Chapter 37 Benji
I swing by Dante’s apartment on the way home. He’s on the couch with his laptop and a glass of wine. He’s wearing a cashmere sweater in July because Dante keeps the AC at sixty-four degrees and dresses for the climate he creates rather than the one he lives in.
“You look tan,” he says, glancing up.
“I was on a deck for four days.”
“You also look like you’re going to sit and tell me everything.
And I’m going to need more wine for that.
” He closes the laptop. “There’s pad Thai in the fridge.
The good kind. I ordered it an hour ago because I knew you’d land hungry and sad.
I’m not dealing with hungry-sad Benji on an empty stomach. ”
“Here’s your candy,” I say, dropping the bag on the table in front of him before heading to the fridge.
I eat the pad Thai on the couch while he digs into the candy bag. Dante pours me wine I didn’t ask for and I drink it because Dante’s instincts about what I need are better than my own.
I tell him the good parts first. The loft, the deck, Stormy, the nights.
Mickey talking about going back to work, getting the truck fitted with hand controls, rebuilding his life piece by piece.
The 30A wedding plan and how Mickey didn’t try to talk me out of it.
His mother holding my hand and inviting me back.
Mickey introducing me as his boyfriend at the kitchen table.
“That’s a good man,” Dante says. “I like it.”
“He is.”
He’s watching me and not saying a word. Dante doesn’t push. Dante creates space and waits for you to fill it.
“We went to an outdoor shopping center after his mom’s house,” I say. “It’s on his old patrol route. I wanted to see more of his town. We went to a candy store. That’s where I got your taffy.”
“The taffy is excellent, by the way,” he says. “The key lime is transcendent.”
“While I was shopping, a neighbor recognized him. He lives two doors down from Mickey’s house. Nice guy. Talked to Mickey for three minutes about his wife, his yard, the recovery. Offered to bring him casseroles.”
I stop talking. The silence between us stretches.
“And?” he says.
“I was standing right there. Right next to the wheelchair. Holding a bag of candy. Jim looked directly at me. He saw me. And then he looked back at Mickey and they kept talking. Mickey never once said my name or acknowledged me.”
Dante doesn’t move. But his eyes go hard. I’ve seen that look exactly three times in seven years and it’s never ended well for the person who caused it.
“Earlier at his parents’ house,” Dante says slowly. “He introduced you as his boyfriend to his mother.”
“Yes.”
“And the same day, in public, in front of a neighbor, he didn’t introduce you.”
“No, he didn’t acknowledge me at all. I was standing right there beside him holding the handle of the wheelchair.”
Dante goes still. His hands fold together on the table. I’ve learned the hand folding is the Dante version of loading a weapon.
“Private is easy, Benji,” he says. “Public is the test.”
“Maybe he forgot,” I say. “The conversation moved fast. Jim surprised him. It’s not like he planned to run into someone.”
“Benji, stop defending him. You’re pretending this didn’t hurt and I’m not going to watch you build him an excuse he didn’t earn.
He didn’t forget. He’s a cop. He clocked every person who walked into that store and he knew exactly who was standing behind his chair and he chose not to say your name.
That’s not an oversight. That’s a decision he made. ”
“It was only one time,” I say.
“Was it? Because your face is saying it wasn’t.”
“No,” I say quietly. “Maybe it wasn’t only one time.”
“Tell me.”
“It was at the bar. I was sitting on the stool next to Mickey arguing with Sheila about the lighting. A regular came in. He said hello to Mickey, the whole glad you’re back thing.
And out of the corner of my eye, I watched Mickey move his hand off the bar top.
It had been next to mine all morning. Close.
Almost touching. The second the man looked at us, Mickey’s hand moved to his armrest. Quick. Like a reflex.”
“Did he put it back?”
“Later he squeezed my hand and quickly let go. When we’re alone or around Tex and Stormy, he holds my hand tight like letting go hurts.
In the bar, everything gets more distant.
Less touching. Less looking. In private, he’s all the way in.
Hands, mouth, words, everything. He told me I’m in every version of his future life.
He asked me to stay in Panama City. And then when we’re downstairs, something pulls him back.
It’s not cold. Or cruel. Just less open. ”
Dante leans back on the couch and lets out a long sigh. “I’m going to say something and you’re not going to like it.”
“When has that ever stopped you?”
“You need to talk to him before this goes on any longer. You need to tell him what you told me. About what you saw him do at the bar and the candy store. All of it. Because here’s what I know about you.
You don’t fight back. You absorb. You take the hit and you smile through it.
You adjust the flowers and you make everything around you perfect and you never once say this is hurting me.
