Marrying the Master (27 page)

It
was simple as that.

She
was crying again in no time, annoyed with herself but unable to stop, when her
phone buzzed across the nightstand. She snatched at it, grateful for the
interruption, but mostly—pathetically—hoping it would be Roman.

It
was Ben.

BEN:
How YOU doin’?

Lola
laughed in spite of herself, and answered just to have something else to think
about, just to give her fingers something else to do. Sitting in her bed crying
was not really working out for her.

LOLA:
Terrible.

BEN:
What happened?
Trouble in paradise?

LOLA:
Yes.

BEN:
Oh shit I’m sorry. Do you need a shoulder to cry on?

Lola
hesitated. The truth was that she
did
need
a shoulder to cry
on,
preferably a shoulder who would
understand exactly why this latest thing was a such a big deal to her, and that
narrowed the field down considerably. It was basically just Roman, which, for
obvious reasons, wasn’t going to work out; Stella, who was probably happily
asleep with Bashir; and Ben. Before she could respond, he texted again.

BEN:
I really mean it, just as a friend. Where are you? I’ll come to you.

It
was pure weakness that made her text back. But then, she’d been worn down for
weeks and then dumped. She wasn’t feeling particularly strong.

LOLA:
My apartment.

BEN:
Be there in 20.

~ * ~ * ~

Roman
couldn’t sleep. He appreciated the irony. Anyway, he certainly deserved it.

So
he’d gone for a walk. Manhattan would always be one of his favorite places,
especially at night, when the city started to get weird, when the layers of
artifice started to come off. Of course, that was when some people put them on.
New York was a strange place.

It
was a city he got to know with Samantha. Most of the city held memories of her,
and of him, learning how to be a good husband, learning how to love someone
properly, fully. Good memories.

He
found himself drawn to Central Park.
Specifically, to that
bench right at the bend in the path by Strawberry Fields.
It was where
he and Samantha had always ended up when they went on walks together. In the
summers there was always an ice cream guy nearby, and they’d sit there feasting
on Good Humor bars and ice cream sandwiches, just watching people relax, have
fun, be happy. It was where they’d had most of their own moments. She’d told
him that she loved him on that bench. He’d proposed to her on that bench.

In
retrospect, he could have made it more memorable, but he’d been young and dumb.
Though, according to Chance, he still was pretty dumb.

Roman
sat on the bench. He leaned back. Leaned forward.

It
didn’t feel right.

Possibly because it was one in the morning.
Possibly because
he hadn’t been there in a while.
But that bench had been ‘the place’
he’d had with Samantha. That bench used to be home, of a sort.

“Shit!”

Roman
looked around; there was no one nearby. It had been a woman’s voice, and she
had been in pain. A moment later, and that was confirmed. “Ow! Shit, shit,
shit, this is really bad.”

It
came from around the bend, just through the new foliage. Roman strode around the
path and found a young woman decked out in jogging clothes limping heavily.

“Let
me help you,” he said, and moved towards her.

He
didn’t expect the scream. It was one of those things that, again, in
retrospect, seemed rather obvious.

He
also didn’t expect the mace.

“Get
away from me!”

“Hey!”
Roman said, backing up quickly, well out of range of the mace. “I’m not going
to hurt you. But you cannot walk on that ankle—I can see that from here.”

“I
don’t know you,” the woman said. She was leaning on a tree now; she really
couldn’t put any weight on that ankle.

“Do
you know many people in the park at one in the morning?” he said. “Jogging
alone at this hour is ill-advised.”

“Screw
you. I couldn’t sleep. Seriously, don’t come near me, ok?”

“Ok.”

Roman
put his hands up in mock surrender. “I will stay at this distance, yes? But I
will not leave you here, alone, wounded, in the middle of the night. Do not
even try to argue that point; you will not win.”

“How
do I know you’re not, you know…?”

“Because
I’m staying over here.”

She
leaned more heavily on the tree, bringing her face into the pale light from a
far-off streetlight. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, brunette, probably
pretty when she wasn’t terrified and nursing a badly sprained ankle. He could
see the evidence of adrenaline in her eye movements, her breathing, the way her
hand was shaking.

She
looked at him angrily and said, “What are we supposed to do? Just sit here
until someone comes and finds us?”

Roman
pretended to think about it. Adrenaline often warped people’s thinking. He
tried not to smile. “We could do that, yes. Or we could use a cell phone.”

She
gave him a fierce look and said, “Stay where I can see you.”

Luckily
there was an EMT bus stationed nearby, and in about ten minutes two
weary-looking EMTs packed her up, her ankle now swollen up like a balloon. It
wasn’t until she was safely in the care of the EMTs, being taken in for X-
rays, that
her manner softened. She called to Roman as she
was being loaded into the back of the bus, her eyes wet and her expression
contrite.

“Thank
you,” she said.

“Of
course.”

“Um…”
She seemed to be searching for what to say. An EMT held the door open for her. She
called out, “Get home safe!”

The
door shut. The bus drove away. Crisis averted.

The
words stayed with him.
Get home safe.

Memories
of Samantha no longer felt like home. Places that held the remembered feel of
Samantha no longer felt like home.

Home
wasn’t a feeling he’d had the luxury of growing up, and so once he’d had it, he
learned to recognize it. Or thought he had. The last time he could remember
feeling at home was the previous night.

