Page 20 of Lovely War
I’m dumbfounded. “Thanks,” I say slowly. “These kids work hard and don’t get paid. I want them to learn something.”
He rubs his chin. “I want that too.” He’s looking at me thoughtfully, his expression less guarded than usual, and I let him. We used to be those kids. Weshouldagree on this. We should agree on a lot of things.
The faint smell of his soap lingers in the air. Sometimes he goes to the gym around five, showers, and comes back to the office to do more work. It’s a nice, clean scent, I’ll admit it. Everything smells good after spending half the day in an old gym surrounded by sweaty athletes.
I resist the impulse to step farther into his office. Even being this close gives me an electric-fence feeling. The boundary is invisible, but it’s there. My eyes land on a framed photo on his desk in the spouse-and-kids spot, a college-age Ben standing at center court with Maynard. It looks like senior night. I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for sure.
My tongue is stuck in my throat. “Nice picture,” I can’t help saying, as I fold my arms and squeeze them against my body.
“Thanks.”
“Do you still talk to him?”
His eyes flick to mine. “You don’t?”
“I don’t know why I would.”
He sits back in his chair, the wheels rolling a little. He makes a self-chastising face, like he shouldn’t have asked. We both look at the photo. “I talk to him pretty regularly,” he says. “See him every summer. He still has the beach house in Bethany. Does a big Memorial Day weekend thing every year.”
A shiver runs through me. “You stillseehim?” I ask. “You talkregularly? Like, how often?”
He gives me a baffled look. “I don’t know, every few weeks? We text, mostly.”
“Every fewweeks?” The pitch of my voice rises.
“Yeah, that’s too much,” Ben says dryly. “It’s not like I owe my entire career to him or anything.”
I shouldn’t be surprised by this, by Ben’s unwavering loyalty. The night Maynard invited us to dinner at his house to tell us we were candidates for the Sixers internship, Ben headed for the kitchen after our plates were cleared and picked up a sponge. “Wow, playing dirty,” I teased.
A wounded huff escaped his mouth and his cheeks turned pink. “I always help Kelly with the dishes!” Like dinner with the Maynards was a regular thing, like he was part of the family.
Maynard was ordinary-looking, a little nerdy, with an unremarkable face. He wore his blazers too big, like a child.But he walked in a beam of light. When he entered a room, people looked at him, sensing that he was somebody, even if they didn’t know who. And the light landed on you if you got close enough. When he talked to you, even in a crowded gym, it was like you were the only other person there.
“You really think you owe him everything?”
He shrugs. “I do, yeah.”
“He helped you get your foot in the door. That was a long time ago. Pretty sure at this point the only person you have to thank for the fact that you’re in here playing with numbers on a Friday night is you.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t get it. Is it that hard to be grateful for the opportunities he gave you?”
My face goes hot and cold at the same time, and my hand flies to my necklace, coiling it between my fingers. I’m going to have to allow Ben to add this to the list of things he’s holding against me, because I can’t pretend to have fond feelings for Maynard.
We’re never going to resolve our differences. We can’t have this conversation without dredging up the past, and that’s a risk I can’t take, because the past is full of dangerous land mines.
Time is so thin here. My college years feel so close. The same plaques rest undisturbed in the same places on the same walls; they’ve been here all along, even when I wasn’t. The sound of Donna’s voice carrying down the hall, the work getting under my skin, the way the autumn air hits me when I leave the building at night. It’s as if I could reach out and slip through whatever separates now from then with almost no effort at all. Sometimes it seems like I am doing that, like now, in this conversation. The earlier part, thefriendly bit between Ben and me, that’s the kind of thing that happened back then. The second part, about the photo on the desk, reminds me there’s pain here, and where to find it.
The pain is in my memories of the man who treated me like a daughter for three years, and then spent the fourth sending me creepy text messages and propositioning me in hotel rooms.
Ben wants to talk about opportunities? Maynard gave me the opportunity to develop my skills, to begin building a career, to make connections in our field. And then he attempted to give me the opportunity to sleep with him.
Behind Ben I see the two of us reflected on the window. Me, casual in the doorway in a long open sweater, him, slouching unarmed in his chair. We look like two people making small talk. We could be talking about Thanksgiving dinner, or how early it gets dark now. But not about this. Any second now the girl in the window is going to laugh, teeth gleaming on the glass.
SEVEN
The mall is already decoratedfor Christmas. Faux white trees covered in lights sit at regular intervals in squat planters, and a giant wreath is suspended from the ceiling above the escalators like a guillotine ready to fall. Santa is doing his thing in front of an ornate red carousel, a bloated line of families winding infinitely into the distance. The children are restless and sugar-high, dressed for photos, and the parents sag under the long wait.
The guy walking in front of Kat stops dead in his tracks, looking lost. She rolls her eyes and dodges him. “The whole point of coming here the weekend before Thanksgiving was to avoid the holiday shoppers.”
