Pete bites his lip, looking as though he wants to believe this but can’t quite work out how. “You’re sure? You’re not upset? You don’t think I’m a monster?”
“I’m so, so sure,” Ben says, smiling up at him, and then Pete’s leaning down, and kissing him like he’ll die if he breaks away for more than a second, like Ben is oxygen and Pete’s spentdecades gasping for breath. Since they’re conveniently already mostly naked and sprawled, legs lazily entwined, across the bed, this proves to be abitof a distraction, and they lose rather a lot of time—no. “Lose” is not a word Ben would apply in this circumstance. They make a glorious and far better use of the time than they otherwise would have, and between a delightful interlude that Benreallyhopes Mrs. C can’t hear from upstairs and several hours of sleep, they don’t pick up the thread again until the following morning over coffee at Ben’s favorite local shop.
“Okay, you can tell me to back off if you don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Ben says, sipping the pistachio latte Pete obligingly bought for him. “But, last night—I’m so glad you told me about what happened with Neil, and I’m really sorry if I missed this in all the, um, everything, but—how? Exactly? Does that relate to…Miranda getting you your Formica job?”
“Oh, God, right,” Pete says, and shakes his head with a self-deprecating little laugh. “Naturally, I told you every detail except the most relevant one—Neil? Is Neil Culter. He’s Miranda’s little brother.”
“Ahhhhhh,” Ben says, with a wince, because: Yep. That would do it.
“We were friends, at one point,” Pete says, morose. “She used to be fun, you know—she was the partier of the two of them, when we met, and he was the serious, focused one. That’s how she found out about the meme thing from when I was a kid: I told her at a bar one night. We were getting hammered while Neil studied for his CPA exam.” He rolls his eyes, and adds, “I think that was the same night she told me her job title should be Bullshit Artist, actually, because everything she did all day was bullshit. I’m not sure she’d even recognize herself now.”
“What changed?” Ben asks, even though he imagines he knows the answer.
“Oh, Neil did, mostly,” Pete says, with a shrug. “I think, now, that he must have told her I was the one giving him drugs, that started him down that path—I know for sure she blames me.” He takes a long pull from his coffee, and admits, “She told me she did, a couple years ago. I hadn’t seen her since Neil and I split—that job she helped me get was at Clean Eats, a smaller health food magazine, but that wasn’t ever really her area, she’d just pulled a few strings. It’s a big company, and we swam in totally different waters, right? So by the time Formica bought Gastronome—and I applied for, and got, the test kitchen manager job—I wasn’t really thinking about her as a factor anymore.”
“But then she turned up,” Ben prompts, when Pete goes briefly and painfully silent. “Right? I mean, I know she did; everyone in the kitchen hates her.”
“Oh, she was dating Rick,” Pete says, with a sigh. “As it turned out. The worst thing is, none of it really even had to happen; I think they were pretty happy together. But she came by to see him for lunch one day about six months after I started there, and realized he’d hired me, and…” Pete winces. “I guess she…tried pretty hard to get him to fire me? And he wouldn’t, and she told him about Neil, and he, I guess, said that he was sorry, but he didn’t think it sounded like it was my fault, and it all. Uh. Went…wrong, from there. Rick didn’t exactly give me all the details, but he wanted to—warn me, afterwards. That she was gunning for me, I mean. He’s good about that kind of thing, usually. And it’s good he did, because about a week later a meeting with her turned up on my work calendar, and she took me out to lunch, and she…”
Pete has to pause here, and take another sip of his coffee, and stare out the window. Ben waits for a minute and then puts a hand over Pete’s, gives it an encouraging squeeze.
It must help, because: “She told me I’d ruined her brother’s life,” Pete says quietly, obviously half believing it himself. “She told me that he’d been fine and normal and wonderful until he met me, and I had destroyed him, and she’d never forgive me. She said if Neil wasn’t going to get to be happy, I didn’t deserve to be either. And ever since…” He waves a hand, miserable. “She went after the other staff, first, and Rick could only do so much, especially if she found anything even remotely actionable. She has something on him, too, I think, but he won’t tell me what.”
“Maybe she has a sex tape of him,” Ben suggests, just to pull Pete up out of his dark headspace a little. “Maybe all his dirty talk is about lures and, like…bite rate, and the walls of his boudoir are lined with professionally mounted fish carcasses, and he can’t bear the shame of the world knowing his truth.”
In reward for this absurdity, Pete cracks a smile. “He’d probably be proud of that, horribly. I’ve always assumed it’s something to do with the Formica-Gastronomedeal, because I know she was involved in that, but I’ve never gotten it out of him. It doesn’t matter, anyway; his hands were tied, and Miranda made it clear if I pushed back at all, or said anything to anyone about what she was doing, she’d put that meme back out there for the world to see. So I justwatchedas she tortured my friends at work, and made our jobs tense and stressful, and I swear she arranged for extra health inspectors to come by the restaurant and harass my father, although I can’t prove that. And anyone it even seemed like I was dating—God.” Shaking his head, Pete mutters, “I just had to stop dating, eventually. I didn’t really go anywhere but home and work, so everyone I met worked at Formica, and within a few weeks of seeing me they’d get demoted, or fired. She gotJosiefired, for God’s sake, and I only kissed her on the cheek! Because she brought me a baklava tray and a book about multiple sclerosis when she heard about my dad! I don’t even likewomen!”
