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I nod. “I do.” I turn my back to him, feeling his hand on the small of my back as I open the door to let us into the darkened apartment. Once inside, I cross the living room for the lamp. I turn it on, adjusting the brightness so that it’s not too bright, and then turn back to face Ben, who is pushing the front door gently closed and locking the dead bolt. Ben is tall, over six feet with an athletic physique, his biceps visible through a thin white shirt, his jeans straight.
He turns away from the door, catching me staring. “You can just throw your coat on a chair. Do you want something to drink? I have beer.”
“A beer would be great.”
I nod, carrying the vodka down the dark, narrow hall and to the kitchen. I take it out of the bag and then pour a couple shots into a lowball glass and fill it with Coke. I take a long sip and then send a quick text to Sienna, saying, You didn’t need to text Dad. I’m okay. A second later though, I worry about the tone of the text, that it sounded brusque. I don’t want Sienna to think I’m upset that she texted Ben, because it was genuinely sweet and well-intentioned.
I send a second text. I appreciate that you did though. Thank you for thinking of me. Have fun with Gianna tonight. I love you.
I take another drink from my glass, standing at the kitchen counter to see if Sienna texts back, but she doesn’t right away, and I’m glad because it means she isn’t on her phone and that she’s enjoying her friend’s company.
I take another sip and try not to think about Caitlin. I try hard to forget about the way her skin felt under my fingers after she died. I think instead about the awful things she did to me and others, how disingenuous she was. What she did was reprehensible. She sought me out, she learned about my past so that she could impersonate a friend to slip easier into my life. She knew everything about me, and she used my desire to help people to her advantage, playing a victim so I would protect her, so I would take pity on her, so that I would take her in. I can’t think of her as the woman she’s been these last few weeks: helpless and unconscious with a family who loves her despite every awful thing she’s done to hurt them.
I have to remember the woman she was before.
The one mistake I make, as I grab a beer from the refrigerator for Ben, tuck my phone under an arm and carry the two drinks out to the living room, is that I don’t stop to wonder how she knew so much about me.
In the living room, Ben stands with his back to me. He looks out the window for the street. He doesn’t hear me come in and so I hang back and watch him for a moment, finding it hard to believe that he is here in my apartment when Sienna isn’t home, that he came for a reason other than to pick her up, but that he came to check on me.
The old Ben wouldn’t have done that. The old Ben wouldn’t have gone out of his way like that for me. Suddenly all of the bad feelings I’ve had for him these last few months soften. I look at them in another light. What if Ben wasn’t the only one to blame for our marriage’s collapse? Looking back, it was easy for both of us to get complacent after so much time together. There was a laxity and a lack of effort on both our parts. We weren’t putting as much effort into our relationship as we did when we were first together. What if it was my fault as much as it was his?
“Here’s your beer,” I say, coming further in. “Do you want to sit?”
He turns slowly away from the window. Behind him, on the other side of the glass, it’s snowing again. Ben crosses the room, stepping around the narrow edge of the coffee table. He lowers himself onto the leather sofa, our hands touching by accident when I pass him his beer. “Thanks,” he says, and though I deliberate on where to sit, eventually I lower myself to the sofa beside him instead of opting to sit in the armchair alone.
Ben looks down at the beer, holding it by the neck. It’s Guinness, which is what he always drinks, and it’s not lost on him. “I didn’t know you like Guinness.”
“I don’t.”
“Oh,” he says, as if thinking I bought the Guinness for someone else.
But I correct him. “Old habits die hard,” I say, blushing because I don’t drink beer, not often anyway. I bought this unintentionally at the grocery store a month or so ago. It was one of those things you do without realizing you’re doing it because, when we were married, I bought six-packs of Guinness for Ben all the time. When I got home and unpacked the bags, I couldn’t believe my mistake. I almost thought about throwing it away. I would never drink it, but it seemed a waste because someday someone might.
I never thought that someone would be Ben.
He throws back the beer, taking a long sip, and then, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, asks, “Will you tell me your patient’s name? The one who died.”
I don’t want to talk about her. I don’t want to think about her.
“You know I can’t.”
“Nice to see you’re still a stickler for rules,” he says, and I smile, liking the banter. I like the way that, even after months apart and all the bad feelings between us, he can still poke fun at me. “What happened exactly?” he asks, draping his arm over the back of the sofa, sobering. His arm brushes against my shoulders and hair, triggering something inside of me. It’s been so long since I’ve been this close to a man. The smell of Ben’s cologne is strong and familiar, reminding me of home, and I flash back to our life together, to getting ready for work in the same small bathroom each morning, breathing in the scent of his cologne.
“Cardiac arrest.”
“How old was she?”
“Thirty-two,” I say, seeing the way he watches me, studying me.
Ben can tell that the conversation is making me upset. His tone changes, and he says, “I shouldn’t have asked. Let’s not talk about this,” as he breaks his gaze, and I appreciate his willingness to let the conversation go.
I’m still in my scrubs. I regret that I didn’t change when I first came home, that I didn’t put on something else like jeans and a blouse or run a comb through my hair before getting our drinks. “I’m a mess. I should change,” I say, making an effort to stand up, but Ben brings his arm around from behind the sofa to set his hand on my thigh. It stops me all of a sudden and I sink back against the seat, watching his hand on my leg. His hand is still at first, though it gives off heat, the warmth of it taking the chill out of the room and warming me through. I expect him to move his hand, but he doesn’t. Instead he strokes my knee with a thumb, just a small sweeping motion that I feel all the way to my core. I stare, silent, at Ben’s hand for a while, not reacting but not pushing him away either, letting him touch me, remembering how, at the frozen yogurt shop where we used to work when we were in high school, I fell in love with Ben’s strong hands, with the deft way they would punch numbers into the cash register, which stirs up something inside of me now, nostalgia and something else.
My heart accelerates, a caged bird wanting to fly.
“No,” he says. “You don’t need to change. Stay. It’s just me.” He takes another sip from his beer. “What time is Sienna coming home?” he asks.
Our eyes meet as I say, “She isn’t. Not tonight. She’s sleeping at her friend Gianna’s.”
