BENJY
Few things ruffled Benjy’s feathers like fighting with his sister. He and Ore had always shared a closeness that he lacked with his brother. She was vulnerable with him and he could often read her moods well enough to know when something was on her mind.
It was interesting that while he was good at being a brother to his baby sister, he was terrible at being a committed boyfriend or a husband to someone’s daughter.
He felt terrible at hearing her ‘confession’ about what had happened all those years ago, and even though he knew she was a child when she did what she did, he had expected some kind of remorse from her in the present. He had seen how differently their father treated Ore, how gentle he was with her, how understanding and…capable. With the boys, he was all sharp edges and uncompromising expectations whereas with Ore he was malleable, willing to bend and maneuver to get her what she needed.
Benjy had seen all these, but he hadn’t known that Ore had been successfully blinded by their father’s two-facedness. How had she not seen that the same hands he used to pamper her were the ones he used to intimidate their mother?
How blind, how naive could she be?
Whenever he thought about their conversation, he felt a mix of sadness and anger. He had driven straight to his office because he had been too wired to go home. He had even gotten some work done thanks to the adrenaline rushing through his veins. It wasn’t until he got home that evening that he remembered the real reason he had called Ore for a chat.
**
“Hello?” her voice was tentative on the other end of the phone.
“Hi Lizzy,” he said. “How have you been?”
There was a slight pause, “I’ve been better.”
“Are you feeling…okay?” he had been doing some reading about pregnancies and according to Google, the first trimester was often the worst.
“I’m okay. I don’t…know.”
“You don’t sound okay. Do you want me to come over?”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?”
“I mean why would you want to come over?”
“To check on you, Liz. You sound…off.”
Her laugh was a cynical sound. “Now you care about how I sound?”
“Lizzy, please. I’m worried.”
She sighed, “fine. Come over.”
**
Her apartment was how he remembered it. A wave of nostalgia hit him as he stepped in. Everywhere he looked, there was a memory of them doing…things. Her two-seater couch, which she had taken residence on now, had once borne the weight of both of them writhing and groaning in pleasure.
It seemed like another lifetime, where they both hadn’t had any care except about each other’s bodies, desires, and needs.
Lizzy always called him a sensitive lover like she had had many and he was the best of the crop. It hadn’t bothered him then, the feeling of being compared to other men. He didn’t care to know about her past or how many men she had been with, just like he didn’t expect her to care about his sex life.
They were concerned about the present, about the moments they could find with each other. That is…until Lizzy began to want more. More knowledge, more information about him. More than he was willing to give. And then he’d walked away, said his goodbyes in his head not through his mouth because he never knew how to put into words the fact that he was leaving because he was too scared to stay.
She didn’t have a dining table but there was a small, round bar table with two bar stools around it that was a great place to have a meal or a drink. During their short-lived ‘relationship’, they had eaten at that table maybe two or three times and it had always been food that they ordered.
She never cooked for him, and he never expected it. In his thinking, the less the women gave, the better it was. He walked away feeling no guilt at having led anyone on to believe that what they had was sustainable.
They had shared kisses over meals at the table, though. Because of how tiny it was, it encouraged tender moments and intimacy that shook him. The first few times they had eaten at the table, it had felt…risky. They sat too close to each other and when they looked up from their meals, their eyes found each other’s and there was awkward laughter like two teenagers before they looked away again.
After the third time, when she reached over and touched his hand, and they found themselves kissing, Benjy knew it was time to move all meals to the living room, sprawled on the floor next to the couch. And so, the next time they ordered in, he had suggested casually that they sit on her tiled floor.
“Are you going to stand all day?” Lizzy’s voice cracked his memories.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts. He never thought he would see the inside of her house again so it was surreal in a way, to be here.
He took the single couch opposite her and then took a long look at her. She looked like she had lost some weight since he last saw her a few weeks ago. Her eyes had sleep bags underneath them, and her face was devoid of makeup. She had a cloth wrapped around her even though her living room was warm.
“How…how are you?” he asked.
“What do you think?”
“Lizzy, please. Can we just…talk? Let me…let’s talk without hostility, please.” he was tired. Tired of fighting, tired of pretending that this didn’t exist.
She looked at him then, and her eyes filled. She began to sob.
Benjy might have been clueless about what to do with women and pregnancies, but he knew what to do with a crying woman. How many times had he comforted his sister? Or even his mother?
He moved from his couch and settled beside Lizzy, letting his arm wrap around her shoulder. She moulded into him, fitting the curve of his arm perfectly. She seemed smaller, younger and more vulnerable and Benjy felt a pang of guilt.
“I’m struggling,” she said, through tears. “I don’t know what to do. I feel so alone and ashamed of myself. I’m sick all the time, can’t eat, can’t sleep…just, I’m tired. This isn’t how I pictured my life at this stage. I am so confused, Benjy. I don’t know what to do. Maybe you’re right…maybe I can’t do this. Maybe this isn’t the right thing for me right now.”
She glanced up at him, her eyes brimming with tears, snot threatening to exit her nose.
“Maybe I need to consider ending this now,” she said.
