"You have ... what??" I whisper-yelled – because we were still in a public space –, eyes as wide as my cats' when they're in a mischievous mood.
Ben pursed his lips, yet without leaving my hand. I should have probably snatched it away, but part of me, as astounded by the depth of his lies and appalled by the enormity of his revelation as I was, I still was dying to know every single detail of the story.
And Ben seemed to perceived that – or probably read it all over my face, since I can never hide him anything, unlike him –, because he took a deep breath and, squeezing my hand, he started talking.
"As you know, Valerie and I kind of ... lost contact after high school."
I nodded, even though I wanted to remind him her version of the story: he ghosted her, plain and simple. Whichever the reason, whatever the bigger, greater distraction he found, he pretty much dropped his best friend right after they graduated from high school.
Obviously, she is a little dramatic, but in the end it is true. And these past weeks I thought I wasn't even surprised. Someone that is able to lie so blatantly to your face every single day for months obviously has no qualm in dropping you like a hot potato whenever it suits him. Cue my attempt at freeing my hand, given the line of thought my mind had taken.
However, Ben once more read me like an open book, and, squeezing my hand more – enough for it to become a tad bit red –, he scoffed: "Just listen, okay? No prejudices, no back-thinking, no jumping to conclusions, no deeming me an unredeemable bad guy just because of what happened between us." His tone was stern – the nerve!
"You can't come demanding after-"
"JoJo, please." Ben squeezed my hand and because I moved it a bit, hurt – in more ways than one –, he took the chance to entangle our fingers. His blue eyes were pleading with me, and as much cold as I always considered myself to be, I still had a hard time not melting. "I don't have a right to demand anything after what I did, I know, but ... can you please just listen? Once I've told you everything, you can decide whether you still want me in your life or not, but for now, just ... listen, okay?"
There wasn't much I could reply to that. I could have slid my hand out of his, without a word, which would have been the same as saying no, I do not want to listen, there's nothing you can say that may actually work. But maybe there is, that's the problem.
I thought and thought and thought, what could possibly drive someone to make up an entire life or at any rate hide key points of it? The only reason I could come up with – based on the evidence I had, namely the phone calls and his secrecy –, was that he was married. Because if someone claims to be gay, when it's not true, then having a whole family at home is the only possible explanation, no? "You have a daughter and a wife?"
"Joanna ..." Ben sighed, shaking his head. "Just halt that derailing train of thought of yours, for once, okay?"
"I thought you liked it, the fact that I am so ... creative."
"Of course, I do. But not right now. Right now, that overly creative mind of yours is what stands between us."
That's not the only thing, Ben, come on. "That's not true." I finally pulled back my hand. "What separated us are your own lies."
"That's what I'm trying to-"
"But what really stands between us, Ben, in your way, it's the fact that I do have a boyfriend." I stood. "Someone that loves me for who I am, not for the me he built."
"You're jumping to conclusions again." Ben scoffed, standing up as well.
I shook my head, rummaging through my wallet to get the money to pay for all my teas. "You have a daughter and a wife, what's there to add? There's not much room for assumptions when you present me with such a fact." I threw some money onto the table, hoping it would cover my bill, and stormed out.
"You're running away again." Ben froze me – literally, because I was just about to step foot out the door. "Like always. Every single time you get any close to really feeling something, you run away." His voice was too loud for my tastes, because I could already feel the glances of the other customers and some staff on me.
I wasn't gonna wait for him to humiliate me in front of everyone, though, no. I just walked out, ignoring my red cheeks as much as I could, and hating Ben even more for submitting me to such a mortification. It's clear he doesn't know me, if he thinks the theatrics work with me. They have the exact opposite effect, actually.
Being the center of attention is the one thing I loathe the most, and he should know. He should know how I am, and he should know that the worst possible thing you can do to a shy/introvert person is to put them on the spot like he just did.
Sighing, I grabbed the earphones in my back pocket, hoping music would absorb my feelings and thoughts. I guess maybe it's indeed time to delete his number.
"Joanna." This time it was whisper-yelled at the same time as something gripped my arm.
I closed my eyes, forcing my heart to stop its silly somersaulting. "Don't." I merely murmured. Don't embarrass me, don't make me the center of attention, don't prove me one more time that I was right and you never cared, you've never really known me, you just guessed based on your typical, generic shy fat girl.
"I'm sorry, ok? I didn't mean to embarrass you earlier." Ben admitted. If only he knew how little his apologies matter at this point, and how hard it is to believe a single word that comes out of his mouth. "Can we go somewhere private?"
"Why?" I tried to free my arm, but his response was pulling me back towards him. "Just let me go."
"You'll run if I do."
"I wouldn't run in the middle of a busy street."
"You know what I mean."
