Truly (New York Trilogy #1) (38 page)

Matt glanced anxiously down the aisle.

“Give her a little space,” Nancy said.

Ben doubted this was good advice, but Matt accepted it. “I’m going to take a walk,” he said.

And then he was gone, too, leaving Ben alone with Nancy. She approached him with her head tilted, eyes bright. At the last second, she veered off toward a nearby table, where her purse was sitting. She rummaged through it until she found a lipstick and compact. Making an O with her mouth, she applied color and smacked her lips together. The tube closed with an aluminum
click
, the mirror a plastic
snap
. Her purse swallowed them both.

“Fingers crossed.” She held up both hands with her middle and index fingers entwined.

Ben looked down. He’d picked a daisy apart, and his fingernails were busy shredding one
petal to strips. He laid it down on the nearest table.

“Do you think it’s going to work?” she asked.

“No.”

“Oh, don’t be a spoilsport.”

Her cheerful tone was the same one May used when she was bullshitting herself. It knocked another spark off his anger, and this time there was plenty of tinder.

“This isn’t a sport.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah, you did.”

He crossed his arms and tried to find a way to calm down. She didn’t deserve this. No one deserved this.

“I want what’s best for May,” Nancy said.

“You want what
you
think is best for her. You don’t care what she wants.”

“Of course I care.”

“You don’t even know what she wants. You don’t ask her. You don’t listen. Nobody in this whole fucking family ever
listens
to her.”

Nancy’s lips pursed in an exact replica of May’s sour-mouth. “There’s no need to swear.”

Ben took a deep breath. There was no need to swear. There was no need for him to be here, leaking rage onto May’s
mom
, for Christ’s sake. He needed to apologize, but he felt like he’d been punched hard in the stomach—no, punched everywhere. Achy and weird, jacked-up and wrong and desperate for a target. Desperate to push against something, anything to get the feeling
out
.

He had no targets. Just a mother who wanted the best for her daughter and had no clue what it was.

Just a vision in his head of May at the beer garden, leaning back against the picnic table on her elbows in a shaft of sunlight. Cowboy boots crossed at the ankles, beer stein dangling from her fingers.

Sexy, confident, incredible May.

“Dan doesn’t understand her,” he said. “He made her sound like a—like a peanut butter sandwich. Or a decent bag of chips. She’s not a fucking bag of chips.”

“He’s not good with words.”

“He’s not the right
person
for her. She needs somebody who sees what she’s really like. Why don’t you get that?” He interlocked his fingers behind his head, elbows out, pacing. Unable to stop attacking this woman who didn’t really deserve it, because she loved May, but God, he wanted to shake her up. Make her see. “You don’t get it because you don’t know your daughter. You don’t know what she’s capable of. You never let her try. You keep trying to shove her into this box you built for her, and it’s
cruel
.”

Nancy crossed her arms. “Who are you to say that?” Her voice came out shaky. As rattled as he’d wanted her to be. “Who are you to—to
accuse
me?”

Who was he? Some guy who’d met May a week ago. A failed son and failed chef. A bum and a liar who’d insinuated himself into this woman’s good graces on false pretenses.

“Nobody.”

He took a step away from her.

I’m not any good to you
, was what he meant.
Or to her. Or to anybody
.

“Forget it.”

His throat convulsed reflexively, and he swallowed in a futile attempt to keep the lies he’d told himself from coming up.

You just want to help May
.

Bullshit.

She needs a bed to sleep in, a tour guide to show her the city, a shoulder to cry on
.

Bullshit.

You’re only staying because the sex is great, and you’ve got nowhere else important to be
.

Giant, steaming truckload of bullshit.

If his time with May had ever been an experiment, the experiment had ended days ago, long before May knocked him over and straddled him in his bed. Before she told him he didn’t want another restaurant.

Sometime between a rainy farmer’s market phone call and a perfect moment surrounded by bees and sunshine in a Park Slope backyard, he’d fallen for her. That was why he’d stuck around. To be with her, and to make sure that if he couldn’t have her, Thor wouldn’t get her, either.

