I take a sip of my iced tea and try to remember exactly why we broke up. I recalled a teary fight in the rain—like out of a John Hughes movie—but no, it wasn’t that fight. We had a bunch of those little fights, the kind that I thought you had to have in order to have grand passion. Usually, I would pick them over ridiculous things, college girl things—I can’t even remember. I do remember, though, that the sex was always great after, so I kept doing it. It was something bigger that broke us up. I close my eyes, replaying the end.
It’s still, all these years later, a punch in the gut to remember what destroyed us—my adolescent insecurities, flamed by the high school memory of walking in on my boyfriend with another girl. I thought that Ben had gotten me over it, but it would rear its ugly head when I least wanted it to. If he talked to a pretty girl after a show, I was sure he was planning to meet up with her before coming to sleep in my room. Besides my own past haunting me, I saw it happen all the time in my dorm. It happened to my roommate. She came home early from her waitress job to find her boyfriend leaving another girl’s room on our floor. It was surely nineteen-year-old bravado that made him so bold, but weren’t most nineteen-year-olds like that—obeying their super id (and penis) above all else?
I loved Ben so much, the thought of him with anyone else drove me crazy and I eventually drove him crazy too. We stayed together through our senior year. I spent every weekend watching him play. I was so proud, knowing that he was mine. Listening to the other girls in the audience gave me a thrill and fed my deepest fears. “The guitarist is so hot,” was a common refrain. With, “Do ya think he’d hook up with me?” following a close second. From what I knew, Ben never took the bait while we were together, never gave in to temptation, but that didn’t stop me from worrying that one day he would. During every show Ben handed me a pick just like he had the first time I saw him play. And, after every show he left with me without fail. Looking back, I don’t know why I worried so much, why I was so jealous. Whenever I’ve looked at photos of myself from college, I think, Why didn’t I appreciate that body; that hair; that unlined face when I had it?
One night, a few weeks before graduation, Ben was playing a gig at the hottest bar in town. Rumors flew that there might even be a few scouts there. The show was amazing. Ben’s voice just melted me and apparently quite a few other girls, as well. One gorgeous blonde with hair cascading in shiny waves down her back and boobs out-to-there approached him after the show. I watched as she licked her glossy, shimmering pink lips and leaned over, giving Ben full view of her spectacular cleavage. I could practically see the drool forming on his lip. I wanted to go over with a napkin and dab it away. I hung back, chatting with my friends, but with an eye on Ben and the goddess. I saw her take a pen out of her bag, place the cap between her perfect teeth and gently take Ben’s hand, palm up. Ben just smiled. She wrote her name and number, or at least I guessed it was that and not the answers to Ben’s final the next day.
Ben ambled over to me a moment later. He slung his arm around my shoulder and whispered in my ear, “What do you say we get out of here? I’ve got a boner with your name on it.”
I twisted away from him and spat, “Of course you have a boner after that slut just gave you an eyeful of boobs and her phone number!”
“So what if she gave me her number? It’s you I want to go home with.”
“But, you smiled at her when she gave it to you. You didn’t say, ‘I’m sorry, I have a girlfriend.’ You were practically drooling.” I knew I sounded petty, and I think I may have even stuck my lower lip out, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t possibly understand how he could choose willingly to go home with me, when he had his pick of girls like her. I was just waiting for the other shoe to fall, for the day that he would say, “You know what, we’ve had a great time, but I need a change.”
Ben put his hands on my shoulders and turned me to him. He tilted his face down to mine, so I was staring into those amazing eyes. “Maxie, don’t you think that by my taking her number, she’s going to want to see the band again and bring her friends? That’s all it was. You have to just forget about her, okay?”
