But it would all come flooding back when I considered the particulars. I began to wish I’d simply told Dan everything straight after I’d met Ben at the party; it would have been easier that way. I’d left it too long, and it would look weird if everything came out now. More than weird: suspicious.
So I had to trust to Ben’s good nature—and I did. Until, suddenly, I knew I couldn’t.
We were in the pub, the three of us—not an irregular occurrence since Ben had moved back but one that was still a fresh hobby, a new way to spend our time—when Dan got up and went to the loo. Once he had disappeared from sight, Ben gripped my wrist where it lay on the table between our three pints and a stack of the Sunday papers.
“I can’t do this, Lizzie,” he said urgently. “You know we had something special. Please don’t throw it all away.”
I was surprised but sympathetic and firm, drawing my hand away, pulling my sleeve down over my fingers as if to protect them, prevent them feeling him again. Just the touch of his hand had been a reminder of the electricity there had once been between us.
“Ben—” I struggled to grasp the right words. There was no point in being cruel, but I didn’t want to soften the blow too much; I didn’t want a repeat of this conversation ever again. There could be no gray area after this.
Just trying to form the sentence made me realize how often I hedged my words so as not to offend, how I’d tie myself in knots socially just to avoid saying no. How I went along with things I didn’t really want to, gave consent without actually meaning to. How much easier it is to simply hurt someone’s feelings and get on with it. It was a valuable lesson.
“I’m with Dan,” I said eventually, simply. “I’m sorry. We had a great time, but I just know that Dan is the one for me. There isn’t anything else to say.”
It sounded so bald like that that I reached out and stroked the back of his hand where it still lay on the table in front of us. I wanted him to be okay.
“You ghosted me,” I said softly.
Ben jumped back as though I’d pinched him, knocked one of the glasses and splashed beer on the varnished wood, across the blaring front page of the newspaper.
“And what will Dan say when he sees all your texts?” he sneered.
“Dan is a grown-up,” I said firmly. “He will understand that people see other people, that there’s sometimes an overlap. It isn’t exclusive until it’s exclusive. We had that chat. He was seeing other people when we met too.”
Ben just smiled at that. “I’m not ‘other people,’ though, Lizzie. I’m his best friend. And Dan will never love you the same way when he knows that you were in love with me.”
It felt like he’d punched me in the stomach.
When Dan got back to the table, he found us both sitting in silence staring at a puddle of craft ale, the chic weekend supplements sopping with it. Ben was looking out the window and I stared at the cuffs of my navy wool fisherman’s jumper as though they might show me a way out of the mess I had made for myself.
“What have you two been nattering about then?” Dan smiled as he slipped back into his seat, onto the bench between us, and draped an arm around my shoulders.
—
A few days later, Ben texted me and asked me to meet him after work in a bar near my office, the sort where managers take their receptionists in order to start affairs. Busy, anonymous. Not particularly pleasant.
As soon as I saw his sandy head bent over his phone at the table in the wooden booth, I felt the ghost of an attraction now gone tug in my stomach. When I sat, he took my hand, and my heart flipped a somersault. A sharp zap of voltage ran through me.
“Please, Lizzie,” he said. “Please. Don’t marry him. I’m in love with you.”
The response came easily, but even at this point—even after he had scared me, threatened me—I still felt like I was dragging the words out of myself. I loved Dan, but I thought I had loved Ben too. I told myself that I had spent a whole year actively loving Dan—planning a life with him, burrowing into his personality, exploring his hinterland, conjugating a whole new language with him. I had spent one night—really, only a matter of hours—loving a version of Ben that had turned out to be a figment of my infatuation.
“I’m sorry,” I said huskily, awkward but decisive. “I’m really sorry. I’m going to marry Dan in a few months, and I really hope that you and I can be friends. I know how much you mean to him.”
Ben dipped his head so low that all I could see was hair and the hollow of his nape. His shoulders began to shudder, and my stomach turned again—not for love of Ben but with the realization that he would always be there to remind me of this. How could I live by Dan’s side for the rest of my life and avoid him?
When he looked up again though, his blue eyes shone like ice rather than with tears.
“And how much do you think you’ll mean to him when he knows you’ve been sending me pictures of your tits?”
There had been just one picture—not long before Dan and I had met for our first date, but very much in advance, I’d believed at the time, of the thought of meeting somebody else, of me ever joining another dating app. I had been out and got home late, and drunk; the time difference meant Ben was at work. I thought it’d
