by Phoebe Fox
“I’ve already forgiven it, Brook. You’ve got to do the same thing.”
It was exactly what I’d told Michael.
“Ben,” I began. “The other night…downtown. When you saw me with…with Michael—”
He waved off my words. “You don’t owe me any explanation about that, Brook.”
“No, but I want to…He came back to town. Unexpectedly. And we talked. And I…” I looked down at the table. “I forgave him,” I said quietly. “Surprisingly.” I glanced up to where Ben was watching me with absolutely no expression.
“And he works in promotion now,” I went on, wanting desperately to make him understand—but what, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand myself what was going on between us. “He asked about trying to promote me—I mean, my business. The Breakup Doctor stuff. So we’re sort of working together at the moment.”
“Okay.”
I searched his eyes, but they were placid as the gulf at ebb tide. “Okay,” I said lamely. “I just…didn’t want you to be upset.”
“Is it any of my business, Brook?” he asked, eyes steady on me. “Who you date?”
I felt foolish. Of course it didn’t bother him. Why would it?
He was still staring at me, and I looked away, afraid that the expression I couldn’t read in his eyes might be pity.
“Brook?” he asked.
“No,” I said, and the effort it took to push my lips into a smile actually hurt. “I guess it isn’t.” I scooted away from the table and stood, a forlorn Jake gazing up at me disappointedly at the removal of my lap. “I’m going to…” I eked past the immovable object that was Jake, and Ben stood as I came around the table, making no move to stop me. I looked up, meeting his eyes.
“Can I ask you a question?” I blurted before I could change my mind.
“Sure.”
In the months since the awful morning after we broke up, when Ben had walked in on me and a shirtless Chip Santana in a horrible mute testimony of what we’d done, I’d wanted to know why he’d come to my house. The night before he’d been crystal-clear—he was ready for a serious relationship, and if I wasn’t then there was nothing more to say between us. His certainty about that was most of the reason I’d ended up with Chip that night in the first place—I’d been heartbroken to lose Ben, but given all the emotional upheaval I’d had in my life after Michael dumped me, and then Kendall, I hadn’t been ready to commit to something serious yet, no matter how much I loved Ben.
And yet not twelve hours later he’d come back, strolling into my backyard with Jake because I hadn’t answered the front door, that warm, pleased smile on his face that he’d always worn whenever he’d seen me. At least, until he caught sight of a half-naked, tattooed Chip sitting beside me on the sofa on my back porch. In the terrible scene that had ensued, there was certainly no way to ask Ben why he’d come. And our recent rekindled friendship was too fragile for me to risk it by asking.
But what did I have to lose now?
“That day,” I began hesitantly, my face heating. “That morning on my porch…Why were you coming over?”
Something flickered over his face—a shadow of remembered pain, maybe, or anger. Maybe something softer—but that was probably wishful thinking on my part.
“I was coming to apologize,” he said, watching Jake scramble under the table to get closer to us. “I was wrong the night before. I forced you into a corner, and that wasn’t fair.” He cleared his throat and met my eye again. “The truth was, Brook, I would have taken you on any level you were ready for, and I was coming to make sure I didn’t lose you over some stupid ultimatum I gave in a knee-jerk moment of insecurity.”
Pain flooded over me in a wave so strong I physically felt the knife of it in my chest.
If I hadn’t called Chip that night in a blinding moment of rejection…If I hadn’t opened the door when he showed up in the middle of the night…If I’d been able to sit with my emotions for a change, instead of pushing them down, distracting myself from them the way I always had…If I’d waited out the anguish of losing Ben until the rational light of morning…
If.
I would have been standing here at his side, instead of across a vast uncrossable divide.
And Ben would be with me, instead of Pamela.
But love didn’t always mean things went exactly the way you wanted them to. I finally saw that now. It meant that even when it didn’t, you loved that person anyway, and supported what they wanted for themselves.
Even if it broke your heart.
“Thanks for telling me,” I murmured, emotion threatening to choke me. “I’d really better go.” I leaned over to give Jake’s silky head a few strokes. Then I gave myself one last moment of indulgence—stepping forward, I rested my hand in the familiar curve behind Ben’s head and for just a moment held my face to his neck, breathing him in, relishing the warmth of his arms that reflexively came around me until I pulled away.
“I’ll see you later,” I said softly, wondering, after everything, if I would.
twenty-three
When my doorbell rang later that night, I wasn’t surprised to see Sasha.
She looked wrecked, with tired circles beneath her eyes—atypically makeup-free—and pinched lines at the corners of her mouth. “Can I come in?” she asked hesitantly.
“Since when do you have to ask?”
I could see her biting the inside of her lip. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me…considering.”
“Don’t be an idiot.” I left her standing at the door and went to sit on the sofa along the front wall, and after a moment Sasha stepped inside and shut the door.
She stopped just inside the entryway, staring at my cocktail table, where I’d set out a tray with cheese and crackers, fruit, water, and a bottle of red wine. “Are you expecting company?”
