He’s still looking down at his hands, folded between his knees, when he speaks next. “Can I be honest here?”
“Please.” I match his soft voice.
“I think you think I’m a lot cooler than I actually am,” he says, reaching up to readjust his cap. “I’ve put up a pretty good front as long as you’ve known me, I guess, but finally being out here with you? I’m nervous as hell.”
I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, really, but “I’mnervous” was not on my admittedly rather rusty radar. So after another moment I do what any smooth, mature woman would do, and ignore that part entirely.
“I don’t think you’re that cool.”
Benny looks back up at me, and I’m relieved to see he’s laughing. His normal big, easy laugh. “Good. You’re perceptive.”
I give him a smirk before facing forward again.
“I’m the baby of the family, you know,” he continues.
I nod. He told me that when we had lunch the first time, when I told myself that I would never ever be in the exact position I’m in at the moment, on a date with the guy I’m trying to see asjustmy competition. I see now that it was always gonna be hard to keep Benny asjustanything.
“And my family is full of big personalities. I mean,big.Loud, sarcastic, emotional, proud, loving. They do it all big.” He makes a wide arc with his hands. “And I think I’ve always found it easy to trail along behind them, keep in the background, go along with whatever they did. I tried the same sports as my brothers growing up. I always had the same teachers, and they’d always mess up and call me Manny or Leo or Enzo before landing on Benny.”
I’m watching his face now, and his expression settles into a grimace as he looks back toward the water. “I started working at the restaurant as soon as I was old enough, just like they did. But each of them, they’re still there. Manny’s engaged, Leo’s got another part-time gig, Enzo’s in school, but ultimately, they allplan to stay in San Francisco and work at and eventually run Beneventi’s. And the last couple of years, it’s kinda hit me that I might not want the same.”
Something about the way he says it makes me think that he’s never done so out loud before. His voice gets a little rougher, as if he’s pulling each word from deep within himself and pushing it out by force. I stay quiet.
“I applied for this summer internship without telling anyone, and I told my parents only a few weeks before I was supposed to leave. They were pissed. My brothers froze me out for a couple days, mostly just out of bitterness that I’d gone behind their backs. So they all got over it, assuming they would just hire an extra set of hands for the time I was gone and that I’ll be back in the fall and everything can go back to how it was. At some point, I’ve gotta tell them that I’m not coming home.”
Whoa. Not coming home…because he definitely plans to stay at Friends of Flavor? The reminder that he wants the fall internship at least as bad as I do—or worse, that he might already be counting on getting it—makes my hackles raise and stomach churn. I’m trying to take his separation-of-work-and-personal spiel to heart, trying to believe what Nat and Clara said about how I can have it all, but comments like that don’t make it easy. It’s hard not to feel like the fall internship is this cloud hanging over us at all times—something we can’t avoid in just about any personal conversation about our goals and dreams.
But what he’s telling me feels so personal, so difficult for him, that I don’t think he even realizes how it sounds to me. And I don’t want to drag him down further with my worries when he’s trying to express his own. Not to mention putting the cart before the horse—I mean, this is only date number one. The stakes just feel higher for us than they might if this was gonna be a normal relationship between coworkers. One of us will be staying at Friends of Flavor after this summer, and one of us won’t.
For now, I try to stay engaged with Benny’s story. I brace myself on my hands as I lean back and stretch my legs farther in front of me. “Does that stress you out?”
He shrugs, mimicking my pose without seeming to think about it. “Yeah, but it also feels inevitable. Theywillfind out sooner or later, so I’ll have to find the words.” He lifts and readjusts his cap again. “But I guess I’m telling you all this because…well, because I don’t have my shit together. I can talk a big game but I’ve never done anything out of my family’s shadow, just as Benny, the individual. But that’s the only Benny you know. And I’m worried that when all the smoke and mirrors and cheesy lines are gone, you won’t like what’s left.”
My eyebrows lift in surprise and I study his face. His expression is more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen, and the confession turns my focus from Benny the coworker and competitor to Benny the surprisingly sensitive guy. I have the sudden, totally stupid thought that I want to kiss him. Even more than Idid while we were in the pantry, when I also kind of wanted to slaphim.
But I know myself, and I know that probably shouldn’t happen tonight. Not when I’m still trying to work out all my mixed-up feelings. Slow and steady.
