I stopped, felt my cheeks start to burn. We had danced aroundThe Gritjust like we had danced around Allison: best to pretend it didn’t exist. Best to believe that I had left of my own volition, even though sometimes, when I thought about Ben still reporting to that big, beautiful office each morning—walking past my old desk, somebody else’s body in my chair and bylines on the wall; sharing coffee with my old coworkers, my friends—I felt an overwhelming twinge of sadness. Like a death I had never fully mourned.
“You should do it,” he repeated, walking over to me. I smiled, stretched out my neck, and gave him my lips to kiss—but instead of greeting them with his own, he grabbed Mason, took him from me, and turned back around, disappearing into the hall. “Like I said. Whatever makes you happy.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
I pull into a metered spot on River Street and walk the few blocks to The Bean, a hole-in-the-wall coffee spot I know Ben would never visit. It’s too grungy for him, the kind of place where you pour your own creamer when it’s still in the carton, sweating in the corner alongside fossilized packets of sweetener and mismatched spoons. Waylon hadn’t left town yet—he got a hotel room yesterday, after I kicked him out, too shell-shocked from our confrontation to make the drive home—and when I step inside, he’s already there, waiting for me.
“Hey,” I say, dropping my purse onto the empty stool. There’s an awkwardness to our interaction, like reconciling exes, but I try to push through it. “I’m just gonna—”
I gesture to the bar, but he shakes his head, pushing a mug in my direction like a peace offering.
“This one’s for you.”
“Thanks.” I smile, sliding into the seat. I grab the coffee and take a sip.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” he says, his fingers bouncing across the table. “Or I guess a more accurate way of stating it iswillfully omitting the truth. Either way, it was shitty.”
I smile again, nod my head, and think about the strange little bow he had greeted me with when he first stepped foot into my home. The way his eyes had scanned around the room, looking for traces of Ben, and how he had ducked down low at Framboise, trying to make himself smaller. He must have been terrified, I realize, stepping into those situations and not knowing what he would find. If Ben had been there with me, his cover would be destroyed.
“So,” I say, drumming my fingers against the mug, “where should we start?”
“From the beginning, I guess.” Waylon exhales, rolling his neck like he’s preparing for some kind of fight. “Allison and Ben met in high school. He was a few years older than her, and I think she liked that—the attention of an older guy. How it made her feel older herself.”
I picture Ben as a teenager, roaming the high school halls the same way he roamed around the office or up on that rooftop: with purpose and poise. He was popular, I’m sure. Letterman jackets and pockets of friends flanking him on either side. I picture him catching Allison’s eye at her locker, shooting her a wink and a grin. The way she probably looked around before mouthing: “Me?” Like she couldn’t possibly believe that his attention was directed at her.
“I can relate to that.”
“He eventually went away for college but came back every weekend to see her,” he says. “He proposed pretty much as soon as she turned twenty, got married when she was twenty-one. She never dated anyone else. My parents loved him.”
“And you didn’t?”
“Imean…” He shrugs. “I was a kid when we met. He used to suck up to me in that boyfriend kind of way, but I always felt like I saw through him. Like his wholeperfect personpersona was an act.”
Ben was always good at making himself the most well-liked person in the room—the way he always knew just what to say and when to say it, moseying through a crowd with an easy confidence and perfectly placed hand that seemed to pull people toward him like gravity.Kids don’t fall for that kind of thing, though. They always seem to sense something the rest of us can’t.
“Anyway, Allison was always such a vibrant person. She loved to argue.” He smiles. “She wanted to be a lawyer.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Oh, yeah, and she would have been great at it, too, but she followed him to college—a big journalism school, because that’s whathewanted—and by the time she graduated, Ben had talked her out of it. Law school was expensive; he was a few years in at his job and had finally saved enough for them to start enjoying it. It was like she just shrunk herself down to make more room for him.”
I feel the familiar sting of tears in my eyes. I can relate to that, too. The way I had justified it at the time, as if my leavingThe Gritand my life slowly dwindling down to nothing wasn’thischoice, butours. I remember gossiping about Allison that night of the party, Kasey’s champagne breath in my ear. Judging her for being unemployed, staying at home. Her body gliding next to his like an oversized accessory, unaware of the fact that she had a passion worth pursuing. Something she was good at, something she loved.
Just like me.
“It just sucked to watch,” Waylon continues. “But it wasn’t like he wasallbad. I couldn’t point to anything inherently wrong about their relationship. It seemed like he treated her well when I saw them together. He made her laugh. I figured that if he made her happy… I don’t know. I should just stay out of it.”
“Relationships are complicated,” I say, blowing on my coffee to give myself something to do.
“Yeah, but that’s the thing,” he says, shifting in his chair. “I was nine when we met. Allison and I were seven years apart, so I didn’t know what ahealthy relationshiplooked like. But as I got older—as we both got older—Ben and I started growing into two completely different kinds of guys. And I realized that whatever a healthy relationship was… that wasn’t it.”
I’m quiet. I decide to let Waylon keep talking, let him tell me what he knows, before I chime in again.
“Anyway, the years went by, and Allison kept shrinking. She tried to talk to him a few times about going to law school, getting her own thing going, and he would guilt trip her out of it every single time. It was like she was just this thing meant to check a box in his own life and not even live her own.”
I remember that night, when I had decided to go back to work. The touch of unease as I had brought it up, like I knew I was flirting with fire. The way Ben had taken Mason from me afterward, like a punishment. A warning of what was to come.
“Whatever makes you happy.”