Chapter 3 #2
The thought stayed with Rachel longer than she expected.
Long enough that she was still thinking about it when she stopped at the grocery store on the way home.
Long enough that she found herself staring blankly at avocados while another shopper politely asked whether she intended to buy all of them.
Long enough that later that evening, standing barefoot in her kitchen with leftover pasta and absolutely no interest in dirtying another plate, she found herself replaying the afternoon.
Not the hard parts.
Not Grace.
Not Robert.
Not even the tears.
Oddly enough, what she’d remembered most clearly was the silence after she’d admitted she missed her children.
Liz hadn’t rushed to reassure her.
She hadn’t told Rachel she was selfish or needy or ridiculous.
She’d simply listened.
And somehow that had felt kinder than reassurance.
Rachel leaned against the counter and twirled pasta around her fork.
Maybe that was the thing she’d spent years misunderstanding.
Maybe love wasn’t always found in explanations and solutions and proving things.
Maybe sometimes it lived in quieter places.
In being listened to.
In being understood.
In not having to argue your case.
And then, because apparently her mind had become deeply uncooperative lately, she thought of Ben.
Not in any grand or romantic sense.
Just the memory of standing beside the broken fountain while he nodded and let her talk about benches and workshops and people crying after yoga classes without once suggesting she was overthinking.
She smiled despite herself.
Funny.
Two days ago she hadn’t known the man existed.
And yet she’d somehow acquired opinions about his listening skills.
Which, she suspected, would amuse Liz enormously.
The thought made her laugh softly.
Then she shook her head and carried her dishes to the sink.
Tomorrow, she told herself.
Tomorrow she would answer emails and teach classes and call Ethan and remember to buy olive oil.
And maybe, somewhere in the middle of ordinary life, she’d think a little more about what Liz had said.
Not about gratitude.
Not about guilt.
Just the strange possibility that perhaps feelings didn’t always have to earn the right to exist.
———
Ben had known Mark Sullivan for twenty-three years, which was long enough that a text arriving fifteen minutes before dinner with the words
Running late. Singapore crisis. Don’t order dessert without me
did not register as an inconvenience so much as confirmation that Mark remained exactly himself.
By the time Mark walked into the restaurant, slightly windblown, still wearing the tie he had probably put on fourteen hours earlier, and carrying two phones in one hand like a man awaiting instructions from several governments, Ben had already ordered wine and watched the last of the sunset settle over the vineyard beyond the patio windows.
The restaurant was one they’d been coming to for years, low-ceilinged and warm, with rosemary growing near the entrance and a menu that changed often enough to make people feel adventurous while keeping three dishes for regulars who preferred not to be surprised.
It was the sort of place Mark claimed to love because it felt “local,” though Ben suspected what Mark really loved was that the owner always remembered his name.
“You ordered the red,” Mark said, sliding into the booth across from him, with a slightly weary demeanor.
“You texted the word crisis.”
“That could’ve meant anything.”
“It usually means red.”
Mark laughed, loosened his tie, and finally set both phones facedown beside his plate, though Ben noticed one remained within easy reach.
Twenty years earlier, Ben would have had his own phone on the table, probably beside a laptop bag, and neither of them would have considered that strange.
They would have answered emails between courses, discussed projections over appetizers, and mistaken constant availability for importance because everyone around them had been making the same mistake.
The waiter poured wine. Mark took one sip, closed his eyes briefly, and let out a breath that seemed to have been waiting all day.
“There,” Ben said. “That looked human.”
“I’m trying something new.”
“Humanity?”
“Tonight, yes.”
They fell into the easy rhythm of old friends, the kind that didn’t require updates in strict chronological order.
Mark showed him a photo of his daughter at a volleyball tournament, all knees and ponytail and fierce concentration, then another of his son standing beside a car with the stiff, terrified pride of a sixteen-year-old newly entrusted with machinery.
Melanie appeared in the next picture, holding a bowl of tomatoes from the garden she had apparently spent three months growing.
