He started to race back toward the fight, toward the cops. But, even from the woods, we could see it was too late.
Finn was on top of a rich, redheaded groom—and the cop who was pulling him off was not there to save him.
I kept going over the night before Bobby’s wedding—as if it held the secret to how I should feel, seven days before mine.
I was getting nowhere fast—lying on my childhood bed, staring at a photograph of Culture Club taped on the ceiling above. It had been there since I was a teenager, placed at my eye level, so Boy George would be the one to say good night.
It felt like he was taunting me with all the answers I didn’t seem to have—when my phone rang.
I looked down at the caller ID, a happy Ben staring back. I wanted to pick up and tell Ben what Finn had just told me—I wanted Ben to be my person again, the one I told everything to. Ben always said the thing that revealed to me what I should do. Ben said that was giving him too much credit. It never seemed to me that it was giving him enough.
“Hey,” he said when I picked up the phone. He paused, not sure what to do now that he had me there. “Thanks for picking up.”
I kept my eyes on the ceiling, on George’s face. I wasn’t going to make this easier. Maybe I was done making it harder, but that was different.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Staring at Boy George.”
He laughed. “That bad of a day?”
“You have no idea.”
He cleared his throat, asking me a question that encouraged me to answer him.
“You want to tell me?” he said.
“Yes.”
“You going to?”
I shook my head as though he could see that. “How would you describe Bobby and Margaret? Would you describe them as happy?”
“Yes, I would.” He paused.
“What?”
“I would describe him as happier than her,” he said. “She seems a little lost.”
That broke my heart for Bobby, for the reasons why Ben was correct, for the reasons it didn’t matter.
“And my parents?”
“That is more even. That is blessed,” he said. “I mean, next to you and Boy George, I’d say they are the happiest couple I know.”
I laughed for the first time that day, some of my anger melting. Ben felt like Ben again, the two of us talking gently in a dark room, the world safer and more lovely for it.
“You still need to take that poster down. It’s creepy. Milli Vanilli creepy.”
“That’s not a battle you’re going to win, Ben.”
Except that it was. I would have to remove everything from this room before this house was sold. The house. The vineyard. My childhood.
“So I oversaw the move today,” Ben said. “Everything is on its way to London.”
His accent crept up on me and warmed me to him.
“I guess you heard that . . .”