"Do I?" I scoffed, turning to him only because talking while he stared at my back was awkward. "I don't know anything anymore."
"Just listen to me, please ..."
"I did."
"No. You ran away. As you always do." Ben claimed, and without giving me time to argue, he went on: "Did you ever even stop to think about what I said last time?"
"I have thought about your lies even for too long." I rolled my eyes, hating myself not only for still listening to him, but for having wasted so much time on him and his deceitful self.
Ben sighed. "Not that." He glanced around for a few seconds, which I almost considered using to walk away. The road was as trafficked as you can imagine – it's New York, after all –, and the noise would be deafening to anyone that isn't used to this city. "Let's go."
Before I could ask where, Ben dragged me towards an alley behind me. I would have thought it dangerous – a New York alley is where Batman's parents were murdered after all –, but the fairy lights above our heads and on the door we reached told me this was actually a kind of fancy place. It was a restaurant, in fact, as the sign above the glass door read. Luckily, it was closed.
"Why are we here?"
"Far from the madding crowd." Ben quoted jokingly, but I wasn't in the mood to laugh. Nor was I feeling, well, whatever those fairy lights and the whole ambiance were supposed to make me feel. Hence, he turned serious. He finally let go of my arm, but remained standing in the middle of the alley, blocking my only way out. "Here we can talk." He said. "A friend works here," he hinted at the restaurant behind me, "we could even have dinner when they open."
"Dinner?" I scoffed. "You plan on keeping me prisoner all day?"
"If that's what it takes to finally make you listen, sure." He shrugged – again, the nerve!
"Don't treat me like a child." I rolled my eyes, crossing my arms over my chest. Then I quickly undid that when I noticed Ben's line of sight. Did he ever look at me like that? Did his eyes ever go any more south than my collarbones?
"Can we just talk? Instead of running around the city, or rather, me having to run after you? Do I need to handcuff you to my wrist to actually force you to listen?" Ben groaned, rolling his eyes.
"What do I need to listen to? More lies? You already said your truth, what else?" I scoffed, going to lean against the wall on the left.
"I haven't even started."
"You said you have a daughter. That usually implies the presence of a wife or girlfriend – you know, the person that actually gave birth to said daughter."
"She's dead!" Ben shouted at the top of his lungs, so much that some pigeons nearby flew away.
I don't know whether it was the shock of the revelation or the fact that he never really lost his patience with me, but my back pressed against the wall so hard it actually hurt. "She ... she what?" I asked in a murmur – an ashamed murmur, to be exact.
Ben took a deep breath, and walked up to me, mirroring my position against the wall. His gaze on the sky we could hardly see, as high as the buildings around us where – but still, the small stripe of blue sky that emerged brought some feeble sun rays.
"Eleanor, her name was Eleanor." He started, and I felt my knees already quiver. The pain latched in his voice felt ancient yet ever so fresh, as if it renewed itself every single day. "Ellie, for everyone," he cracked a small smile, "which is why she wanted to name our daughter Elle. She thought it would be cute – Elle and Ellie, Ellie and Elle."
"How ... how old is she?"
"Elle is 9." He turned to me for a second. "I didn't mean to keep her a secret, I just wasn't sure how to tell you about her."
Telling me you're gay isn't a great idea to make up for that, I wanted to say, but I kept it. Instead I just nodded. Feeling like my knees wouldn't be able to sustain the weight of his story, I slid along the wall, and sat down. I didn't care if it was lurid, after this I'm going to need a long, long shower anyway. "I'm ready." I murmured after a few seconds.
Ben sat beside me. When he grabbed my hand, entangling our fingers once more, I thought about pulling back, but it wasn't the right time. "Like I said, Valerie and I pulled apart after high school. Partly because I stayed at home, she went to college, so it was easy to lose contact, partly because ... well, that summer, the summer after graduation, I met Ellie."
Love at first sight, I bet. "It wasn't instant." He contradicted my thoughts. "Like ..." Ben turned to me, pressing his lips as if he wanted to say something but wasn't sure whether he should or not. He opted for no. "She moved with her family from Omaha. A downsizing plan her dad was adamant on – something Ellie hated."
"She wanted to be an actress." I murmured without thinking, connecting the dots, for once.
Ben's gaze shot to me, but he wasn't surprised. He nodded. "Leaving the city to go to a small town is the exact opposite of what you need to get to Hollywood." I can imagine. "We butted heads for a while. The first time we met, all I saw was an insufferable client that fussed about her salad – I worked as waiter back then, photography didn't give me enough to provide for my family." He paused. "I don't deny I got caught up. I don't know what it was about Ellie. Maybe we just found each other at the right time – two lost souls that needed a direction."
I don't know why but those words made me feel some sort of pang to my heart – but not at the tragedy of his story as much as at the emotion still latched in his voice as he talked about her. To have loved like that, I wonder if I know what it means and if I ever will.
