Page 71 of Forget About Me

“Yeah, we did pretty good,” Vinnie says before stuffing a huge mouthful of garlic bread into his mouth.

“Yes, you did,” I agree, smiling at my dad. “Thank you, Papa.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart.” His eyes are a bit damp too. “Now eat up. If you’re not quick, Sal there’ll start stealing from your plate.”

Lying next to Ben in his bed later that evening, I say, “This is almost perfect.” We’re fully clothed and have just been chatting about our respective days, but it’s nice. We never did this before.

He rolls over to his side, flops an arm across my waist and hauls me in to spoon my body. “Almost?” he huffs. “Seems pretty perfect to me.”

“Well, there are a few things I wish were different.”

He bends his elbow and rests his cheek on his palm. “Like?”

“Oh, that I didn’t spend so much time in the car. That I wasn’t going to lose you to the theater all weekend?—?”

“Or that you didn’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to go to work tomorrow?”

Just the thought of it has me yawning. “There’s that too.”

He strokes a finger across my furrowed brow. I’m about to addThat I wasn’t worried about what happens next,when he says, “Remember how Tony used to wrestle me to the ground and fart in my face?”

“Ugh. He did that to me too. It was disgusting.” Even as I shudder at the memory—which unfortunately hits me in Sensurround—another follows it. “What was that he used to call you in middle school? After he had that growth spurt but you were still short?”

Ben flops onto his back and throws an arm across his face. “Oh god. Beanie. His little Beanie.” He grunts. “He said it was to stop kids from calling me ‘Been-a-dick,’ but…”

I peek under his elbow. “But it backfired?”

He nods. “Kids just started calling me Teeny-Weeny Beanie.” With a sigh, he shakes his head. “Tony could sometimes be kind of a dick.”

I sit up. “Kind of? Sometimes? He was a jerk. I mean, I loved him, but I also hated him half the time.” Tears gather in the back of my throat. Swallowing past them, looking at the ceiling, I say, “He was such a protector, you know? Like nobody else could say anything bad about me. But at home, especially when my parents weren’t around, he would do the meanest things.”

Ben brushes a curl off my forehead. “Like what?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Call me Pizza Face when I had a pimple. Or remember when he chopped the heads off my Barbies, one by one? He’d leave the naked body lying in gross positions in the yard and he’d hang the heads by the hair. And he never got in trouble. He’d tell my parents that I’d left it outside and some animal had gotten to it. They always believed him.”

Ben sits up to face me. “He used to make me stand at the end of your upstairs hall with a pillow strapped to my front. He’d shoot tennis balls at me with a lacrosse stick. Supposedly it was good for me.”

Weird giggles escape past my lips. “I’m sorry I’m laughing. But I think I remember that. You made some weird sounds.”

He coughs out a laugh. “Yeah, especially when he’d hit me in the balls.”

“He was an asshole!”

“He really was.”

Suddenly we’re both laughing hysterically, but we can’t stop coming up with things he did to us.

“When I was seven, he told me that Santa died in a terrible sleigh accident!”

“When we started high school, he told me that the water fountains would give you venereal diseases.” He shakes his head. “I was thirsty all the time.”

Our laughter fades eventually. After a few beats of silence, Ben takes a deep breath. “Lucy, I?—?”

Before he can go on, Puck starts barking his head off. We both sit up. He usually sleeps on the couch, but right now he’s scratching at the door and howling.

“What the fuck?” Bens jumps out of bed, and I hear him shushing the dog before opening the door. The door closes behind him, and Puck whines. I’m starting to get worried, when the door opens and closes and Ben says, “Good boy.”

“What was it?”

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