Truly(48)
It felt perfect now to stretch her legs, to breathe deeply and move at a brisk pace. As they made their way up the inclined walkway, he seemed lighter. Cheerful, for him.
The bridge was all cables and air, the pedestrian walkway in a separate area from the car traffic but crowded with tourists and punctuated by the occasional surprise of a cyclist bombing downhill from the Brooklyn side.
The morning was crisp, the sky bluer than blue, the river shining with reflected light.
“What is that, the Hudson?”
“East River. The Hudson’s on the other side.”
“Oh.”
“Separating Manhattan from New Jersey?”
May rolled her eyes and tried to project Sure, I knew that.
“Kids today,” Ben said. “Did you learn no geography in school?”
“My teachers back home sadly neglected the unit on mapping Manhattan. And I bet yours did, too.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I can’t really remember, honestly.”
“Did you go to cooking school?”
A slightly risky question, as it might fall into the none-of-your-business category or, worse, plunge Ben back into gloom. But her curiosity demanded to be fed more scraps of Ben’s life story.
“No, I went to UW–Madison. You know Connor, the guy who was slagging off my darts game at Pulvermacher’s?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“That’s where we met. He was my roommate.”
“So how did you get into the restaurant business?”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. Gray today. The blue T-shirt he wore underneath did interesting things to his eyes.
“It was an accident,” he said. “I was supposed to be a farmer. I grew up on a berry farm. Raspberries, blueberries. And hives, too. Lakeshore Nectar.”
“Did you sell honey all over Wisconsin?” She might have eaten it and not even known.
“Not as far away as Manitowoc. I think they changed the name anyway.”
“They?”
“My dad and his new family. My parents got divorced.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s all right. Happens to everybody.”
“Well, not everybody.”
He had nothing to say to that.
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
She imagined him back then—his unfinished face and skinny, defenseless adolescent body. Ben with his hands buried deep in his hoodie pockets, hurting.
He glanced at her. “Naw, don’t look like that. It was a good thing. They were fighting all the time.”
A woman passed them with a rolling suitcase. Her intense focus on the ground reminded May to get out of her own head and look around. There was so much water and sky and air up here, she didn’t want to miss it. It was hardly like Manhattan at all.
Ben caught her eye, and one corner of his mouth hitched, maybe at the expression on her face. She felt like a deep inhale, caught and buoyed up.
“Are you an only child?”
“Yeah.”
“And the farm—that’s what you wanted to do?”
Ben stepped around her and pushed her to the outside of the bridge, away from an oncoming bike. “Walking in public isn’t one of your best areas, is it?”
“I’ve managed to survive this long without your help.”
He grinned that loopy grin, and she looked down at her boots, afraid she’d float away.
He’d shaved this morning. In the bright light, against the blue sky, she was having trouble not staring at him. With a few days’ beard growth, Ben was good-looking, but clean-shaven … holy cow. He had a nice square chin, a strong jawline, and since when did she notice a man’s jawline?
When he spends two days hiding it from you.
Maybe. Or maybe just when the man was Ben.
“I guess that was what I wanted to do,” he continued, ignorant of her jawline fixation. “It wasn’t something we talked about. It was how things were, with my dad. But then after the divorce, I went with my mom, and all the plans changed.”
“That must have been disorienting.”
“It was … a surprise.”
“Were things better after the divorce?”
“In some ways. But the farm—not really. I couldn’t get along with my dad. When he remarried, he was kind of done with me and my mom. And then after a while he had another whole set of kids. Three boys. I figure one of them will take over.”
“Is that what he says?”
Ben shrugged. “We don’t talk.”
His expression had darkened. May saw the skinny boy again and suppressed the urge to hug him. “Are you close to your mom?”
“Nah. She’s Latvian. Got stuck marrying my dad when she found out she was pregnant. As soon as I went to college, she moved back home.” He glanced toward her, frowning. “How did we get on all this? It’s fucking depressing.”