Chapter 11
I’m fighting back tears the entire walk home. Despite Janine’s assurances earlier in the week that my emotional roller coaster is normal, I don’t feel normal. I feel raw and exposed, like the slightest jostle will send me over a tear-soaked ledge.
Thankfully, Ben doesn’t seem to notice. He walks beside me, unbothered, as if I haven’t wasted his morning trying to track down a book that’s sold at literally every bookstore within a fifty-mile radius.
What did I think was going to happen? I would walk into some random bookstore and magically remember everything that happened over the past year?
Yes, a small voice in my head admits. Even though I knew I wasn’t guaranteed to remember anything, I still held on to the hope that maybe some part of my grandmother’s advice was true. That the universe was looking out for me, that magic would finally appear right at the moment I needed it most.
But instead, I’m back where I started, feeling so gullible I’m almost angry.
It’s overcast by the time we reach the North End again. I haven’t said much the last few blocks, and when we stop at the corner at the end of our street, Ben finally looks down at me.
“You okay?”
I know I should say I’m fine. After all, he didn’t sign up to deal with my mess. But I can’t quite muster the energy to lie.
“My grandmother always said the world was full of magic. All you had to do was look for it,” I reply.
“I know that sounds ridiculous, but I really needed it to be true today. I needed something to be familiar. It didn’t have to be huge, just…
something.” I shake my head. “But I didn’t remember anything.
And yes, I knew that was a possibility before we left, but I still got my hopes up, so now I’m not only disappointed but mad that I’m disappointed. Today was… it was just…”
“Today was a bad day,” Ben finishes.
I exhale. “Yeah.”
A moment passes.
He shifts his weight so he’s facing me fully. “What are you doing right now?”
I shrug. “I’m probably going home to stare at the wall and feel sorry for myself.”
His head cocks to the side. “Can that wait twenty minutes?”
“I don’t know, it’s a really good wall.”
The corner of his mouth tugs up even as he nods to the sidewalk ahead. “Come on.”
I follow him as he turns right, and within a few steps we’re maneuvering down a narrow street between a hair salon and an Italian restaurant. The brick walls on either side feel like they’re almost bowing above us, but then we’re spat out on another street similar to the one we just left.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Modern Pastry.”
“Is that the bakery we walked past on the way to the grocery store?”
“No, that’s Mike’s. Modern is one block down.”
I throw my arms out at my sides. “How many bakeries can one neighborhood have?”
He throws me a hard glare, but there’s something playful in his eyes. It sends a hot prickle over my skin. “This is the North End, Marnie. We take our baked goods very seriously.”
I want to laugh, but he’s moving again, long strides that take us another two blocks until we turn onto Hanover Street and find Modern Pastry, glowing like an oasis. The windows are bright and the sign above beckons with buzzing neon.
It’s crowded, so Ben directs me to wait outside. I watch him through the window as he approaches the long glass display case, featuring an array of cookies and cakes, and places his order with a woman behind the counter. A moment later, she passes him a small white pastry box with a wink.
When he emerges, I want to ask what he got, but he doesn’t stop, just nods for us to continue down the street.
We barely pause as we turn down what feels like an alleyway that I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen before, and head onto a street I’m positive I haven’t.
Within five minutes, I’m completely lost. But I also don’t care.
Every concern I had that first time I followed Ben through this neighborhood is gone.
All I can focus on is his broad frame, how it seems to span the narrow spaces we navigate until, suddenly, we emerge onto a small cemetery.
There’s row after row of old slate headstones, each set at a different angle, and as we walk past, I can tell that most of the names carved into them have worn away.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“Copp’s Hill,” Ben replies, as if that explains everything.
I want to stop, examine the graves more, ask what this is doing here a few steps from restaurants and shops. But before I can, Ben continues forward and crosses another small street.
I think it’s a continuation of the cemetery, but it’s not.
It’s a small stone terrace. There are a few iron benches set across it, each facing out at the sweeping view ahead.
