A Life More Complete

---Chapter 33---

Ben and I drive back in a quiet stillness that is somehow calming. I’m not sure how to approach the subject of where he’ll be staying. We’ve spoken very little about his plans to return to California. I suddenly feel guilty that I’m allowing Ben to be this intimate with me while Tyler isn’t present. I should feel guilty, I guess. I held his hand, he kissed my head, he held me while I cried. It’s far more intimate than I’ve been with Tyler in months.

“Hey Ben? You have somewhere to stay?” I ask casually.

“I was just planning to stay at the hotel you and your sisters are staying at. I hope that’s okay. I didn’t book a return flight. I thought you’d want some company on the way back.”

“Sure. The hotel’s in the same parking lot with the Cracker Barrel. Can you imagine? The pregnant lady and a plate full of dumplings just a few steps away? It’s been glorious.” I never told Ben that I’m pregnant, so I slip it into the conversation knowing full well that Bob did the deed for me. I let him. He loves gossip and all things scandalous. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Ben, so I let Bob do the unloading. I gloss over the fact that I’m pregnant because dealing with the actuality of what I’m thinking is too much.

“I imagine so. You look good. Pregnancy agrees with you. You okay with me catching a flight home with you? Given there are seats,” he asks again this time with a bit more hesitation.

“Sure,” I answer again, pausing. “Thanks for coming. This really means a lot to me.”

“No problem. I know the death of a parent is hard regardless of your relationship with them.”

The car falls silent again for a few seconds before my need to make conversation takes over. “Do you want to see where I grew up? The town is quite beautiful. Tons of history, beautiful old homes, a river? What do you say?”

“Why not. I don’t have much else planned.”

The night is cool, yet comfortable. The May weather had taken a turn for the better after the wake and the chronic misty mornings had given way to cool, calm night.

We head up Franklin Street to Centennial Beach. It looks entirely different since I left home. The beach still the same as we look through the tall chain link fence. The grounds beautifully landscaped with walking paths and a new stone entryway.

“This is where Gia and I spent our summers,” I tell him, smiling at the memory. “Her parents would buy us all season passes and we’d swim from the time it opened until it closed. When we got older, Gia and I would smoke pot in the back of the parking lot near the ball fields. The best part about living here is that everything is within walking distance. I probably would have left home earlier than eighteen if I had been trapped in a suburb that wasn’t so accessible.”

Ben smiles at me but says very little. We walk along to Washington Street and decide to take a ghost tour that’s beginning near the military statue at the entrance to Central Park. As goose bumps begin to dot my skin, Ben slips off his suit jacket and drapes it over my shoulders. The tour lasts far too long and my feet begin to throb from walking in my heels.

Both of us are starving after hoofing it through downtown Naperville for the last three hours and I settle on Lou Malnati’s. We sit down in the bustling restaurant and like everything in downtown Naperville it’s packed. I order the pizza and know my growling stomach will barely handle the hour long wait for a deep dish and I’m being conservative considering the quantity of people currently jammed into this place. The conversation is easy and we begin to talk about nearly everything.

“Thanks for taking me around. It’s really great to see where you grew up. The town is really quite stunning. I have to say, listening to you talk about it, I’m surprised you left.”

“I love all the old homes and their character, but you met my mother. You’d really think I could’ve stayed? I couldn’t get far enough away. When I left for college there was nothing here for me. Gia was leaving for college, Tyler and I had broken up, Tom and my mom were in the process of a divorce. All I had were my sisters and at that time our relationship was anything but loving.” Changing the subject I ask about work. “How’s Annalise’s baby?”

“Adorable, obviously. Annalise is obsessed. I don’t think she’s coming back. She says she is, but I get the feeling she’s just saying that so I don’t lose my shit. I finally found a new temp, but she still isn’t Annalise.”

“Well, can you blame her? I can’t imagine leaving my baby with someone else while I’m at work all day. I mean I know I’ll have to, but if I had the choice I’d be home in a heartbeat.”

Ben nods almost imperceptibly. His eyes are down, “You know, you could have told me,” he says without making eye contact. I can tell he’s hurt and I know exactly what he’s talking about without asking for clarification.

“No, I couldn’t. I was...I don’t know. Embarrassed is the wrong word.” My eyes finally meet his and I can see the hurt in his eyes. Yet behind them is a promise that I can’t bring myself to acknowledge. “Remorseful? Humiliated? Regretful? I can’t even express it. That’s why I couldn’t tell you.” He places his hand over mine.

“You know that no matter what happens, we were friends before we were anything else. It shouldn’t have been this hard for you.”

When I whisper the words, “It should’ve been you.” The urge to take them back moves over me. When he doesn’t acknowledge them I realize he’s a much better person than I am.

We finish dinner without me saying anything else idiotic. Both exhausted, we pull into the parking lot and my stupidity returns full force.

