by Phoebe Fox
My frown drew down further. “Does Tom want that too—is he trying just as hard?”
I was afraid I could guess the answer.
Sheila’s gaze darted up to me, and then shot right back down. “I think he is. If he says something a little...you know, unkind, and hurts my feelings, he’s so sorry about it—he’s so sweet and sorry and tries so hard to make it up to me. He says I’m just what he needs—the exact opposite of Desiree.”
I heard a muffled cry of outrage from Dina again. I couldn’t even chastise her—sympathetic pain knifed through me as well at Sheila’s words. This guy—Tom—had set up his previous girlfriend as a paragon, an ideal he made sure Sheila could never reach, and then compounded it by telling her she was nothing at all like this perfect (and I suspected greatly embellished) version of a girlfriend. With a woman like Sheila—low self-esteem, eager to please—it made her strive ever harder to be what he wanted. He was manipulating her by preying on her weaknesses, and she was so caught up in thinking she could “fix” him, she couldn’t even see it.
It was unbelievably common, especially with women, but it didn’t make me any less sad—or angry—every time I saw it.
“Sheila...” I had to tread carefully. She was clearly still in defensive mode where Tom was concerned, and heaping blame for their difficulties on no shoulders but her own. “Sometimes people try to make others feel worse about themselves because it makes them feel better—more powerful. It’s especially egregious when they press on those areas where someone might already be insecure or vulnerable. It can make that person a little bit blind to the fact that maybe their relationship isn’t as healthy as it could be.”
To my surprise, Sheila seemed to agree wholeheartedly, her head bobbing up and down like a Pez dispenser. “Yes! That’s it exactly—that’s what Desiree did to Tom, always cutting him down and making him feel like he wasn’t good enough. That’s what I want to help him with!”
She looked so uncustomarily hopeful, her expression so relieved and validated, I knew I had to leave it alone for now. Sheila wasn’t ready to see what was really going on in her relationship, and pushing her to was only going to make her defensive and close her off to further exploration of it. Good therapy didn’t always mean forcing someone to examine their life—sometimes you had to back off and let them live it for themselves, even if you could see they were making a huge mistake.
Some people had to scrape bottom before they were ready to admit they were drowning and reach up a hand.
twenty-three
I got ready for my date with Ben that night with Sasha-like levels of personal grooming. Which entailed:
Shaving my legs—obviously. And as long as I was down there with a razor...I thought I might do something a little creative.
Waiting for bleeding in un-Band-Aidable area to taper off.
Trying to cover strange bald patch with creative womanscaping, resulting in what looked to be the letter B. Which, while I was committed to making my feelings known tonight, might be a level or three past what I wanted to convey to Ben about them.
Stepping away from Lady Town before further damage could be done. I’d make sure the lights were dim this evening, and (sadly) that Ben didn’t get too much face time down there.
Curling hair, something I was not accustomed to or adept at doing, resulting less in my usual frizzy waves but more...I wasn’t sure what. A little bit 1940s pinup girl, a little bit Lenny Kravitz.
I opted for a dress between sexy and classy—a form-fitting sheath that hugged every curve—until I realized that some of those curves weren’t the good ones and would require Spanx. And having Ben remove me from a sausage casing seemed like the least sexy choice for later on. So I discarded that option and, after trying on literally every single dress in my closet, went with simple: yellow-and-white cotton sundress à la Donna Reed, but with a fitted bust and a slightly shorter length that hopefully suggested a somewhat dirty Donna Reed.
Heels. Duh. Strappy and purple and high.
I even tried a smoky eye, which I thought was pretty hot, and then added a bold pink lipstick (because Sasha told me once that bright lipstick mimics the way nature makes lips flush in sexual arousal, and subliminally turns guys on), but the effect was a bit early Eddie Izzard, so I scrubbed it all and started over, going with a simple subtle gold wash on my eyes and a medium-toned coral gloss. It may not have sent primal evolutionary mating signals, but I thought I looked pretty.
And then I waited. Because in my ignorance of how long this type of primping took, I had allotted myself two and a half hours before I had to leave to meet Ben, and it turned out it took about half that.
As I sat on the bed, contemplating breathing into a paper bag to calm my too-fast heartbeat, I tried to figure out what had me so nervous. I needed to therapize myself.
Why was I so scared?
I’d tried rehearsing what I wanted to talk to Ben about—to be honest, I sat down to make a list, intending to commit it to memory so I didn’t get tongue-tied and bungle it.
But the truth was, I had no idea what I was going to say.
Last weekend everything had been fine—easy and comfortable and straightforward. Now Ben and I hadn’t talked all week. Last week I’d practically had custody of his dog, and felt like his mom and I were creating a unique sort of friendship. This week I hadn’t seen or spoken to either one.
Last Saturday Ben had told me he loved me, or something like it—maybe—and I’d said...nothing.
That was just about the worst response I could have given, if he really did say it. “I love you too” is the holy grail of responses. On the other end of the spectrum, “I’m so sorry, but I don’t feel the same way” is agony, but at least it’s closure. No response was just...indifference. And that was not how I felt.
