Chapter Seven #2
“I have, absolutely. But if you like, we can throw it back.”
“I think I have a seven-year-old’s perspective on killing other beings: I would rather not. And when I eat fish, I’d rather
not think about the killing part. I’m just admitting my bad character here, so you know my contradictions and the ways I’m
a hypocrite.”
Ben laughed. “Deal. It took me a long while to get used to the whole ‘taking a life’ thing. My grandfather said that the first
time he took me fishing, I made them keep the fish alive in a Tupperware and I insisted on them living our bathtub.”
“Ah, that’s so sweet.”
“OK, hold the handle here and feel,” he said, putting his hand around mine. “That’s a fish pulling right now. Now turn this
knob here and you’ll pull it in.”
His hand felt nice. I didn’t dwell on it because I admit I got quite caught up in making sure the fish didn’t jump away, despite
the slimy, smelly reality of its body flopping about in the bottom of the boat once I reeled it in. We stared at the poor
thing. No one had prepared me for the tiny eyeball factor.
“You’re right. This is tragic. Let’s set him free.”
Ben gently retrieved the lure, made sure the fish wasn’t injured, and threw it back in the water.
“To our seven-year-old selves!”
“Did your grandpa get mad at you for keeping the fish alive?”
“No, but I could tell he didn’t find it sweet. I think he talked to my mom about me needing to toughen up.”
“Different generation, I suppose. Is he still with us?”
“Yeah, he lives in a care home now. I try to visit on Sundays when I’m at home. Do you have any living grandparents?”
“I have a granny in England, my dad’s mum. I’ve only met her a couple of times, and she’s not the warm, grandmotherly type.”
The sun was starting to set, and we only had about a half hour of moody daylight left.
“Um, is it safe to just be in a boat in the dark?”
“It’s probably best if we go back. I didn’t even ask if you were a swimmer.”
“Not really,” I admitted. “A semi-competent dog-paddle. I mostly like to lay about on the beach reading. I need you to tell
me some of your faults, now that you know I’m a bad swimmer, too weak to kill a fish, and eat like a feral child.”
“OK, um, I suppose I’ve never really had a relationship last longer than a few months.”
“Oooh, OK, we’re getting real now.”
“It’s a red flag! I know. But it’s not a date, so we can be open about it all.”
“Do they all end for the same reason?”
“Not always.”
“So that’s a yes,” I said, trying to steady myself getting out of the boat.
I stood on the tiny rocks, watching him pull the boat onto the shore and tie it around a post.
“A lot of girls around here want to have babies and settle down. I don’t want that, I suppose. I don’t feel old enough.”
“I get that. I don’t feel old enough to get married even though it’s happening all around me like the plague.”
“Exactly!”
“I do want it, though. Eventually. I love the idea of stability, intimacy, truly feeling known.”
He gave me a smile that meant trouble as we walked back up the path. He drove back in a roundabout way that involved a lot
of bumps and views of the east part of the island. At one point, as though planned, he pulled over and cut the engine and
said, “Shhhhh. Look.”
To our right, in a hayfield, was a whole herd of deer.
The air was misty, the skies pink at the edges.
I turned to grab my phone from the console so that I could take a photo, and when I did, Ben thought I was leaning in for a kiss.
So we kissed, kind of awkwardly, but in a nice perfect-moment way.
When he pulled away, he stared ahead and said, “I thought that might be a nice thing to do.”
“Are the deer animatronic? Did you arrange for their lifelike proximity to orchestrate this moment?”
“I did, I did, that’s my friend Jerry out there. They’re far enough away that you can’t see the back zippers.”
He started the truck up again, and I tried to act natural about the accidental kiss.
“So are you back on set all week?” I had lasted a long time not asking about the movie but I couldn’t stop myself.
“Yeah. They replaced you and Daniel, apparently. The director hated that guy. They’re bringing on Jennica, her last name is
like Fowler, or Fowlie?”
“No way!” I put my hand up to my mouth and tried to stay cool.