Lola
felt like home.

He
knew where he had to go.

Twenty
minutes turned out to be the exact right amount of time for Lola to begin to
regret taking Ben up on his offer to come over. It was the middle of the night,
and ex-boyfriends usually came over in the middle of the night for exactly one
reason, and that was
not
what she
wanted. Now she was super stressed on top of feeling sad and hurt and
humiliated.

She
was just wondering how late was too late to text Ben back and
tell
him nevermind when her doorbell rang. That alone
freaked her out; what the hell had happened to her doorman? But then she
remembered that Ollie would recognize Ben, would think he was ok. It wouldn’t
be the first time Ben had come over kind of late.

Why
did she have such a bad feeling about this?

“One
second!” she called out, casting around for her bulkiest sweatshirt. She was
already rocking the sweatpants—it had been that kind of a night.

She’d
say hi, she’d say thanks, and then she’d send him home. She really was kind of
exhausted. Nothing tired her out like crying.

“Hey,”
she said, opening the door. Ben stood there in his black leather jacket, gray
hoodie, faded jeans, shadow on his chin. He smiled softly at her, raising an
eyebrow rakishly, and lifted a plastic grocery bag full of various ice cream
pints.

“I
brought supplies.”

Lola
had to smile. She stayed back, not really sure what kind of greeting to go
with. A hug would seem…misleading. Dangerous.
Possibly bad
news.

But
Ben didn’t even try for one. In fact, he kind of kept his distance.

Probably
nothing else he could have done would have relaxed her more than that.

Lola
let him in,
thinking,
Maybe we really can be friends.

It
wasn’t until he bumped into the doorway on his way to the living room that the
bad feeling returned.

“Ben,
are you—”

“Tired?
Hell yes, it’s the middle of the night,” he said, giving her his most charming
smile. “But you needed me. What can I do for you?”

“Honestly,
Ben, nothing. This was probably a bad idea.”

“Oh,
come on. I meant it when I said I cared about you, Lola,” he said. His gestures
were too big, his words overly enunciated. The bad feeling in the pit of Lola’s
stomach got worse. Ben seemed to notice her hesitation. “Come on, just tell me
about it. What did Roman do?”

“It’s
not really that simple.”

“‘Course
it is. You gonna come sit next to me?”

Ben
had sat himself down right in the middle of her couch. She’d be squeezed in
next to him no matter where she sat down.

“No.”

“Come
on, Lola, tell me what’s wrong.”

Lola
knew she should be worried, but what she mostly felt was sad. Because while Ben
had been an asshole to her, and there was a really good chance that he would be
an asshole again in the future, what made it so difficult was that he was also
charming, and funny, and sensitive. He had made a sincere effort to be a better
man over the past few years, and Lola knew that the biggest part of that effort
was his commitment to Alcoholics Anonymous.

And
she was also pretty sure that right now he was drunk.

Ben
frowned,
then
pushed himself up off the couch.

“Come
on, Lola, you can talk to me. Seriously. It’s important to me that we stay
close, you know? I care about you.”

“You
already said that, Ben,” she said softly. She didn’t even know where to begin.

“That’s
‘cause I mean it twice as much. Come on, what did he do?”

Ben
took a step toward Lola and she backed away, keeping the distance between them
the same. She watched him process what her movement meant in real time. His
face fell.

“Lola,
come on.”

“I
want you to leave.”

“Lola,
what the
fuck
?” he said, exhaling
with frustration. Ben screwed his face up like he was about to cry, hung his
head, and took a deep breath. When he came back up, he looked more angry than
upset. “I mean, come
the fuck
on,
right? Roman? Fucking
Roman?
I could
have told you that was gonna happen.”

“Ben,
I said I want you to leave.”

He
ignored her and smiled bitterly. “He doesn’t want you anymore, right? It turned
out you were just like all the rest of them?”

Lola
flinched. That was the worst thing about Ben: all that charm, all that
charisma. He could use those traits to hurt just as easily as to help. It hurt
all the more because he was right: that was exactly what she’d been feeling.
She’d been trying to tell herself it wasn’t true all night, that she was just
really hurt, but hearing Ben say it, even though he was mad, and even though he
was drunk, made it seem…real.

She
didn’t have an answer for him. He took another step closer. Her already small
apartment was starting to seem even smaller.

“You
always had a thing for him,
always
,
way before I ever fucked up,” Ben said, working
himself
up into a righteous, drunken rage. “You had your inside jokes and your fucking
looks you would give each other. How long did you want him? Did you have
something going on while we were together? Did you? Were you fucking him and
just gave me a hard time for fucking up because I got caught?”

Lola
felt the wall at her back. Every time Ben asked one of those angry rhetorical
questions he stepped closer, as though that would somehow make him right. With
a strange detachment, Lola wondered how long he’d been storing all this stuff
up. Was it just bad luck that she had happened to get him here on the night he
relapsed? Or would it have happened anyway? She couldn’t believe how rational
she was being until she looked down and saw that she was gripping the bag full
of ice cream so hard that her fingers had started to poke through the plastic.

“Ben,
you’re kind of scaring me.”

“Oh,
that’s such bullshit, Lola,” he scoffed. “Total bullshit.”

“I
asked you to leave. I still want you to leave.”