But did he say it?
And did I love him?
Those were the two unknowns.
When I walked into Saffron, where Ben was standing at the front waiting for me, I saw him visibly suck in a breath at my appearance.
Score.
The snaking tension in my belly started to uncoil. It was so good to see him—it felt like weeks instead of the usual five or six days, and my heart thumped into my ribs as I took him in. Brown hair that seemed longer, with a slight curl, carelessly falling over his forehead. Dark hazel eyes that smiled when he smiled—which he was, and that lit me up too. I didn’t realize until then my fear that I might never see him smile at me like this again. He reached out one hand and I stepped into the circle of his arm as he pulled me toward him and gave me a light—but stomach-tumbling—kiss on the mouth.
“You look beautiful,” he murmured.
“So do you,” I whispered idiotically, pressing my palm to his cheek and trying to stop grinning like a fool.
The hostess whisked us off to our seats, and while we talked in the same easy way we always had, we had wine and ordered plates of food that we shared bites of, and I think it must have been delicious, but I didn’t taste any of it because I was too happy simply to be here, with everything—blessedly—okay.
After dinner I suggested a walk down to the water, and we strolled along the lighted sidewalks alongside the marina, watching the boats bob in the moon-bleached river, hearing the creaks and zzzzppp of their lines pulling and the sibilant splashes of water on their hulls and the dock pilings and the seawall, smelling the earthy, musky, alive scent of the Caloosahatchee—and even then the thing that registered strongest of all was Ben’s warm hand clasped around mine.
There were others with the same idea we’d had, strolling in both directions, and we greeted passersby with nods and smiles, pieces of their conversations trailing behind them as they walked past. But we kept walking to where fewer people had wandered, only the occasional figure lit up in the regular puddles of yellow light from the lamps dotting the wal
kway.
In the darkness I felt the rest of my tension leave me and float out over the river with the slight breeze that stirred my hair and Ben’s. Our conversation quieted comfortably, and after a while of the only sound the waves’ gentle teasing and our steps on the concrete, I pulled him over to a bench and we sat side by side, looking out over the trail of moonlight dancing over the water’s surface.
I took a breath, and then another, but I was much less nervous than I thought I’d be, now that the moment for talking was here.
“Can we talk about last weekend?” I asked into the night noises.
I saw his surprise in the lift of his eyebrows as his head turned to me. He nodded. “Okay.”
One more breath, and then I faced the lions head-on: “That night in bed...when I said that Jake was easy to love, I thought I heard you say, ‘So are you.’” I was sure he could hear my heartbeat through the fabric of my dress. I’d either finally know where things stood, or I’d made a complete fool of myself.
“I did say that,” he said.
His quiet words shot straight through to my belly. “Okay.” I nodded. “So...I didn’t know that. I was so tired that night anyway, and then I wasn’t expecting you to...I wasn’t sure. So I sat there trying to figure out if I’d really heard it, and then pondering what it meant if I had, and figuring out how I felt about it, and then I realized a lot of time had passed and it was too late to say anything. So I didn’t.” My last words came out in a tone of remorse.
Ben was looking intently at me, but a slight smile lifted one side of his mouth. “Wow. Is all that analysis from being a mental health professional, or just a woman?” he teased.
“Both. It’s exhausting.”
He chuckled, but didn’t offer anything else, so I went on.
“Since then I can’t stop thinking about it. And things got a little weird with us. And...I thought maybe it was because you said something...important, and I ignored it. But I don’t want things to be weird, Ben. I didn’t want some stupid misunderstanding from my being tired and neurotic and overanalyzing to change things between us.” I reached over and took his hand, and he clasped mine. “Dating you is the best relationship I’ve had in a long time. I’m happy. I’m calm—meaning I don’t have to sit and analyze every little thing about us to decide whether you really like me—this week aside, of course.” I gave a half laugh. “You make it clear every second. I always know where I stand with you. I have fun with you. I love your company. I can’t wait to see you every weekend. I even like your mom and your dog so much.”
Ben let go of our clasped hands. And then he put both his palms alongside my face, and he leaned in for a soft, long kiss.
He pulled away just far enough so he could look into my eyes, but his breath still brushed my face. “What I was trying to say that night, Brook, was that I think I’m falling in love with you.”
I felt something explode inside me—like a supernova, filling me up with a burst of warmth and joy so strong I thought it had to shoot out of my chest.
“Me too,” I whispered.
Sometimes you can analyze your feelings and the meaning of love until your brain cramps with the effort, but if you shut up all the logical, rational voices trying to carefully decide what it all means, the heart tells you in the simplest, clearest way imaginable.
Ben slid his warm hands across my shoulders, down my arms, and took my hands again. “I actually thought you might not have been ready for that,” he admitted into the purple night. “I figured saying nothing was your kind way of not having to say you didn’t feel that way about me.”
“Is that why this week has been so weird?” I asked. “Why you didn’t leave Jake with me? Why we met here?”
