by Julie Wright
Ben didn’t ask where we were going once my driving took on some purpose, so if he didn’t like where we went, it was all on him. But as we got out of the car and entered the restaurant, Ben didn’t complain.
I ordered the tamales and an horchata, and Ben ordered the sampler plate at the suggestion of the guy working the counter. Ben had apparently never been to Guisados. How anyone could live in LA and not have been to Guisados blew my mind. I tried to pay, but Ben beat me to it with a smirk and a, “You must not look like the more dangerous of the two of us today,” as the guy at the counter took his credit card instead of mine.
I didn’t bother telling him that I could be dangerous if he kept pushing, but the truth was I didn’t feel dangerous; I felt vulnerable. A quick glance at the full tables inside sent us outside to wait for our food. We found a table and seated ourselves.
The drive over hadn’t been as uncomfortable as it could have been, considering Ben’s silence. But then I’d had something to do—paying attention to the road and trying to figure out where we were going. Now that we were seated with no food yet to keep us occupied, I wasn’t sure what to do.
So, I dove headfirst. “Adam said he saw you on a date with Alison. He told me you were together. Being that I had personally disrupted your attempts to date her on three separate occasions, it was easy to believe that you really were together. I didn’t want to give her the wrong idea by my continual interference. I’m sorry if that came across as abandonment to you. That was never my intention.”
He didn’t meet my eye while I explained, but instead stared into the street before saying, “Fair enough.”
Our order arrived just then. I cursed the prompt service; we had talking to do.
The food did what food always did when two people found themselves together in the most awkward way possible—
it served both as a focal point and a distraction.
After Ben proved he really had been starving by downing three of the six tacos on his sampler plate without much of a pause or a breath, he stopped eating long enough to exclaim that he’d never had a better tortilla in his life. Then he dove back into the sampler plate.
We finished eating at about the same time, and there was nothing else to do but face the elephant sitting with us.
Ben frowned into the street. “That’s fair about you thinking all that about Alison. We were dating for a while because I promised her I’d give that a chance. When I realized it wasn’t going to happen for me emotionally, I told her, and now we’re just friends. So, you’re both right and wrong. I do love her—she’s a friend, and I care about what happens to her—but I am not in love with her. And the difference between those kinds of love is pretty substantial. The whole thing with Alison is complicated.”
“Why then did you want me to meet with her so much? Why the whole date with her last night?”
“She wasn’t my date last night, she was my . . . plus-one? That sounds like date, too, doesn’t it? Anyway, she wanted to go because you’d been gracious and invited her specifically. She practically worships you now and wants to be your best friend. I wanted you to meet with her because you’re always complaining that there aren’t enough women in our business. It made sense for me to try to do something proactive to help change that. Since Mid-Scene already turned her down, I hoped you could help find a place for her.”
“Right. That makes sense. And, yeah, I agree. Being proactive to change the business is the only way the business will change. Thanks for seeing that.”
Sometimes, I really was the half-blind girl. Why hadn’t I seen that? At least I had agreed to meet with Alison. At least I had acted the part of a grown-up and not shut her down in mean-girl jealousy.
With Guisados becoming even busier, and people giving us the stink eye when they noted our empty trays and our stubborn occupation of a perfectly good table, I stood, not really feeling like defending my squatter’s rights. “We’ll receive a stern talking-to if we don’t vacate the table,” I explained, noting that a few different couples were talking quietly and casting glances in our direction—likely drawing straws for who had to ask us to leave.
We got back in the car, but Ben didn’t give me any destination, so I turned in the direction of his house.
“So Alison didn’t work out?” I asked, wanting to know how it all went down before we talked about anything more.
“No. Not exactly. She was willing to keep at it, but it wasn’t working for me.”
Alison couldn’t be blamed for her persistence. She’d dated him before. She knew he was dependable and smart, caring and compassionate, funny and weird. She knew all there was to love about him, and what girl in her right mind would ever be willing to throw that away when she knew what she had?
The more I thought about her, the more I respected her.
And didn’t respect myself. I knew all there was to love about him, and I’d still felt willing to throw it all away because I was . . . what? Too busy? Too apathetic? She deserved to win more than I did because she’d cared enough and dared enough to try. I had let him go without so much as a shrug or a farewell wave. No wonder he was mad at me. “Didn’t you guys date a long time back in film school?”
“About two years. Most of our junior year and all of our senior year.”
“That’s a long time. I’m sorry things didn’t work out. Why didn’t things work out?” My lips felt cold, a sign that the blood in my system was all racing around in my midsection and ignoring my extremities.
His tone changed. He’d been reserved since we’d left his house—probably so he could process. But now his tone had shifted from reserved to amused, though I didn’t understand what he found amusing about a question regarding a breakup.
Instead of answering me, he said, “Here’s your phone.” He pulled it from his jacket pocket.