Because he loved her.

Of course he loved her. She was May.

But love turned him into a human wrecking ball. He saved all his most destructive, outrageous, ridiculous assholery for the things he loved most. Look what had happened with Sardo. With Sandy.

Look what had happened with everything he’d ever loved.

He couldn’t do this.

“I need to go,” he said.

“I think that would be best.”

When he reached the door, all the muscles in his arms felt too heavy. May wasn’t in the hallway. She wasn’t anywhere. He didn’t even know where to look. He panicked, turned in a circle, kicked a stack of folding chairs and knocked them down. The noise was deafening.

Nancy came into the hall wearing a censorious expression. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I need to find May.”

“She’s in the bathroom.” Nancy paused. “What
is
this?”

This is love
.

This is life
.

This is me, fucking it up
.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s almost over.”

When he found the cool handle of the bathroom door, Ben stood still, breathing too fast, too hard. He closed his eyes. He needed to be calm to do this, so he searched for the narrow slot inside his psyche where he used to hide.

There
. Just there. He was no longer a boy, but he could still squeeze in if he kept his breathing shallow. He could crouch in a place where there was no color and no sound, and nothing could touch him.

By the time the door shut behind him, he felt perfectly calm.

May perched on the edge of the counter beside a sink, staring at the row of stall doors.

“Waiting for one to open up?”

She looked up in surprise. “I thought you were my mom.”

“No.”

“I thought she’d be barging in here to find out what happened with Dan.”

“What happened with Dan?”

“I told him there was another guy.”

Half a minute passed. She looked at the floor. He looked at her face, waiting for her to meet his eyes so he could do this.

She knew why he was here, but she wouldn’t help him. She would only sit there, passive, and make him hack apart whatever it was that tied them together.

He hadn’t thought this far ahead—hadn’t realized he’d have to tell her something. It had seemed obvious, before, that their relationship had a time limit, and when the time was up, he would go back to his life and let May get on with hers.

It was still obvious. He would cling to that obviousness. He would force May to acknowledge it, because otherwise …

There was no otherwise.

“I guess every vacation’s got to come to an end,” he said.

May braced her hands on the edge of the countertop. Her face came up, her eyes fierce. “Is that what it was? A vacation?”

Ben looked away.

“Sandy and I went to the Bahamas a few years ago,” he said. His voice sounded like someone else was operating it. Someone toneless and half-dead. “Our last shot at saving the marriage, and we both knew it. I was afraid I’d be bored, or we’d fight. But instead, we got to the resort, changed our clothes, went for a swim. We got drinks by the pool. There was this sense of possibility.
It doesn’t have to be over. I don’t have to be that stressed-out, angry guy who Sandy’s getting sick of
. We had sex on that vacation for the first time in months. A
lot
of sex.”

She didn’t flinch, though he’d meant her to. She just watched him with those big brown eyes. Those dairymaid eyelashes.

“And then it was time to go home. I was sure we’d fixed it. I felt more relaxed than I’d been in years, and we were joking around at the airport. But on the flight, we sat behind a baby that screamed so much, I thought there might actually be something wrong with it. The airline lost our bags. We couldn’t find a cab. Sandy and I started bickering about whether to take a shuttle or call a car service, and the next thing I knew, I was yelling at a skycap, and we weren’t even
home
yet.”

May stared at a stall door.

“You hear what I’m saying?”

She recrossed her arms.

“It’s not real,” he said. “We can’t make it be real.”

Her eyes brimmed with moisture, but she didn’t blink or look at him. She inhaled raggedly and asked, “Where will you go?”

Ben shrugged. “North, maybe.”

That brought her eyes back to his face. “You’re going to visit your dad?”

“Not him. The farm.”

She didn’t reply.

“What about you?” he asked. “What’s next?”

“I’m not sure yet.” She lifted her chin. Held his gaze. “I’m in love with this guy.”

Sweat broke out on his forehead, slick across the lines of his palms.

That wasn’t right.

Loved him. She
loved
him.

“You haven’t known him long enough,” he said.

“Yes, I have.”