As soon as we got home, Ben washed his hands, scrubbed them really, at the kitchen sink in his tiny off-campus apartment. Christmas lights were strung across the soffit over the sink, even though it was May. The buzzing fluorescent overhead light was off and in the soft glow, Ben was truly beautiful. His roommates were all sleeping at their girlfriends’, so we had the apartment to ourselves. He sat down on a chair and pulled me to him. Slowly, he eased off my jeans then my underwear. He circled his tongue around my belly button, then slid off the seat and flicked his tongue lightly over to my hip and down my thigh. By the time he pulled me to him and buried his face between my legs, I had forgotten all about the blonde at the bar.
Unfortunately, I remembered pretty quickly. While Ben was in the shower, I couldn’t help it—I searched his pockets. Retrieving a folded up sliver of white paper, my heart was hammering. I knew I shouldn’t look. I knew that once I looked, our relationship would most likely be over, but I just could not help it. That’s the problem with snooping—you can’t stop in the middle and you can’t really do anything about the results, because once you tell the person what you’ve found, they know you snooped and trust is broken. Even if they explain and the answer is one you really want to hear—it’s too late. The distrust is out there, hanging heavy and thick between you.
I turned on the bedside lamp and carefully unfolded the paper. It was a phone number, but from the name, Chris, it was impossible to tell if it was a guy’s or a girl’s. This was a hell I hadn’t imagined. If it was clearly a guy’s number—someone from class or maybe a booker from a club—I would fold it back up and put it in his pocket. If it was a girl, I would wave it in his face, righteously indignant that I knew I couldn’t trust him. Who cared if I snooped? I had a right to, if he had a girl’s number in his pocket. But this, this was far worse than I imagined. I couldn’t say anything, because if it was a guy’s name, Ben would know I didn’t trust him, that I snooped with no reasonable grounds and he would probably dump me. If it was a girl’s number, well I wanted to know if he was cheating on me. I had a right to snoop. We had been talking about maybe getting engaged after college. We mused for hours over where we would live, how many kids we wanted, and what we would name them. Did I want to keep planning a future with a cheater? What if his band actually made it? What if they got signed and he spent months on the road with groupies at his disposal, while I stayed home and took care of the kids? These were the thoughts that careened through my brain as I listened for the water to turn off; trying to gauge how much time I had before Ben returned.
Heat crept up my neck to my cheeks. My stomach gripped. I have always been the worst liar—my body betrays me, shaking, sweating, flushing—and that night was no exception. How could I possibly look Ben in the face and not ask who Chris was? I wondered. Then again, how could I?
Either way, our relationship was destroyed when I pulled that slip of paper out of his pocket. I sat on the bed for a moment and just took in the room. I wanted to remember everything about it. It was the one place in the world I was happiest. Such a simple room, just a bed made up in that overly manly style that mothers inflict upon their sons when they go away to college—gray and navy pinstripes and plaids—and a desk bought at a tag sale, the wood tone laminate peeling. The January 1984 cover of Rolling Stone was tacked right next to the bed. Ben’s idols—Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and other rockers watched over him as he slept. It seemed to me like his talisman—it was the only thing that moved from dorm room to dorm room, then to his apartment. I had this urge to take it with me, to keep something of him.
It wasn’t even the sex that had made me so happy back then; it was the curling up in that tiny twin bed, forced to sleep layered over each other, arms and legs entangled. It was feeling his breath on my neck.
Of course, it was the last time I was ever in that room, on that bed
. When Ben walked in from the shower, he found me sitting on the bed, staring at the paper, tears streaming down my cheeks. I didn’t say anything, just looked up at him pleadingly.
He came over slowly, lifted the paper from my hands. I gazed up at him. He had a towel wrapped around his waist and it was slipping slightly. A sliver of hipbone rose above the terry cloth. The downy hairs trailing down his stomach disappearing into his towel made me want to weep. I wanted to plant baby kisses along that line. I wished that I had never searched his pockets. I wished that I could turn back time. “Why were you looking in my pockets?” Ben asked sadly. “You know I’d never cheat on you. I’ve told you that a million times. Why can’t you trust me?”
