Truly (New York Trilogy #1) (24 page)

All the anger he’d witnessed when he was too young to know what to do with it—that was the legacy his father had handed him when he took away the farm.
This is how the world is
, his parents had taught him.
This is how it treats you, and this is how you cope
.

The restaurant kitchen he’d wanted so badly. His marriage. His obsessive ambition. Every choice he’d made had taken him out of the sunshine, away from the bees and the dirt and stuck him in the dark, with people pressing around him, demands pressing down on him, heat and sharp edges and relentless expectations.

This is how the world is
, he’d told himself.
This is how it treats you
.

Cope
.

No wonder he’d started snapping. What were the other choices, if you were Ben?

He exhaled. “That was the night I asked myself what I was doing. I thought I had this … passion, I guess, this thing I found in Sardinia that made sense to me. But then the way it worked out, was that what I’d really wanted? To be stressed all the time and have headaches and insomnia and cameras rolling while I flipped out? Is that passion, May? Because if it is, it’s fucking miserable, and I don’t want any part of it.”

“I think that’s obsession.”

“Yeah. Well, I couldn’t tell the difference. It all felt the same to me, by the time I split with Sandy, and for about a year afterward. But I’ve been trying to figure it out. You know Tiger Woods?”

“What, the golfer?”

“Yeah. You ever see him play?”

“I can’t watch golf. It’s so boring.”

“Okay, well, he’s amazing. But he wanted to be better. So he and his coach, they spent, like, a year breaking his swing down into all the components, then teaching him how to swing a golf club all over again. That’s what I’m trying to do. With my life.”

“How will you know when you’re done?”

“It’ll get easier. This is just what it’s like to be in the middle of the process, I think. Feeling broke-ass and lost, like you’ll never get back to where you were before. But sooner or later, if I keep at it, it’s going to click into place. That’s what Tiger said—it all clicked into place. And I’ll be able to … you know. Swing again. Without getting pissed off and screwing up so much. Without thinking about it all the time. And when that happens, I’ll open another restaurant.”

He thought he was broken. That there was some mechanism in him he could fix, if he
tried
harder.

God.
God
.

It was the saddest thing anyone had ever told her.

Ben cleared his throat and looked away. “Can I have my wallet back? I’m going to buy another round.”

May gave it to him, and she let him walk away from her, knowing he needed space, and that she needed … something. A break from all the tension, coiling tight as that spring he’d controlled with such physical certainty. A reprieve from whatever this was that they were doing.

She stood in the passageway, a still point vibrating with emotion. Her throat hurt. Her eyes watered.

A man bent over the jukebox, and when he straightened, an old Creedence song came over the sound system. The women with him had just finished clearing a space free of tables and chairs. They lifted their arms, bumping hips and laughing when one of them spilled her drink.

A dance floor. They were going to dance. The man caught May’s eyes from across the room and smiled.

Want to?
he mouthed.

And she did. She did want to. She needed to move, to take the tension she’d created and push it outside of herself, because if she didn’t—

If she didn’t, something might happen with Ben that she wasn’t ready for.

So she crossed the room to the stranger, smiling back, and she pretended to believe that Ben would understand.

She pretended she wasn’t trying to make him snap.

He sat at an uneven, sticky table, nursing his second beer and watching her.

She’d stripped off her sweater and thrown it on top of her purse, exposing her bare arms and neckline. May and her new friends whirled around, grabbing one another’s arms, whooping with laughter, singing the lyrics of some inane piece of synthetic pop crap.

When she tossed her head, her earrings shivered.

He couldn’t decide if she was just having fun or if she was also trying to punish him—and if so, for what. For telling her?

He didn’t need her to punish him. He was doing a thorough job of it all by himself.

He watched her dance. He clenched his fist under the table every time the blond guy brought his mouth to her ear to shout at her over the loud music, and he hated himself for it.

She’s not going to do anything with that guy, you dick. And even if she did, it’s her right. Her body
.

The music had an orange-red corona that pulsed pain between his eyebrows. He wore away the skin beside his thumb, storing blood beneath his fingernail and glaring at the table. At the floor.