"We weren't careful," Ben went on, shrugging, "nine months later, Elle arrived." He pursed his lips. "Eleanor, she ... well, none of us was ready, but she, I told you, she had dreams. I won't pretend, having a child so young, it has a tendency of cutting off your wings pretty ruthlessly. Especially when your ambitions revolve around such a plastic world as the star system, where everything and everyone is fake and obsessed with appearance." It was impossible not to spot the hatred in his tone.
"We had long discussions about it. Many people over the years blamed Ellie for choosing her career over her own daughter – but they didn't know." Ben sighed. "They didn't know the weight of that choice, how it nearly crushed Eleanor, keeping her chained. They didn't – they don't – know that she made a brave choice. It's easy to give up on your dreams, you know, follow the concrete road ahead of you.
It's the reason why people end up bargaining, making do, stopping halfway or worse, when they've almost reached their destination. It takes more than courage to follow your dreams," he glanced at me, "it's not just about your own fears, it's about everyone in your life, society, everything.
It's like climbing Mount Everest, really." He chuckled for a moment. "You're not sure you'll make it to the top, but you can't go back and you can't stop. If you stop, you die. If you go back, either you die or you live with regrets."
Somehow, I felt like he was referring to me as well. The way I just stopped pursuing my dreams, crushed by the weight of the "real" world, the expectations, the responsibilities. It's not easy to think ahead, build imaginary castles in the air, when you're busy worrying about concrete things like food, bills, and rent.
"Everyone always blamed Ellie, claiming she was a degenerate mother for leaving her daughter – 3 years old at the time – to go chasing a dream that would never come true." Ben sighed noisily. "You understand just how deeply sexist our society is when you think about how many times I heard people tell me: children need a mother; single mom is natural, but single dad ... cue the disgusted or worried face; or, why did Eleanor leave? Didn't you provide for her and Ellie? Like a real man?"
Ugh. I felt like puking. A real man. What does that even mean anymore? "Idiots."
Ben smiled slightly, his thumb starting to trace the back of my hand, which, now I realized, he was staring at, closer and closer to leaving his head on my shoulder. "If I had left them, people wouldn't have been so judgmental, you know."
"Because boys will be boys." I recited, scoffing, rolling my eyes.
"The thing is, nobody ever understood that Ellie, she ..." There you go, he did lean his head on my shoulder as his voice broke a little. "She didn't want to leave. I know it's easy to judge, like, oh she leaves her daughter to go be an actress, such a terrible mother. But it wasn't like that. The plan was the very same as I had when I came to New York, you know?" Ben explained. "Ellie was unhappy, post-partum depression hit her hard, but she was only 20 ... you cannot ask a 20-year-old – a free spirit, a dreamer like her even – to give up on everything and just keep paddling through. Yes, she loved our daughter, of course, she did, but ... for some people children aren't everything."
That's understandable. Not everyone is made to have a family, and not everyone can handle witnessing their dreams – especially if they were close – fall through. We're not all made of steel, you know. Actually, no one is, we just have different levels of endurance.
"We agreed that she would pursue her dreams, and when it was time, Elle and I would have reached her." Ben sighed heavily once more. "I didn't think that world would swallow her whole. I didn't think she would get in so deep that she couldn't reemerge anymore. She was asked for more, always more. Lose more weight, smile more, train more, be more. And she couldn't handle it."
"Hence the pills."
Ben nodded against my shoulders. "Hence the pills."
"I'm sorry." I squeezed his hand, not knowing what else to say. What do you say in such situations?
"My family helped me with Elle." He went on. "I worked long hours – I had 2 jobs, one as a waiter, one as bartender, and photographer on the weekends. Luckily, I could bring Elle with me on the photography gigs, so we could make up for the lost time. My mom took care of her after school, sometimes my brothers babysat."
"That's nice."
"But you know, one thing Eleanor and I had in common, is that we both had big dreams."
I nodded, remembering what Valerie told me about Ben feeling like a lion in a cage in their hometown. He always wanted to travel. "Hence New York."
He shrugged. "It's not the best place to raise a kid, to be honest. But ... you know, the city of possibilities."
"If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere." We quoted in unison, only to then smile.
Ben raised his head, to look straight into my eyes. "I didn't mean to lie. But ... you were so shy and scared, I thought maybe, if you believed I wasn't uh ... if you believed I wouldn't ... that I couldn't be interested in you in that sense, maybe you'd relax."
I let out a small snort-laugh, only to then cover my mouth. Ben rolled his eyes, I bet knowing where my line of thought was going. "I would have never, not even in a billion years, thought you were trying to get with me. Even if you downright told me, have sex with me, I would have never even considered you actually meant it."
