Page 8 of Because of You
Hallie
Isit with my friends and my sisters, their conversations buzzing around me while I stay mostly silent. They are all a little tipsy and don’t seem to notice that I have barely said a word in the hour we have been sitting at the table. My feelings are all so close to the surface. If I open my mouth, I’m sure they’ll all come tumbling out, like they almost did with Ben.
I can’t believe I almost blurted out all of my deepest, darkest, ‘I’m in over my head because I don’t think I want to do the thing that I have been planning for years to do but I don’t know how to tell anyone and get out of it without losing my best friends and if I don’t do this, what the hell else would I do’ secrets to Ben. And I would have done it if Jo and Hannah hadn’t interrupted, even though I have been keeping this secret for more than a year. I’ve been keeping most of my secrets, if I’m being honest.
I rarely share. I don’t go deep with people about my feelings. It’s not in my nature. It’s not that I don’t want to, more that I don’t know how. I never have. I have feelings. Big ones. A lot of them. But I’ve never been able to open my mouth and let them out the way other people can. The way I see my sisters and friends do all the time. It’s like everyone else took some class asa kid that taught them how to say, “I’m struggling right now, and I need to talk about it.”
It’s ridiculous that I’m a twenty-nine-year-old woman and I don’t know how to ask for help, or how to let the people who love me support me. I like to please the people in my life, and I don’t like to burden anyone with my shit. I mostly shy away from conflict, and I just let things ride when I should confront them head on.
I always keep things inside, and when I struggle, I struggle alone. I’m fascinated and a little jealous of my sisters and their ability to talk about their feelings in a way that lets my parents support them. Or the easy way my friends let loose and lean on the rest of us. Or of people who can confront someone who upsets them. I’m great at supporting other people, but I can never figure out how to get that support for myself. And I think not being able to ask when I need it, or to say what I really think, keeps the people closest to me from really knowing me all the way down. I know all this, and yet, I don’t know how to change it.
Which is why my desire to unload on Ben at the bar is so surprising. Sometimes I think that it isn’t my parents or sisters or Julie who know me best—it’s Ben. When I do try to talk to someone, it is often him before it’s Julie. Julie’s particular brand of certainty and her tendency to bulldoze through life is enormously intimidating. Ben is the opposite of that. He is quiet and steady. He is a good listener with an uncanny ability to know when I want advice and when I just want someone to listen. And he was right there. His blue eyes calm and understanding and so damn familiar that it made my chest actually ache with the need to tell him everything. I want to lay my head on his shoulder, knowing that he is strong enough to hold me up. And I need someone to hold me up. Because I’m sinking.
“Earth to Hallie!” Julie waves her hand in front of my face. “Where did you go, girl?”
My head snaps up, and I see five pairs of eyes looking at me, all with the same glazed expression that is alcohol mixed with sheer exhaustion. I would look the same if I had taken more than three sips of the margarita in front of me.
“Sorry…I zoned out there for a minute. I’m just tired. I didn’t sleep much last night, and all the adrenaline of the day wearing off is getting to me.”
Before Julie can say anything else, Jeremy saunters up to the table, all dark hair and brilliant blue eyes and easygoing smile and muscles for days. Ben’s best friend might not be a professional hockey player anymore, but he sure still looks like one.
“Another round, ladies?” he asks. And then, for some reason, he arrows his gaze at Emma. “Em, I have the sugar for your margarita glass rim waiting for you behind the bar.”
“Oh…um…oh. Okay,” stammers Emma. She ducks, her face now bright red, so she is staring at the table. Emma isn’t the best at talking to people who aren’t either us or her clients, but getting this flustered is unlike her.
“So that’s a yes?” Jeremy asks, patiently waiting her out.
“Yes. Wait. No. No more. Drinks. No more drinks. I’m done. We’re done. I think. Right? Fuck,” she mutters under her breath, glancing desperately around the table with asave meexpression on her face.
Molly snickers and comes in for the save. Emma rarely swears, so if she’s dropping a “fuck,” she’s desperate.
“Maybe we should call it a night?” asks Molly. “I just thought of a new configuration for the waiting room furniture, and I want to sketch it out before I go to bed.”
Julie rolls her eyes but says nothing. Even she knows that Molly is going to move the damn furniture at least ten more times over the next six months. Talking her out of it is a waste of time.
“Jer, we’ll settle up with Ben at the bar,” Molly says.
“You absolutely will not do that. Our best girls don’t pay in our bar on the day they buy an office and start a law firm. Your money is no good here. You, too, Jo and Han. It’s on us. Enjoy the rest of your night—proud of you,” Jeremy says with a smile. “See you later, Em, and thanks for the thing.” He waves and walks back to the bar.
In one motion, all five of our heads turn towards Emma. “Um, what was that all about?” asks Molly.
“What’s the thing?” Julie adds.
“Ugh, it’s nothing. He just emailed me a couple days ago to review some documents for his foundation.” Emma’s practice specializes in nonprofit organizations, so it makes sense that Jeremy would go to her. But there is something in the way he was focused on her that has my instincts humming.
“It was no big deal—all we did was email back and forth a little. I don’t know why I have so much trouble talking to him.”
“Because he’s fuck-hot and clearly likes you,” Jo declares, blunt as always.
“Definitely,” says Hannah. “He practically smoldered. I would kill to have someone look at me the way he just looked at you.”
“Seriously? Not possible. And he smolders at everyone. I’m like, a decade younger than him and he’s got all that going on.” Emma gestures to Jeremy behind the bar, his back to us as he reaches up to grab a liquor bottle on the top shelf. “And I’m just me.”
“Seven years, which is absolutely not a decade, but okay.” Molly unlocks her phone and opens the Uber app. “I’ll refrain from pointing out all the ways what you said is wrong. And I won’t tell you how gorgeous and brilliant and successful you are and how I would kill for boobs like yours because we’re tired and halfway drunk and tomorrow is another day. Come on, Em; thecar is five minutes away.” She and Emma stand up and hug Julie and me and then Jo and Hannah.
Molly and Emma live in a house on Walnut Street that had long ago been subdivided into two separate apartments. All four of us lived in one of them together during law school and for the first couple of years after graduation. Two years ago, I bought a townhouse in Shadyside, and then, soon afterwards, Julie did the same. Emma and Molly stayed put. Last year when the landlord wanted to sell both apartments, Emma bought the one we had been living in, and Molly bought the other. It’s still kind of weird to be living alone after all the time we spent living together, but there are times when I’m grateful for the privacy. Like, say, when I am in the middle of an existential crisis.
“Bye, favorite ladies!” Molly blows us a dramatic air kiss. Then, with a wave at Ben and Jeremy, and a dramatic nudge to Emma’s side when Jeremy waves back, they turn towards the door.
