He smiled warmly. “I just got back from backpacking in Machu Picchu. Highly, highly recommend. It was the trip of a lifetime.”
“Wow. That’s so cool! Who did you go with?” I asked, immediately regretting the ambiguity of the question. It felt too personal. An unnecessary perforation in the effortless atmosphere he seemed committed to.
He read my face and gave a good-natured laugh. “Just me. I joined a group that was already going. It was awesome. Met some great people, took unreal pictures. You’ve got to go. I came back with perspective I never thought I’d have after everything that happened with us. I know now where I went wrong.”
I shook my head. Was he talking about reconciliation?
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Ben,” I said cautiously.
He nodded. “I did. But we’ll get into that later.”
“How did you decide on Machu Picchu?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I needed something to take me completely out of the place I was in. Peru felt far enough to do that.”
The bartender returned with the 1942. “Your table is ready. I’ll transfer these over.”
I nodded and reached for my bag, but Ben had already picked it up. “Jesus, what’s in here? You carry this around all day long?”
“It’s my laptop. I bring it home with me in case any emails come in that can’t wait until the next day.”
“That’s a recipe for back trouble,” he said with a genuine frown.
I chuckled like an old-timer who’d been hearing that all my life. “I’m definitely destined for sciatica or something like that.”
As we sat down at the table, I realized Iwashappy to see him. I’d forgotten there was a time when we enjoyed spending time together, before I started to feel trapped and anxious that I’d never figure out how to disentangle my life from his. Could we really have made it to the other side this easily?
Ben ordered another old-fashioned and I sipped the 1942 while we caught up over small talk and oysters. He had so many questions about my life in New York: Was it difficult to find an apartment? Did I work all the time? Had I made new friends? Did I ever have time to see a show or go to a museum? I treaded lightly with every answer, careful not to come off as overly enthusiastic. After everything that had transpired, I couldn’t tell if his attention was genuine.
He opened the wine menu.
“Think they have a good bottle of Oregon pinot?”
I felt a sense of apprehension but tried shaking it off. “Ah. I haven’t had an Oregon wine in years,” I said lightly.
“There’s a pretty reasonable Willamette pinot on the list. What do you think?”
I wondered if the evening’s emotional land mines were one sided. “Okay, let’s do it.”
He smiled triumphantly. “Remember how we always wanted to go to Oregon wine country? You were obsessed with it for a while.”
Every nerve in my body felt on alert, looking for signals that his relaxed manner and nostalgic attention were genuine, when one of the last things he’d said to me wasit seems to me that you got everything you wanted.
But the tequila was doing its thing. I wanted to know more about the perspective he gained in Peru. I also wanted to know if he was still writing the book, and I was just tipsy enough to ask. “Hope it’s okay to ask, but are you still writing that book?”
He swirled his cocktail, and I couldn’t tell if he wanted the question to hang out there uncomfortably or if he was stalling.
“Here and there,” he said casually. “I took a break when I went to South America. Didn’t seem like the right place to write a self-help book about your wife leaving you for the big city.”
I cringed.
“Sorry. But to be fair, you brought it up,” he said with a thin smile.
I held up my hands as a peace gesture. “No more book talk.”
I told him about the insanity of finding a passable studio apartment and the hours spent working days, nights, and weekends. Getting to work with Eddie. He was wide-eyed over the ground I’d covered in only two months. We ordered another bottle of wine. The more we drank, the less I noticed land mines.
We finished the second bottle and ordered dessert and sambuca. Suddenly everything seemed hilarious. We switched to reminiscing about all the trips we took when I inevitably over-Xanaxed myself because of my fear of flying.
