Truly(64)

In the dark screen of the phone, she could see her own reflection. She stuck her tongue out and crossed her eyes. “Go crazy,” she told her absent sister. “It’s your turn to be the fuckup.”

And anyway, if Allie’s panic had its way—if she actually managed to choke back her cowardice and do something to put an end to her clamoring doubts about the wedding that was only six days away—she would steal back her title as Family’s Number-One Fuckup soon enough.

* * *

May handed the phone back.

“Where are we going now?” she asked.

He didn’t look away from the street. “Wherever you want.”

Not fair. She didn’t know the city, and she didn’t want anything except to fix what they’d managed, once more, to mess up.

All her life, she’d been a fixer. A good girl who smoothed over playground disputes between the six-year-old prima donnas and who carried notes from Allie to the boy she liked on the other end of the playground. May didn’t like to fight. It made her feel awful—made her stomach churn and her mouth sour while her heart beat too fast and she felt weak and terrible. She’d rather back off than clash, figuring it was easier to compromise, to drop the point, to take the blame—anything to keep from having to feel like that.

She was a coward, and she’d always been okay with it.

But something had clarified for her. Allie had helped her see there was no black line drawn through her life, no way of making herself over into a new person at a moment’s notice. There were only the choices she made, each of them separate and individual. The choice to leave Dan’s apartment. The choice to stay with Ben. The choice to push him when he didn’t want to be pushed.

This was a choice she got to make, too: how to behave in the wake of their argument. She could choose to back off, or she could choose to step up. How she felt about it mattered far less than being honest with herself about what she wanted and what she was willing to do to get it.

She wanted to know what had happened to Ben.

She’d poked him somewhere that hurt, and despite his offer to answer her questions, he’d curled around the pain and snapped at her like a wounded thing.

She didn’t like that, but she did recognize it as the prerogative of someone who didn’t spend his whole life trying to please others. He got to act angry when he was frightened, instead of pasting on a smile and pretending not to feel anything. She envied him that freedom, even though she’d been the one who got bit.

And sure, it stung. He’d sunk his teeth in deep with that comment about strays, puncturing her ability to pretend that what had been developing between them was anything more than quick, convenient lust between two people who had nothing better to do for a few days than screw around.

The feeling she’d had a few times now—that something more was going on here, something deeper and more elemental—couldn’t hold up in the light of that reality. It was fantasy-world nonsense. Ben liked her company, provided she didn’t get too pushy. He would be game for a brief affair if she made herself available. That was all.

Part of her hated that truth so much, she wanted to run from it. Hide in an anonymous hotel room. Because Ben wasn’t easy, and he refused to behave in a way that the movie reel in her head could work with. He wouldn’t offer her a candlelit seduction or a montage-worthy tour of the city.

Instead, he gave her strange gifts. Rather than roses, he bought her cheap, flashy earrings. He tossed out permission to be who she wanted and wear what she liked. He offered encouragement to bare herself to him, and he responded with cynical anger when she tried to get him to reciprocate.

Such was life. And the thing was, with Ben, she really did want to live rather than pretend. To choose the uneven edges and uncomfortable moments that came with inhabiting the real world over the bland ease of fantasy.

She didn’t want to act as though nothing had happened.

She didn’t want to give up on him.

“I want to play darts with you,” she said.

But what she really wanted was to start over. Ben and May at Pulvermacher’s—except this time she wouldn’t pretend not to be attracted to him. She wouldn’t cower, frightened by his intensity and overwhelmed by her situation.

She would match him, drink for drink, dart for dart, growl for growl.

“I suck at darts.”

“So we’ll play pinball.”

His face set in hard lines. His eyes were shuttered. “Pulvermacher’s?”

She nodded.

“Are you hoping to find somebody else to show you around the city?”

“Why would I do that?” she asked sweetly. “You’re the best distraction I’ve found in weeks.”