At anything but May.

You can’t keep her, even if you want to. You’re about to lose your apartment, and you have to find a new one. She’s going back to Wisconsin. You and her make no sense. You’re a wreck, and you don’t deserve her
.

Just go. She doesn’t want you here. She’s disgusted with you
.

Go. You’ll both be better off
.

But he didn’t. Even when the blond man flattened his hand on her back, swooped down, and kissed her, Ben didn’t move.

He couldn’t move.

May didn’t push the man away. She didn’t pull him closer. She didn’t react at all.

The music beat beneath Ben’s hand on the tabletop, and his blood drilled into his temples and turned everything a bilious red.

May put her hands against the blond man’s chest and took a step back. She said
something that made the guy smile. Gave his arm a friendly squeeze.

She walked away from him. Directly toward Ben.

He rose so fast, his chair knocked into the one beside it. It fell over, spilling May’s sweater onto the ground.

“You ready to go?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

They both leaned over to pick up the chair. He got to it first. She wobbled on the way and had to grab his arm. “I’m all right,” she said in a put-on voice. “I’m aaaaalllll right.” She winked at him as if he wasn’t coming apart. “That’s a line from
It’s a Wonderful Life
. Uncle Billy.”

He shook his head.

“You haven’t seen it?”

“Not on purpose.”

May laughed for no reason he could discern, and he followed her toward the door, carrying her sweater. “You want this? It’s cold out.”

“No, I’m too hot.”

She tripped on the threshold of the steps leading up to the street, scraping her palm on the concrete. Ben helped her up, guided her onto the sidewalk, and inspected her wounds under a streetlight. When he ran a finger lightly over the base of her thumb, she sucked air in through her teeth. “It stings.”

“Don’t be a baby.”

She stuck out her bottom lip. “Kiss it better.”

He kissed her wrist instead and felt her pulse beat there. She closed her eyes. “That’s nice.”

He didn’t trust himself to speak. Clasping his fingers around her wrist, he led her down the street toward the subway.

“Hey, Ben?” Her voice was low and mellow, like she’d sounded when she was sitting in the sun on the step with the humming of bees in the air between them. “Is there any chance?”

“For what?”

But he knew. He knew what she meant, and there was no chance at all.

“He kissed me,” she said. “But it wasn’t the same.”

“You’ve had a lot to drink.”

“Did you mean it when you called me a stray?”

“You know I didn’t.”

They walked a block in silence. May crossed her arms and shivered. He pushed her sweater at her, and this time she put it on. They were crossing the street when she said, “I just liked that he wanted to. I haven’t … That doesn’t happen to me much.”

“It should. You’re gorgeous.”

“I’m too big.”

It was the way she said it. So automatic, it was clear she hadn’t even thought twice.

He
hated
that she did that, hated that she believed it, and hearing her do it so casually lit the sweating fuse he’d been trying to keep in a cool, damp place. He pulled her into an alley, pushed her against the brick wall of the nearest building, bracketed her head between his hands.

“You are not too big.” He kept his voice low, but he knew he didn’t sound calm enough. Not even close. “You’re not too tall or too fat or too loud or too whatever the fuck else you think, so stop with that.
Stop
.”

When she opened her mouth to protest, he kissed her. He kissed her hard, tasting citrus and alcohol on her tongue, pouring all his frustration and desire into her. Her hands came up to his biceps, but she didn’t try to move him or stop him. She stroked his arms through the sleeves of his sweatshirt. He crowded her with his body, and she moaned and tilted her hips up, lifting her leg. He caught it behind her knee and sank between her thighs. He was already hard. Always already lost in her, from the beginning.

“I want you,” he said, pushing against her. “Exactly the way you are. I want you naked and panting and wet underneath me. You understand that? Am I being clear?”

“Yes.”

