26. The Longest Lunch
“Uh,we just need a few minutes, please,” Ben told the waitress, tapping his menu to indicate they were still deciding, given the chaos that had just ensued. “I’m sorry for the delay, Tara.”
The waitress smiled, probably relieved that at least two of the original party of five would remain to leave her a tip. “Of course. I’ll be back in a bit,” she said, walking away to check in on those dining at nearby tables.
“Gia, I’m so sorry,” Ben started. “I didn’t know you would be here. I didn’t know she would?—”
“How do you know her name?” Gia gestured at the waitress, who had moved a couple of tables over to check on other diners.
“What? Tara? Oh—name tag. But, Gia, I had never even met Jen until just now, and it was just a distraction.”
“Forget about it. It doesn’t even matter,” Gia said, picking up the menu and pretending to look at the lunch options. “Let’s please just order something small so we can both get out of here.”
“Alright,” Ben agreed, lifting his menu and eying it thoughtfully. As his eyes scanned the lunch selections, a slight smile formed at the corners of his mouth. He had an idea. “Do you know what you want?”
“Yes,” Gia said, closing her menu and placing it on the table. Ben did the same, indicating that they were ready to place their order. The waitress glanced toward them before making her way to the table.
“Looks like you’re all set! What can I get you?” she asked, looking inquisitively at Gia.
“I’ll have the locally foraged mushroom and wild green goat cheese salad, please,” Gia said, tracing the words on the menu with her finger to reiterate her selection to the waitress.
“Excellent choice. Is the house honey balsamic alright? It’s made with local honey.”
“Perfect,” Gia confirmed.
“Anything else to go with that?”
“No. Just a quick and easy salad, thank you.”
The waitress nodded, then turned to face Ben. “And for you, sir?” The slight smile that had graced Ben’s features a few moments ago morphed into a grin as the waitress put her pen to her pad.
“Oh, let’s see here. I’m quite hungry this afternoon.” Ben stretched his legs in his chair and leaned back. “I had someone rush out on a breakfast meeting. It was a little stressful, and I lost my appetite this morning. Barely ate a crumb.” Ben smirked at Gia. “Gotta make up for that lost meal, don’t I?”
The waitress only offered an awkward smile, uncertain what to make of Ben’s comments. “Sounds good. What can I get you, then?”
“Well, I think I’ll start with some appetizers,” Ben began. Gia groaned to herself, catching on to Ben’s plan. “Let’s do that same salad as the lady ordered to start. But let’s add a wood-fired farmer’s market pizza—to share, of course. Then, we’ll certainly want to try the local artisanal cheese plate and charcuterie board. Is it okay to order the rest of my meal after those apps come out? I still have some decisions to make.”
“Of course,” the waitress responded, jotting the order onto her pad.
Gia realized Ben would drag this out as long—and expensively—as he possibly could until she agreed to talk to him about Aiden or whatever else he wanted to discuss. Sure, she could stand up and leave, but she felt awkward just walking out of the restaurant after her friends had done it once already!
The waitress walked away to put the order into the kitchen. Gia slid Carla’s drink in front of her, claiming possession of the alcohol and hoping it would help her through what promised to be a very long lunch. Ben eyed the old fashioned in front of where Matt had been sitting. “You gonna want that one, too?”
“No. Have at it,” Gia scoffed.
“Thanks,” Ben said, reaching for the drink and sipping it slowly. “Well, that’s certainly… interesting.” He took a gulp.
Gia gazed at the ceiling and took a deep breath before allowing herself to speak. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you without you running out the door. I want to meet Aiden. I want to make you understand why I did what I did. I want—” Ben stopped mid-sentence and took a deep breath and another sip of the drink before him, finding his courage. “I want to try again.”
“You what?” asked Gia, flabbergasted. “You want to try again? After showing up here and prancing around in front of me with fucking Morticia Adams? You want to try again?!”
Ben watched as Gia angrily took a deep breath and tried to compose herself. He could tell she was attempting to avoid causing another scene like the one in the café earlier.
“Gia, Jen didn’t mean anything. I’ll say it again: it was just a distraction!”
“A distraction? A distraction from what?”
“From us.”
“From us? Ben, there is no us. There’s you, and there’s me. That’s it. Separate.”
