Page 56 of Lovely War
Cassie shakes her head. “Half the reason they want methere is to deal with the bullshit. I thought you of all people would be telling me to quit.”
Ouch. That feels like a slap, but Cassie has no way of knowing it. It’s like Donna dismissing any possibility of me being emotionally vulnerable, like Ben calling me cynical. I’ve insisted to everyone for so long that I’m a certain type of person and now I’m disappointed to learn they’ve all believed me.
I smile through it. “If you want to quit, I would support you. Not financially, I mean, I don’t make that much money. But emotionally.”
We finish our work in silence and Cassie slides the pans into the oven. “I’m glad you came early to hang out tonight. I’ve been so jealous that Eric gets to see you more than I do.”
“I know. The whole reason I moved out here was so I could spend your first year of marriage with you guys, like you always dreamed. But I see way too much of Eric and not enough of you.”
Cassie folds a dish towel into a neat rectangle. “I don’t even know what’s going on in your life. Anything exciting other than work?”
“Nope,” I say with an affected shrug. “Just basketball.” It’s not a lie, exactly. So why do I feel a twinge of guilt saying it? Either way, there’s no way I can talk about Ben to Cassie, not with her sense of caution and rationality. Not right now.
Cassie goes to the living room to fluff the throw pillows. I stay in the kitchen, scrubbing the dishes with a concentrated vigor, until the skin on my hands is pink and soggy.
In the middleof the episode, Eric checks his phone and announces that Blake lost another game, which meansArdwyn has clinched the regular-season conference title. Everyone whistles and applauds loud enough for the neighbors to hear, even Cassie’s friends, who don’t follow basketball at all.
Ben and I are silly and hyper on the walk home, immune to the cold, spinning imagined scenarios about different people’s reactions to the news. Ben thinks Coach Williams probably grunted and gave his son a lecture on how the only title that matters is the national championship. I prefer to envision a secret second world for him, one in which he gathered his family around to celebrate with ice cream sundaes. Ted Horvath is already on a conference call with the fundraising team, telling them about his kitchen renovation, and Donna’s popping lozenges to prepare for the onslaught of well-wishing callers she’s going to have to yell at tomorrow.
“Look,” Ben says, waggling his phone at me. “Williams is already messaging us with a lecture.”
“While he finishes his banana split, I bet,” I say, peering at the screen. There’s a long block of text about heads staying down, long roads ahead, and keeping a foot on the gas.
I’m reading it out loud when a notification pops up, a familiar icon in marigold and white. A dating app. “Oh!” I avert my eyes and thrust the phone back at him. “Sorry.”
He looks at the screen and slides the notification away. His face is completely unself-conscious, as if it were a notification from the Weather Channel about tomorrow’s chance of precipitation. Embarrassment pours over me like cold water. The possibility that Ben was seeing other people never once crossed my mind. But of course he is. He’s trying to find a girlfriend or get laid like most single people, not obsessover innocent text message exchanges and incidental physical contact with his coworker.
He glances at me as if to continue our conversation, but something must show on my face. He freezes, his expression turning distressed. “Sorry,” he repeats after me, and I don’t know why either of us is apologizing.
“No need.” I give what I hope is a cool shrug. It’s not like I want to be his girlfriend. I like him too much to ruin things with a feeble attempt at dating one month before one of us is probably forced to leave this place. Not to mention the Maynard-shaped grenade buried in the space between us.
I won’t make the same mistake I made with Oliver. There was a moment one night on his balcony in Florence. We were drinking Sangiovese, watching the sun set over a sea of terra-cotta roof tiles and talking about our childhoods, when I thought,It can’t get better than this.And I was right. If we’d allowed it to be the dreamy summer fling it always should’ve been, I could’ve avoided a lot of heartache. I might’ve looked back fondly on it as a youthful adventure.
This is a wonderful surprise of a friendship in the middle of a wonderful surprise of a basketball season. That’s enough. When it’s over, we can both walk away intact.
But if somebody gets to be so blasé about it, why is it him?
His dark eyes are fixed on me. “I thought you read it. It’s telling me it’s been a while since I logged in. I don’t really date during basketball season.”
Oh. I attempt a detached nod as the tense knot inside me unwinds.
“Maybe that sounds bad. Our schedule is just too hectic to meet someone and start a relationship. I don’t bother with these apps between October and March.”
A six-month window to meet someone, otherwise it’sbetter luck next year? “Well, that’s a little depressing.”
“You’re dating right now?” A stricken look passes over his face that I enjoy more than I’d like to admit.
“Obviously not. I’m stuck with you eighty-seven hours a day. No time for swiping.”
His phone buzzes, and he looks at the screen. “I have to get this,” he says. There’s nowhere for him to go for privacy, so we continue walking together while he talks and I pretend I can’t hear his mom’s voice coming through the phone.
The call is apparently one he’s been expecting, about a big meeting at the high school today. Ben’s sister, Natalie, was accused of sharing an essay with another student, a boy, who copied it word for word. Amateur. They got caught, and the school threatened to sanction them for honor code violations and notify their colleges. Ultimately, they let Natalie go with a warning and a community service project.
Ben keeps asking questions about proof.Maybe she didn’t give him the essay. Maybe he took it from her backpack without her knowing. How do they know? She’s a good kid, she wouldn’t do that.His mom sounds a little scatterbrained. She doesn’t know anything about proof, didn’t ask. It’s not until the end of the call that she mentions that Ben’s sister confessed to her crime.
Ben sputters a bit. It’s so like him, to assume the absolute best of someone he loves. To give her the benefit of the doubt at everyone else’s expense. His sister probably is a good kid, a good kid whose teenage brain said yes when a cute boy asked to see her homework.
When he hangs up, it’s clear he needs to simmer in his thoughts, so I let him. We’re on Ardwyn Avenue now.Through the window of a bar, a television plays the Blake highlights while clusters of students chat over bottled beer and do a blunted, sober-ish version of dancing. Just a little sway; it’s only ten thirty.
