“She won’t be mad at me for asking,” May said.
“If you’re sure.”
She wasn’t, though. May felt like one of those cartoon characters who ran off a ledge and then windmilled her legs in space, unaware that the earth had dropped out beneath her.
Those cartoon characters always kept running. As long as their legs were moving and they didn’t look down, they wouldn’t fall.
“Go on,” he said. “When you get back, we can go to lunch or something. Take a walk.”
Say goodbye. That was what he meant.
“Okay.” Now or never. Keep windmilling. “I’m going in. Stick the buckets wherever. It doesn’t actually matter all that much.”
“Good luck.”
Allie didn’t look up when she approached.
“You need help?” May asked.
“No.”
Bang went the stapler.
“You’re mad at me,” May said.
“No, I’m not. Why would I be mad at you? You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re perfect. You’re always perfect.”
Ah. The accusation Allie had been flinging in May’s direction since they were eight and ten years old, respectively. It seemed particularly unfair at the moment.
“What are you talking about? I’m a national joke. Mom is one conversation away from realizing she hates me for ending things with Dan. Ben is leaving any minute, and I’m wigging out. I’m not perfect. I’m a catastrophe.”
“You love him.” Allie said it with a sneer on her lips. “You broke up with Dan and fell in love.”
Uncomfortably aware of her sister’s rising volume, May looked toward Ben, but if he was listening, he gave no sign. “What makes you say that?”
“Are you kidding? It’s so obvious. You’re like a goopy toasted marshmallow for this guy.” She made her voice dopey. “ ‘Stick a fork in ’er, folks. She’s done!’ Except I guess it’s not a fork, it’s a dick.”
May crossed her arms to tamp down a rush of incoherent fury. Allie only ever got this offensive when she was madly deflecting. “I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment to you.”
Another bang from the stapler. “You were never this pathetic about Dan.”
“Would you put that thing down?”
Bang. Allie’s answer. Bang Bang Bang. The staples went through the table linens and right into the tabletop. No decorations anywhere nearby.
“I’m trying to talk to you.”
“You want to ask me about Matt.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Don’t.”
“Allie—”
“You think I’m not excited enough, and you’d so hate for me to make a mistake on something important like this.” Bang.
“Look—”
“You’re worried I’m not thinking of Matt. That I’m not thinking at all. You’re so concerned, you just have no choice but to say something.” Bang. Bang.
“Come on, Allie. Don’t—”
Allie spun around, and whatever words May had planned to say, she lost them. She had expected to see anger in her sister’s expression—her lips white around the outside the way they got when she was too furious to speak. Instead, she saw the same naked fear that was in her own body. The windmilling legs. The shoulders hunched in defense against such dangerous exposure.
“I already got the lecture from Mom a month ago, okay?” Allie said. “Do me a favor and consider me forewarned. Your big-sister duty is done. You can go back to Ben now.”
May wrapped one arm across her stomach, needing to bolster herself against the swimmy untrustworthiness of her knees. “If that’s what you want,” she croaked.
“It doesn’t matter what I want.”
“It always matters.”
But her sister had already turned away again. May couldn’t reach her.
When she scanned the room, seeking reassurance in the shape of Ben’s inept arrangement of daisy buckets on tables, she found her mother and Matt in the doorway.
“May?” her mother called. “Dan wants to speak to you.” She held up Matt’s cell phone.
May’s eyes found Ben. He was wearing the same aloof, uninterested expression he’d had that first afternoon at Pulvermacher’s, when she’d asked him his name at the bar and he’d tried to brush her off.
Not the kind of guy a woman wants to pin her hopes and dreams on.
Fear bloomed in the pit of her stomach.
Her mother pushed the phone into her hand. “Take it somewhere else,” she whispered. “Somewhere private.”
May pressed it to her ear.
“Hello?”
The vast hall swallowed her voice, and Ben watched her with eyes that said I don’t even know you.