“What’s her deal?”
“She’s my nemesis.”
“That’s a thing in the Christmas movie world?”
“Indeed it is. We went to film school together. And we once worked on a TV show at the same time, and it went, well, badly.
Be careful around her.”
“Okey-doke. I love that you have a nemesis. Our industry is too fake nicey-nice all the time. I like that you admitted it.
I also have an enemy. I call him Square Jaw Jake. He got a lot of gigs I was up for, and then he went out for pilot season
and now he’s in a popular sitcom.”
“What an asshole!”
“Truly.”
For the next twenty minutes or so, we gossiped about the industry and he pointed out local curiosities. Eventually we drove through a beautiful village called Milford, and then when we got to Cherry Valley, I figured out where I was.
“I’m starting to recognize places,” I admitted, “not long until I’m a true local.”
He looked at me and smiled in a way that made me melt into the seat. I turned to look out the window so he wouldn’t see me
blush.
“We’re almost at the cabins, but I’ll take you to my folks’ place and you can get the car.”
“Oh, that’s so sweet, thank you. I am fine to rent, you know.”
“It’s just sitting there. And honestly, I’m half afraid she’ll think she’s fine and try to drive against doctor’s orders.”
He pulled up a hill, onto a beautiful family farm.
“My sister and her husband live across the road, too.”
“I assumed you guys lived on the same property. How did they get the winery? ”
“This farm belonged to my dad’s parents, they kept it up really well, and the winery belonged to my great-grandparents, originally.
Then my grandparents turned it into a winery, tore down the old house, and lived in an apartment in the converted barn. My
mom kept it running as a winery—it made quite a bit of income—but she also turned it into a restaurant and then ran the summer
camp.”
He parked the car between an ATV and a mid-sized Subaru, just like Sarah’s. I tried to imagine living this close to my immediate
family.
“You live with your folks?”
“I’ve got an apartment in the city, usually. But in the summers I’m here. I stay in a room above the garage.”
I think I would feel watched if I were this close to my family as an adult. But in other ways, I was jealous of what Ben had.
Imagine being that close, and wanting to be. That security must be a balm against the cruelties of the world. He looked up
at the house. The curtains were drawn.
“I’ll just go in and get the keys and say hi. She’s probably not in the mood to meet new people right now,” he said.
I knew it was cancer as soon as he said that.
I sat in the car obsessing about the kiss. It was a really good kiss. The kind that starts slow, just kind of pressing your lips together, and builds naturally to the more intense
part. It’s the kind of kiss that makes me think he’d be good in bed, intuitive, good at listening, which is basically the
same skill when you really think about it. I hate when guys try to start at level ten with the instant tongue. Marlon disagrees
with me on this; he says the best kissers approach it like a battle and says that guys from the UK, for example, just immediately
stick their tongue in your mouth like they’re wrestling and you’ve already lost. He thinks it’s hot. I think it’s obnoxious,
like they aren’t thinking about how it feels to be kissed by them, only what it feels like to be doing the kissing. Whenever
I’ve been kissed like that, I took it as a sign we’d landed in incompatibility land. But this kiss was perfect. Romantic.
Curious. I hadn’t kissed anyone in years, unless it was merely the first part of a sloppy cast party hookup. I hoped he wasn’t
expecting we’d be a friends-with-benefits kind of arrangement. What did that kiss mean? Did it need to mean anything? I remembered
all his comments about me writing a part for him, launching our careers together. I smoothed my sundress down, stared up at
the house. Had I already messed up my summer? This summer was supposed to be about me finding myself, writing my script, getting
out of my routine. I unclicked my seat belt, watched him pop out of the house, dangling the keys.
“Well, thanks for the car and the friendly hang, Ben.” He looked a little puzzled, then smiled.
How do you know what an actor’s smile means?
My friend Alia fell in love with an actor once.
She was a producer on a TV show I worked on my first year in the business, one of the toughest women I ever met.
