He hands me his keys, then his phone, and strides ahead of me and reaches the water first. The waves are choppy and bleak, uninviting, which is maybe how it should be, though I think Leo, who was brighter than the shiniest star in the galaxy, would want it some other way. Ben wades in, to his ankles, to his knees, then all the way to his chest. Everyone else out here is in a wetsuit, if they’re brave enough to venture in at all.
“Ben!” I shout, though I can hear my voice dissipate in the whoosh of the sea winds. “Ben, come on!”
He arcs his hands above his head and dives under. If he hears me, he doesn’t flinch.
I let him sink for as long as he needs to. He’ll return to me when he’s ready.
He’s been out there for fifteen minutes and must be half frozen when his phone buzzes. On instinct, I glance at the screen. Not because I mean to, not because I’m snooping. It simply vibrates in my palm, and I uncurl my hand, and there it is.
Thinking of you today.
Then:
I’m here if you need me.
Blood floods my heart and everything speeds up: the rush of the waves, the sound of the ocean, the footsteps of the jogger behind me, the sway of the palm trees that lurch as I spin around and race to the concrete boardwalk, which may provide surer footing. It can only be one person; this can only mean one thing. I fold myself in half, trying to abort the crest of nausea, the dizziness in my brain.
Ben didn’t come back to me like I thought. I inhale and exhale and try to stop the vertigo.
I right myself and draw a line in the sand with my toe. And then I kick it away, gently at first, then angrily, furiously. When I calm myself, I’m surprised to discover that, upon further examination, there is no trace of the line at all.
He heads straight to a warm shower when we get home. Into the cavernous white bathroom that is just off our cavernous white bedroom of the new house we moved into three months ago that was supposed to be our enclave, our safe haven to protect me from that stalker and from the rest of the outside world too. I sit outside the closed door in the nook where he usually writes—his laptop is open, and I consider checking to see what he’s been drafting, if he ever got around to writing that bullshit script for me, if he ever even was honest about that. But instead, I simply sit, and I wait. If I don’t say something now, even on Leo’s birthday, I worry that it will get swallowed up like Ben might have underneath the waves today.
I curl my hands into balls, a familiar release from way back when—from my mom, and Aaron, and my drunk dad, and all the failed auditions and paltry tips at P.F.Chang’s and everything in between—and I squeeze my eyes shut just as tightly. I can become anyone I need to be, just like I do in front of the camera, though my pulse beats loudly in my neck and a thin film of sweat forms underneath my armpits, in the crooks of my elbows. Despite my expertise, however, I find I cannot become a woman hiding all these secrets any longer.
He stays in the shower for minutes on end, and it’s gotten so late that I nearly run out of time. I won’t be late for the edit bay; my work won’t suffer for this. It never has. It simply won’t. I will tell him. I will compartmentalize this. And then I will go about my day because that is what I’ve trained myself to do.
“Shit!” Ben yelps, when he opens the bathroom door and sees me on the loveseat. An oversized white towel is knotted around his waist. He’s still in shape for forty, still built like he was a decade ago, though everything beneath that exterior has changed. It’s a startling realization for me. Every actress constructs her career on matching her insides to her outsides: play a kind prostitute and you wear trashy makeup, ask wardrobe for an extra push-up bra, ensure that your pink manicure is chipping, which might make viewers empathize with your heart of gold. Play a hardened lieutenant but still-loving mom inArmy Women, and you train until your body fat is down to 8 percent and you dangle a gold necklace with your kids’ initials atop your army fatigues.
What we see is always about telling a story until one day you realize that it’s not.
“Sorry, shit.” Ben holds up a hand. “You just startled me.”
“I know about Amanda,” I say, quickly, tersely, like it is just another fact that belongs to someone else’s life.
“What?”
“I know about her.” I stand. “I have since Piper’s shower. Back in Ohio. She texted you today, and well ...” My hands find my hips. “I thought you should know.”
“I don’t ...” He opens his mouth, then closes it. “It’s over. I mean, it’s been over since ...” He shakes his head. “It’s been over since May.”
“Don’t lie to me after all of this, Ben, please, just don’t.”
Ben sinks onto the loveseat, the towel splitting into a V atop his legs. He drops his head in his hands. “No, I’m not ...” He raises his head, his tearful eyes finding mine. “Sometimes she texts me. That’s it. It’sover, Tate. I ... I don’t even know why I did it.” His head returns to his palms.
I want to say:I do. I get why you did it, and it’s for all the reasons my own lines got blurry with you and everything else.Instead, without thinking it through, I say:
“I knew Leo had relapsed. I ran into him in New York, and he was high, and he promised me he’d get better.”
Ben’s face flies up, the rest of his body following.
“What? Wait, you what?”
“I knew Leo had relapsed.” I press my lips together, offer a small, defiant shrug. “I guess we both had our secrets.”
“Youwhat? I could have fucking helped him, Tatum!”
“You couldn’t have.”
