“We should come back in the summer.” Ben says it so casually. As if it’s just normal that we would be making plans together for almost a year from now.
I hum in response, joining him on the blanket.
“Does it freak you out when I make plans like that?”
Of course he caught on to that. “It makes me a little anxious,” I admit.
He pats his lap indicating that he wants me to lie down. My head willingly meets his bare thigh—thank you short shorts—and he tugs at my hair tie. “Can I take this out?”
I do it for him, and he begins to play with my long locks. He braids and unbraids my hair several times before saying, “I don’t want to make you anxious. I can come on…verystrong. I know that. But I want to find a way to make you feel secure.”
“It can take me longer to process things. It’s not necessarily that I don’t like the thought of coming back here with you next summer… oftentimes it just takes my brain a minute to wrap around new or surprising ideas.”
He nods, which I can feel more than I can see. “So, give you processing time. Don’t try to interpret your silence.”
“That would be really helpful.” My heart picks up speed again, this time from an emotional intensity rather than a physical one.
“Can I ask a hard question?”
“That seems more than fair, after last night.” I laugh but Ben, for once, stays serious.
“You told me about your friendship with Maya and how things ended there. I noticed you don’t really talk to your parents either—was it something similar?” he asks.
Surprisingly, this topic isn’t too difficult to talk about, though I can see how Ben would assume so with the relationship he has with his parents.
“Well, you know that I moved to Sassafras when my parents divorced in middle school. After that I was pretty much estranged from my mother. I don’t think she ever really wanted to be a mom, but I was the bandaid on a marriage that was in the middle of brain surgery. Surprise, surprise, a child does not make marriage easier. Especially not a child with undiagnosed autism.”
We’re both quiet for a bit. I listen to the falling water as Ben continues to play with my hair. “My dad,” I finally continue, “he is a pretty conservative guy. He retired to Florida a few years ago and I haven’t talked to him much since. Just the occasional obligatory check-in. I think he realized both the autism and the queerness weren’t a phase.” I shrug. “Maybe I would miss him more if he had ever tried to form a real relationship with me, but he didn’t. And that’s sort of the parent’s job, isn’t it? He didn’t get the perfect child so he stopped putting in the effort.”
“How the fuck could anyone think you aren’t perfect?” Ben seethes.
“I’m not,” I laugh. “Not in his eyes, at least.”
“You were the goddamn valedictorian, Colette. Didn’t you get a full ride to Stanford? What else did he want?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. It caught me by surprise at first. He hid a lot of his preferences away from me. I really had no idea he felt the way he felt, probably because I’m not good at interpreting nonverbal communication. It’s why I struggle with feeling like I’m missing something in other social relationships I’ve formed. Between that and my fallout with Maya, you know?
“I’m thinking when I came home and told him I had a girlfriend instead of some macho jock that wanted to wife me up and put two point five babies in me, he finally realized I wasn’t going to follow the path he had laid out for my life.” I sigh. “The irony of all of this is that he would have loved you. Floppy hair and athletic, put together, a real guy’s guy.”
Ben scrunches his nose and I laugh. “Gross, please never call me a guy’s guy again.”
“Fine, you goof.” I spin in his lap and look up into his disgusted face. “If it makes you feel any better, now that I know you I can wholeheartedly say you’re a girl’s guy.”
His hand comes over his heart. “Thank you.”
“What about you?” I ask. “Tell me more about your relationship with your parents. They seem great.”
He nods in confirmation. “They are great. With both of them, what you see is what you get. They are loving, down to earth, overly affectionate and way too involved in their children’s lives. But we all agree how lucky we are to have them as parents. Both Mom and Dad just want us to be happy. They love big family dinners that seem to grow each Sunday. The more the merrier has always been their motto.”
“I was so envious of your dynamic in high school,” I confess. “The Bardots were everything my family wasn’t. I felt like the only thing I had was school… achievements. I think I hated you because you threatened the one thing I felt like I had any control over.”
“That makes a lot of sense, Cole.” He pushes my hair away from my face, twisting a piece slowly around his finger. “I never hated you.”
I scoff. “Fuck off, yes you did.”
He grins, shaking his head. “No, I didn’t. I wouldn’t have tried half as hard in school if it wasn’t for the opportunity to spend more time with you. I admired your work ethic—still do.And yeah, I enjoy friendly competition.” His hair flops onto his forehead when he looks down at me. “But really I was just trying to get your attention. Albeit, I would go about it entirely differently now.”
“No you wouldn’t,” I tease. “You got off on me being mean to you.”
