“Come on.
”
He throws
his arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get you out of here.”
We’ve both forgotten Chris’s warning, and flashbulbs pop into my eyes, and I reach up to shield them, but it’s a mill
ion lights hitting all at once.
Ben
pulls me closer to him as we break through the crowd.
“Do you know Chris Jensen?”
a voice from behind one of the lights screams.
I turn back a little bit, surprised.
Do I know Chris Jensen? The question lingers. I thought I did. But I was apparently wrong.
It makes me want to go back in
and punch him myself. T
he muscles in my body tense.
“He’s not worth it,
”
Ben
hisses
, under his breath.
He raises
his hand to hail a cab
, and ushers me inside.
I follow,
wordless
.
***
“What do you want to do
next
?”
Ben
asks me
an hour later
.
We’re curled up on the couch in
a
hotel room and
his strong arms are around me. After getting in the cab, we headed to
Sophia
’s apartment. “
We need to just get it over with while she’s not there
,” he said. While
I waited in the
backseat
, he used my keys to
let himself in to
p
ack my things.
My suitcase is sitting in the corner
of the room
and
I’m just grateful that I don’t have to see Sophia
.
What had he asked? Something about what I was going to do next.
“I honestly don’t know,” I say.
I reach for my phone. I
t’s a reflex because it’s not there anymore.
The first thing
Ben
did after we got to the hotel was to turn my phone off. I had silenced it
back in the cab
,
but
there were 48 missed calls by the time we got
checked in and to the room
. Giving it a look of disgust,
Ben
chucked it into his bag.
“It’s better if we just
turn
it
off. Make sure the asshole can’t get a hold of you
,” he told me.
“It’s Christmas in two days,” he adds. “Home?”
The thought of dealing with my over-bearing
, all-knowing, and
perfectly beautiful mother makes me shudder.
She couldn’t
see me like this.
She would have a fit. I loved her, but the last thing I want or need to do right now is to be trapped in that house, that town.
I don’t say anything and Ben nods.
“
Maybe Christmas with Claire isn’t the best idea
,” he adds.
I shake my head and shudder a little bit.
“I think maybe I just need some ti
me to sort
things out, and my mother isn’t exactly known for providing a lot of space.” Ben nods in quick agreement. “
Maybe
I’ll
just
go
back to school. The dorms open up right after Christmas. So, I could just head back there and tell my mom I want to get a head start on the semester.”
Ben considers this and nods.
“Road trip?” he suggests.
In spite of all of it, of Chris and
Sophia
and the fact that the memory of it (
give it
its
real name—rape, I tell myself
) had just reentered my brain, I smile at his words. A roa
d trip sounded pretty good right now
.
“I get free rein in terms of musical choice?”
He groans slightly. “If that junk that you listen to can be called music, then I guess so, yes.”
***
Two days later, on
Christmas
, Ben and I are
halfway to Atlanta.
We rented a car in New York and I insisted on buying Ben a plane ticket from Atlanta to Ohio. Both of these things required my dipping into my savings account, and for a second, I wished that I had the foresight to grab some of the cash in the envelope that Cleo and William had left for Sophia and me. This was her fault, after all.
But my next thought was that I would rather die than owe her anything else.
Ben and I had
called our parents the day before
to break the news that neither of us would be making it
to Ohio for Christmas
. My mother
started crying immediately when I told her, and t
he sound of her voice broke my heart, but I just couldn’t do it. I
couldn’t go home to that house.
Christmas had never been my favorite time of year, not since my dad died, and with the memories
of
Chris and Sophia and everything else fluttering around in my head, I knew that I was headed for a serious breakdown if I had to spend even one minute trying to pretend to my mother that everything was all right. I managed to calm her down by promising a January trip.
“I love you, favorite daughter,” she said.
“Only daughter,” I corrected her. It was an old ritual.
“Love you too, Mom.”
I know Chris has
been calling me
.
Earlier that morning,
Ben
spent almost half an hour deleting all of
the messages
.
“You’re going to need to change your number,” he said, disgusted.
“It would have ended badly, anyways,” I say
to Ben.
It comes
out of nowhere. I’ve been trying to avoid the subject, to pre
tend like my every
thought wasn’t consumed by the image of him and her in that stupid bedroom. I can tell that
Ben
knows that it hasn’t been working, but he’s managed not to say anything about it, either.
He doesn’t say anything back.
“I mean, what was I thinking? He’s going to be James Ross, for chrissakes. I’m nobody.”
“Don’t say that.” It’s a command.
“I mean, really, though. It’s not like there was any kind of future there. It doesn’t even matter anyways. I think he and
Sophia
will be perfectly happy together. They can bask in each other’s perfect beautiful glow and I can go be plain old Hallie, the one that no one wants.” My voice is breaking up and I hate that I don’t believe a word that I just said and that I still can’t get
the image of the two of them together
out of my head.