“Right.” I reached for where it seemed most logical for his hand to be. “Did you say you left me a message last night?” My fingers grazed over the smooth case of my phone as Ben pulled it away again. Then I heard the familiar tones of a message being deleted. “What? Ben! You can’t delete my messages!”
“I can when they’re from me. Trust me. A conversation will be better than that message.”
That message. Whatever it had been, my not responding to it had been enough to incite Ben’s anger.
We were silent a moment before he asked, “What wrong idea were you talking about earlier?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” I said, irritated that he’d deleted my message and hating how congested traffic was becoming and the fact that the road required so much of my attention when my attention wanted to be on the man in the passenger seat of my car.
“You said you didn’t want to give Alison the wrong idea by your continual interference. What would have been a wrong idea?”
I tried to answer, sputtered, and fell silent. Because the wrong idea was actually the right idea. I didn’t want Alison to think I was falling for a claim she’d already staked.
When the silence from my nonanswer stretched so long that I almost considered telling a joke or playing the movie-quote game to fill the silence, Ben spoke up. “It was nice to see her again and see who she’s become. It’s interesting, isn’t it?”
“Interesting?” Did my voice sound too high?
“You think you know someone and then some time without them goes by and you see them again, and you realize that they are exactly what you always believed them to be, or you discover you didn’t know them all that well after all.”
“Which was Alison? Was she what you thought? Or someone you didn’t really know?” I shouldn’t have asked, because it wasn’t my business. They’d broken up again, and what did the why of it matter to me?
“I was talking about you just now, not Alison.”
“What?” I took my eye off the road to look at him. Ben wasn’t looking at m
e though. His eyes were on the road. His hand went to my shoulder as he shouted, “Silvia! Brakes!”
I looked back in time to see that traffic had come to a dead stop, and I slammed my brakes to avoid the business end of the bumper on the truck in front of us. The truck would have been fine; my car would have crumpled like a soda can.
“How about,” he said, instead of addressing the part of our conversation where he said he was talking about me, “you pull over so we can talk.”
His request seemed so reasonable, and his hand warm on my shoulder knocked me so far off-balance, that I pulled over without any further consideration, at least not until I finally made it to the curb, where it occurred to me to be insulted by his insistence. “Is this because I make you nervous driving with my one eye? We’ve already discussed this. I’m perfectly legal. And in spite of what just happened, I’m still safe. You just surprised me. I’ve never been in an accident, which is more than we can say for you.”
“That accident wasn’t my fault,” Ben insisted. “That was the work of an old woman who let her purse-puppy have free roaming rights of the front seat of her car while driving.”
“Sounds like an excuse to me,” I said.
With the car stopped and in park, I was finally able to turn my whole head and see him fully. He looked different than he had when we’d left his house. He seemed lighter, more good-humored.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Your emotions are kind of killing me. Are you happy, furious—what? You’re all over the place today. I want to talk to you about important things, but not while you’re furious. And because I’m clearly a little clueless—but so are you, so don’t judge—I need you to spell it out for me.”
“I think I’m not furious,” he whispered.
“That’s good, I guess.”
His hand still hadn’t left my shoulder. He rolled the end of my side braid gently between his fingers. My breath quickened. Was this what I thought it was? The day had been so full of stress and emotions, I didn’t trust myself to accurately interpret anything.
His eyes were hyperfocused on where his fingers met the end of my braid that rested on my shoulder—the same shoulder where his hand had seemed to become a permanent fixture. He tilted his head slightly as those fingers grazed over my collarbone, drawing fire across my skin.
He finally looked up, as if checking to make sure I was fine with this kind of contact.
I gave a small nod to tell him that it was, and, just like when Sliver of Midnight filled the screen in the miniature theater of Portal Pictures’ property, I forgot to breathe.
“I am also not happy,” he said. “I’m nervous and hopeful because I find myself in a unique position to be entirely honest, and that’s actually a little terrifying.”
“Honest?” It was hard to speak when you weren’t breathing properly. “About?”
“I . . .” He widened his eyes and gave a low laugh. “Okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I can’t do this.”
It was instinct, probably powered by fear of him backing up instead of moving forward, but I reached out and took his other hand, wanting to encourage whatever was about to come next. “Aren’t you the guy who says anyone can do anything?” I said.
He glanced around at where we’d parked on the side of the road and furrowed his brow over those ice-blue eyes. “Fine, throw my own trite, positive affirmations at me. This isn’t exactly the right place either, but here goes. Stop me when it gets awkward.”
He waited for a pause and then said, “No? Not awkward enough yet? Okay, then, I kinda thought we were already all the way to awkward, but my mistake. Here goes. I hated it when you left the company to go to Portal Pictures.”
“But you—”
“I know. I know I helped you get the job, but have you ever wondered why?”
“You were helping with my career,” I said.