“You,” I said, leaning forward to open the wine. “Come on in.”
The expression on her face would have been hilarious if the situation were different: Sasha looked confused, hopeful, and wary, like a wild mustang facing a cowboy with an apple in one hand and a lasso in the other.
“Lisa told me she talked to you,” she began, making no move to sit.
“She did. She offered me a raise.”
Sasha’s mouth dropped open in outrage. “Are you shitting me? She told me there was no money in the budget for raises!”
I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I can’t help it if I’m indispensable.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “You realize they also give me a full benefits package and paid time off, right?”
I let a half-smile leak out. “I’m just teasing you. Lisa actually said you were her best reporter, and if she could find the money in the budget to keep you, she would.”
“Lisa said that? Holy shit. That’s like being knighted from anyone else.”
For a moment we were just us again, nothing between us but years of friendship, and we shared a grin across the room. Then Sash seemed to remember, and hers disappeared.
“She told me she told you,” she said. “Why aren’t you yelling at me?”
“Why aren’t you sitting?” I asked, holding out one of the two glasses of cabernet I’d poured.
One hand fluttered to her belly. “Wine? I don’t—”
“If you’ve made your decision, is it really going to matter anymore?” I asked as gently as I could.
Sasha blinked several times, and I saw her lips tremble. But finally she stepped forward, took the glass, and sat beside me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she whispered. “About the job offer, I mean. I just…I needed time to think things out on my own. And I knew how you’d feel…what you’d say.” She broke my gaze and stared down into her wineglass, then finally raised it to her lips and took a sip.
Sasha d
idn’t know how clearly I could understand that; wasn’t that why I hadn’t told her about what happened with Michael, with Ben?
“I think you should take it.”
Wine went everywhere as she choked. “What?” she managed.
I calmly pulled a napkin from the tray and dabbed at the purple spatters all over my sofa and the white denim of my skinny jeans. “I know how important your career is to you, Sash. It’s a great opportunity. A much bigger paper in a much bigger market—” My voice had started to wobble, and I stopped to swallow a mouthful of my own wine, trying to steady it. “There’s no chance for advancement like that in this town. We both know that.”
Once again she narrowed a suspicious gaze on me. “What is this? Reverse psychology? Some kind of desensitization? What?”
I sighed and leaned forward to set my glass down on the tray. “This is me saying what I should have said all along. That you are the only one who knows the right thing for you. That I love you and want whatever you feel is best for you. That I will be standing right there beside you no matter what you choose.”
Her eyes filled with tears as I spoke. “How can you say that?” she asked, almost angrily. “I am ruining your family’s life!”
“Well, someone has a healthy sense of self-importance,” I said dryly.
“Stop it! Stop being so funny and nice to me! I don’t deserve it!”
“Hey!” I barked. “Get your shit together, Patterson.” My sharp tone stunned her tears dry, and she stared at me.
“Why are you yelling at me?”
“I thought that’s what you wanted!” I yelled. I torqued back my volume, but pushed ahead with what I’d been trying for hours to find the right words for. “Look…we all do the best we can with wherever we are at the moment. That didn’t used to be all that great for either one of us. But we’re not kids anymore. We’re getting better at this life crap—but sometimes there’s just no right answer, and all you can do is make the rightest choice.” I felt my own eyes growing hot with tears, and I resisted the urge to medicate them away with a distracting gulp of wine, keeping my eyes steady on Sasha’s. “I don’t know the rightest choice for you, Sash. No one does but you. But I know my rightest choice, and that’s to support you—no matter what. No matter what you need to do for you, in every way that counts you’re my sister, and that’s never going to change.”
Sasha let out a sudden sob, more wine sloshing over the sides of her glass onto the floor and my table as she blindly reached to set it down. I ignored the spill as she collapsed forward into my arms, and I held her while she cried.
“This is all I do anymore,” she sobbed into my shoulder. “I cry. I cry at everything. I cried at a Cialis commercial last night. Hormones!” she wailed. “I’m all mixed-up, Brook. I don’t know what to do. Please just tell me what to do!”
I let go, brushing away her tears with my thumbs the way Ben had done with me only hours ago, the memory knifing into my heart. “I can’t, Sash. No one can. But if you need someone to talk it out with, objectively…well, I’ll try.” I offered her an apologetic smile. “Or I can make some professional referrals.”
She gave a shaky laugh.
“Does Stu know about the job offer?” I asked carefully.
“I already told you, I tell him everything.”
She’d told Stu about this even when she couldn’t tell me. Stu and Sasha, I realized, despite their constant oversexed grab-assing and childish exploits, had one of the healthiest relationships I’d ever seen. I couldn’t help believing that no matter what happened, they’d make it through this together.
The days of my being the axis of our world of three were over, I knew in a rush, and from now on I’d always be just a little outside of their twosome.
But maybe that was the way it should be. As I’d said to Sasha, we weren’t children anymore, and it was time for all of us to grow up a little.
