right or the entire thing just falls out of the sky." I explain. "But I guess you wouldn't care since you apparently like falling."
"It doesn't even feel like falling." He says. "Seriously, it's like, you step out and it just feels like wind blowing in your face. You only free fall for a short amount of time anyway. Then once they pull the parachute you are just gliding and can see for miles and the place I went there was this river and mountains and I swear to god I've never been so in awe of just seeing land than I was then."
"What if your parachute didn't open?" I ask. "Or what if it does open, but there is a hole in it, then you're just free falling the entire time knowing you're about to eat dirt and die right there. Like you're just waiting for the moment you slam into the ground."
"Well." He says seriously. "My parachute did in fact open. Without holes." He laughs a little. "I actually got to watch the instructor I jumped with fold up our parachute and pack it into the bag. The wild thing is, this man had on no shoes." He laughs a little more. "Just walking around on the plane barefoot and strapping us in. If there is anyone I trust to jump with it is a man so confident in what he's doing that he's doing it all barefoot."
"See, to me, that would be a sign that the man is obviously unhinged." I point out. "Who jumps out of a plane barefoot? What if y'all landed somewhere with rocks or something and his feet and ankles just get gashed open and he just bleeds out. That sounds like poor planning to me."
