LAINE
After my conversation with Josh, I had half a mind to cancel on Ben—except I didn’t have his number, and walking over to his apartment to tell him I wasn’t going to have coffee with him seemed like the epitome of pathetic. Also, I couldn’t articulate why I felt weird about our meeting. Sure, I’d been attracted to him many years ago, but I was married now—and it looked increasingly likely that I was going to stay that way. Besides, Josh hadn’t even blinked an eye when I told him I was going to see Ben.
“Sure,” he said, not looking up from his computer. “I’ll keep an eye on Mom and get a little work done. Have a good time.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, grateful that he wasn’t paying close attention, because my cheeks were warm and probably pink. Josh knew I’d once had a friend named Ben, but he thought we’d just drifted apart—and that was because I’d never mentioned what had happened. I’d always told myself that I didn’t want to rehash the painful past. Which was absolutely true . . . so I wasn’t sure why I felt like a liar.
I tried to push these dueling thoughts out of my head as I walked to the café we’d agreed to meet at, which was a few blocks away on Hoyt Street. Ben was sitting at a small table out back when I arrived, and he stood when he saw me.
“Hey, Laine,” he said with a smile. He was wearing another linen shirt, this one green, and a pair of dark jeans. I’d almost thrown on a sundress but had settled on a clean T-shirt and a pair of shorts because I didn’t want it to seem like this was a big deal.
Even if my shaking hands said it absolutely was.
I tried to smile back, but my mouth wouldn’t work. I’d spent the morning cleaning the upstairs apartment with my mother—who’d mostly tried to convince me to keep her random purchases, including but not limited to the liquid face-lift—and at first I’d almost been able to distract myself. But I’d grown more and more anxious as it grew closer to the time Ben and I were supposed to meet. Which was silly—if it went badly, then we’d just end up in the same boat we were already in. And obviously I knew how to handle that.
Except I didn’t want it to go badly. Maybe it was Belle’s absence, but even surrounded by my family and Josh, I could not pretend that I wasn’t deeply if weirdly lonely. And some part of me, however ridiculous, felt like maybe Ben would make me feel less like a stranger in my own life.
“Uh. Hi.” I was in front of him now, and he looked at me for a split second, then opened his arms for a hug, which I awkwardly accepted.
But then I breathed deep and realized he still smelled exactly like himself, by which I mean decades of memories: when we teamed up against the jerky little kid who kept grabbing Piper’s butt on the way to school and told him we’d give him the wedgie to end all wedgies if he did it again. (He didn’t.) When we nearly burned down his kitchen trying to make brownies after school. And the time in high school when we snuck off to Limelight, the infamous Manhattan club, and danced until dawn—even though both of us were truly terrible dancers. There were few parts of my childhood and adolescence that hadn’t included Ben, and I knew that, more than anything else, was why I could describe it as happy.
“Thanks for meeting me. I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he added as we parted.
“I almost didn’t,” I blurted. Then I grimaced because I hadn’t meant to say that.
He leaned back in his chair and smiled even more broadly. “Don’t censor yourself on my account.”
Now, in spite of myself, I smiled. “I’ll do my best not to.”
“What can I get you to drink?” he asked.
“Whatever you’re having is fine.”
“Two Strawberry Hill surprises?” he said, referring to the teeth-achingly sweet wine we used to steal from Reggie, who didn’t have my mother’s highfalutin taste in booze. We’d pour it into Solo cups and sneak it into Ben’s bedroom. Even then, we knew it was barely potable.
I must have been feeling more comfortable, because I laughed. “Please, no. How about a latte?”
“Skim milk?”
I made a horrified expression, and he laughed.
“Glad you still have good taste,” he said, and I swear I could tell he had to stop himself from winking. “Be right back.”
A torrent of emotions swept through me as I watched him head back inside. I’d thought about this moment for ages—dreaded it, wished for it, wondered if it would even happen before it was too late. At first, I’d just wanted to tell him all the ways he was wrong about me and my mother. Sorrow set in soon after, because I knew, deep down, that he was right—I had let my mother make my decision for me. By then it was too late; there was no fixing what I’d broken. And yet I couldn’t help but long for everything to go back to the way it was before that awful conversation.
Before I knew it, Ben was back and handing me a mug of steaming coffee. He sat down in front of me. “So,” he said. “Where do we begin?”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t really know.”
“Me, neither. But I’m glad you’re here.” He lifted his mug. “To old friends.”
But we weren’t anymore. So instead of responding, I shifted in my seat, then took a sip of my coffee. “How’d your dad doing?” I asked after a moment.
“Dad’s had a couple health scares, but he’s hanging in there,” he said. “My mom died, though.”
My jaw dropped open. Sixteen years was a long time not to be a part of someone’s life, and, of course, he hadn’t been there when my father died, either. Still—hearing that he’d gone through his mother’s death without me only made the loss of our friendship feel greater.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “When?” His mother had claimed she’d send for the boys when she got settled in California. But she never had, and she hadn’t come to visit, either. Ben hadn’t talked about it a lot, but it was impossible not to notice the many ways it shaped him. It wasn’t just that he hated to be in his house. He’d check the mail two, three times a day around his birthday in September. His mother would send a card, and finally in his late teens, he admitted that he’d been waiting for her to write that she wanted him to come live with him. He dated plenty, but never stayed in a relationship more than a month or two, and although he hadn’t said as much, it seemed obvious to me that he didn’t want to give anyone the opportunity to leave him.
No wonder he was so upset when I said goodbye. How had I never realized that before?
“Last year,” he said with a shrug. I knew that shrug—at least, I used to—and it meant the opposite of what it was supposed to convey.
“Ben . . .”
He met my eyes. “I saw her a couple times when I was living out in San Francisco. She got herself a whole new family. I have two half sisters. They’re okay, I guess. I don’t know them all that well, and they’re not super interested in changing that.”
“That’s—” It was awful, that’s what it was. He used to tell me how abandoned he felt. How he wanted to get on a bus and show up on her doorstep, just so he could tell her how horrible she was, and how furious he was with her. I often thought about Ben’s mother when my own wasn’t living up to my standards. It never hurt quite as bad when she, say, forgot to wish me a happy birthday until the very end of the day, or neglected to take me bra shopping yet again. At least I had a mother. “That’s really unfortunate,” I said, hoping this was tactful enough.
“That’s for sure,” he said, nodding. “So, you still in Ann Arbor?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Social media,” he said matter-of-factly. Unlike me, he didn’t seem embarrassed that he’d looked me up. “I checked on you from time to time, just to see how you were doing. But you don’t really post about anything but your dog.”
I looked away. That was true. Why hadn’t I posted more photos of me and Josh?
“Nice-looking animal,” said Ben. “Spaniel?”
“Thanks,” I said quietly. “She died recently. Cancer.”