I bring them Ben.
“You sure it’s cool that I’m tagging along?” Ben asks for the twelfth time, as I pull my Prius into my parents’ driveway.
“Actually, no,” I say, giving him a sad look. “Maybe stay in the car?”
“You know what I mean,” he says, grabbing the bottle of wine we brought with us and shoving open the car door. “Usually Lance goes with you to family dinners.”
I pause and look at him in surprise. His tone isn’t quite petulant, but it’s…something, and for the first time I wonder if Ben felt left out when Lance and I started getting serious, and I started taking him over to family dinners.
In college, I always brought Ben with me when I went home, but after graduation, Lance and I started to feel like more of a thing, so I brought him instead. Obviously. He was my boyfriend.
“You know you could have come with us,” I say, shutting the car door.
“Yeah, that would have been awesome. Sitting in the backseat on the way over. Squeezing in a fifth chair at the table.”
“You came over all the time when Mom was sick,” I say.
And he had. I’d never loved my best friend more than when he volunteered—no, insisted—on helping out with some of Mom’s chemo appointments.
“Sure, because Lancelot wasn’t there,” he said, giving me a shit-eating grin.
I pinch his arm as we wipe our feet on the doormat, but the gesture practically breaks a nail because he’s all muscle.
He knows I hate it when he calls Lance Lancelot.
“We’re here,” I holler, kicking off my shoes the second we get inside, making my way toward the kitchen.
“Honey!” Mom says, looking particularly glowing and radiant in a bright green turtleneck and jeans.
Her hug is warm and friendly, as always, but her hug for Ben is warmer and friendlier.
I roll my eyes as the two of them gab like long-separated best friends and head into the family room, where my dad is perched on the edge of his leather recliner. No doubt he started to get up when he heard my shout, only to become riveted by whatever sport was on.
“No. NoNoNoNo, YES! Yes!”
I glance at the TV. Baseball. Blerg.
I kiss my dad on the head and wait patiently for him to confirm that whatever call earned his YES! would stand. My dad loves sports. Not like the usual-guy level of sports adoration, but like, he freaking loves all things baseball, football, basketball, tennis, golf, you name it.
He played, like, every possible sport in high school, and baseball in college. He’s got crazy-good athletic skills, none of which he passed on to his only child.
But he loves me more than sports. I know, because he mutes the TV and stands up to give me a big hug and a long, searching look, even though something exciting is happening on the screen behind him.
“You okay?” he asks quietly.
I nod. “Mom told you?”
My dad and I have a great relationship, but when it came time to tell my parents that Lance had dumped me, I opted for my mom, who is a little better at doling out relationship advice than dear old dad.
His hands rub my upper arms. “Breakups are hard, but it’ll all work out the way it’s supposed to.”
“I know,” I say, even though I’m only half-convinced that he’s right.
It’s been a week and a half since Lance dumped me, and the truth is, it’s gotten worse, not better. I’m over the anger and, for the most part, over the crying, but the emptiness…the longing. That’s still there.
“Jimbo!”
We both turn as Ben enters the room, and they do the fist-bump thing that Ben taught my dad a few years ago, then Ben throws himself on the couch and reaches for the remote to unmute the TV. “Damn. Close game.”