“That’s the cover story—the one that makes me look like a nice guy. The real story is that I was so sick and tired of working shoulder to shoulder with you every single day and never being able to—”
His fingers brushed against my collarbone again, sweeping up to my jawline until they stretched out to the nape of my neck. “To reach you,” he whispered. “All that time working together and knowing I’d get one or both of us fired if I ever reached out. You telling me I didn’t love Alison is why I feel hopeful, not furious. If you were so adamant about my feelings there, maybe you were wanting me to place those feelings somewhere else, with someone else.”
His fingers gliding along the back of my neck reduced me to a shiver. “This conversation would have been easier if you hadn’t answered the door this morning acting like I was there to tell you I ran over your dog,” I said, my voice thick and soft and not sounding like me at all.
“I was angry because you acted so excited to leave me all those months ago, and because you didn’t look back. You never contacted me, never called, never texted, never liked my Instagram posts. And there were some really funny posts you missed out on. And last night, you were with me, in sync, and totally present, and then you were running away.”
“That’s not fair,” I whispered. “It’s not like you wrote all the time. You are as lousy at communication as I am. And last night, I thought you were on a date. I don’t trespass in relationships. It’s a good moral code.”
“Which makes sense, given the circumstances. I’m sorry I failed to communicate that properly.”
“Failed to communicate? You never once corrected me when I called her your date.”
He didn’t deny it but nodded in agreement. “Yeah, fine, I’m bad at communication. I get it. Anyway, Walt already chewed me out over that.”
“Walt?”
“Your grandma’s boyfriend. He told me if I didn’t get out of the security of my training wheels, I was going to watch the girl ride her own bike away . . . or something like that. It was a bike analogy. It made sense last night. Anyway, the point was that he noticed I was keeping myself from taking a chance with you by being honest with how I felt. He said he understood wanting to protect myself—he used another analogy that I don’t think I should ever repeat—and told me to expose myself.”
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. “Glad you didn’t expose yourself last night. That would have been awkward.”
“Right. Ha ha. You laugh, but Walt’s a wise guy—as in smart, not sarcastic. So I was gearing up to be honest, and then you left, and then I was hurt, rejected, frustrated, furious. And that’s the guy who opened the door this morning. Sorry about that.”
“Apology accepted. I’m sorry, too, Ben. You’re right. My priorities were messed up. I should’ve called and written, stayed in contact. There were just so many important things that had to be done all at once, and it was overwhelming.” How did my voice keep working with all this energy building between us?
“I had just hoped that even with all your terribly important, overwhelming stuff that I was important to you as well.” His eyes filled with a vulnerability and desperate need I’d never seen in him before.
“You are. That’s why I’m here.”
“Finally.” He smiled, a mesmerized look of awestruck wonder. It felt like a mirror of my emotions. We were in my car on the side of the road, and it didn’t matter that it wasn’t in a place where the set dressers had carefully prepared flower petals and candles, or where the sound director had prepared romantic music to herald the moment, because we were both here and feeling the same thing, breathing in the same hope.
The tension between us crackled with energy. We were so much closer than we’d ever been, and yet the space between us felt like universes.
He’d said that in those three years of working together, he hadn’t been able to reach out to me and hated it. Now there were no lines that couldn’t be crossed, so I reached out to him. My fingers folded into his shirt as I pulled him forward.
&nbs
p; He tilted his head and leaned in.
His breath washed over my lips, a teaser for what was to come.
I closed my eyes, suddenly totally alive, completely aware, drinking in this moment that belonged to us and us alone.
The rap at the window made us both jump. His chin bumped my cheek, hard. I grabbed at my face and whirled to see who dared interrupt what probably would have been the most epic kiss ever.
A parking enforcement officer in his black jacket zipped up to his neck over his uniform stood just outside my window. “You can’t park here!” he called loud enough to be heard through the glass.
I narrowed my eyes and briefly considered running him over.
It had been a long time since I’d been on a date, and a lot longer still since any of those dates produced any kind of physical attraction enough to warrant kissing.
I rolled down my window and made sure the officer felt the full measure of my glare. “We weren’t parking. We were just—”
“Yeah, I saw,” the man said. His name tag identified him as Officer Stern, which probably dictated the direction his life had taken that brought him to this exact moment where he ruined my moment. “This is a bus zone. You’re not in a bus.” His flat-eyed stare told me he was not a man to give emotional compassion or support.
At least he didn’t have his ticket pad out.
“Thanks, officer,” Ben called from the passenger seat. “We really appreciate you pointing that out.” He sounded friendly and not bothered by the rude interruption.
I put the car in drive and said to the officer, “We were just leaving.”
“Well, you weren’t, but you are now,” Officer Stern said. Yep. His name had to be why he’d chosen to walk down this path of humorless, emotionless harassment of random innocent citizens.
As I pulled out, a bus pulled in.
So maybe Officer Stern wasn’t entirely wrong to make us move. The bus pulled in at a speed that would have made it hard to brake if my car had still been in the way.