“I like this version of you more than the one with the bad come-ons,” I answer honestly, and his mouth tilts up on one side. “If you want me to like you for who you are, you just have to keep showing me who that person is.”
Benny nods and I can see his heavy swallow. He’s like one giant, boy-shaped ball of nerves right now, and I feel compelled to give him a little bit of myself in return.
“I think I know how you feel, living in others’ shadows. I mean, it’s different, but I have these two best friends at home, Natalie and Clara, and they are the strongest, smartest, most impressive people I know. Clara was the first person in our grade to come out as gay. Inmiddle school.You know how awful kids are in middle school to begin with, right? And she made the decision to tell people at thirteen years old. Her family was supportive, thank goodness. But they were basically run out of their superconservative church for the ‘scandal’—the very church my family still attends, but without me ever since.”
I sigh, my frustration building anew as I remember what my best friend went through—what she continues to go through each day in different ways, making a statement she never set out to make just by being who she is.
“I’m still figuring out where I stand with the man upstairs himself, but that was when I first figured out that Christians weren’t always what I thought them to be. Natalie almost punched another girl in the cafeteria when she came up to our table to tell Clara she was going to hell. There were a lot of others who went the ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ route, but do you really love the person if you hate a key part of their existence? But Clar went on to start a GSA chapter at our high school that had, like, fifty members by the time we graduated. And she would travel around to other schools and give talks and help them start their own clubs. She had a whole slew of colleges fighting for her to enroll there.”
I trail off, shifting to sit cross-legged and running my palms over the little lap-shaped tent created by my dress. I peek at Benny from the corner of my eye, raising a brow as if to say,Am I boring you to tears yet?But he gives me a smile, one where I can just start to see the suggestion of a dimple, and it’s all the encouragement I need.
“And then there’s Nat, who’s a firecracker.” I huff out a laugh, shaking my head as a slew of sassy Natalie-isms float through my head. “Her family runs a horse farm for the out-of-town owner. She’s been getting up before the crack of dawn to muck stalls for as long as I’ve known her. She’s gotten to know all the other farmhands, a lot of them immigrants, and treats them like family, babysitting their kids and helping them learn English in herdowntime.
“But, like you, she had no interest in sticking around after high school.” I give Benny another glance and he nods in understanding. “She’s a theater kid, and loves school and learning to boot, and her family doesnotunderstand. They’d never come to her plays even when she was the lead—which was most of the time. I swear, they try to make her feel like the biggest snob in the world for wanting an education, of all things, and haven’t expressed any pride in all the cool stuff she does or that she’s the first in the family to go to college. And thank goodness she has a bunch of scholarships to an artsy school in the Northeast, because her parents refuse to help her out now that she’s leaving.”
I stop for a breather. I feel oddly vulnerable, telling these stories that aren’t even mine per se. But Natalie, Clara, and me, our lives have become so intertwined, we’re a three-piece braid. Our stories overlap and twist around one another’s and run together till it doesn’t make much difference whose hurts or happinesses are whose. It’s only now, as we’re splitting off from each other for the first time in years, that I’ve even had occasion to consider our relationship from a distance, let alone share it with another person.
But the connection I’m starting to feel with Benny is the strongest I’ve had with anyone outside my two best friends. I want to know him and, even more surprisingly, I’m beginning to want him to know me.
I take another long breath before continuing. “They’ve bothbeen through so much and are so resilient and hugely impressive, and beside them I feel so…ordinary. Not to mention privileged. Like my problems aren’t problems and my accomplishments, well…they’re lacking. I could’ve stayed in that church when Clara was shut out and no one would have batted an eye. My parents encouraged me to apply to any schools I wanted, made sure I felt like money was no object. The biggest struggle in my life so far has stemmed from stupid high school drama that was maybe even partly my own fault, but Nat and Clara stuck by me and supported me like there was nothing more important to them. They even introduced me to Friends of Flavor a few years ago. They pushed so hard for me to apply for this internship, and I think a big part of why I wanted it so bad was to make them proud or, like, try to live up to the kind of person they think I am. The kind of peopletheyare. I’m not envious of the fact that they’ve struggled, by any means; I’m just in awe of them and don’t feel worthy of such amazing friends. I don’t think they have any idea how much I want to deserve them.”
