Page 50 of The Fear of Falling
He looks up, his eyebrows lifted. “No.”
“Liar.”
“I believe in coincidence, maybe, but not—”
“What are the odds you and I sat next to each other on the way to Italy? That you happened to see me in the line for a taxi? That we were staying at the same hotel? And then you show up here to helpmycompany?”
He doesn’t have a response, which hopefully means he has no argument. I’m not sure I believe in fate either, but there has to be a reason we’ve been pushed together like this. I can’t let him brush me off anymore if I’m going to take control of my own life.
“You can lie to yourself that we don’t have a connection,” I tell him, “but I won’t. You’re going to have to deal with that.”
Taking a slow breath, he sets down the menu and leans forward, locking his gaze onto mine in a way that makes me shiver. “Do what you want,” he says coolly, “but it won’t change the boundaries I need to keep.”
“Need to?” I counter. “Or are choosing to?”
“Does it matter?”
Maybe not to him, but it matters to me. It will tell me if I have any chance with this man. In all reality, I should cut my losses and accept that he isn’t willing to put in the work or make sacrifices, which is a pretty terrible start to a relationship. If Dani were in my position, I would tell her to set the guy loose and move on to someone who won’t leave her heartbroken.
But I guess I’m not as careful with my own heart as I want her to be with hers.
Before I can say any more bold things, our server comes to take our orders, and her smile turns flirtatious when she looks at Benson. To my delight, he barely gives her a passing glance as he tells her his order, his eyes fixed on me as if he’s worried about what I’m going to say or do during this dinner.
Good. He should be worried. He’s not getting off the hook so easily.
“So,” I say when we’re alone again. “What’s your favorite food?”
He narrows his eyes. “Why?”
“Because I’m trying to get to know you, Benson. Believe it or not, you didn’t tell me much about yourself when we were in Florence.”
He groans, sitting back in his seat. “I don’t want to do this, Avery.”
“But I do, and I just got majorly hurt by my business partner, so you should be nice to me.”
He mumbles something under his breath that sounds like a colorful insult directed toward Eric, and everything about his body language is uncomfortable right now.
Maybe I’m beingtoobold. He’s allowed to set boundaries, even if I don’t like them, so I change my question. “Actually, I want to hear how you and Eric became friends.”
“Why?” he asks again, though this time it carries more curiosity than irritation.
“Because the two of you are so different.”
“Hasn’t he told you all about me?”
“Yes, but I’m pretty sure your version of the story is going to be different from his.”
Benson folds his arms, making his white shirt strain against the ridges of his body. There are suddenly so many other questions I want to ask him, like what his workout routine is like and if he likes living out of hotels and what he does when he leaves the office at the end of the day. I want to know if he has any siblings and if he’s ever played a competitive sport and why he chose consulting out of all the things he could be doing with his life.
“We were paired for a project together our freshman year,” he says, surprising me with the response. He doesn’t look happy to be talking about his life, but it’s nice to see he knows me well enough to know I won’t let him brood in silence while we wait for our food. He’s picking his battles, telling me that Eric is one of the safer topics of conversation.
I wave my hand, urging him to continue.
With a sigh, his arms relax and he keeps talking. “I drove Eric nuts because I didn’t care about the assignment and kept focusing on a different side of the topic we were supposed to be researching.”
I vaguely remember Eric telling me about how he met Sonny, how this eighteen-year-old kid with boundless energy taughthim so much patience. “You failed the project,” I say when Benson falls silent.
Nodding, he lets out a soft laugh. “Yeah. Eric was furious and wouldn’t look at me in class after that. But then he stopped me on campus a few weeks later and asked for help on an assignment in one of his other classes because he couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was supposed to be doing, and he figured since I had a different way of looking at things, I might be able to understand it. It was…nice. To be seen that way.” He shakes his head, his eyes distant, like he forgot about that moment when Eric cornered him after class. “I was failing a couple of my classes, so he offered to help me study in exchange, and we figured out that we balanced each other out pretty well. He kept me on track, and I helped him think outside the box and brought some fun into his life.”
