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We remained in silence after that, and she stared at her pastry, while I stared at her. After a while, she lifted her eyes to look into mine, urging me to believe in her. “That’s why I didn’t want you there.”
“Why didn’t you dispute him when he implied you slept together?”
She considered my question for a moment. “For a couple of reasons.” She shifted in her seat, and I could see her mind working to find better words. “I could’ve denied it all at that moment. But aside from my surprise that he was playing that card, I didn’t wanna start a new side argument. I had no idea how he’d react, and I’d rather talk to him about it without you around first. It felt like betraying his trust and breaking our loyalty. We...talkedabout what happened that same morning, but it wasn’t exactly beautiful. I didn’t want the worry of mincing words and having you as a spectator for what we had to deal with.
“Besides, that’s the kind of truth you should hear from him, not from me. If I’d told you at that moment, you wouldn’t have believed me. I would’ve thrown Benny under the bus and betrayed his loyalty for nothing. And even if you’d believed me, it wouldn’t be quite a victory.”
“How come?”
“You should believe we had nothing together becausehesaid so. Because you trusthiswords. Not because a third party came to you.” It weirdly made sense. “Benny did that a lot with Zee and me over the years. Trying to push us away, I mean. Especially when we were kids.” Her lips stretched into a nostalgic smile. “I think after realizing we wouldn’t go anywhere, he just stopped trying to get rid of us.”
“You guys seem to be very close,” I observed.
“We are.” She nodded. “We’ve been through a lot together over the years. We all know no matter what any of us do, we’ll stick together. We know our highest qualities and our biggest flaws. We made a lot of mistakes together, and we also fixed shit. Our bond is as solid as it can get. I knew I could overlook the stunt he was pulling, but I wasn’t sure you’d be willing to.
“So when you showed up, I wasn’t happy. Because I didn’t want you to see it. That Benny wasn’t the real one. That was the scared and scarred jerk who acted before thinking. He wasn’t the funny, caring, loyal man he truly is.”
“So you were trying to protect me?”
“I was also trying to protect him,” she explained. “From himself and potential heartbreak. I know he made a mistake, and I’m not making light of it. I just don’t want him to be punished for reacting to something that’s been tormenting him since he was a kid.”
“How could our relationship be tormenting him since then?”
“Loving someone is a torment to him. Letting himself be loved is a challenge, maybe the biggest one he’s ever faced.”
“So you think he loves me?” I asked, trying to hide my hope.
“I think that’s an admission he should be the one to make...but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe it.” She grinned conspiratorially, as if telling me a huge secret. In a way, she was.
I smiled back. For whatever reason, I couldn’t not smile at her. But my insecurities were still running high.
“Sometimes I’m afraid this is just a lost battle I’m stubborn enough to keep fighting.”
“How come?” She resumed eating.
“He’s still not comfortable enough to confide in me. But I see how he is around you, and I feel like I’m never gonna have what you guys have.”
“That’s because you won’t.” She stated like it was obvious.
“Ouch. That’s a kick in the gut,” I muttered.
“No, it’s not...damn it, that’s why I’m not allowed to talk to people without a buffer.” She rubbed her forehead and took a deep breath. “You’ll never gonna have what we have, and you don’t want to.”
“How can you say that? Of course I want—"
“First of all, we don’t have sex,” she interrupted me, raising her scarred eyebrow and challenging me to rebut that. How could I? She grinned knowingly. “That’s what I thought. More than that. We have a different kind of history. We’ve been together since we were kids. We lived and saw things that were bound to bond us. There are things he hasn’t told youyet,” she emphasized, “that he didn’t need to tell me, because I was there living it with him. But that in no way diminishes what you have growing between you two.
“You’ll never have what Benny and I have, you’ll never have what Benny and Zee have.” She shrugged. “Just like we’ll never have what you and Benny have. I’m not talking only about having sex and the baby. You’ll always have a part of him, a connection with him, I’m not privy to. I’m fine with it, because I don’t want that part. That piece of him belongs to you and only to you. Believe me, it does. Because no matter how hard he tried to fight it, he never gave it to anyone else.”
Fighting tears, I looked outside, only then realizing the sky was getting darker. Mia let me absorb her words, and I started to see they made a lot of sense. That made me hopeful. More than that, they made me respect the small spitfire sitting before me.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked quietly.
Just as quietly, she answered, “Because for the first time, Benny’s found someone with a heart big enough to love him for who he is, fears and all. You’re good for him, and I do believe he’s good for you.”
As she resumed eating for the umpteenth time, I remembered our previous interactions, this time without jealousy clouding my judgment. What I thought was jealousy in her eyes when she saw us together, I recognized as worry. What I imagined as a threat to my relationship with Benjamin was protection.
Despite my not-so-warm welcome to her, she was the one welcoming me and trying to ease my fears and insecurities, because she loved the man I wasin lovewith. I felt ashamed to admit while I was trying to come up with ways to make him choose between the two of us, she was trying to help us find our way to each other.