"Yeah, I know that now ..." he sighed, "and you know how wrong you were ..."
I frowned, tilting my head to the side. "I wasn't-"
"I kissed you, JoJo." He chuckled, cheering up a bit.
"Yes, but that was just uh ... I don't know, the heat of the moment?"
He rolled his eyes once more, but this time half smiling. "You're on a level of denial humanity hasn't discovered yet, I swear."
"It's not denial, I just don't think you know what-"
"For God's sakes, did you even hear me when I said I love you?"
Oh. Oh! I ... no. I totally uh, removed that part. Um. I mean, I did hear it, yes. But ... he didn't mean ... uh ... "But that was ..." my cheeks reddened, so I had to lower my glance. "Like ... you meant ..."
"If you tell me you thought I meant it platonically, I'm gonna start tickling you."
I sent him a dirty look. "You wouldn't."
"Try me." He laughed. Well, at least he cheered up.
I tried to free my hand from his, but obviously in vain. Of all the things I heard two weeks ago, I didn't exactly focus on his uh confession. I mean, yes, I did hear it, but I dismissed it as nothing, like, I mean, it's something you tell your friends anyway – the English language doesn't really give you many choices in that sense, does it? "Ben, you can't ..." I murmured, voicing my thoughts. "I mean ... you," shouldn't you be still loving your long-lost Eleanor? Isn't that how romance works? When you lose your sweet other half, you find yourself unable to move on and love somebody else, no?
Ben's laugh died down slowly as he stared at me intently. "If your objection to us," he pointed at me and him, just to be clear, "is that I couldn't possibly fall for you, then," he flicked my forehead, "you're crazier than I thought when we first met."
"Oh, so you did think me crazy."
He rolled his eyes, albeit smiling a bit. "Once again, Miss Joanna Brooks, I literally declare to you, and you don't see it!"
I opened my mouth to say something, to argue that he wasn't declaring anything, that he's out his mind if he thinks he loves-LOVES me. But I didn't. I closed my mouth, and took a deep breath, leaving my head against the wall. I closed my eyes, trying to make sense of all this. How many are the chances that after a life spent mostly alone and invisible, feeling inadequate and worthless, in a matter of months, I would have not one, but two guys declare they love me?
That's fiction material, not real life. The girl that never believed in herself, finally starts doing so, and attracts attention. She gets friends, a new job, a boyfriend and her new best friend confesses to be in love with her. I'm pretty sure I've seen something like this in those crappy soap operas nobody watches.
So many things have happened altogether, I can't believe it's real. Any of it.
"You don't believe me, do you?" Ben murmured. "I guess I deserve it after all the lies."
"It's not that." Well, not just that.
"Then what?"
"I ..." I sighed, and shook my head. "This isn't real." I stood up, dusted off my pants.
"What do you mean it's not real?" Ben questioned, standing up as well. "How can it not be?"
I kept shaking my head. "No, this isn't ... no."
"JoJo ..."
"I ..." my breaths hitched, I was finding troubles even only thinking straight, imagine actually speaking and explaining the turmoil that was my head.
Ben took my hand in his once again, and brought it to his lips. "This is as real as ever."
"Ben ..."
"No, you have Jeremy, I get it. That is a good enough reason." He said. "But don't tell me it's not real, because it is, always has been."
Again I went with the shaking of my head. "What do you mean always ... you're not making any sense!"
"Why not? Why does it make sense for Jeremy but not for me?"
"It doesn't for him either!" I nearly yelled, pulling back from him. I felt tears welling up in my eyes, and I hated it. "Don't you see? This cannot be real! This is probably just me writing yet another stupid love story." I said, while he looked at me bewildered. "I can already see the blurb:
Joanna Brooks had her life all planned. She'd have graduated in time, got a great job, had a successful career. In the middle there would have been a relationship or two maybe, but by the age of 25, she'd have been happily in a stable relationship, working for a well-known newspaper as journalist.
She'd have never guessed, when she was 12, that none of these plans would work out.
28 years old, stuck with a crappy job and no love life whatsoever. Future seemed as bleak as ever. With two new kittens, Joanna was readying herself to start her life as crazy cat lady...but her new neighbor, handsome and lovely photographer Ben Harris, doesn't seem to think it that way, as he gets ready to revolutionize her whole existence.
Trouble is, his own life is not as crystal clear as he pretends it is.
Don't you see, Ben?" I gave in to a few tears. "All of this, it sounds exactly like a fictional book. Even where we are right now!" I gestured for him to pay attention to our surroundings: the fairy lights, the cute and romantic restaurant somewhat hidden away at the end of a Brooklyn alley. The only thing missing is the right music. This is exactly how I would end one of the sappy romances I wrote in secret, without ever telling anyone.