“I’m glad,” I told her genuinely. “You guys will figure things out together. And Sash, if you need me—for anything.” I nudged her with my shoulder. “I’m here.”
Sasha nodded tearfully, but I could already see her gathering herself back together. “Thanks, Brookie. That means everything.”
When she rose to leave, she seemed to take in the splotches of wine scattered all over my furniture and my person.
“Oh, crap…I’m sorry about the mess all over your house.”
I shrugged. “I sort of deserved it, after what I did to yours.”
“Agreed,” she said a little too vehemently.
I walked her to the door and we hugged before she let herself out into the cool orange blossom-scented evening.
Yes, it was time to grow up, I thought as I noticed her mostly untouched glass of wine still sitting on my cocktail table.
I finally knew better than to let it raise a childish flicker of hope.
twenty-four
Michael rang my doorbell sharply at six thirty on Friday. I wasn’t quite ready—he’d always operated on “band time,” which could mean anything from fifteen minutes after he’d promised to be somewhere, to an hour, to forgetting it entirely—and I answered in bare feet and a ridiculous terry cloth robe that my mom had given me one Christmas.
“Whoa!” I said as I took in his outfit: gray pants with a lavender button-down and a boldly colored Jerry Garcia tie that told me the old Michael wasn’t completely extinguished. I was glad of that. “You look nice.”
He eyed the appliqued cartoon flamingos dotting my robe. “You look…unusual.”
“I am so close to ready, you have no idea. Give me three minutes.”
Michael’s outfit told me loud and clear what I’d been trying not to think about all week: This was a Real Live Date.
I’d planned to downplay that with jeans and a silk top, but there was no way I could do that now. I reached for a faux-wraparound knit dress and a pair of heels, swiped on lip gloss, and then stood at the bathroom counter leaning my weight on my hands ’til I calmed my racing heart.
Michael was still standing in the entryway when I came out.
“You’re allowed to sit,” I said, putting on earrings.
“Yeah, I know, I was…Wow.”
I gave a nervous bubble of laughter. “Thanks.”
For a moment we stood at the door, looking at each other, ’til I had to break the intensity of his stare by reaching for my purse on the entry table.
Outside, Michael followed me to the passenger side of his older-model Lexus—it was still hard to believe he’d traded his funky old Jeep for something so sedate. I shot him a glance as he flanked me. “What are you doing?”
“I’m opening your door.”
“You’re…?” I couldn’t help it—I laughed. It felt like the first time in days, and I relished the feeling. “Seriously, Michael, did you go on like a makeover show or something? You’re weirding me out. You’re too good to be true.”
He just grinned, and held the door while I got in.
“Where are we headed?”
“The Plantation,” he said, rather proudly.
I froze. Ben had taken me there to celebrate my first group session last fall. It had been a turning point for us—that night, after hours of a perfect meal and giggling over our hilariously serious waiter, when we got back to my house I’d finally opened myself up to him, warts and all, showing him my mortifying drunken tattoo, confessing pretty much the lowest point I’d hit after Kendall dumped me…and ironically, telling him about Michael—the first time I’d ever let myself even say his name since our broken engagement. It had been our first real intimacy—before the sex, before we’d even admitted we’d fallen in love. It was the most naked and vulnerable I’d ever been with anyone.
I’d been through too much this week—I didn’t have it in me to face going to the same restaurant w
ith Michael.
But he looked so pleased with himself; he was trying so hard to abide by everything I’d asked of him, to prove that he was an adult now, a professional, and that my business was in good hands—and that I was. I swallowed. “That’s a bit fancy,” I said in a small voice, hoping he’d reconsider.
“Didn’t see that coming, did you?”
“Nope. I sure didn’t.” I made myself return his smile, but it felt more like a labial contraction as I swung my other leg inside and Michael shut the door.
It actually turned out to be a great night.
By the time we were seated—in a different room of the restored old manor house from the one Ben and I had been in, with a different waiter—Michael and I had fallen back into our old easy rhythms. We ordered scads of food, stuffing ourselves from each other’s plates, and a bottle of wine, which lubricated any residual awkwardness and made it easy for us to laugh, to tell each other stories, to reminisce.
When the bill came I reached for it, but he grabbed it away, insisting that he wanted to treat. “The least I can do after everything is buy you a nice dinner,” he said with a crooked grin, and I let him.
I never thought I’d ever see Michael again, let alone have a conversation with him—and certainly not that we’d be able to reclaim our friendship after everything that had happened. And yet it seemed we’d done it. A thorn I hadn’t even realized had been pricking me had been removed, and it felt so good not only not to hate him anymore, but to be reminded why I had liked him in the first place. And for a few hours I almost forgot about Sasha, about Stu…about Ben—or at least the sharp pain of it all faded into a dull ache.
Maybe this was how things had to happen all along. We’d both admitted we’d been different people back then, that we’d changed. Maybe our paths were always meant to run together after all—just not that soon.