The space he’d found in his head—gone. He’d lost it, so he reached for anger, but he couldn’t find it. He felt sick and lost and hopeless.

“May, come on. Why are you doing this? You know I’m leaving.”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“I’m too messed up,” he said. “Too angry. I’ll ruin it.”

The words echoed off the walls, louder than he’d wanted them to be.

“I know why you think so, but angry isn’t the worst thing in the world. That’s something I discovered this week. Angry can be okay.”

Ben took a step back. “What are you even suggesting, that I stay here? The Midwest … God. No. It took me twenty years to escape. I’m not coming back, and you’re not coming with me. I’ve known you a week. I don’t even have an apartment, or a job, and neither do you. It’s impossible.”

“It’s not impossible. It’s difficult.”

“May, grow up. This is a fantasy.”

Her face fell, and he recognized the knife he’d been scrambling for. He grabbed it. “What’s real is that your sister needs you. Your mom—you’ve got to talk to your mom. This
whole wedding is maybe not going to happen, and I don’t belong here. I sure as hell don’t belong in the middle of it. I have to go.”

“Because you need to work on your golf swing.” She sounded sullen now.

“Yeah. I do.”

“All right,” she said. “Go, then.”

If he were closer, he would reach for her. Touch her hair. Her neck. Her face.

But if he were closer, he wouldn’t be able to do this.

Ben took another step backward. Then another.

May shut her eyes, and he reached for the door handle, blindly grabbing at the space behind him until his knuckles banged into metal.

When he wrenched the door open, she didn’t say anything. She didn’t call him back.

If you try to push me away again, I’ll go
.

He’d pushed as hard as he could, and she was gone.

When he said goodbye, she didn’t even open her eyes.

* * *

After the door closed behind him, she had to imagine all the other sounds. The handle of the exit door. His footfalls across the asphalt parking lot. His key in the lock. The van door opening.

She didn’t decide to follow him, to fling open door after door until she felt the air on her face, full of cold and moisture. It just happened. She spotted his van in the lot and watched the lights come on.

Midday, but the sky had gone dark.

This was it.

No last embrace. No kiss goodbye from the man who’d kissed her so hard this morning, her mouth still felt swollen and soft.

She’d told him the truth, and he’d told her their future was a fantasy. Her worst fear—that she was doing with Ben the same thing she’d done with Dan. That she had no other mode, no other way of being in the world except this one, false way.

She’d known, of course. She’d known, but she hadn’t wanted to know.

He’d never invited her to love him. They had always been temporary, from the first
night’s truce over tacos.

Stupid girl, to have fallen for a man like him.

Stupid heart, to keep hoping even now. Even as he backed his van out of the parking space.

Even as he turned the wheel, straightened the tires, and drove away.

Allie looked at the sky. It was easier than looking at her sister.

May stood alone in the parking lot, watching the empty road where Ben had been and wasn’t anymore.

The sky wasn’t much more pleasant to look at. It was a dirty gray, heavy with rain that wasn’t falling. Wind whipped the branches of the trees and blew May’s hair into a whirling gold-brown aura around her head.

Allie’s wedding day sucked.

She
sucked. She’d been mean to her sister, and then she’d gone off and hid in a train car while May had been getting dumped. She wouldn’t even have known it happened if Mom hadn’t seen Ben leave and then come to fetch her.

Ben’s gone. May looks terrible. I don’t know what happened, but you have to talk to her
.

Someone had to anyway. Mom was out of the question. At times like this, she was always trying to identify the bright side, and you ended up feeling like a jerk for casting such a pall on her day.

Matt was MIA. That left Allie.

But damn it, she wasn’t the one who comforted May. It went against the natural order of things. Allie was the jerk, and May was the fixer.

A gust of wind whipped her hair into her eyes. As she brushed it away, a howl rose from the parking lot. Not a crying sort of howl—a full-throated yell of the frustrated, angry variety. The kind of noise Allie made when she dropped her keys for the third time or broke a dish in the sink or whanged her funny bone on the door when she was trying to shove three dogs outside at once.