“You can stay with me if you want. There’s a pull out couch in my hotel room.” I can’t believe myself. Desperation much? I sound like a trampy high school virgin on prom night. For some reason I don’t even care.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll get my own room.” I almost scream at his response. How much more obvious do I have to be? “You’re married, remember?” he says as the lobby doors whoosh open.

“I know. I’m sorry.” My cheeks flush and the warmth runs through my body. I should be embarrassed. I’m married and behaving entirely inappropriately. Obviously not embarrassed or inappropriate enough for me to ask, “Do you want to come back to my room for a little while. We could just talk.”

He pushes his hand through his hair and takes the key from the desk clerk before answering. “Sure,” he says followed by a few muttered fragments. I catch a quick, “What am I doing?” It makes me giggle a little and he smirks back.

Ben is sitting on the edge of the bed flipping through channels on the TV as I emerge from the bathroom wearing a t-shirt and pair of shorts. My feet are throbbing and slightly swollen from the scenic tours in heels. I climb into the bed and prop my feet up on one of the pillows. He hardly looks at me and I can sense he’s uncomfortable being alone with me and right now I don’t blame him. Together we were simple and easy and right now it is far more stressful than anything we have ever been through. I have placed him in a situation that could be misconstrued by anyone.

“Ben?” As soon as I say his name his head whips around in a near frenzy and his hand tugs through his hair. “I’m sorry. Things are just really crazy right now and I’ve put you in an uncomfortable situation. I’ll completely understand if you want to leave.”

“No, no. Really it’s okay. Honestly it’s not you. We’re friends and I get that. You’re making it a little hard, but I can deal.” He comes across as awkward, but composes himself rather well given my insinuations. He takes a deep breath and turns away from me. “This is hard. We’ve known each other for seven years, but...” I cut him short.

“I know. I’m sorry that I’m throwing myself at you. I can only imagine how completely ridiculous I look.”

He turns back to face me and his words catch me off guard. “Can you stop for a minute?” I nod quietly. “I have known you for seven years, but there is something you don’t know about me. A secret I pretty much keep from everyone. You know me better than anyone, but there’s one thing you don’t know. I came today because I knew you’d need someone and I also knew Tyler would fail you. He doesn’t know you the way I do. I don’t think you’re right for him. I’m not trying to dog on your marriage or your relationship with him, but you let him off easy. Grief is hard, even harder when you go it alone.” I nod again as if I can read his mind. I know where this is going and I can feel a lump form and the tears build. “You know my parents are dead. I didn’t really have to tell you that. But unlike you, I had the perfect childhood. My parents were obsessed with each other and they were obsessed with their children. My brother and I wanted for nothing. We took great vacations and my mom packed our lunches and we worked for my dad in the summer. It was perfect.”

He pauses and I take the moment, “Ben, you don’t have to do this. I don’t need an explanation of why you’re here. We’re friends.”

“I know. But I need to tell you. I need to tell someone. Seeing it all again and knowing what you’re going through.” He stops and walks to the opposite side of the bed. He pulls his shoes off and slips his tie off over his head. Tossing his suit coat and his tie over the desk chair, he climbs in next to me. “My mom worked as a high school history teacher for twenty years. That seems like along time, doesn’t it?” he asks but I don’t answer. “Not long enough. She was so good at her job. She’d spend hours grading papers and putting together lesson plans. My dad worked equally as hard. When he found out she was pregnant with me he wanted her to quit her job. He spent years building up his business so that she would never have to work again. But she couldn’t leave. She loved it and he never once made her feel guilty for continuing to work.” He stops again and swallows hard. “She went to the doctor because she kept getting headaches. My dad would joke with her that she spent too much time on the computer. But in the end she went in for headaches and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Two totally unrelated things. She died less than six weeks after she was diagnosed.”

I look over at Ben and he’s crying, silently. I can’t control myself and tears fall fast. I take his hand in mine, “Ben, I’m so sorry,” I say, but he stops me.

“Please let me finish,” he chokes out. “It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year in college. I sat by her bed for hours. My dad wouldn’t let her die in a hospital. He hired the best nurses and doctors. She had chemo and radiation. She lost all of her hair. She had the most beautiful hair I’d ever seen. She was born blonde and it stayed that way her whole life. When it started falling out I think I was more traumatized by it than she was. I wished I had blonde hair when I was little, but my brother and I both looked like my father. I remember thinking how unfair that was. She carried us for nine months and the reward in the end was that we looked nothing like her.” He wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. “She made me promise to finish college. How was I supposed to go back to school and leave her? How was I supposed to carry on with my life?”

I can’t even look at him by this point and a ragged sob leaves me. He grips my hand tighter and continues.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Not for us. Not for my perfect family. She died the week before I needed to go back to school. I left even though everything in me told me to stay. I stayed gone. I didn’t come home at Thanksgiving or Christmas. I was drunk all the time.”

