Chapter Thirteen
I spent the day combing through the documents we’d pulled from Andie’s phones and laptops—thousands of emails, texts, and spreadsheets. Everything had been uploaded into a fully searchable online review tool. I’d asked IT for a second monitor and now felt like a Wall Street trader.
I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to read years of private correspondence for someone like Andie. Her world was filled with celebrities I’d grown up watching in movies or on TV.
By Wednesday morning, I had written two interview outlines and tagged three dozen relevant emails.
The sun was just beginning to set as I walked down Fifth Avenue, past the New York Public Library toward Union Square.
In my fantasy, we were having dinner but ten years in the future.
We could make lighthearted jokes about the utility of a starter marriage.
He was happily remarried with a family. I would be in a relationship with someone who wanted the same things from life. We’d each have our own happy ending.
The air outside was considerably cooler than when I left the office.
I nervously chewed my lower lip as I crossed Thirty-Fourth Street.
The closer I got to the restaurant, the more nervous I felt.
I suddenly wished I’d made up an excuse.
I could have said I was out of town. The last time we saw each other had been agonizing.
He’d been brutally honest about how angry he was. Would this time be even worse?
I spotted him as soon as I walked in, reading a book at the bar. He must have sensed my presence—looming, unsure, radiating nerves—because he looked up and waved me over.
“Here we go,” I said to myself.
Ben stood up and gave me a hug that felt both genuine and formal. Then he stood back with his hands on his hips.
“Damn, Sam. Can’t believe it, but you’re a city girl. Love this place too. Excellent old-fashioned,” he said, nodding at the bartender.
“1942, please,” I said as I eased into the seat next to Ben. I hadn’t really known what to expect, but his upbeat, casual demeanor was throwing me off.
I suddenly wanted to confess how nervous I felt, to overexplain just how much I wasn’t sure what was real and what was pretense. I couldn’t figure out which note to land on.
“It’s good to see you,” I said honestly.
It was. He looked healthy. His olive skin was more tanned than when I’d seen him over the summer, and even though it had only been a couple of months, he was noticeably more muscular.
“Really, you look great. How are you?”
He smiled warmly. “I just got back from backpacking in Machu Picchu. Highly, highly recommend. It was the trip of a lifetime.”
“Wow. That’s so cool! Who did you go with?” I asked, immediately regretting the ambiguity of the question. It felt too personal. An unnecessary perforation in the effortless atmosphere he seemed committed to.
He read my face and gave a good-natured laugh.
“Just me. I joined a group that was already going. It was awesome. Met some great people, took unreal pictures. You’ve got to go.
I came back with perspective I never thought I’d have after everything that happened with us. I know now where I went wrong.”
I shook my head. Was he talking about reconciliation?
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Ben,” I said cautiously.
He nodded. “I did. But we’ll get into that later.”
“How did you decide on Machu Picchu?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I needed something to take me completely out of the place I was in. Peru felt far enough to do that.”
The bartender returned with the 1942. “Your table is ready. I’ll transfer these over.”
I nodded and reached for my bag, but Ben had already picked it up. “Jesus, what’s in here? You carry this around all day long?”
“It’s my laptop. I bring it home with me in case any emails come in that can’t wait until the next day.”
“That’s a recipe for back trouble,” he said with a genuine frown.
I chuckled like an old-timer who’d been hearing that all my life. “I’m definitely destined for sciatica or something like that.”
As we sat down at the table, I realized I was happy to see him.
I’d forgotten there was a time when we enjoyed spending time together, before I started to feel trapped and anxious that I’d never figure out how to disentangle my life from his.
Could we really have made it to the other side this easily?
Ben ordered another old-fashioned and I sipped the 1942 while we caught up over small talk and oysters.
He had so many questions about my life in New York: Was it difficult to find an apartment?
Did I work all the time? Had I made new friends?
Did I ever have time to see a show or go to a museum?
I treaded lightly with every answer, careful not to come off as overly enthusiastic.
After everything that had transpired, I couldn’t tell if his attention was genuine.
He opened the wine menu.
“Think they have a good bottle of Oregon pinot?”
I felt a sense of apprehension but tried shaking it off. “Ah. I haven’t had an Oregon wine in years,” I said lightly.
“There’s a pretty reasonable Willamette pinot on the list. What do you think?”
I wondered if the evening’s emotional land mines were one sided. “Okay, let’s do it.”
He smiled triumphantly. “Remember how we always wanted to go to Oregon wine country? You were obsessed with it for a while.”
Every nerve in my body felt on alert, looking for signals that his relaxed manner and nostalgic attention were genuine, when one of the last things he’d said to me was it seems to me that you got everything you wanted.
But the tequila was doing its thing. I wanted to know more about the perspective he gained in Peru. I also wanted to know if he was still writing the book, and I was just tipsy enough to ask. “Hope it’s okay to ask, but are you still writing that book?”
He swirled his cocktail, and I couldn’t tell if he wanted the question to hang out there uncomfortably or if he was stalling.
“Here and there,” he said casually. “I took a break when I went to South America. Didn’t seem like the right place to write a self-help book about your wife leaving you for the big city.”
I cringed.
“Sorry. But to be fair, you brought it up,” he said with a thin smile.
I held up my hands as a peace gesture. “No more book talk.”
I told him about the insanity of finding a passable studio apartment and the hours spent working days, nights, and weekends.
Getting to work with Eddie. He was wide-eyed over the ground I’d covered in only two months.
We ordered another bottle of wine. The more we drank, the less I noticed land mines.
We finished the second bottle and ordered dessert and sambuca. Suddenly everything seemed hilarious. We switched to reminiscing about all the trips we took when I inevitably over-Xanaxed myself because of my fear of flying.
“I couldn’t even relax on a twenty-hour flight to Sydney,” he laughed. “I had to stay sober just in case you overdosed on benzos and wine and we needed to call for an emergency landing.”
I tried to catch my breath from laughing so hard.
“Do you remember the letters I would write when I was hallucinating at thirty-five thousand feet? Declaring how lucky I was to have you take care of me while I blacked out on every flight? I was never more nostalgic than when I was on Xanax and airplane wine.”
He looked at me squarely. “Part of me wished you stayed like that after we landed.”
I looked down at my plate. “I was a lot sweeter when I was drugged,” I admitted.
He signaled the waiter. “Can we each do one more sambuca?”
The waiter looked at me to confirm I wanted another one, and I nodded. We needed to end on a positive note.
I insisted on picking up the tab and walking him to his hotel.
The second sambuca landed hard, and I had to pull out my phone to calculate the tip, which Ben thought was adorable.
As we left the restaurant, laughing our way toward Park Avenue, Ben went back to describing how life-changing his trip had been and saying he wished he’d been there with me.
He turned toward me and looked so earnest and hopeful that I instinctively leaned in.
The next thing I knew, Ben was kissing me, and I was kissing him back, with an intensity that seemed unfamiliar and surprising to both of us.
I hailed a cab. As we slid into the back seat, I mumbled, “Perry and West Fourth Street, please.”