I didn’t have a response—just silence. “Yeah, I didn’t think you had a reason. I’m sorry, Maxine, but if you can’t trust me, there’s nothing left to us.”
The fissure in my heart cracked wide open. The thought that I had brought this upon myself was too much to bear. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I just… I feel like you could have your pick of anyone and I always feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to fall.”
“Do you see the way guys look at you, Maxine? You could have anyone you want. But I don’t worry about that, because I know you love me. By the way, Chris is a guy from my business models class. Not that I should have to explain that to you. I think you should leave now.”
It sounds like a cliché, but walking out of that room was the hardest thing I have ever done. With each step toward the door, I fell deeper in despair. I leaned into the creaking side door of Ben’s apartment building and stumbled into the soft May night.
Part Two
Chapter Five
I DIDN’T CALL BEN back that afternoon, nor did I call him back the next day, but here I am holding the phone—number dialed, trying to get up the courage to press talk two days after he called. I’d planned on calling that day, but Sam needed attention, plus Trevor and Will both had projects due the next day, which somehow I knew nothing about. I chastised myself for not keeping up on their school assignments, though admittedly I had a few other things on my mind. By the time I went to Staples for poster board, helped them with research and putting the project together, it was bedtime, and I just did not have the energy to muster up the appropriate mix of bubbly and seductive required to talk to an ex-boyfriend.
Emma had come home for dinner—a miracle in my book, but stormed off to her room as soon as she swallowed the last bite. It was amazing to me that she could manage to hold on to her anger for so long, without it blurring even just a tiny bit—no softening of the edges. Her rage was as sharp-edged as jagged glass and cut just as deeply. The notion that we might never repair our relationship filled me with despair and even the sexiest of exes couldn’t drag me out of it. Emma slept at home, but didn’t leave her room, except to use the bathroom and brush her teeth. She even yelled at Sam, who often read a book with her in her bed before he went to sleep, to get out when he opened her door, hoping to cuddle for a bit.
I cried myself to sleep, but morning actually brought the slightest sliver of positivity from Emma. She apologized to Sam and then said, “Thank you,” when I handed her a plate of pancakes and a cup of orange juice. If they didn’t have cereal for breakfast, I usually served the kids frozen pancakes, fresh from the microwave. But I woke up early to whip up a batch on the griddle before Emma had to catch the bus. Of course, she scowled at me when I told her to have a good day, but that “thank you” was enough encouragement to buoy me and let me call Ben back without the threat of tears when he invariably asked me how I was holding up.
Even with a bit of a better morning under my belt, I still look at the phone in my hand like it’s a grenade waiting to detonate. I feel like lobbing it onto the couch, but I know I have to call him back; it’s rude not to. I press talk and it rings twice before I hear Ben’s voice ask, “Maxie?”
I answer, “Yup, it’s me” and smack myself lightly on the forehead—Yup? Really? How completely dorky, but Ben doesn’t seem to notice. He sounds almost giddy.
“Oh Maxie, it’s great to hear your voice. It’s been years. Couldn’t make it to the reunion?”
“No—my husband was traveling that weekend and I didn’t have anyone to watch my kids, but I really wanted to go.” Then I hastily add, “I should say my soon-to-be ex-husband.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. It’s for the best.”
“Good, because I really wasn’t sorry,” Ben admits. “I was hoping your husband was a soon-to-be ex. I read that in Us, but I didn’t know if it was true. I actually never read those things—I’m kind of embarrassed.”
“You don’t need to be embarrassed. You see someone you know and of course you want to read about them. I think everyone has read about me. It’s humiliation on a grand scale.”
“Don’t say that. You still look great. I mean to see you like that again…” he trails off.
Words have left my brain; there is nothing left to come out of my mouth, except a confused, “Seriously?” which I instantly regret. Why would I plant the seed of doubt in his brain—make him think, You know what? She really didn’t look that great.