“—but there’s Aiden,” Ben said quietly, afraid to hear Gia’s response.
“Aiden isn’t yours. You haven’t done a damn thing since his birth—or before it—to earn a right to see him or even know about his life. The only thing you did was knock me up, then run away.” Gia buried her face in her hands, trying to keep her rapidly developing tears under wraps. “And how many other distractions do you have?” Gia couldn’t help but notice that lifelong feeling of ‘not enough’ sneaking into her psyche.
“Can we talk about this calmly?” Ben asked. “She was the only other person I’d talked to on that app or anywhere else. I’m not looking to date around. That was just—an unfortunate decision. Listen. We really do need to clear up a few things.”
As Ben spoke, the waitress appeared with a tray holding two salads, a cheese plate, and a board of delectable-looking meats, nuts, olives, crackers, and more. She placed a salad in front of each of them and the meats and cheeses in the center of the table, placing a small, empty plate next to each salad so they could share the other items.
“The pizza will be out in just a moment!” the waitress said, trying to ignore that both patrons looked like they were about to burst into tears.
“Thank you,” Ben and Gia responded simultaneously. As the waitress returned to the kitchen to fetch their pizza, they glanced up, eyes meeting across the table. Somehow, at that moment, the urge to cry dissipated, and instead, Gia let out a slight chuckle. Then, she couldn’t stop.
“Gia?” Ben stared at the woman across from him with a confused expression. Gia’s chuckle began to rise like a wave until it became a full-on laugh—a very infectious laugh. Ben wasn’t even sure why, but somehow, it overtook him with emotion. He began to laugh uncontrollably in response to Gia’s laughter, and by the time the waitress returned with their pizza, both Ben and Gia had tears in their eyes—but this time, it wasn’t from crying.
As the waitress attempted to present the pizza to the two cackling diners, they tried to get themselves under control, but every time they managed to stop laughing, one would start up again, beginning the whole process again! Finally, after the waitress left the pizza on the table and walked away shaking her head, Gia and Ben regained their composure.
“What—what was that?” Ben finally asked.
“I have no idea. I just… I just… I don’t know what to say or do about this—about any of this—about you or Aiden or anything! I don’t even know what to do but laugh at this point. You left us. You abandoned us. We weren’t enough to keep you here. And I’m laughing about it. I must be losing my mind.”
“I mean, there are certainly worse ways to pass a lunch with an old flame than laughter if you think about it.”
“Ben, we aren’t even old flames. I don’t know what we were. We never even talked about it back then. One minute we were—something—and then you were gone, and we were nothing, and then I had Aiden.”
“And your ex-husband.”
“You have no right to criticize that. He saved us. Regardless of how we worked out in the end, there’s not a moment I’m not thankful that he stepped up to the plate and raised Aiden as his own. I don’t know where I’d be right now it Steve hadn’t stepped in. There was no difference between how he treated Aiden and his biological children. He’s a good man and a good father. We just weren’t in love. At least not the type of love you need when trying to make a forever life together.”
“I already told you I came back.”
“What were you expecting? That Aiden and I would just be there waiting for you to appear at our doorstep, crossing our fingers that you’d return from the middle of the damn Amazon rainforest to rescue us?”
“No, but I didn’t expect you to give up on us so quickly.”
“So quickly? Ben, it wasn’t quick. Maybe it felt that way to you while you were off galivanting on your Brazilian adventures, but I faced a pregnancy, the birth of my first child, and a new baby in that period. It felt like a lifetime for me. My dreams came crashing down, and I had to re-write them—every last one of them—without you in them.”
“I wanted to be in them. I just realized it too late, is all.”
“And now that you’re back, you think it’s just something we can dive back into headfirst? Being together? It’s complicated now.”
“How is it any more complicated now than it was before? We are both single. I want to be in Aiden’s life. We could try.”
“I don’t want to try. I don’t want to go through it again. I knew I didn’t love my ex-husband the way I should have to commit to a lifetime together—but I also knew he wouldn’t ever be able to break me like you did. I stayed with him because he didn’t have the power to crush me. I’m not opening myself up to that again.”
“Then you’re going to have a pretty sad life,” Ben muttered. “Trust me.”