by Mulry, Megan
Claire actually giggled.
Sarah continued. “Good. You sound much better. A good cry and maybe even a laugh. Have a great day, sweetie. And don’t make me wait another week for a phone call.”
“Okay, Sarah. Say hi to Devon for me. Bye, honey.” She hung up the phone and stared at it in her hand. Could she possibly muster the courage to call Ben? Of course she could. As Sarah had pointed out, it would be much easier to talk to him on the phone. It was all that physical immediacy that had made her so awkward yesterday, or that’s what Claire tried to tell herself.
She got up and made a pot of coffee in Bron’s tiny kitchen. While the water burbled and began to brew, Claire opened the folder for the Litchfield house project. The Pinckney project, she thought with mild irritation. She flipped to the inside flap where she’d put the address and telephone of the property and took a deep breath. She checked the time and saw that it was after nine and probably not too early to call. Ben seemed like the type who was up early anyway.
Claire pressed the numbers carefully and took another deep breath. The phone rang several times then the answering machine picked up. Simultaneous relief and disappointment came over Claire in a quick wave. She tried to stay calm and began speaking after the long beep.
“Hello, Ben. I just wanted to call and, oh I don’t know, apologize, I guess. This is Claire, by the way. I was so taken aback to see you after all these years, I think I may have come off—”
The phone screeched loudly and Claire pulled it away from her ear.
“Claire? Is that you?”
He sounded sort of breathless, and his voice right in her ear felt far more intimate than Claire had anticipated. Her breathing quickened.
“Yes. Ben, listen, it was so awkward yesterday—”
“Claire, I feel terrible. I just, I don’t know what came over me to be so rude. I don’t even have any excuse. I was just…I don’t know what to say.”
Claire breathed and made a mental note to thank Sarah James Heyworth for the rest of her life, every single day. “Oh, Ben. I’m so relieved. I was feeling so awful the whole drive home. I am just a mess, if you must know.”
“A mess?” He sounded like he was settling in. “Can you talk for a few minutes? Is this a good time?”
Claire’s stomach flipped. A few minutes? She could talk to him forever. His voice was so deep and optimistic. Tentative, but hopeful. “Of course. I called you, remember?”
“Ouch,” Ben said quietly. “I swear I was waiting until I thought you’d be awake and then I was going to call and apologize—”
Claire laughed. “No! I didn’t mean it like, I called you, damn it! I just meant, I have plenty of time to talk, because I called…I mean, oh, I don’t know what I mean. I was just so happy to see you yesterday and then I got all nervous and I tend to act a bit…cool…apparently.”
It was Ben’s turn to laugh. “Oh, Claire. Listen to you.” He sounded so happy to listen to Claire, and her hand shook a little as she poured the freshly brewed coffee into the white mug.
“I know. I’m a shambles.”
“You must be joking. If you’re a shambles, the rest of us are catastrophic.”
She laughed, a wonderful release of a laugh, deep and satisfying. “God, I’ve missed you,” she let slip through her laughter. Then they both fell silent. Oh, dear. Why had she said that? What a horribly inappropriate, overly intimate—
“Oh, Claire, you have no idea,” he blurted. “I never knew what happened to you. I came back to the hotel in Antibes, and Steve told me you’d popped your head into our room to let us know you were leaving. I couldn’t believe it.”
“You were so angry the night before. I didn’t think you’d want to see me. Ever again, really.”
She could hear the hiss of Ben’s exhale. “I think letting you go without a fight might be the greatest regret of my life.”
Claire almost dropped the coffee mug on the white tile floor. “Ben. What a sweet thing to say.” She had to get this new upbeat…friendship…on the right track. She wanted to be around Ben, just to be near him, to sit at the folding table and laugh and be his friend. Was it even possible? “Do you think we might be friends? Now that we’re so much older and wiser.”
Ben hesitated, and Claire worried she’d pushed too hard. Then she tried to remember Sarah’s advice, that Claire’s idea of pushy was the rest of the world’s idea of humble solicitude.
