Chapter 20 #2
“Yep. Epicurean. Wrote this poem called De rerum natura—translates to On the Nature of Things, which, well, it’s kind of hard to summarize.
Basically he counters the Stoic argument—you know, virtue is the only good?
Happiness in adversity?—with this idea that the universe is eternal but the soul is mortal, dies when the body dies, and so we should spend our short time on earth seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. YOLO, in other words.”
I smile. “And which side are you on?”
“Ha. I guess it helps to be a Stoic on the football field. There’s this famous Epictetus quote about how you should be sick and yet happy, dying and yet happy—I can’t remember them all—in exile and happy. In disgrace and happy.”
“So are you happy?”
He finds my eyes. “I’m happy right now.”
Some words jumble in my mouth. Something about whether that makes him a Stoic or an Epicurean, but I can’t put them in order.
My brain is too exhausted for logic. Too fogged by old rye whiskey.
I drop my gaze to the cover of the book on the table.
In one corner, opposite the Roman, is the head of Botticelli’s Venus.
“Sometimes I’m angry at him,” I say.
Ben asks gently, “At Arnaud?”
“Sometimes I don’t even know what I feel.
I was only a few years out of uni when we met.
He was ten years older. Everything happened so fast, like I didn’t want to give myself time to second-guess.
And I don’t think he ever really showed me the real him.
The person inside. Because after he died, I found out a few things that made me think I hadn’t really known him at all, you know?
So it’s like trying to miss something that wasn’t really there.
Or one of those pictures that changes when you look at it from a different angle.
And I’m so mad at him. For not loving us enough.
For not giving us all of himself, when I was giving all of me.
And I can’t tell anyone. I haven’t told anyone. Not until this second.”
“You didn’t tell your mom? Your siblings?”
“I couldn’t. They’re sweet and I love them, but there’s this gap. They’re all rich. They lead these careless rich lives—”
“Hold on. How can they be rich and not you?”
I shrug. “Because I’m the stepkid. I got to live with them, in their nice houses. I went to nice schools. And I’m incredibly grateful for that, believe me. But once I left home, that was it. And that’s fair. I already had a father. They didn’t owe me anything.”
“I’m just saying,” Ben says, staring at his hands, “if I had a stepdaughter—like, the daughter of the woman I loved enough to marry?—I would pretty much want to treat her as my own kid. Love her like my own kid.”
Old houses are never quiet. Even when they are at rest, you hear the creak of settling wood and the gasp of some ancient appliance. It fills the yaw of silence between two people. The ache that hangs in the air.
The leg of Ben’s chair scrapes against the floor. He stands and picks up the whiskey glasses from the table. “Anyway. You can sleep in my room. I’ll take the sofa.”
“You don’t even fit on the sofa.”
“Well, I already changed the sheets,” he says, “so you don’t have a choice.”
—
Unlike Punkin, I don’t have pajamas or a toothbrush. Ben rummages out a spare from the bathroom drawer and hands me a T-shirt that says NFC East Champions.
I hold it out in front of me. “Nice flex.”
“Forgot I still had it,” he says. “I’ll go find you some towels.”
A moment later he knocks gently on the door. “It’s open,” I call.
He stands in the doorway with a towel and washcloth. I’m wearing the T-shirt, which hangs almost to my knees.
“Très chic.” He holds out the towels.
“Thanks, Ben. For everything. I’m glad—it’s nice to have someone to talk to. Someone adult, I mean.”
“Yeah, that’s the hardest part, right? The thing you miss most.” He turns away and stops beneath the hallway light.
The hall is narrow and the ceiling is low, and the bulb is so close to his ginger hair that it turns him a fiery blond.
He puts his hand on the back of his neck and says, “For the record, I did try to find you.”
“What? When?”
“Piccadilly Circus. New Year’s Eve. I waited all night.”
“Piccadilly Circus? Are you serious? You flew to London?”