He licked a path along her throat, tasting the salt of her sweat, the warmth of her skin. “I don’t know what Einarsson ever said to you, if it was his fault or somebody else’s or just the whole goddamn world, but you’re sexy, all right? Your legs are sexy, your tits are sexy, your face is beautiful, you smile like the fucking sun coming up. Anybody who disagrees with me is an idiot, May. You got that? Are you hearing me?”

“Yes.”

“I want you. I want you with me.”

He kissed her again, trying to force the strength of his conviction under her skin, and she
whimpered. He couldn’t tell if it was a sex-whimper or if he was actually hurting her. The bricks couldn’t feel good behind her head. She couldn’t
want
to be pushed into an alley and mauled by an angry, jealous dickhead.

He shoved himself away from her.

“I’m sorry.” He backed up a step. “I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be like this.”

She grabbed him by the front of his jacket and yanked him to her. “Come here.”

“It’s really not okay.”

But he came anyway. She cupped the back of his head in one hand and guided his forehead to her neck.

“I’m a jerk,” he said. “I shouldn’t keep kissing you. I’m kind of hopeless, May, honestly.”

“Shut up.”

“All right.”

She pressed her fingers into his hair, pressed his head down and held him in place with her grip on his sweatshirt. Ben breathed against her sweater with her hair in his face, the strands catching against the rasp of his cheek.

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not okay.”

“I know.”

“I said shut up.”

“Okay.”

She kept a steady pressure on his head, and it was the pressure that calmed him. The pressure and the smile he’d heard in her voice when she told him to shut up.

It was the message behind her flat palm and her clenching fingers.

Stay here. I’m not letting you go
.

“You know, I feel like you need some really basic instructions,” she said. “So let’s call this a lesson on your swing.”

“Okay.”

“The thing is, it’s fine to yell sometimes,” she said. “Like, you can yell at shitty drivers, but only from inside the car. You can’t get out and punch them, right?”

“Right.”

“And you can hate the refs at a football game, and shout a few taunts at them, maybe, but
you can’t walk down onto the field and give them a piece of your mind. You know this already.”

“I know this.”

Her fingers began stroking up and down the nape of his neck. “It’s fine to be jealous when some guy tries to make out with me right in front of you, and it’s fine to kiss me in an alley so hard that my lips sting, if I let you do it.” She tapped one finger on his neck. “
If I let you
, Ben. If I want you to. Which I did. I do. So it’s fine. You know that, too.”

He touched her fingers where they were clutching his sweatshirt, and she relaxed them. Her palm flattened over his chest. He covered her hand with his own.

“You’re allowed to be mad,” she said. “Everybody gets mad.”

“You don’t.”

“I’m working on it. But here’s the distinction, so listen up. It’s not fine to
try
to hurt me. Snap at me all you want about stuff that doesn’t matter, but if you try that bullshit from earlier again—if you tell me I’m a stray, or that you don’t give a shit, and you use all that anger to push me away like you’re so good at doing? If you do that one more time, I’ll go, and I won’t come back.”

He lifted his head. It was too dark for him to see his heart in her eyes. Too loud inside his head for her to hear the fear hammering against her hand.

But he could anyway, and so could she.

“Don’t go.”

“This is me,” she said softly. “This is me not going.”

He kissed her then. He
had
to kiss her, to try out every way he could move his mouth over hers—hard and soft, deep and reverent—and he had to move his tongue against hers and cup her breast in his hand because he was so fucking grateful and so fucking lost.

“You make me want to be a decent person,” he murmured against her lips. “It’s just awful.”

She laughed then, and put her head against the bricks and closed her eyes with her hair tumbling down and sticking to her face and her neck. “You’re the strangest man I ever met.”

He kissed her collarbones and the swell of her breasts. Her hands smoothed over the back of his head. “I want you,” he said.

“I got that. I think you more or less have me. I’m cool with it.”

“You’re cool with it?” He smiled and kissed her again, so much lighter now. She’d
transmitted some of her buoyancy to him, intoxicating him with her mouth and her taste and her dark brown eyes. He tried to reciprocate. He kissed her long and lingering, with every shred of longing in him. Every broken shard of devotion she’d somehow collected together and remade.