Chapter 9
Holding the chipped blue-and-white mug in his left hand and the cordless phone in his right, Ben weighed the pros and cons of being friends with Claire Heyworth. Was it even possible? When the mere thought of her got him hard. Like right now. The sound of her voice worked on him like an erotic caress. He’d practically torn the pantry door off to get to the phone in time to interrupt her voice message. “Friends. What a concept. I think we might.”
She sounded relieved as she exhaled into the phone. He wanted so much more, but if that’s all she had to offer, he’d take it. She was probably madly in love with the marquess, after twenty years of marital bliss.
“So. What do friends do?” she asked, with that optimistic innocence that threw him right back to their time together in France. Her eyes had been so bright. She had been so easily amazed. At first, he’d thought she was putting him on. His backpacking buddy Steve had thought she was a frigid tease. Ben had thought she was an angel. He still did, come to think of it.
“Oh, I don’t know. How long are you in New York? We could go to dinner or a movie.”
“How long? What do you mean? I live here.”
“Oh. I thought you lived in a castle…I mean…I thought—”
“Ben. My marriage is over. My husband absconded with my entire fortune. If such a thing still existed, he’d be going to debtor’s prison. Unless he can find more of my money to pay for his sins.”
“Wow. I had no idea. I’m so sorry, Claire.”
“I…I don’t even know if I’m sorry or not. I mean…it was pretty awful…”
Then why do you only want to be friends? Ben wanted to yell. Instead, he asked her to come hear him play in the East Village that night. “It’s just a small jazz band in a dirty old bar. But it might be fun. Friendly-like.”
She smiled through the words. “I’d love that. What time?”
They finished making plans, and Ben said they could grab a bite to eat after his set, which usually ended around nine. He hung up the phone and thought maybe life wasn’t as dismal as it had seemed the night before. A chance to remedy all those years of what-ifs and what-went-wrongs. He could be a friend. In fact, Ben would be the best friend Claire ever had.
He spent the rest of the day going through all the items that he’d pretended he didn’t have time to think about when he’d been so rude to Claire the day before. He looked at baseboard samples, paint samples, doorknobs, and hinges. He made tons of notes that he would send to Claire’s office Monday morning, so she could move forward on the project. He was grateful they had something physical to work on together. Like friends. Maybe eventually it wouldn’t feel like an approximation. Or maybe Nora Ephron was right, and all men not-so-secretly wanted to sleep with all their female friends. Maybe it was just pheromones. Ben could deal with that. He wasn’t a teenager after all.
The thought of being a teenager made him think of Claire, which made him hard as a lead pipe, which led him back up to his bedroom to rub one out, then back to his to-do list before driving back to the city that afternoon. He put his car in his Upper East Side garage and went to his apartment to drop off his weekend bag. He took a quick look around his place before he picked up his guitar, wondering what Claire would think of his bachelor pad. He shook his head at all of his dreaming about the future and was on the number six subway heading downtown with plenty of time to be at the club by seven.
Ben had been playing with the same three friends for the past ten years. It had started as a way to blow off steam when they’d all been working in the same hospital. Jenny
was a plastic surgeon now and played the drums like a maniac, incredibly controlled and nearly militaristic one moment, then volatile and free-form the next. Wendell was on keyboards. He was a pediatrician and lived with his girlfriend and two daughters in Chelsea. Ivan played stand-up bass and was an ENT specialist who had recently gone into private practice in Brooklyn, where he lived with his boyfriend of seven years. The quartet played a schizophrenic mix of mid-century classics like Art Blakey and MJQ, then trotted out souped-up versions of pop singles by the likes of Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson that they transformed into lighthearted instrumental pieces.
Ben felt Claire before he saw her. She looked lost, in that elegant way of hers, poking her head into the darker part of the club, beyond the bar. He continued playing the selection he’d been riffing on as he watched her wend her way through the narrow spaces between the café tables. There was an empty spot along the banquette that ran the length of the exposed brick wall. He smiled when she looked up at him. She smiled back.