I hadn’t realized the neighborhood was slightly elevated, and that from here you can see out onto the harbor, the boats and ships slowly floating past, the overcast sky reflecting back on them from the water.
Just below us is another small park, but this one has a few long bocce ball courts.
There’s a small group of older men playing, laughing and yelling at one another.
Ben heads over to the nearest bench, but I don’t move. All I can do is stare out at the view, mouth agape.
“Wow.”
“I know,” he says, sitting down on the bench’s edge.
After another minute, I walk over and sit down beside him, leaving space for the white pastry box he places between us.
“All right. You ready?” he asks. His voice is low and suggestive, and my pulse trips over itself.
“For what?” I ask.
“Your entire life to change.”
I laugh. “I think so?”
There’s that now-familiar tug at one corner of his mouth.
Then he unties the string keeping the pastry box closed and reaches inside.
A moment later, he pulls out what looks like a massive cornucopia made of flaky pastry, lightly dusted with powdered sugar and filled to bursting with whipped cream.
He hands it to me, then pulls out his own, holding it up to tap against mine.
“Cheers,” he says, and takes a massive bite. He only manages to fit one corner in his mouth, and the rest of it leaves powdered sugar in his stubble.
I attempt to do the same, trying to get a bit of the cream sticking out the end.
“What do you think?” he asks as he chews.
My mouth is full, and for a moment, all I can do is close my eyes as the pastry and cream combine into an almost decadent combination of flavors. I groan.
That seems to be enough to satisfy him, and he takes another bite.
“What is this thing called?” I ask once I swallow.
He chews for a moment, then says, “A lobster tail.”
I already have my mouth around it, ready for another bite, when I still.
Ben catches my expression and shakes his head. “There’s no lobster in it. It’s just shaped like a lobster tail.”
“Oh, thank God.” I let out a relieved sigh.
“Do you have a problem with lobsters?”
“No. I love lobsters. They’re the reason I’m a vegetarian,” I say, then take another bite.
His head cocks to the side, like he’s about to question my logic, but I cut him off.
“No one should eat lobster. It’s unethical.”
“You realize you live in Boston, right?”
“They mate for life, Ben.” I lean forward, maintaining a steady gaze so he understands the gravity of the situation.
“Imagine you’re a lobster, okay? You’ve searched your entire lobster life for your soulmate.
Then, at long last, there she is. You both just know.
Because everything that has happened in the history of the universe has brought you to this one moment.
You’ve found your destiny. And then, you’re both wrenched from the ocean and stuck in a fish tank somewhere, forced to watch as one by one, your lobster friends disappear until one day, it’s your soulmate taken away from you and plopped into a pot of boiling water just because it’s somebody’s date night or… something.”
My words trail off once I realize I’m rambling. This is usually the time where I would get a strange look from Matt, or Sara would laugh and move the conversation along.
But Ben doesn’t do either. He’s quiet, his expression pensive, like he’s actually listened to every word.
“All right,” he says after a moment. “No more lobster.”
“I didn’t mean for you to stop. I’m just telling you why I don’t eat it,” I say.
“Then you shouldn’t have made such a good argument,” he replies, taking another bite of his pastry. There’s a piece of whipped cream at the corner of his mouth that he doesn’t know is there, and I suddenly want to reach over and run my thumb over his lips to wipe it away.
He turns and catches me staring.
“You okay?” he asks after he swallows.
“You’ve got something right there,” I say, using my pinkie to point to the corner of my own mouth.
His tongue darts out to clean up the stray bit of cream, and I try to ignore how the motion makes my pulse feel like warm syrup in my veins.
“Better?” he asks.
I nod.
Silence descends as we both take another bite and stare out across the water. The gray sky mutes the already muddy colors of the buildings on the opposite shore. The boats moored nearby bob with the current, their masts lolling from side to side like metronomes.
“Thank you,” I say after another minute. “I needed this.”
“My mom used to get me one of these whenever I was having a bad day.”
I try not to look surprised by this nugget of personal information. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. She says every good wallow deserves a good pastry. If she knew I had a rough day at school, she’d stop by the Italian bakery near her work and pick one up for me.”
