“You know you can’t count on anything there.”
“Hence me thinking your girlfriend’s name was Magenta.”
“You said Fuchsia.”
“And there you have it.”
“Well, now it’s just you and me talking. We don’t have to rely on anyone else to pass on questionable news items or search our memories for fossils,” he said. “I want to know you now. I want you to know me, too. What do you think?” He grabbed one of her hands and pulled itbetween them with their fingers interlaced. She didn’t know how to answer, so she did the only thing that made sense. Ellie held his gaze and squeezed her fingers against his twice hoping he would remember. His eyes flashed in recognition, and he smiled, squeezing back twice to confirm.Yes, let’s keep going.
CHAPTER 17
“Are they doing that thing where they pretend nothing is different, and it’s awkward—but they still refuse to talk about it, so it’s more awkward? Aka, how they dealt with having a gay child?” Ben said, holding his phone directly over his face as he lay in bed.
“Aka, having two kids that are… shall we say, unique?” Ellie sat at one of the wooden tables on the deck of the Delfino, waiting for the troops to assemble for afternoonaperitivo. She savored the few moments she had with Ben while he was sitting—actually, lying—at home for once.
He’d tweaked his back at SLT, a boutique gym in Tribeca famous for fifty-dollar classes and supermodel sightings. Ben was bullied into an hour-long class on The Machine, where he stretched his body along a series of pulleys and left behind three vertebrae in the process. He was livid, of course, since he was still on call for the Janelle Monáe party, but he proclaimed that so help him God, if he had to strap himself to a gurney and roll into the Ziegfeld, he was going to turn that party out.
Ellie had spent most of the morning on her bed with her laptop, checking emails, watching YouTube, and reading through the American Psychological Association’sEmerging Researchnewsletters. She had a habit of bookmarking the papers she thought would be helpful in clinical practice, though exactly whose clinical practice she was aggregating information for was not a mental labyrinth she wanted to explore.
By the time she got to the beach, she realized that the only thing she’d missed was Peggy and Gio trying to stay out of each other’s way on a stretch of beach that was about the size of two tennis courts. Gio had dragged his sand chair so far down the shoreline that the lifeguard told him he was in a high-tide zone and liable to get swept out to Isola d’Elba if he happened to nap too long. Peggy set into her usual practice of aggressive crochet, only stopping to harrumph at the encroaching sea under Gio’s chair.
Of course neither of them would speak to each other directly and instead relied on Ellie to interpret their intentions to both ignore and infuriate each other at the pace of six passive-aggressions per hour. There wasTell your father that if he hasn’t forgotten for the seven hundredth time, he is allergic to capers and will likely die if he has the smoked salmon plate for lunchonly to be matched byIf your mother was paying attention she would find that she left her sunglasses on the shelf in the cabana as she always does when she takes too long to get changed in there. Once again, Ellie had tried and abandoned any plan to pull one of them aside for a heart-to-heart, and the stress was building. How could she be helping if she couldn’t even get one of them alone?
“I’m going to have to pull rank on this one. I am still only going on a smile and shoulder squeeze from Dad as acknowledgment that I am out.” Ben chuckled.
“Ah yes, but youdoget tubs of frozen cookie dough shipped across the country and no shortage of screen time with their foreheads on FaceTime twice a month.”
“Lucky for them, cookie dough happens to be my love language.”
“See? Theydoknow you!”
“Allegedly,” he said, grinning from his comfortable-looking halo of white pillows.
Ellie enjoyed the laugh with Ben, but she was avoiding the real reason she wanted to talk to him. And the reason was probably about to walk onto the terrace at any moment.
“Hey, so, one more thing.” There was something about the advice she could get from another person who both knew every detail about her and also wasn’t afraid to weaponize all of it if necessary. A sibling was the best and worst person to have in her corner when she wasn’t sure what was mountain and what was molehill. “I’ve been spending some time with Cris.”
“Reeeally.” It was not a question.
“Yes. I think… I think maybe he is not exactly what I thought he was. I can’t believe I am going to say this, but he’s actually very self-aware and smart.” Ellie bit her lip.
“Gee, El. What a generous compliment. Don’t injure yourself with effusiveness, okay?”
“I am not. I am just being truthful.”
“Yes, I can see that you are.” Ben laughed. “Does this mean that you’re getting over whatever kerfuffle you guys had years ago?”
“I am saying maybe I took it so hard because my perspective was off. I’m not saying that he didn’t handle it poorly, but maybe it was easier for me to feel rejected and quickly cut things off with him so I wouldn’t have to think about how much I shouldn’t have feelings for him. Also, Iguess it’s possible that I misinterpreted some things, you know—in light of recent discoveries about myself.”
“You’ve spent a lot of time trying not to think about things and people that hurt you. But you know, your diagnosis is not a reason to second-guess every instinct you had about situations in your past. Our family didn’t sit around talking about our feelings. It makes sense that you and I found other ways to deal with uncomfortable emotions. I default to making jokes about everything because it feels good to make people laugh when I’m down. You? Well, you try to help people, but I think that’s because it makes it easier for you to hide from your own stuff.”
“Damn, Benny. Aren’t I the one with the PhD in psychology?”
“I don’t know, are you?”
Ellie sighed. Ben was right to go there even though it felt terrible. Sooner or later, she was going to have to deal with the fact that she was hiding from the most important unfinished business in her life—and the reason for her obsessive APA journal reading. “I don’t know what I am,” she said, suddenly too tired to hold up the mask.
“Maybe it’s a good time to figure it out.” Ben’s words hit hard, stinging her eyes and making her feel hot despite the cool breeze from the sea.
