Page 62 of The Legend Next Door
How will I be able to watch hockey if he hates me? I’ll never be able to watch a rerun of one of his games and enjoy it again. I won’t be able to leave my house ever again either, so I’ll be stuck here with nothing to watch, and I’ll have to call Marcus and tell him he was right.
A loud, tacky sob leaves me as a fresh sheet of tears pours down my face.
And Luca. What about Luca? I love Luca. The chats we have through the fence are often the highlight of my day. How am I going to explain why I can’t come over anymore? What if Ben doesn’t want me to talk to him anymore? How am I going to explain that in a way he’ll understand?
No. Ben is a good man. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt Luca. Even if he hates me, he’ll probably still let him talk to me. He’ll probably tell Luca he can’t come over anymore, but I’m sure he’ll still let him talk to me through the fence.
He’ll probably just move house to get away from me, and oh God, they’ve only just moved here. That will be so unsettling for Luca. Moving is awful for children, and he loves his cousins so much, and this house is only ten minutes from them. It’s almost impossible that Ben will be able to find a house closer to them, so they’ll have to move farther away.
I can’t stand it.
I can’t let Luca go through all that again.
I’m going to have to move to Canada after all.
I get up at around six a.m., dizzy from lack of sleep, and start throwing a few things into a box.
If I leave early enough, I can be gone before Ben wakes up. I can ask Lissa to ship the rest of my things, so I won’t have to face Ben or Luca at all.
When I’ve filled the box with a collection of possessions that are in no way related to each other or particularly useful and have taped it shut with thick, overly sticky moving tape, I realize I’m spiraling.
I don’t have to move.
No.
Ben is an adult. He’s as responsible for what happened as I am. I’ll just have to apologize and return to my plan of phasing him out. Actually, I probably won’t have to. He’ll probably be the one phasing me out.
It’ll be awkward for a while. That thing with Jacob in college was intensely awkward for six months, and it was a normal amount of awkward for another six months. So, in all, it was awkward for a year, and oh God, I can’t survive being awkward around Ben for a year, but no, my point is it was awkward, and then it stopped being awkward. That’s my point. Awkwardness doesn’t last forever. Awkwardness is survivable.
All I have to do now is get through today. If I can get through today, I can get through tomorrow. If I can manage that, I can get through the week.
I might have to take Marcus up on his offer to travel with him in August. It’ll give me something to look forward to, something to focus on that isn’t beautiful Ben and his beautiful dick and the beautiful way he made me come simply by fucking my throat.
Or how I ruined a beautiful friendship with the best person I’ve ever met.
It’s mid-morning, and I’m at my wheel. I’m making a vessel for Luca. I’ve been planning it since I heard the news of his wiggly tooth, and it occurred to me while I was unpacking the box I packed earlier that I'd better get to it. It’ll take a while to dry and be fired, so there’s no time to waste.
I’m hand-building, but I’m using the throwing surface of my wheel because I find sitting here comforting, and God only knows I can use all the comfort I can get right now. The clay was cool to start off with, but it’s warmed to my skin now. It’s softer and more pliable than it was, and that’s almost enough to pull me down to the quiet place I go to when I work with clay. Almost. Not quite.
It’s not often I have a reason or the time to spend on something like this. In a way, it’s a luxury. I’m making a tiny vessel that involves tricky, detailed work. I try to focus my full attention on what I’m doing to stop it from wandering to hotter, worse, more beautiful things.
I’m largely unsuccessful.
“Jelly,” says a gruff voice from the other side of the fence.
The sound of Ben saying my name gives me one hell of a fright. One of those frights that gives itself a fright when it’s done giving you a fright. One of those frights that shoots up your spine, and as soon as you recover from that, you drop what you were holding and the clatter of metal and wood as it lands on terracotta gives you another jolt.
There’s a finality to his voice.
I give myself a moment, a last, nice moment before the next moment, the moment I know is inevitable, to appreciate what I’ve made. It’s good work. I think Luca will like it. I have one more thing to make, and I think Luca will like that as well.
“Jeremiah.”
Ben’s use of my full name makes me look up, though I’m not sure I decided to. In fact, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t ready to do it. He’s so tall that the top quadrant of his face is visible over the fence. His eyes are shadowed by the shade of an overgrown spartan juniper and, thus, unreadable from here. His hand appears in the hole in the fence, forefinger outstretched and pointed at me. He turns it slowly, a hundred and eighty degrees, so his palm faces the sky.
A single outstretched finger beckons to me.
I hurriedly plunge my hands into the bucket of water next to my wheel and wipe them on my pants as I walk. My palms are clean and mostly dry from being scoured by denim, though my knuckles will soon be coated in a fine dust that tightens if it’s not washed off thoroughly.
