Truly(53)

“There is that.”

They lapsed into silence, which allowed too much space for him to think about Sandy.

They’d had their share of drama, but by the end the writing on the wall had been twenty feet tall. He’d daydreamed about selling the restaurant and moving back to Sardinia, where he could open a local place. Something seasonal and dead simple, where the Michelin critics would never dream of visiting.

Sandy hadn’t been with him on the imaginary airplane.

He thought about May’s illusions. It was easy to love your idea of someone—to fall hard for their very best self. The question was whether, once you had to spend some time living with their worst self, you could bear to be with them anymore.

“You want to sit?” he offered. “Rest your feet for a while?”

“Sure.”

They found a flat spot beneath a huge oak tree, and May futzed with the grass, running her hand back and forth over it. He heard a bee several feet away where there was clover. Maybe it was one of his bees. They were only a mile or so from some of his hives.

“The thing is,” May said, “I’m not as sad as I should be. And that makes me sad, because it makes me realize I was being a dope. And then I wonder what’s wrong with me, and I go into this whole mental spiral, and that’s no good.”

“No.”

She turned her head sideways, resting it on her knee. All wrapped around herself, gold hair and red sweater, long legs and black boots. She looked gorgeous and disappointed. He wanted to fix her, but he was the wrong person. Ten times more broken than May was.

“I have a suspicion that I’m in the middle of one of those really important life lessons,” she said. “I’m just not sure what the lesson is yet.”

“I know how that feels.”

“It’s not a lot of fun,” she said. “But it’s really liberating, too.”

“Because you’re not who you used to be, but you’re not who you’re going to be yet, either.”

“And you don’t even have to figure it out if you don’t want to,” she said.

“Exactly. You can do what you want.”

“Tend bees,” she said with a smile.

“Eat borscht.”

“Kiss strange men.” Her eyes were still glistening, her voice husky and solemn when she said it. He couldn’t figure out what it meant. Whether to be funny or serious, or to just kiss her again like he wanted to.

But no. No kissing. Not unless she asked.

He leaned back against the tree trunk, wiping his palms on his jeans. “You think I’m strange, woman?”

“No.” She unwrapped her arms and leaned against the tree beside him, bumping his shoulder with her own. “I think you’re pretty great.”

He let that sink in, soaking it up until it saturated him.

The most meaningful compliment he’d received in a long time.





CHAPTER NINETEEN


Ben took her to Park Slope to see about some bees. She liked the neighborhood. The brownstone where he kept the hive was four stories tall, one of a row of beautiful, interconnected red- and beige-brick homes with elaborate stonework and neat front walks on a beautiful leaf-shaded street.

No fish deliveries or abandoned mattresses on the sidewalks. This was a family place, like the park, and it was easy to envision herself living somewhere like it, if she’d been a city woman. Taking the subway to work every morning, coming home to her pretty little brownstone to find her husband sautéing something that smelled delicious, presiding over the kids doing their homework at the table. She’d lean around his shoulder to see what he was making, kiss the side of his neck, and he’d turn to grasp her waist and kiss her properly.

She had to admit, she was dying for him to kiss her properly. Slow and long and deep, or hard like he had last time, with all that heat and urgency. She wanted his body against hers, his hands all over her, and why hadn’t he kissed her in the park?

Maybe because the last time he kissed you, you started crying on a curb, you space cadet.

There was that. Or maybe he’d somehow intuited she was having marriage fantasies about him. She kind of felt like apologizing for them preemptively, but she wasn’t sure she could quit if she tried. A woman with a brain like hers, hanging around a man like Ben, talking about life and disappointments and babies—what was she supposed to do?

Change your brain to another channel.

“This looks like The Cosby Show,” she said.

“Yeah, it was set in Brooklyn. But I think they actually filmed the exterior shots in Manhattan somewhere.”

“How on earth do you know that?”

“I know a lot of random crap like that. I told you I’d be a good tour guide.”