He was so screwed. Her smile was like one of those absurd shaft-of-light Hallmark cards when the Holy Spirit descends upon some unsuspecting sot. He must have missed a beat or picked up his pace because Jenny took it as a musical cue and launched into a crazy drum solo. Ben chanced another peek at Claire and tried to keep his fingers moving. He knew all the songs like he knew how to breathe. But since breathing seemed complicated, maybe that wasn’t saying much. It was much easier when he didn’t look at her.
Ben looked down at his own fingers, as if he needed to see the strings and his fingertips touching in order to play the notes. He could have played blindfolded with the guitar behind his back, but she didn’t need to know that. They played the full hour and a half without a break, and his three friends gave him a couple of leading glances as they put away their instruments to clear the small stage for the next group.
“Who’s the babe?” Jenny asked casually.
Ben looked across at Claire, who seemed as far from a babe as a woman could possibly be. He wanted to bark at Jenny that Claire was the daughter of a duke until he realized he was being completely ridiculous. “An old friend. Come have a drink with us.” He looked across to Wendell and Ivan, to include them in the casual invitation.
“Sorry, Ben. I’m on call tomorrow and Tuesday. Maybe next week. She looks charming.” Ivan winked. Wendell also said his regrets, so Jenny accompanied Ben and his guitar case over to where Claire was sitting.
Claire tried to stand, but she was tucked in behind the cramped table and it was an awkward business.
“Nice to meet you!” Jenny smiled. “I’m Jenny Donovan. The drummer.”
“You were amazing!” Claire cried. “Come sit.”
Ben was almost jealous—why did Jenny get to sit next to her?—then smiled, loving that Claire was genuinely excited by the music. He had spent so many years with Alice tolerating it, at best. Alice had always seen Ben’s guitar playing as an eye-rolling hobby to be borne. Claire seemed fired up. Her cheeks were flushed. She was speaking quickly, almost breathlessly, to Jenny.
“I mean, are you thinking? Or does it just come over you? What does it feel like?”
Jenny burst out laughing. “You’re a musician’s dream come true. Look at you! So turned on by the music.”
Claire flushed. “Oh. Sorry. Am I being inappropriately enthusiastic?” Ben almost dove across the table to get back that flushed excitement. Damn the person who ever made Claire feel like her enthusiasm was inappropriate. Whether it was her mother or her ex-husband or her whole damn circle of friends, Ben decided that a big part of his new position as her Very Good Friend was to fan the flames of her enthusiasm. He certainly hadn’t helped matters by being a moody bastard the day before.
Jenny laughed again and grabbed Claire’s upper arm. “Are you for real? You’re from another world. So upper crusty. I love it. Isn’t she divine, Ben?”
God. If Jenny only knew how divine he thought she was. Instead of mooning all over her, Ben reached out and took one of Claire’s nervous hands in his and patted her like an older brother would. “Yeah, she’s the best. We haven’t seen each other in over twenty years and we just bumped into each other yesterday.”
Jenny stayed for another twenty minutes, laughing with Claire about her first impressions of working in New York. Ben tried to act normal.
After Jenny left, he moved around to the banquette to sit next to her and tried to act like it was because the music from the next act was a little too loud and he couldn’t hear what she was saying. Of course, he was just trying to get as physically close to her as he could without frightening her.
She had pulled her hair back into a practical ponytail and was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. She couldn’t have looked more pedestrian if she had tried. Ben had the distinct impression she had tried.
“I’m starving. Have you eaten dinner yet?” Ben asked, forcing himself to look away from the curve of her fitted white T-shirt and away from the train of thought that made him question why she was trying to make herself nondescript. It was impossible anyway. His stomach lurched with desire at a white T-shirt and jeans. What would he do in the face of a black thong and bra? Or just a pair of shorts. He shook his head and scowled at himself.