As he speaks I can’t help but think that Ben and I were only a few hours away from each other. I can picture him drunk in his apartment in Berkley on Christmas. It was the same Christmas that Tyler went to the Maldives with his family, leaving me alone to serve steak to lonely people on Christmas Day. I was the only waitress on staff because I was the only one without family. I ate my Christmas dinner with Marco, the bus boy and my manager, Josef, that night.

“When the school year finally ended I went home only because my brother had called and begged me to. I didn’t realize how bad it was. My dad had fallen apart. Josh called me a lot, but I blew him off. I guess I didn’t really want to hear it.” Ben releases my hand causing me to look at him. He reaches over and wipes the tears from my cheeks and shakes his head. “The business was failing. Terribly. It had basically gone to shit after my mom died. My dad wouldn’t show up to work because he was still drunk from the night before. Luckily for him, his crew was good and they kept it running as best as they could. I took over from there. My dad’s secretary trained me on the billing and scheduling. I’d only ever done the labor portion of the job. I had to learn payroll, which by that point was four weeks behind schedule, but somehow I pulled it together.” He smiles a little, but I know it’s just for show. The hurt is still in his eyes. “I dropped all my classes. It killed me but I knew my mom wouldn’t have wanted me to let my dad suffer. My dad got it together a few weeks after I came home. He stopped drinking, came into work with me every day. Things were really good. Business picked back up and we added the pool installation and cleaning. Josh went off to Texas A&M in early August and I stuck around to help run the business.” Ben stops again and I can hear his breathing accelerate. He reaches for my hand and I slip my fingers into his willingly. “My dad killed himself on the anniversary of my mom’s death. Looking back on it now, I don’t think he got better. He just pulled it together long enough to make sure I was okay with running the business.”

His voice turns quiet and the ragged breathing makes it far too difficult for me to handle. In the time I’ve known Ben he has never once cried in front of me. It breaks my heart to see him like this. His voice is flat as he speaks and he can’t look at me, but when he does my whole body physically hurts. I want to take his pain away, ease his loneliness, but I can’t. What’s worse is knowing that after everything he has been through, I caused him even more pain. I broke his already fragile heart.

“I came home from work and found his car running in the garage. Krissy, it nearly killed me.” I’ve made every attempt at holding it together for him, but that’s over. I’m sobbing as Ben leans over and pulls me into his arms. I feel his body racked with heaving sobs as he presses his face into my neck. We sit like this for what feels like hours before he pulls away from me. “He left a note that said he couldn’t do it anymore. In a way I don’t blame him. She was his life, his everything and my brother and I were just reminders of her. I can’t even begin to fathom the pain he was going through when she died. It was extremely difficult for my brother and me, but for him, it was on a whole different level. He didn’t have to love her. He chose her and it was almost like he knew from the moment he met her that he’d love her with so much force that it would hurt. I have so much guilt that I carry around. I could have saved him, but I didn’t even try. I was so wrapped up in forgetting her that I couldn’t see I was losing him too.”

“Ben, don’t do that to yourself. You can’t beat yourself up over something like this. You have no idea what was going through your father’s head. Maybe he didn’t want to be saved.” I want to pull him into my arms and hold him and tell him I love him, but I don’t. I can’t take advantage of his vulnerability.

“True. But I could’ve tried. I’ve put everything into my dad’s business as a way to keep him alive. I know he’d be amazed at how much the business has grown and how hard I work, but it still hurts from time to time.” He smiles again and this time it feels authentic. “I’m sorry that I unloaded all of this on you when I should be consoling you.”

“No. Please don’t apologize. You needed someone to tell and I’m glad it was me.” I return his smile. “What I can’t believe is that you somehow managed to finish school during all of this.”

“I made a promise to my mom and even in death she scared the shit out of me. I didn’t want her coming back and haunting me,” he says jokingly. “It sucked, but I did it, not to mention paying tuition at Texas A&M for four years, too. Someone had to see Josh through to end.”

“Ben, you really are amazing. You are going to make some woman extremely happy one day.”

“Yeah,” he says with more static than his usual tone, “but it won’t be you.”

I look down at my hands and begin to pick my cuticles. I don’t know how to respond. I put myself in this predicament, so I can’t blame him when he fires back. I close my eyes and exhale hard. “We can’t do this to each other. We can’t battle back and forth. It’s wrong.”

“I’m sorry. That was a low blow,” he says as he leaves the bed. He puts on his shoes and I rise and walk toward the door with him. “Thanks Krissy. I really appreciate it.”

“No, thank you. Only a true friend would drop everything to be here.” I rise up on my tiptoes and wrap my arms around his neck. He pulls me against his body and his arms tighten around me. As I pull back something that feels so natural, so normal happens. Our lips meet far too long to be considered a peck but just shy of inappropriate. I lean away and my hand instinctively moves to cover my lips. Everything in my body changes and what feels like a low hum takes over. My body buzzes with Ben’s touch the same way it did in the past. I can only manage a few words before he steps out the door, “Good night, Ben.”

“Good night, Krissy.”