“How was your date with Lena?”
No reply.
“That good, huh? Oh well.”
“I can see you’re real cut up about it,” he said with a smile.
“Yeah. The pain goes deep. It’s really good to see you.”
He looked at me for a long moment. “Yeah, you too. Still, kinda pissed you came in here, though.”
What a silly statement. I gave him both brows up and Oh really in the eyes. Start out as you mean to go on and all that. Because at no stage would I be answering to the man for where I went and what I did. Trust and respect, etcetera.
He shrugged, unimpressed. “You didn’t like me going out with Lena. I didn’t like you coming here.”
“Both of these things are true,” I said, relenting just a little. “What are we going to do about them, though? That’s the question.”
“Hmm.” He grabbed hold of my hand, giving it a squeeze. “C’mon, I’ll drive you home.”
“I’d like that.”
Without another word he led me through the crowd, clearing the way with his body. In his plain jeans and plaid shirt, no one seemed to recognize him. In Portland, he was just one more bearded, tattooed dude among many. Attached to Ben, no one messed with me. I was neither bumped nor groped, thank god. Ah, togetherness. What a rare and beautiful thing. No wonder Anne was so wacky about Mal if this was how he made her feel. Walking beside Ben, my heart seemed so light I might hit my head on the ceiling.
“Later,” the very pierced bouncer said, opening the door to let us through.
“Thanks, Marc.”
Outside, the air was crisp, decidedly cool. I bundled myself up in my coat. Ben didn’t seem to have brought one. He just shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders. A beaten-up Chevy truck, from the ’80s at best, sat at the corner. It might once have been pale blue. With all the fading and the couple of spots of rust, it was hard to say.
“This is your ride?” I asked, surprised.
In lieu of a response, Ben unlocked the passenger side door, holding it open.
“Huh.”
I climbed up and in, sitting carefully on the cold, cracked vinyl seating. Cassettes spilled out of the glove box. Actual cassettes. “Stunned” kind of fit the situation. The man had money, lots of it.
He swung the door shut, then strode around to the driver’s side. Soon enough the engine was roaring to life with minimal splutter. Clearly the car was kept in good condition.
“Expecting a Porsche?” he asked.
“No. Just something slightly less older than me.”
He snorted.
We pulled out into the traffic, the low hum of some old Pearl Jam song playing. Cassettes. Christ.
“It belonged to my grandfather,” he said. “He taught me how to fix it, handed over the keys when I got my license.”
“Nice.”
He gave me side eyes.
“I mean it, Ben. I didn’t have much in the way of family myself. So I get that’s nice.”
A faint smile. “Yeah. We didn’t have a lot of money so … I thought so.”
The shadows of his face were frankly fascinating beneath the passing street lights, the sudden brightness of oncoming traffic, everything. He had perfect cheekbones. You could almost miss them above the beard, but the lines of his face were both sharp and beautiful. His lips, for instance. I could have stared at them for hours.
“Will you tell me about your home?” I asked.
“Not much to tell,” he said, eventually. “Mom and Dad owned a cleaning business so they were gone most of the time. They were real hard workers. The business was everything to ’em. My grandparents lived next door and they fed us and kept an eye on things.”
“Must have been wonderful to have them around. A stable influence like that can mean all the difference to a kid.”
“You diagnosing me or something, Miss Psychology Student?”
“No. Sorry.” I groaned. “Please continue. You mentioned an ‘us’?”
“Me and my sister.”
“You have a sister? What’s she like?”
He squinted, little lines appearing beside his eyes. “Martha’s … Martha. She’s living over in New York these days, enjoys the party scene.”
“That’s pretty far.” I couldn’t imagine being on the opposite side of the country from Anne, living without my last bit of real family close by. “You must miss her.”
“It’s probably for the best,” he said. “She caused some shit a while back. I didn’t help much either.”
I stayed silent, waiting for him to go on. People usually would feel compelled to fill a silence, you just had to be patient.