“Are you okay?” Claire asked. “You look a little…”
“What?”
“Angry.”
Ben shook his head and tried to shake off his irritation with himself. “No. I’m just trying to shake off a week’s worth of irritation, I guess.”
“Oh.” Claire looked down at the soggy napkin beneath her wine glass. “You looked like that yesterday, and I thought you were aggravated, you know, with me.”
Ben was totally out of his depth. He wanted her, obviously. She didn’t want him. Obviously. Or so he thought. He smiled, the big one, which seemed to put her at ease. “It’s all just work and the usual crap,” he tried. “Let’s go get something to eat and forget about life for a while.”
Claire smiled, but there was something wistful and disappointed when she did. Ben stared at her gray eyes.
“What is it, Claire?”
She shook her head and tried to look away and then stared into Ben’s eyes, as if it were a dare. “You used to say that. Do you remember? When we were in France. When we were so young?”
“What, that I was hungry?”
Claire’s face clouded, as if she’d gone too far and the world would never really understand her. “No. Oh, forget it. I sometimes think the world is full of a million memories and most people remember five hundred thousand particular memories, and I remember the other five hundred thousand.” She shook her head again. Her long, blond hair swung against her shoulder. “I sometimes think I should try to remember the other five hundred thousand, to be a part of the world.” She smiled—a sad, lost smile—then shrugged. “But I guess we can only remember what sticks, you know?”
Fuck, Ben thought. He was a mess.
He stared at her lips. Why did they have to be so plump? If she was a hard, cold, strident woman, it just didn’t make sense that she would possess a pair of kissable, red, trembling lips.
“Ben?”
“Yes,” he answered firmly. “Sorry, I was just remembering…the same things. I remember it. I remember how you and I could forget everything,” when we kissed, he wanted to add. “You aren’t the only one who remembers that…those…the memories. I mean, well, let’s go get something to eat, eh?”
Claire smiled and Ben recognized it for what it was. The full, real one, not the cool stubborn one she used as a mask to protect herself from the world. “Yes. Yes, please.”
Ben put a few bills on the table for the two beers and Claire’s wine, and they walked out of the bar and into the cool night.
They went to a Japanese noodle shop on Second Avenue and laughed about Claire’s first two weeks of work and how ridiculous it was to be almost forty years old at her first job.
“I keep forgetting I’m not sup
posed to say I’m almost forty! Thirty-eight!” Claire cried, then laughed. “Boppy ordered me to say just thirty-eight!”
They laughed through most of the next hour and ate spicy food and drank lots of water and Claire asked about the band and how they’d all joined together and about Ben’s job and his apartment. And they kept it…friendly. By eleven-thirty, Claire was starting to fade, so Ben got the check and insisted on paying for it. It wasn’t much, but he felt like—friends or not—he wanted to pay or be the man or something stupid like that. Claire shook her ponytail, not quite understanding him, and then said thanks. They walked out to the sidewalk and plenty of available cabs were cruising by.
“How did we do?” Ben asked.
“Good, I think. What do you say? Can we be friends?” Claire asked. She reached up to settle a strand of hair behind her ear that the wind had pulled, and Ben had the fleeting moment of thinking she was reaching up to touch his hair instead of her own. Wishful fleeting moment of thinking.
“I say yes,” Ben said.
“Good!” Claire said, relieved. “I’m so glad. I hated the idea of…whatever that was yesterday. That was awful. And I could use a friend.”
Ben must have looked frozen, trying to hold himself together as best as he could. He was beginning to despise this whole friend concept.
“I mean,” Claire added quickly, “I don’t want to use you. Oh dear, that came out all wrong. I am so awkward around you!” She laughed, then took a deep breath. “I think I’ll get a cab. Thanks, Ben. I’m so glad we got together.”
“Claire.”
She had turned toward the avenue to hail a cab then turned back at the sound of his voice. “Yes?”
“I’m so sorry about yesterday, about everything.”