“She complained about those tomatoes every day,” Mark said, smiling at the screen. “Then took fourteen pictures when they ripened.”
“That sounds like marriage.”
“That sounds like Melanie.”
Ben smiled. He liked Melanie. He liked Mark’s children too, though he saw them less often now that they were old enough to have schedules more complicated than most executives.
There had been a time when Ben had assumed his own life would eventually arrange itself into something similar, but that assumption had faded so gradually he couldn’t remember the exact moment it stopped feeling like a plan and became simply another road he hadn’t taken.
In return, he showed Mark a few photos from current projects: a winery slope he was restoring with native grasses, a shaded courtyard behind a private home, the overgrown side garden at the yoga studio before he’d begun sketching changes.
Mark stared at the screen for a long moment.
“I’m trying to be supportive,” he said.
“I appreciate the effort.”
“Those are definitely grasses.”
“Very good.”
“And you know their names.”
“I do.”
Mark leaned back, shaking his head with fond disbelief. “You used to know market share by region.”
“And now I know which sedges tolerate clay soil.”
“That’s what worries me.”
Ben laughed and put the phone away.
The first interruption came before the appetizers arrived.
One of Mark’s phones vibrated against the table, and although he ignored it for several seconds, the sound seemed to rattle him.
His hand shifted closer to the device and his eyes flicked downward before he caught himself and looked back at Ben.
“Take it,” Ben said.
Mark grimaced. “I’m trying not to.”
“You’re doing poorly.”
“Thank you for your honesty.”
He stepped outside and returned after seven minutes, apologizing before he’d even sat down.
Ben only waved him off. The interruption didn’t bother him, not really.
If anything, there was something almost tender about watching Mark still inside that life, still carrying the urgency of it in his shoulders and the reflexive guilt of someone who wanted to be fully present but had built a world that rewarded him for never quite being anywhere completely.
While Mark was away, the burrata had arrived and Ben had made a respectable dent in it.
Mark stopped halfway into the booth.
“Wow.”
Ben smiled.
“You were gone.”
“I had a crisis.”
“So did the cheese.”
Mark laughed and sat down.
“I can’t leave you alone.”
“You absolutely can.”
Mark reached for a piece of bread and looked around the restaurant as though confirming Ben hadn’t eaten the furniture.
“Twenty years and you’re still like this.”
“Like what?”
“Completely comfortable entertaining yourself.”
Ben smiled.
“I’ve had practice.”
They ate for a while, talking about people they used to know, companies that had somehow survived on branding and optimism, and a former investor who had recently reinvented himself as a longevity guru despite having once lived almost entirely on Diet Coke and rage.
Mark told the stories well, with the affectionate exasperation of a man still very much inside the machine and still, in many ways, enjoying it.
That mattered to Ben. He didn’t need Mark’s life to be hollow in order to feel steady inside his own.
Eventually, after the waiter cleared their plates and brought another bottle of wine neither of them had technically ordered but both accepted, Mark settled back and studied him with the same expression he’d worn years ago in conference rooms when a product timeline seemed too optimistic.
“I have to ask,” he said.
Ben smiled. “That never leads anywhere good.”
“What do you actually do all day?”
“I’ve answered this question before.”
“You give answers. I’m not sure they qualify as explanations.”
Ben took a sip of wine, giving himself a moment because he understood the question beneath the question.
Mark wasn’t asking about hours or tasks.
He wanted to know how a man who had once lived inside deadlines and pitch decks and acquisition strategy now spent entire afternoons thinking about shade.
“I meet clients,” Ben said. “I look at sites. I design things. I fiddle with irrigation systems. I move rocks more often than expected.”
“That’s the part I can’t get over.”
“The rocks?”
“The scale.” Mark leaned forward slightly. “We used to manage hundreds of people.”
“And now I manage lavender.”
“Exactly.”
“Lavender is less likely to schedule unnecessary meetings.”
Mark laughed, but the curiosity remained. “Do you miss it?”