“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No. But we probably ought to.”
Isn’t that what mature people usually do? Talk about their problems and their feelings, and work through things?
“Do you…regret inviting me?” Ben asks softly.
I hesitate, then shake my head. “No. But…I didn’t expect to call you my boyfriend in front of my family.”
Ben gives a half smile. “Well, you are my boyfriend, aren’t you? Or I made a terrible faux pas and have been reading you wrong all of this time.”
“No, I mean…well, I guess we hadn’t talked about what we are to each other at this point. You’re about to go for weeks or months. And I’m gonna be back here, doing”—I gesture vaguely at the board with its deadlines and schedules and lengthy to-do list before staring down in the vicinity of my toes—“all of that.”
With a nod at the board, Ben pulls up in the wheelie chair in front of me. He takes my hand gently. “Forget all of that for a minute.”
Reluctantly, I look up him.
“Do you want to be my boyfriend, Charlie Renfrew?”
I can’t get over—don’twantto get over—the way he looks at me, so wanting and hopeful and open. It’s incredible.
What does he see when he looks at me?
“Yeah,” I whisper. “I do. I want that very much.”
And Ben’s smile is as golden and beautiful as ever.
“Well, I want you very much. For the record. In case you didn’t hear me back in Richmond.”
“I heard you say that. And a lot of other things.” Glum, I take him in, letting him play with my fingers.
“Tell me what’s on your mind.”
Where to start? Where to end? Don’t let me down now, nerves. We’ve come this far.
“Well, there’s a lot.”
“Start at the beginning,” Ben encourages. The way he says it, he makes it sound easy.
I squeeze my eyes shut. As much as I dread going back to this afternoon and rehashing the whole debacle in my mind, I know I need to. “I don’t know if I can go in order,” I admit at last. “But I can go by what’s important. And I’m so sorry my parents were complete jerks to you. I’m used to it, but it’s not fair to dump on you. And…I should have warned you more about what they’re like. Should have said not to bring up music—”
“Charlie, I’m with you to the point of not bringing up music.” Ben frowns. “But that’s a huge part of who you are. And who I am. It has to be talked about.”
“If it’s not Baroque, they don’t care. They’ll do Classical but they start getting twitchy around the late Romantics, so you know.”
“They only like music by dead musicians?” Ben asks finally.
“Something like that, yeah. I guess.”
“They should love so many twentieth century rockers, then. Like Morrison and Hendrix and hell, even Kurt Cobain.”
Despite my misery, I smile at the idea of my father retreating to his study to listen toNevermindby Nirvana. “Not this lifetime.”
“Well, their loss, then. But seriously, Charlie. Let’s get back to the point. Which is: you love music. It’s part of you. It’s part of me. We have that in common.”
I squirm. “Yeah, but rock music and me brings up bad memories for them of me being a teen and running out and sneaking into gigs and getting high. And inevitably getting into trouble.”
“We all make mistakes. You think I didn’t do any of those things when I was a lost fifteen-year-old, angry about my dad being in a wheelchair and the unfairness of that accident that put him there, and me working all the time to help my family? But all of these things, they don’t define us.”
