Page 16 of Letting Go at 40

“Ben’s sleeping. You should probably go to—”

“It would have never mattered if I picked you,” she interrupts me and closes her hand around the rock, placing her fist back on the floor while protectively holding the heart shape in her palm. “He picked you.”

My head swivels in her direction. Her eyes are intense, focused on my face. I should look away from her, but I’m held in place by her words.

“What do you mean he picked me?”

“He wanted you as his friend. He wants you here. He picked you.”

My thoughts flip back to my earlier memories of Ben inviting me to hang with him. Ben including me in parties and bonfires, introducing me to girls in the area. He didn’t keep me from Anna. I simply thought she’d come to me. Girls always flocked to me. But not her. She went to him with his all-American smile and the good-guy gleam in his eyes. He was better for her than I’d ever be, but it never lessened my desire for her. Never lessened the magnetic pull despite everything I did to keep myself away from her.

“I’ll never measure up to what he thinks of me.” You can do better, be better. I swallow hard, the reality a difficult truth to digest. “I’d never have been good enough for you either.”

“It’s not a matter of being enough, Mason. It’s just that you aren’t . . .”

“Ben,” I finish for her. Wholesome. Good. Perfect at so many things. I’ll never be a man like that. I’m already tainted in so many ways. I’ve done things I can never take back. While Ben doesn’t believe I’m like my father, on a spectrum, I don’t line up with Ben either. I’m somewhere in the gray between the two extremes, and that doesn’t feel any better.

I nod to express my understanding while Anna continues to watch me, head tipped to the side, resting against the wall at our backs. She’d never have wanted me—she didn’t want me—and it was proven when she picked Ben. Although, there wasn’t even a decision or choice to be made. Ben was her other half.

“Ben’s sleeping. You should be too.” Pressing off the floor, I stand upright and hold out a hand for her. To my surprise, she takes it with the same hand holding her heart-shaped rock. Her thin hand feels dainty inside my larger one. The flat surface of the heart in her palm melds into my skin, almost burning me with its coolness, imprinting on me. The sensation is a juxtaposition of my desire for her and my emotions for her husband. The softness of her fingers blends with the hardness of the stone and it’s a reminder of what I’ve craved and what I can’t have.

Her body language affirms my thoughts as she quickly pulls her hand from mine, taking the heart shape with her as if tugging my own heart from my chest.

Anna chose Ben.

And while Ben had chosen me for friendship, and I’d accepted that gift, I’ve always felt guilty for the sliver of truth in our jest.

I’d wanted her to pick me.

Chapter 7

2 Years Ago

July

Ben

[Mason]

The last six months have passed in a blur. I hadn’t spent Christmas with Ben and his family, knowing deep in my heart it would be their last together. Instead, I’d gone home for two weeks in December. I’d met with my father and told him the fuck-you news. I quit Becker Construction.

What could have been my legacy I didn’t want. The construction company was actually from my mother’s side of the family. She was the one with wealth while my father had simply jumped into an existing business. No doubt he tripled it, but at what cost? He’d been unfaithful to my mother, drove her to day-time drinking, and alienated me, his only son. A child he hadn’t wanted.

Once, the summer I was eighteen and working for Frank Kulis and his wife, Ruth, I caught the two of them kissing at Ben’s house. I’d gone into the kitchen for some reason and froze, then took a giant step back. But I didn’t walk away. Watching them kiss should have grossed me out as a teen, but it was the strangeness that held me in place. Frank and Ruth loved each other. They flirted and held hands, and in the moment, they were kissing like new lovers instead of people married for twenty years.

Watching them only solidified how much my own parents’ marriage lacked warmth or emotion. My parents fought so much I didn’t know why they stayed married, but I knew why they’d married in the first place. Me. For the sake of child, Marcus married my mother. What he’d really wanted was her wealth, local prestige, and the success he eventually built. I never wanted to be like them, blaming my child for the fault of adults who didn’t understand love.

Quitting had been dramatic. I gave him the news, held up my phone, deleted his number, and told him never to contact me again. Then, I’d sent my mother to Florida with instructions to get a good lawyer.

Four Points Construction was born and slowly blooming.

Ben was fading.

When Ben had been too weak to attend a father-daughter dance in February with Mila, Uncle Mason played substitute.

When Calvin had wanted to give up baseball, I’d been the one to convince him to continue to play. For his dad. I attended all his games and livestreamed them to Ben at home.

I was stepping up for Ben’s children, but I still rarely saw my own. Samantha played her games and Lynlee and I hardly had moments together. If Ben hadn’t been so sick, he would have been disappointed in me.