You never say it because your father taught you that saying it doesn’t change anything.
Your mother taught you to make things beautiful no matter what, and somewhere between those two lessons you decided that being hurt in silence is better than being hurt out loud. ”
My eyes are burning.
“Silence is how you lose people,” Dante says.
His voice is gentler now, the edge is gone and what’s left is the friend who always catches me.
“Silence is how the inch becomes a mile. If you don’t tell him, he won’t know.
And if he doesn’t know, he’ll keep doing it.
And if he keeps doing it, you’ll leave him.
Not all at once. Gradually. How you leave every man who makes you smaller.
You’ll start pulling away in pieces so small he won’t see them until you’re already out the door. ”
“I’m not leaving him.”
“Not yet. But you’re hurt. He put it there and you’re aware of it. You need to handle this now while you still can.”
I set the pad Thai on the coffee table. I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them.
Dante reaches over and puts his hand on my shoulder.
His hand is always there. Seven years of this.
Me on the couch, Dante beside me, his hand on my shoulder while I figure out how to say what I’m afraid to say.
“Am I too much for him, Dante? Be honest with me.”
“No, not the way you’re thinking,” he says.
“I don’t want to be the person who gives him an ultimatum,” I say. “He’s in a wheelchair. He got shot protecting me. He lost his legs because he jumped in front of a bullet that was headed for me. How do I look at him and say you’re hurting me by not saying my name?”
“You look straight at him and you say exactly that. Because the bullet doesn’t give him permission to erase you.
The chair doesn’t give him permission. Nothing gives anyone permission to make the person they love invisible.
Not the fact that he took it for you. Especially not that.
Because if he took a bullet for you and then spends the rest of his life pretending you’re not there, what was the bullet for? ”
“Okay, I’ll talk to him,” I say. “On the next trip. Face to face. Not on the phone.”
Dante nods, squeezes my shoulder once and releases. He picks up his laptop and opens it. Dante knows when to stop.
“Now,” he says. “Let’s figure out the lantern wedding before you burn the state of Florida down. I need to talk to you about contingency plans because I did some research and the fire risk of two hundred sky lanterns over a garden reception is genuinely terrifying.”
“How terrifying?”
“A single sky lantern reaches an internal temperature of three hundred degrees. Two hundred of them over a garden with live oaks and dried palm fronds is not a wedding, Benji. It’s an insurance claim.
The fire marshal will shut it down before the first dance ends and the bride will be standing on a dance floor watching firefighters hose down her reception while the photographer captures the whole thing for posterity. ”
“Seriously?”
“I’m just telling you the physics. The physics suggest a pivot to LED lanterns on fishing line, which give you the same floating glow, the same visual, the same gasp from the guests, with zero chance of a structure fire.
Or, and hear me out, a drone light show.
I know a vendor. Forty drones programmed to the first-dance song.
The guests look up and the sky is full of light and nobody’s homeowner’s insurance gets canceled. ”
“The bride wants real flame,” I say.
“No, she wants a moment. Give her a better moment. That’s what you do. You take what people think they want and you give them what they actually want and they thank you for it. The lanterns are the idea. The moment is the product. Deliver the product.”
“What would I do without you?”
“Finish eating and go home to rest,” Dante says. “You have a conversation to think about and a wedding to plan. You can’t do either of those things running on Thai food and bad feelings.”
I hug him at the door. He holds on for an extra second.
The drive home is ten minutes. My apartment smells like the sealed-up version of my life. I drop my bag by the door, open the balcony door to let the night air in, and check my phone.
Mickey: Sorry I missed your call. PT ran late. Steve says my left calf is showing voluntary contraction now. Not just twitches. Actual movement. Small but real. I moved my foot today, Benji. Half an inch. Steve measured it.
I stare at the screen. His foot moved. The foot I held in my hands and pressed cream into while he watched.
I call him. He picks up on the first ring.
“Half an inch,” I say. “Mickey! That’s incredible!”
“Yeah, can you believe it? Half an inch. Steve made me do it three times to confirm. Same result every time.”
“I’m so proud of you. You know that, right?”
“I do. How’s Miami? Did you get home okay?”
“I stopped at Dante’s first. He ate half the taffy before I could get it out of the bag. I’m home now.”
“The loft is too quiet without you,” he says.
“You live above a bar with a jukebox and a man who talks to his smoker at five in the morning. Nothing about your life is quiet, Mickey.”
“It’s quiet where it matters.”
I close my eyes. He’s not going to say more than that.
“Goodnight, Mickey. Call me tomorrow.”
“I will. Goodnight, Benji.”
His foot moved half an inch.