Page 33 of Lovely War
Cassie steps closer to Eric and strokes his face. “My dear husband.” He leans into her hand. “How many championships have the Knicks won in the last five years? No, the last twenty years?”
Eric’s mouth drops. He puts a hand to his heart like he’s been stabbed. Ben snorts.
Nobody needs to answer the question, but I do it anyway. “That’d be a solid zero.”
Cassie takes Eric’s hand and squeezes it. “And you still cheer for them. Does that make you a sucker?”
He sighs. “Yes, it does.”
Ben is really laughing now, holding his stomach with one hand. Maybe he’s never seen this side of Cassie. She gives Eric shit so sparingly it’s magic when she does. Ben leans back and his shirt rides up, exposing a strip of his toned stomach, a smattering of hair visible at the center. He pushes an unruly wave off his face and lets out a happy sigh.
I can’t take my eyes off him. After the past couple months, I don’t understand how this version of him can exist, the one who lounges on a couch and brings a dog to a party and appreciates a genuinely funny burn. The one who looks like this.
There were girls in my freshman dorm who had crushes on Ben in college, but his Stepford prom king thing never did it for me. Now that I think about it, though, there were a few occasions like this one, when he wasn’t completely composed, when I thought:Oh, I get it.A couple times when he was a player and got worked up over a bad call. And once when a few of us were stuck in the office at midnight, so we rewatched that old “Boom goes the dynamite” video, and he laughed so hard he cried. It wasn’t a big deal, though. It didn’t make me feel unsettled, like I feel now.
Cassie turns on Ben next. “I don’t know what you think is so funny. You’re a Sixers fan.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh.
This night shouldnot end with Ben and me walking home together, but it does. It happens so fast. I’m digging in my bag for my keys when Eric reminds Cassie he drove Ben here from the auto shop, where he left his car to be serviced.
Cassie turns to me. “Don’t you live in the same neighborhood?”
“I walked here.” My response is too fast, an attempt to preempt a request for a ride home.
The problem is that at the same time, Ben says, “I wanted to walk Sasha home anyway.”
Cassie narrows her eyes at me, probably because I have never walked here before in my life.
“I like walking in this weather. It’s refreshing.” It’s not, but it’s what comes out of my mouth. Today is as frigid as any other day in the big gray blur of January. Even as I’m saying it, I try to gauge how weird it would be if I told themNever mind, I just remembered I did drive.It would be very weird.
Cassie’s nod is like the bang of a judge’s gavel. “You can walk back together, then.”
I press my lips together hard. In fifteen seconds and with one little lie I’ve bumbled my way into a long cold walk with Ben, plus the logistical challenge of figuring out how to get my car back before work tomorrow.
We don’t talk on the stairs or as we weave through the parking lot. I try not to look at my car. Thankfully, it’s far away, in the last spot. I zip my coat all the way to the top and flick up my hood. This warms my ears and comes with the added bonus of blocking me from seeing Ben in my peripheral vision.
We aren’t even at the corner and my face is already numb in the razor-blade wind. This is a peaceful residential neighborhood, with a few apartment buildings and lots of charming old homes. Mature trees line the street, their bare branches towering overhead. At this hour, in this part of town, few cars are on the road.
Ben says something but my hood muffles the sound. “What?” I have to turn my head and shoulders toward him to see his face.
He clears his throat. “Sorry if I was weird in there,” he repeats. “After the night of the interview—well, I didn’t mean to say all that. Feels a little awkward.”
Didn’t mean to say all thatto me.I’m not supposed to be his confidante. And fair enough, because I’d be mortified if I spewed my private feelings all over him. Showed him my vulnerabilities, so he could judge me and use them as ammunition.
Except I have no urge to judge him for what he said. It revealed him to be a living, breathing human. My instinct is to empathize with him, but I’m not sure whether to fight it. “No worries,” I say lightly.
We walk on the quiet side street in silence for a few minutes until he breaks it. “So tell me what you thought of the show. If you hated it completely.”
“Why do you assume I hated it?”
He shrugs audibly, the waterproof material of his coat scratching against itself.
“It wasn’t good—”
“In your opinion.”
I hold up a hand. “Let me finish. And not in my opinion. Objectively. It’s objectively not a good show. But it doesn’t matter, it was fun.”