“I know you don’t,” Ben says, with the sympathetic tones of someone who has completely forgotten he ever wondered about this for even an instant. It just seems so obvious, now. “Also: I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that kind of vindictive retribution in the workplace is wildly illegal, just for the record. If it isn’t, it should be. That’s awful; I’m sorry.”
“Well, it was…I mean…awful, honestly, yeah,” Pete admits. The words are pouring out of him now, so fast Ben gets the sense he couldn’t stop them if he wanted to. “And then she said I had to do the videos, and I didn’t want to do that, but it seemed less bad than having thememego everywhere, except then the video went viral,too! And thenyouturned up, and you were—you, and you looked like that, and treated me like—and I tried so hard to keep things professional, Ben, okay, I really did! But I couldn’t hack it, and then theminuteI let myself believe that maybe it was going to be all right, that she hadn’t gone for you yet even though I obviously liked you, and so maybe it was reallyoverand I was going to get tohavethis, Rick takes me out and tells me she’s going tofireyou, and I—Christ, Ben. I knew, Rick and I both knew, that if we warned you, she’d tell you what happened with Neil. That’s why Rick took me to drinks: He wanted me to have the choice. He said that based on the conversation he’d had with her, she was determined to do something to hurt me, and he thought the least he could do was let me choose. The lesser of two evils, he said. And the meme, really, that was whatever, in comparison to the other option.”
“Why didn’t you want her to tell me about Neil?” Ben feels like an idiot the moment the question escapes his lips, and before Pete can reply, he’s blurting, “God, Pete—did you think I’d believe her? That I’d think you were responsible for what happened to him?”
Pete shrugs, his shoulders an unhappy hunch, and looks away. “I mean. Aren’t I?”
“No,” Ben says, as emphatically as he can. “You’re not.” Pete doesn’t look up, or look like he believes Ben, and Ben thinks regretfully that it will probably be some time before Petecanbelieve him. He also thinks, more ruefully than regretfully, that this whole story is fairly illuminating vis-à-vis his own initial encounter with Chris.
Setting emotion to the side, he decides to try a different tack. “Pete?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry that happened,” Ben says quietly. “Thank you for telling me. It makes—well, a lot of things—make a lot more sense. I wish you’d explained it sooner, but I really, really understand why you didn’t. It’s okay.” He takes a breath, watching the relief of this settle over Pete’s shoulders. Then he says, “Will you tell me, next time something intense comes up?” and takes a relieved breath of his own when Pete nods.
They smile at each other for a moment in the warm glow of the coffee shop’s eclectic collection of lamps, not needing to say anything at all. Distant, cheerful acoustic guitar is twangling over some unseen speaker, and Pete’s fingers are warm over Ben’s, and suddenly, Ben is grateful. He’s grateful for Miranda, and Rick, and Jessica the germophobe, and his coworkers on twenty-seven; he’s grateful for his years alone, every late night wondering if he’d live out his life like one of those solitary bees, toiling away by his lonesome until the day he dropped. He’s grateful for his family, for his failed relationships and career turns, for every grating, grinding moment of aching indecision that felt, at the time, all but lethal.
It was worth it, whatever happens from this moment. Whichever way life decides to go, whatever winding road it chooses to chase them down: It wasworth it, all the anxiety and anguish and agita. For another day like this with Pete—asingle daymore—Ben would do it all again tomorrow.
Still, there are the details to consider: “I do think that maybe we should discuss. Uh. What we do next?” Ben says cautiously, a little afraid to spoil the moment by bringing it up. “Do you have like…a plan? For the show? I know you said, ‘Your move,’ to a large corporation on live television, and to be clear, like, kudos. Ballsy as hell, insanely sexy,notcomplaining. Just: Once they do move, what’syourmove? Or I guess—” Ben swallows hard, tries not to sound shy, and fails: “I guess. Um. Our move? If you…if you meant what you said about—not doing it without me.”
“I did and I do,” Pete says cheerfully, “and I’m glad you brought that up. I don’t know if you caught this, but that conversation Brian and I had on the show wasn’tactuallythe first time I told him the story?—”
“Wow,” Ben says, very dry. “What a shock. Who would have imagined it? His acting was so subtle.”
Pete rolls his eyes, but he’s grinning. “Regardless, okay, he had some advice…”
Three days later, flanked by Pete on one side and an entertainment lawyer on the other, Ben returns to Formica Media headquarters. For the first time in all the years he spent working in this building, he is met by an unfamiliar, very nervous young professional, led to the elevators, and taken to a floor that is neither twenty-seven nor thirty-four. Instead, he, Pete, and their lawyer are whisked up to swanky, private-access-only forty-eight, where they are situated in a large conference room with floor-to-ceiling windows. Water, and coffee, and a selection of pastries have all been laid out on a side table, and they’re encouraged to eat while they wait before the person who brought them up waves and, looking quite anxious about it, leaves them alone.
The entertainment lawyer—a woman called Veronica, who is apparently a long-time friend of Brian O’Malley—shakes her head slightly when she sees Pete eyeing the food. “What did we discuss?”