“You know that’s not true,” he says. I’m still driving, but I risk a look at him, and I’m about to start crying again (it’s already happened twice) and I know I’m going to need to pull over.
“I mean, there wasn’t a future there, because he’s a fucking cheater and you
’re too good for him
. But it’s not true that no one wants you.”
I don’t say anything
back. I’m still fighting the tears.
“Hey,” he says
softly, reaching for my hand. “It’s Christmas. We need dinner.”
I can’t manage a response. I pull off when I see a sign for a 24-hour diner, and when we get out of the car, he pulls me into his arms for a long hug.
“He’ll make a terrible James Ross. Those movies totally suck.”
I know for a fact that
Ben
loves those movies, but I appreciate the effort that he makes on my behalf, and so
I force the sadness back inside
and grin at him.
“I read the script
and it’s really the worst thing ever written. You would have died.”
“Tell me,” he says as we slip into a booth.
I’m
running through all the lines I can remember, putting on the terrible accents and laughing at myself and
Ben
’s laughing,
too, and I can almost forget everything else
.
Almost.
“Was Susan mad that you came to New York?” I
ask
as we’re finishing up dinner
.
He hasn’t called her once
since he’s been with me. A
ll of my old thoughts about our friendship slipping away cross my mind. But it’s
Ben
who’s been holding my hand and mopping up my tears. And I haven
’t asked
him anything about his own life
, not once. Everything h
ad been abo
ut me, was about me and I’m angry with myself when I realize it.
He doesn’t say anything for a long minute. “We broke up.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
He doesn’t respond.
I know that he probably did try to tell me. I feel like
crap
. Here he i
s, nursing me though a not-even-
breakup, driving cross-country on Christmas, and I wasn’t even there for him when he needed me.
Another thought strikes me and I’m selfish again. If I had known about Susan, I wouldn’t have had a reason to go with
Sophia
to New York. Never would have met Chris fucking Jensen. Never would have had my heart ripped into a million pieces.
“I’m sorry,
Ben
.” I place
my hand over his.
“Don’t be,” he says. “It was time.
It got to the point where I couldn’t even remember why we were together anymore. We weren’t right, you know? It wasn’t right.
”
He shakes his head to accompany his words.
“Did you love her?”
He takes a deep breath and looks up at me. He’s hiding something, but I can’t tell what. My powers of perception have been seriously diminished by all of the crying that I’ve been doing lately
.
“I didn’t,” he says finally.
I’m pretty sure it’s the truth. He doesn’t look sad
or
desperate
or any of the things that people who’ve been broken are supposed to look like
.
For example, he doesn’t look like me right now.
“Well, good riddance, then.
I never liked her anyway.” It wasn’t precisely true, but it was an old refrain for us. He was never too broken up about any of the girlfriends, and that was enough of a response for him, usually.
I know that Susan had been different, so I offer something else.
“
I’m sorry that I wasn’t there.
”
“Don’t be
.
It was amicable. It just wasn’t working anymore and I couldn’t see how dragging us thro
ugh more months or years of not quite r
ight was going to help.”
I nod, and he smiles.
I finish my piece of pie and put some money down. He starts to say something and then stops himself.
“What?” I ask.
“Do
you love him?”
Not did. Do. Present tense.
The words are measured and slow and they take my breath away.
I don’t want to look at him, because he’ll know in one second what my answer is, so I concentrate on the crumbs of pie crust instead.
Words spill out of me. “I mean, I barely knew him, it was just a fling, and obviously, he felt nothing for me, he fucking slept with my best friend, that’s all. It was like this perfect storm of things and…” I would’ve kept rambling, but
Ben
silences
me.
“That really isn’t answering my question,
Hallie
.”
I don’t say anything. I just look up at him
and there’s no way that I can keep the emotion out of my face
, and he nods silently
.
When we get back in the car,
Ben
takes the keys and I sit and
stare
out the window for long hours. There aren’t any more words that can help me right now.
Chapter 28
CHRIS
I’m bleeding from the mouth, my brain says.
I grab a towel from Sam’s kitchen and try to wipe some of the blood away.
I’m really not sure what to do. Follow them? Go home? Figure out a way to apologize?
I dial her number again and again on my phone, but there’s no response. The guy
, and
I know his name but I don’t
want to say it or even think it,
probably threw it in the Hudson River already. I keep dialing anyways.
Sophia
comes barreling out of the kitchen and stops dead in her tracks when she sees me. The last thing I want to do is talk to her. What had she said?
“
They’re together now.
They have history.
”
I was no longer sure if her words were true, not after seeing Hallie’s face. I glare at her.