The image of Ben Morgan as a child is such a novelty, I can’t help but smile. “What happened at school to necessitate a lobster tail?”
His gaze travels out across the water as he chews, like he’s letting himself mull over a memory.
“We moved back to my mom’s hometown when I was in eighth grade. We didn’t have a lot of money, and I wasn’t a very outgoing kid, so I was an easy target for bullies. I kept to myself a lot, always had my nose in a book, and tried to stay under the radar. It worked most of the time.”
“And the other times?” I ask.
“I had five different pairs of reading glasses thrown out the window of our school bus before I figured out that it was probably smarter to walk home.” He sighs and puts his lobster tail down on a napkin, then brushes his hands together to get rid of the crumbs.
“When kids learn how to be cruel, they become experts fast.”
I try to imagine a young Ben awkwardly adjusting those same tortoiseshell glasses I’ve seen him wear a few times, trying to ignore barely whispered taunts from his classmates. It sends a sharp ache through my heart. “I got called Sand Witch in middle school.”
Ben pauses. “Like the food?”
“No, like an actual witch who lives on a beach,” I say.
“It was more of a dig at my grandmother than at me. My parents died when I was six, so I went to live with her in Malibu. She was a product of the hippie movement and never grew out of it. Long hair, always in a different caftan, talking about auras and magic. She even tried to form a solstice circle with some of the PTA moms when I was in fifth grade. The two of us were so close, I just saw it as normal. I didn’t understand why other kids found it so funny, but I learned.
Because all those traits started getting assigned to me, too.
The ditzy California blonde, the weird flighty hippie girl.
It didn’t really stop until I graduated high school. ”
He’s quiet for a moment, his dark eyes locked with mine. “Sounds like you could have used a lobster tail.”
I smile. “It would have definitely helped.”
He nods to what’s left of the pastry in my hand. “Is it helping now?”
He somehow manages to make the question sound offhand, but with a slight edge that hints that the answer is vitally important. Like I’m important.
I turn away so he can’t see how that thought warms my cheeks.
“Yeah,” I answer, working to sound casual.
“Yeah?”
I shrug. “A smidge.”
The corner of his mouth quirks up. “I’ll take a smidge.”
Then he picks up his lobster tail and takes another bite, and so do I.
I don’t pay attention to the walk back to our building.
I’m too engrossed in our conversation, which has somehow moved on to my vegetarianism.
Ben is staunch in his defense of beef, and I’m in the middle of making a passionate case for tofu, complete with hand gestures that make my tote bag swing in every direction as we turn the corner to Sheafe Street.
I barely register that we’ve arrived at our building until I see a woman standing out front, arms crossed as she watches us approach.
She looks familiar, and for a moment I think it’s a memory coming back, but within a few steps I realize that she’s the woman I saw with Ben through the peephole. And she does not seem happy to see us.
“Hey, Lauren,” Ben murmurs, like he already knows he’s in trouble.
“You’re a half hour late and all you’ve got is ‘hey’?” she replies.
His hand comes up to scratch his jaw. I think I even catch a wince. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”
Lauren just rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Hurry up, I don’t want to get stuck in traffic.”
She starts down the street, and I can only assume she doesn’t look back because she knows Ben will follow.
He curses under his breath as he brings his attention back to me. “Sorry, we—”
“No, I’m sorry. This is totally my fault. I dragged you to the bookstore and never even considered that you might have plans with… someone,” I say.
Ben nods, and for a moment it looks like he’s going to say more, try to offer an excuse or apology, so I cut him off before he can try.
“I should go,” I say. He doesn’t owe me anything. In fact, I almost feel like I should run after Lauren and say sorry to her for ruining her day. Instead, I take a backward step toward our building and force myself to smile. “That wall’s not going to stare at itself, right?”
I give another one of my weird salutes. This time he gives me one back. It makes my heart do an odd tumble, and I’m so embarrassed, all I can do is turn around and speed walk to the front door.