“For years,” I mumbled without thinking, lost in the memory, “we’d gossiped about this person and that person and all the elephants in the room, and this time the elephant was me.”
“Hey, where’d you go? What was that all about?” Ben gently bumped my shoulder with his.
Ducking my head, I said, “Oh, it was nothing.”
“I don’t think it was. I wouldn’t think anything on your mind was nothing, Murph.”
Ben’s words were like a balm to my tortured soul. Pulling in a deep breath, I met his eyes.
“I’m not sure where you came from,” I blurted helplessly, “but I know I don’t deserve you.”
“Stop,” he said, and his lips met mine again.
A moan traveled up my throat, a reaction I could control even less than my verbal onslaught.
When big lights flicked on all around us, Ben pulled away with a frown. “We’ve gotta go. But let’s continue this at home.”
Squeezing my knee, he hopped off the back of the Jeep and helped me down. We quickly tossed the leftovers in the cooler, and of course, Ben walked me around to the passenger door.
“One more, okay?” he asked and swooped in for a toe-curling kiss without waiting for an answer. His tongue collided with mine, and I forgot about the spotlights being on and the cars all around us.
A quick blast from a horn made me jump in Ben’s arms, and he pulled me in tighter.
“Let’s roll. I’m not finished with you.”
Seated in the car, I watched Ben run around the front and hop in, ducking his head to slide his big frame inside the door, and I let a small sigh of happiness.
Ben fiddled with the radio as we pulled out of the lot and onto the road. It was blacker than black out, and for the briefest of seconds, I missed the bright lights and traffic of the city.
“This is so surreal,” I said, staring out the window. “Being out here in the darkness, driving along a pitch-black road . . . no taxis, no noise, no high heels clicking on the concrete.”
“I’m sure. I had all that noise when I was in Boston. It was energizing when I first arrived, but then I grew tired of it.”
“It feels like an extension of the old me. Of course, I miss the pace the most. I find it so hard to slow myself down sometimes.”
He nodded toward the classical music streaming from the radio. “That’s why I listen to this, especially when I operate. I may live here, but my job demands my hands and brain being fast. This slows me. It’s good for me, and my patients.”
“Bach,” I whispered.
“Yes, you know him too? Do you like this?”
I’d forgotten how many symphonies I’d attended as a middle schooler, and then again when I returned to New York from Pressman. “Classical tunes . . . I never would have thought. What else do you have up your sleeve? Show tunes?”
“Show tunes are definitely not my jam. This is, though. I guess I’m an old soul when it comes to music. I was wondering if you were too, that’s all.” His voice faded off in the end, like he was hopeful I was an old soul too. Like he’d found his people.
“It’s nice. Bach. I was sort of thrown into knowing it. My mom was, and still is, on the board for the symphony at home. It’s been her pet project for decades. We went a lot. Although, we had to go. I’m not even sure my mom likes classical music or would know an oboe from a clarinet, but she likes the prestige that comes with it.”
This made Ben laugh. His deep, raspy chuckle filled the car. “Why would she be on the board then? Just for the prestige? That’s what I don’t understand. I get that she did it for appearances’ sake, or your dad or whatever, but why? In the whole scheme of things, why live your life that way?”
Leaning my head back into the headrest, I closed my eyes. “That’s what we do. We do what we don’t want to because everyone is watching. You know in the movie Ocean’s Eleven, when Anthony Garcia says something like, ‘Someone is always watching in my casino?’”
Ben nodded without interrupting.
“That’s my life. Someone is always watching. Was, I guess,” I said. The words came flooding out of my mouth faster than women running into a surprise sample sale on Fifth Avenue. “Now that I’ve been excommunicated and shunned and won’t fall on my sword, it probably doesn’t matter anymore.”
“What happened?” Ben turned his head for a second and then back toward the darkened road. A pair of headlights hovered in the rearview, but nothing came from the other direction.
Disbelieving, I glanced at him. “You really didn’t google me?”
“Nah. I don’t do that.”
“It’s amazing to me how genuine you are. And always have been.”
“It’s called being a real person. I have feelings, emotions, and I live by them.”
“That’s how I’m trying to be. Better to myself, gentler on my insides, kinder on the outside. Does that make sense?”
He nodded, again not interrupting.
I watched him push his hair out of his eyes and wanted to move the conversation to something lighter, like why doesn’t he get his hair cut? But my heart wouldn’t let me.
Resigned to finally having this conversation, I said, “You know I worked at Columbia. In student advising.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Well, it was a cushy job in the business school, highly sought after, and I landed it as my first job out of college. Family name, strings pulled, all of it.”
I cleared my throat and stared at Ben’s profile, trying to gauge his reaction. He appeared to remain nonplussed, keeping his eyes on the road, but his features relaxed.
“I moved