Ben squeezed my fingers and looked out over the dark Caloosahatchee. “You told me once about your romantic history, Brook. But I never really told you about mine.”
My eyebrows drew together. “Yes, you did.” He’d been married when he was young—just twenty-three, to his college girlfriend—and divorced two years later. In the decade since, he’d had girlfriends, but nothing serious. When I met him he’d lived alone for ten years.
He shook his head. “Not all of it. I just...It’s in the past, and I didn’t think it mattered. But I guess nothing’s ever really in the past; you carry a lot of it with you, especially in relationships.” He smiled at me. “I read that in a really smart therapist’s column this week.” The corners of my lips turned up. “Anyway, Michelle and I didn’t just get a divorce—we imploded. She started talking about how weird marriage was, committing to spend your whole life with one person when it went against human nature—and this was after we’d been married for a year. She said love was meant to be open and inclusive, not cut off and closed down. And still, I thought we were just working through a tough patch, because we were young.” He looked down at our joined hands, and my heart ached for him. If I’d been his therapist at the time, I’d have told him he was in dangerous waters.
“She was cheating—of course,” he said after a long silence. “I was blind to it—of course. Or willfully blind, I guess—how could I not have seen what was going on? She was busy all the time with work and social activities that apparently didn’t include me. She stopped saying she loved me, stopped answering when I said it to her.” He moved his gaze away from mine to look out over the water. “She got late-night calls she never explained,” he added quietly.
A sick feeling crept into my belly as I flashed back to my middle-of-the-night conversation with Chip. “I’m sorry, Ben,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry. The other night must have felt...”
He nodded. “Just like that. I freaked out, I guess. I know you aren’t Michelle. But at the time it was knee-jerk, almost primal—something just kept telling me to hunker down, protect. So I got out of there and I kind of...retreated. I’m sorry.”
It was so much like me, I almost wanted to laugh. I was the queen of cut-and-run the second I saw the first rustlings of unrest. I couldn’t believe that Ben—steady, confident, openhearted Ben—was the same way. But old scars couldn’t always cover up the deepest wounds. I knew that as well as Ben obviously did.
“You can’t imagine how much I understand that.”
He gave a rueful smile. “I guess I just wanted to get out before you had to figure out how to let me down easily.”
“I don’t want to let you down easily,” I said, grinning happily. “I don’t want to let you down at all. In fact, that call was me letting him down.”
I’d meant the words to underline my commitment to Ben, to us, but I could tell from the way his expression changed that I had said too much.
“I thought you said it was a client?” His tone was still relaxed, but sudden tension stiffened his shoulders.
“Oh, it was a client. Or a former client. I didn’t want to take him back on in formal therapy because we’d had a history with each other. I mean not like dating!” I rushed to explain. “It was just this one stupid night that we...” Ben’s face closed up tight as hurricane shutters. Dear God, Brook, stop digging and put the shovel down. But my tongue apparently wasn’t connected to my brain tonight. “Anyway, I’d wanted to help him work through some things, but in the course of that it turned out he had these...feelings for me. And yes, he’d told me a few days before that he...he wanted more. But that night I told him no. Because of you. Because of us.”
He’d turned away from me, staring at the boats bobbing on the river in gentle fluid motions completely at odds with the furious churning in my stomach. He nodded, lines bracketing his mouth. “Why did you have to think about it?”
I released a long breath.
“After we hung up I felt bad because he’s...well, Chip’s a nice guy, it turns out. And I hurt his feelings, and so I...I sat out in the living room for a while just sort of working that out in my head. I should have explain
ed when I came back to bed—I know it must have looked—”
“No, he said tightly. “I mean before. You said he’d told you a few days earlier about his...Chip’s feelings for you. Why did you have to think about it before you told him no?”
My mouth hung open like a hinge had snapped.
A slow chill crept over Ben’s expression. I recognized the decent of an icy shield like an old familiar childhood blanket.
“Because...Because I...” Why hadn’t I told him no right away, that day in the coffee shop? Why did I have to think it over?
I had no good answer.
“I’ve been single a long time, Brook,” Ben said in the face of my mute confusion. “I’m not a kid anymore. I know what love is and isn’t now. I know what’s healthy and what’s not. I know what I want.”
“I...yes,” I said past a dry throat. “Me too.”
“Do you?” he asked, and there was no accusation in his quiet tone, only the question. “If you knew about us—if you were sure—would you have had to think about it? Would you have taken that phone call in the middle of the night, and been upset enough about what happened that you couldn’t come get back into bed next to me because you were still thinking about someone else?”
I shook my head, willing away the tears that threatened to spill out of my eyes.
“I...I wasn’t thinking about him like that.”
Finally he turned to face me, but without the anger or pain I expected—only a shadow of sadness. “Are you sure that you really want something more between us?”
The words lurked just inside my mouth, waiting only for me to give them voice so that the rest of the evening could go as I’d scripted it as I’d gotten ready for our date, what felt like days ago now: Ben in my bed, in my life, our relationship back to the way it was. Yes, I want more with you. Yes, I’m sure. Yes. Yes. Yes.