“Martha and David went out all through high school, and after, when the band started to take off. Then she did something stupid.” He shook his head. “So fucking dumb.”
“What did she do?”
He raised a brow. “You haven’t heard?”
“No.”
“Huh. Thought Ev might have talked about it.”
“I’ve only met her a couple of times.”
“Yeah, I guess.” His fingers tapped out a beat against the steering wheel. “Martha didn’t like Dave being away so much. We were working hard, touring when we weren’t recording. Thought she understood.…”
A fire engine roared past with sirens blazing, distracting us for a moment.
“We were finally getting somewhere, really starting to make it, playing to bigger crowds, and getting some decent publicity.” He exhaled noisily. “Anyway, she must have figured with him being on the road all the time that he had to be messing around on her. She got pissed one night and cheated on him.”
“Oh.”
“Guy couldn’t have been more crazy in love with her if he tried. Never even saw him look at another woman. They’d been so tight for years. I tried to tell her, but she got this stupid idea into her head, and … yeah.” His low laugh was bitter, horrible to hear. “She took something beautiful and shit on it. Everything went to hell after that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. Really thought they’d make it, get married, have kids and everything. Live the dream. She worked as an assistant for the band for a while, but when Dave and Ev got married she didn’t take it too well.”
“That’s when she moved?”
“That’s when she moved.” He said nothing for a moment. “Tried one last time to get him back, and I was stupid enough to help. It didn’t turn out so well. Things were tense between me and Dave for a while, and it wasn’t good for the band.”
“I’m sorry.” I took a big breath, choosing my words with care. This had obviously hurt him. It was in the tone of his voice, the shadows on his face. Also, I didn’t want to treat him like a patient or a subject. He mattered to me much deeper than that.
“It seems you guys are closer to brothers than friends, even though he and your sister didn’t wind up staying together,” I said. “But I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of it. That must have been hard.”
“Yeah. Don’t know why I’m telling you all this.” He gave me a look out of the corner of his eye. “You’re too easy to talk to, you know?”
I smiled. “So are you.”
“You haven’t told me anything yet.”
“Ah, all right.” I rubbed my palms against the sides of my jeans, warming them up. What to tell him? His honesty and openness meant I could give him no less. Might as well just lay it all out. “My parents divorced when I was fourteen. It messed me up for a while. But Anne helped me get back on track, helped me graduate and get into college.”
“Pretty good sister.”
“She’s an amazing sister.”
His gaze switched back and forth between me and the road. “You work hard too, though.”
“Yes. But college is expensive and she sacrificed a lot to get me there, so she deserves the bulk of the credit.”
“Sounds like you both hauled ass to get out of a bad situation.”
“Hmm.” I rested my head against the back of the car seat. The man was far too easy to talk to. I liked it. “That’s it really. I work part time at the same bookstore as Anne.”
He half smiled, and sadly even that made me giddy. God, he was beautiful. I never wanted this car ride to end. We could drive to Wisconsin for all I cared. Just point the hood east and keep going until we ran out of gas.
“Messed you up in what way?” he asked.
That stopped the happy. “Not a topic I like to talk about.”
He just waited, drawing me out, playing me at my own game. Sneaky.
“I hung out with some losers. Drank, did drugs. Speed and pot, nothing too hard-core. I ditched school and did things I shouldn’t have. Dangerous things. Dated the wrong guy for a while.” My fingernails dug into me through the fabric of my jeans. All of those memories were ugly. I’d been so young and idiotic. “Then I got busted stealing. The guy who owned the shop kept saying he was going to call the police, but Anne managed to talk him out of it. That scared the shit out of me. Plus, seeing how upset Anne got about it. It finally got through to me that I wasn’t the only one hurting. I stopped sneaking out at night and messing around, started going to school again. I was just so angry that they couldn’t keep their shit together and be like a normal mom and dad.”
“I bet.”
“Though what even is normal? Seems like everyone’s parents are divorced these days.”
“Yeah. Just about.”
“Doesn’t make for much of an example, does it?”