Truly (New York 1)

“I need to go,” he said.

“I think that would be best.”

When he reached the door, all the muscles in his arms felt too heavy. May wasn’t in the hallway. She wasn’t anywhere. He didn’t even know where to look. He panicked, turned in a circle, kicked a stack of folding chairs and knocked them down. The noise was deafening.

Nancy came into the hall wearing a censorious expression. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I need to find May.”

“She’s in the bathroom.” Nancy paused. “What is this?”

This is love.

This is life.

This is me, fucking it up.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s almost over.”

When he found the cool handle of the bathroom door, Ben stood still, breathing too fast, too hard. He closed his eyes. He needed to be calm to do this, so he searched for the narrow slot inside his psyche where he used to hide.

There. Just there. He was no longer a boy, but he could still squeeze in if he kept his breathing shallow. He could crouch in a place where there was no color and no sound, and nothing could touch him.

By the time the door shut behind him, he felt perfectly calm.

May perched on the edge of the counter beside a sink, staring at the row of stall doors.

“Waiting for one to open up?”

She looked up in surprise. “I thought you were my mom.”

“No.”

“I thought she’d be barging in here to find out what happened with Dan.”

“What happened with Dan?”

“I told him there was another guy.”

Half a minute passed. She looked at the floor. He looked at her face, waiting for her to meet his eyes so he could do this.

She knew why he was here, but she wouldn’t help him. She would only sit there, passive, and make him hack apart whatever it was that tied them together.

He hadn’t thought this far ahead—hadn’t realized he’d have to tell her something. It had seemed obvious, before, that their relationship had a time limit, and when the time was up, he would go back to his life and let May get on with hers.

It was still obvious. He would cling to that obviousness. He would force May to acknowledge it, because otherwise …

There was no otherwise.

“I guess every vacation’s got to come to an end,” he said.

May braced her hands on the edge of the countertop. Her face came up, her eyes fierce. “Is that what it was? A vacation?”

Ben looked away.

“Sandy and I went to the Bahamas a few years ago,” he said. His voice sounded like someone else was operating it. Someone toneless and half-dead. “Our last shot at saving the marriage, and we both knew it. I was afraid I’d be bored, or we’d fight. But instead, we got to the resort, changed our clothes, went for a swim. We got drinks by the pool. There was this sense of possibility. It doesn’t have to be over. I don’t have to be that stressed-out, angry guy who Sandy’s getting sick of. We had sex on that vacation for the first time in months. A lot of sex.”

She didn’t flinch, though he’d meant her to. She just watched him with those big brown eyes. Those dairymaid eyelashes.