I wonder if he wears glasses and didn’t have them on. Then, I wonder, Was Nick telling me the truth when he said he thought I looked great? How is there such a huge disconnect between what I see and what others see? Maybe it’s the graininess of the video, I decide. Surely, if he saw me naked in person, he wouldn’t feel that way. Then again, maybe he would… The thought of Ben seeing me naked fills me with such delicious, head-spinning anticipation mingled with pure dread, I am certain my head will explode under the weight of the contradiction.
Ben exhales. “I’ve said too much—that was a bit forward, wasn’t it? I can’t slip back into conversation about things like that as if no time has passed.”
No, slip back in, I want to insist, then realize the double entendre and am very glad I don’t. I simply say, “It feels to me like no time has passed.”
“Me too. Have dinner with me, Maxie. Please.”
I want nothing more than to see Ben, but I am consumed by fear. This conversation has been so easy, but will seeing him be easy after all this time? I haven’t been on a date in well over a decade—a decade and a half—and I was planning on taking a bit more time before attempting to have a social life outside of school pick-up. Then again, I can’t think of anyone better to reenter the dating pool with than someone I’ve already dated. “I’d love to,” I answer. “I can meet you Tuesday. Nick usually has the kids on Wednesday, but he has a meeting Wednesday night.”
“Tuesday’s perfect,” Ben says excitedly. I feel so grateful that he wants to see me, considering the way we ended and after all the time that has passed.
“Have you ever forgiven me for what I did?” I ask softly.
“Forgiven you? I’d never hold anything against you from back then. We were kids. It’s water under the bridge.”
“Well, I’m obviously not a snoop anymore. I had no idea my husband was having an affair and only checked his laptop when that damn video landed in my daughter’s inbox. I’m sure she’ll never forgive me for that.”
“I can’t even imagine,” Ben says. “I also read about how angry she was in Us. How did they even get that information?”
“One of the moms at school talked, I think. Everyone knew, because Emma has made no secret of her displeasure. She still won’t talk to me. I don’t think we’ll ever be the same.” My eyes well up with tears thinking about my baby girl hating me so much and I wonder if it’s really a good idea to start dating—if I can even consider meeting Ben dating. I’ll think of it as getting together with an old friend, because I can’t justify bringing more possible upheaval into my children’s life in the form of a new man when they’re still reeling from their father moving out.
“Divorce is hard on kids, especially at that age. I was fourteen when my parents broke up and it took me forever to get over it,” Be
n confides.
“But, you got over it, right?” I panic a bit, worrying that my fourteen-year-old won’t get over it, but I don’t have a chance to hear Ben’s answer, because I glance at my watch and see that it’s getting perilously close to pick-up time. I tell Ben that although I’d love to keep chatting, we need to make a plan.
When Ben says that he’ll take a cab from the train station after work, I answer, “Don’t be silly. I’ll come pick you up. You know, I don’t even know where you’re coming from. Where do you work? And where do you live now?” I’m incredulous that I don’t even know these basics, yet we’ve discussed my nakedness.
“I live in the city. Figured I’d be in the suburbs by now, but I’ve been in my one bedroom on the Upper West Side for over 15 years. It’s rent-controlled and I love the city, so I can’t complain. I’m a music teacher now and I give private guitar and singing lessons. Teaching alone doesn’t exactly pay the rent, even a steal like my apartment.”
“I’m glad you didn’t give up music. You were so talented.”
“Thanks, Maxie. You always believed in me. I didn’t quite make the big time, but that’s okay. It was a bit tougher to mix graduate school than undergrad with playing in a band.”
“I have to admit, after college every time I was in a music store I searched through the record bins, expecting to stumble upon you. Even years later, after Target and Wal-Mart put those places out of business, I’d still occasionally glance through the CDs at Target. I always thought you’d be a rock star. But I think being a teacher is so fantastic. You’re influencing the future generation of artists.”
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