He was a guest star for a special finale episode.
The whole time he was dating a woman in LA, and playing it so natural she never once guessed until someone’s Instagram story at an Emmys after-party made it clear.
We were standing, facing each other in a way that could easily lead to kiss number two. I got spooked. Went all business.
“Anything I should know about the car?”
“No, it’s pretty straightforward. It’s got four-wheel drive so you’ll be OK getting up the hill to the winery on the first
day of camp, that hill is a beast.”
“I’ll probably go back to get my car before then,” I said. I didn’t want to just use her car forever. That didn’t feel right.
“Whatever works for you,” he said.
“Well listen, thank you for showing me a good county day,” I said. I was grateful that he had to drive into the city then.
If he’d kissed me again, I’m not sure I could’ve resisted bringing him back to the cabin.
“I have more ideas for our next hang. There’s a tractor pull. It’s incredible.”
“Well, if butter churning isn’t available yet, sure.”
“Listen, I’m on set all week, but I’ll text you?”
“Sure,” I said, getting into his mom’s car. I adjusted the mirrors, connected my phone to the Bluetooth, thought about bringing
some flowers or treats of thanks for his mom later in the week. I did two rounds of box breathing, putting the kiss out of
my mind.
I followed him to the end of the drive and beeped goodbye before he turned toward town, and I went left, back along the lake to the cabin, secure in my sense of direction that I knew where the cabin was.
When I started to feel like I’d been driving for too long and it was starting to look woodsy in an abandoned-area kind of way, I pulled over and checked the map.
I’d flown past it. When I got there, I had to wait to turn in to the driveway while what felt like dozens of camper vans drove by in the oncoming lane.
A whole lineup of pickup trucks started beeping behind me.
What was I supposed to do, kill people? Cause an accident?
Then a row of cyclists appeared behind the last RV, and I felt like, oh, I’m out of my league here.
It felt more fraught than Bloor Street chaos.
But the cyclists, all wearing the same bright Lycra bodysuits lit up with night lights of some sort, looked like a pack of alien gazelles, flowing in unison.
Eventually I made my left turn into the driveway, and the traffic behind me—somehow five of the same black pickup trucks—sped by in my rearview.
A text from Katie appeared on the car screen: Is Walden Pond inspiring?
I dashed inside, wondering how to turn the heat on. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see that well, and I felt around for
the light switch, higher up the wall than I expected. I was not a great traveller; the first few days of being somewhere new
always felt strangely unnerving. But I had given up trying to be easygoing, one of those girls at the airport in their slouchy
sweaters taking casual naps on their backpacks. I took my hair tie out and shook my head around.
What was that? It was a date. I could feel it in my chest. You don’t generally kiss your friends, after all. I was doing the
things I had set out to do. It didn’t have to mean anything major. I didn’t have to freak out about it. Right? He was very
fun to be around, he seemed thoughtful and curious, especially for an actor. He put a lot of thought into our not-date date.
I definitely got into bed knowing a lot more about this new second home.
I lay in bed buzzing from the day, unable to relax, making lists of everything I wanted to get done that week before camp began.
Normally, when I can’t sleep, I get up to write.
Why waste those awake hours when I could create something and engage my brain in a way that made me sleepy, eventually?
I opened my Notes app and wrote a logline for an insane kind of movie I’d love to write one day.
It was a sentence I could say to almost anyone and they might think, Oh I’d love to know what happens.
I had dozens of loglines in my phone, but this one felt like it could have legs.
I texted Katie: Ben and I kissed.
Was it amazing? she answered
It was fun. Sweet. I don’t know what I feel though.
That’s good. The fun part is finding out. DO NOT OVERTHINK.
Overthinking is my special skill! But I liked her text and told myself to follow her rule.
I had to admit, however, that as I was falling asleep, I wasn’t thinking about money or my future falling apart, I was thinking
of the sunset and the deer and the feeling of Ben’s lips on mine. I was really living my life, not just describing a life.
It was mine and that was enough.