Page 61 of One on One
“Don’t you dare say no to me on my birthday.” She motions for me to hand her my coat.
I scan Ben’s face, hunting for any sign of dismay, but he looks completely at ease. And annoyingly entertained. He gives me a reassuring nod.
“Okay,” I say weakly. “And happy birthday.”
Lisa barrels on. “I didn’t know you were a girl, and such a pretty one! Radford—Jesus, Ben, why do you call her that? All this time I thought she was a guy.”
“Talking to your mom about me a lot?” I whisper, elbowing him gently as we follow Lisa into the living room. He leans into it for a second, the side of his body pressed against the side of mine, his eyes hot and knowing.
More of that, please.
“Had to warn her about the stalker who was planning to crash her family birthday dinner,” he says.
When the Vietnamese food arrives, Ben moves the gifts and cake to the kitchen counter so we can sit around thetable. Lisa spreads the containers out in the middle and Ben asks Natalie to set the table.
We talk about our favorite places to eat nearby and the town down the shore where Lisa used to take Ben and Natalie when they were young. Ben’s mom is a die-hard Bruce Springsteen fan and, well, I’m from New Jersey, so we’ve both been to multiple concerts.
They ask about my work. Natalie doesn’t care about basketball but wants to know the wildest thing I’ve ever seen doing wedding videography. The answer is a fistfight between the groom and his own father, and Lisa and Natalie want every detail, but they’ve seen worse on their favorite television shows. “Never been married but haven’t met a wedding-themed reality show I didn’t like,” Lisa declares.
Ben uses the wordhomein a sentence and the letterogoes in a direction I’ve never heard coming out of his mouth. Lisa’s strong Philly accent clearly rubs off on him when he’s around her. Natalie gives Ben the play-by-play of her most recent gymnastics meet, and he asks thoughtful questions about the recent changes to her beam routine.
I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, where I retie the loose bow at the neck of my dress and check my teeth for food. Nothing about this night is going how I expected. But it’s nice to meet Ben’s family, see who he is around them. They’re friendly. Laid-back. Despite the circumstances of my arrival, his mom isn’t overtly sizing me up as a potential love interest for her son. She doesn’t seem like that kind of mom, anyway. Maybe it’s her age, since she had Ben so young. She talks to her kids like friends and equals, with no attempt at asserting authority.
When I open the bathroom door I hear Lisa: “When should we do the financial aid paperwork?”
“Another night,” he says. “Soon, I promise.”
“I don’t know how to answer the child support question. And do you have a copy of my tax return? Because I can’t find it anywhere.”
“I have a copy. I’ll look at whatever you need help with before I leave for New York.”
I clear my throat before walking back into the room.
“Annie, I didn’t know whether to clear your plate. Are you done with your food?” Lisa asks.
“I can get it,” I say, and bring it to the kitchen.
“Having a good time?” Ben appears behind me with the last of the dishes as I’m scraping my plate into the trash. He touches my lower back as he passes me on his way to the dishwasher, the lightest brush of his hand, and my entire body lights up like a neon sign.
After Lisa blows out the candles and Ben passes around pieces of the cake Natalie baked, the conversation turns to Natalie’s college plans.
“I’m still trying to figure out where to go if the gymnastics program gets cut,” she says, picking off a blue sprinkle and frowning at it. “Ardwyn was by far the best school that recruited me. And my favorite. I think I’m just going to hope for the best for now.”
“Natalie and Ben are different,” Lisa explains. “Ben always knew what he wanted to study, always had a plan. Nat isn’t like that.”
“I don’t even know what I want to major in,” Natalie says. “Sometimes I think history and then sometimes I thinkpolitical science and, I don’t know, what about business? It stresses me out because once I pick one, all the other options go away. And what if I pick wrong?”
“You probably will pick wrong at some point,” I say. “I’ve picked wrong a bunch of times. Having a brother like yours might make you think it’s not normal, but trust me, it is.”
“Yeah?”
“Even after college. In school I had a job working in basketball, which was exactly what I thought I wanted to do.” I chance a look at Ben. He’s watching me with a circumspect expression. “It didn’t work out. So after graduation I got an unpaid internship working for a local news station. But there was no way it was going to turn into something paid. I did another internship in Boston, and then I went back to New Jersey and worked a bunch of different places. A company that made garage storage systems, a credit union, an appliance company. It’s normal to bounce around, although I don’t recommend doing it as much as I did. And if you don’t like the first thing you do, or the second, that’s okay.”
“You never even tried to get another job in basketball after you left here?” Ben asks, puzzled. “I didn’t know that.”
“Natalie, don’t forget, Ben had Coach Maynard to guide him every step of the way, which was lucky,” Lisa says. I push frosting around my plate, piling it all together and then spreading it into a flat layer. “Not everyone has a mentor like that. Such a wonderful man.”
“I hope he has a spot for you someday so I can visit you in Arizona,” Natalie says. “I’ve never seen a cactus in real life.”