“It was all I had. No other way to reach you, after you left. Short of stalking you all over the internet, I guess.” He looks at me. “I just don’t want you to think I gave up. Because I didn’t. Not for a long time.”
I realize I’m still holding the towels, sandwiched between my hands. I stare down at the old terrycloth—a sage green that probably started out life several shades brighter—and stroke my palm along the grain.
“Ben, she was my best friend. I just couldn’t.”
“I know that. I understood that.”
I look up. “It was for the best. We were kids. And were living on separate continents.”
“A word would have been nice, though. Even goodbye. Some little sign that it meant something to you.”
“It did mean something. It meant everything. You mean everything. That was why it had to be a clean break. Because if I left the door open, even a crack…”
Ben’s mouth stretches into a sad smile. “Would that have been so bad, though?”
I stand there in the doorway of his bedroom. His T-shirt swallows me. His scent drifts from the cotton—his skin, his soap. He takes up the whole hallway. I can’t see anything else.
Piccadilly Circus, I think.
He turns away.
“Ben, wait.”
“Luce, for God’s sake. I’m not made of stone.”
“Well, I’m not made of stone either, okay?”
“I don’t deserve you, Luce. I don’t deserve to—I shouldn’t even be standing here with you—”
“Ben. Please. We have both made mistakes. We’re human beings.
We screw up. But we’re grown up now. We can start over.
And I’m standing here in this ridiculous American shirt that smells like you, and I haven’t had sex in three years, and you’re telling me these things, you’re turning me inside out, and I just—like, what do I have to do? ”
Ben stares at the wall. His head blocks the hall light. Behind him is the door to Punkin’s room and I’m thinking, possibly we said too much, just now. All that rye whiskey.
“You don’t have to do anything,” he says. “That’s the problem.”
The breath whooshes from my lungs. “Doesn’t sound like a problem to me.”
He turns his head.
The next thing I know, we’re stumbling backward into the bedroom. Ben closes the door behind him. His arms, his chest, his hands in my hair. My name in a whisper. Then his lips. So gentle it hurts. Gentle like the wings of a butterfly, and yet his arms are so strong. I can’t even move inside them.
He breaks off the kiss and draws me against his chest. I love the violent thump of his heart under my cheek. The cold air in the room that makes his body feel like a furnace.
“Luce,” he says. “Lucy. I fucked up. I made a mistake.”
“Ben, it’s okay. Let’s put it all behind us. We’re here now. We can—”
“Luce. Please.” His palm floats along my hair. “It’s not that.”
There is something about the tone of his voice. I don’t know. Call it intuition.
He says, “It’s about Laura.”
At the word Laura, a vortex starts to spin inside each of my ears. Like from a wheel or a fan or something. Whirring, whirring. I detach myself from his arms and step back, so my legs bump against the edge of the bed.
“What about Laura?”
Ben closes his eyes.
I whisper, “Oh, no. Oh, no.”
“Last summer,” he says.
“Don’t say it.”
“It was July. When she came down from Boston. One night—you know, we got to talking, and I was so lonely, Luce, so fucking alone—”
“Just once? Or more often?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“No. But I’d like to know.”
He says, “A lot.”
I force myself to stare at his face. At his eyes squeezed shut. “At Summerly? Or here in this room?”
“Here.” He opens his eyes and reaches for my arm. “I’m sorry, Luce. I’m so sorry. Everybody said you were gone for good. I never thought you’d—”
I pull my arm away and step from the bed. The bed where he fucked her, says a numb, detached voice in my head.
He watches me as I reach for my clothes. I would rather sleep in my jeans and sweater than Ben’s T-shirt that smells of him.
“I want to explain, Luce. I wasn’t—it was not—this is different, you and me—”
“You should have told me,” I say. “You should have told me first.”
“That’s what I meant. When I said I didn’t deserve you.”
“Of course. I should have realized.” I step over the towels, which fell to the floor when Ben took me in his arms. “And if you’ll excuse me, I’m going downstairs to sleep on the sofa.”