Page 51 of One on One
“Like what?”
He hesitates in a way that makes me shift on my barstool, turning toward him. “Do you remember Hailey?”
Hailey. His high school sweetheart. A perfect heart-shaped face and shiny hair, those big luminous pearl earrings. She went to some other college—in Baltimore, maybe? She came to a lot of games and smiled at everyone, wearing little jeans and neat button-down shirts. She was lovely.
I give a casual shrug. “I think so. Vaguely.”
“That fall she told me she wasn’t sure if she wanted to be in a relationship anymore.”
“What do you mean? She dumped you?”
“Not exactly,” he says. “I wish she had. I think she wanted to, but she felt guilty about it. I was there a lot when her dad was sick a few years before. We spent all of senior year in a cycle where she’d tell me she didn’t know what she wanted,and I’d try to convince her we could make things better, and she’d go along with it for a while. Then the whole thing would start again. But it got uglier every time.”
It’s hard to imagine. “You guys seemed…perfect.” There is a one hundred percent chance they were voted Cutest Couple for their high school yearbook superlatives.
He shrugs. “We both grew up in college. But we grew up differently.”
“When did it end?”
“Not until right before graduation. She drove up here from Ocean City in the middle of the night during her Senior Week. She showed up at my apartment crying. Told me she’d hooked up with some guy from her marketing class. She left his hotel room and came straight home to tell me.”
Sweet young Ben, the boy with the flock of chirping birdies, betrayed and heartbroken. My chest almost collapses from the pressure at the thought of it. “Oh, Callahan. Fuck that.”
“At least she told me.”
“So that was it, then?”
“That was it. I had been desperate to make it work before that, but not after she cheated. I think she did it so I’d have to break up with her. Subconsciously. She’d spent an entire year trying to end things. I just wouldn’t listen.”
“She could’ve ended things herself instead of making you do it.”
“Yeah. She could have.”
We fall silent. The door to the kitchen opens and a server appears with a tray, the sound of the sizzling grill filtering in until it swings shut again.
“Whatever happened to her?”
“She married the guy she cheated with. She sends me Christmas cards. I have no hard feelings.”
I flick my straw wrapper at him. “Of course you don’t. That’s so you. You were together for, what, five years?”
“Seven.”
“Jeez. So that’s why you never fell in love with me.” Flippantly, for the record. I say it flippantly.
From the corner of my eye I see his head jerk toward me. A curious look passes over his face. I glue my eyes to the bartender as he mixes a drink. Gin and tonic, fascinating.
“I never had a problem staying faithful,” he says slowly. “That doesn’t mean I never noticed when someone was objectively beautiful. I haveeyes.”
“Ah,” I manage to get out, trying to ignore the flicker of heat in my belly as the bartender adds a lime wedge. “Someone beautiful, like…Jasmine.” I gesture at the television that played theBeach Housecommercial. To say anything more would be fishing for something dangerous.
A beat passes. The bartender drops a cocktail straw into the glass and takes it to a customer at the other end of the bar. “Sure,” Ben says. “Like Jasmine.” He turns back to his chicken sandwich. “What about Oliver? Please tell me he showed up at your door months later and you slammed it in his face?”
My shoulders relax. “Well,” I say. “This is where the story gets funny, I think.” I press my palms against my cheeks.
“Oh, god,” he says, and steals one of my french fries. “Hit me.”
“He called me months later, after graduation. And I picked up so I could hang up on him, which felt good.”
