FOR A few seconds, the fact that some woman is kissing Bennett does not register with me. Emily is babbling in my ear but I don’t hear her. I just feel a surge of emotions that leave me feeling breathless.
The woman ends the kiss and tilts her face slightly towards him as he is looking down at her but his expression is blank. Emily tugs my arm hard, asking me something. I don’t want to see anymore.
“Hey,” Emily cries out, “who is that chick he’s making out with?”
She is so loud that even over the music, Bennett hears her. At the last second, as I turn around to tug Emily away, he looks up. I feel his eyes land on me but I am already facing away from him, anxious not to speak to him. I can’t even sort out what I am feeling right now.
My goal is to blend in with the crowd. Emily has gotten trashed so quickly that part of me just wants to pile her into the car and take her home. But she is having fun and I don’t want to be the sort of best friend that puts my own needs before hers. I decide I’ll take her down by the docks and hope she likes being down there instead.
The band is in the middle of playing an incredibly loud song. We are close to the stage and the music makes my ear drums thrum. Emily says something to me but her voice is lost in the music.
We are halfway across the square when suddenly someone yanks on me. Emily exclaims something I can’t hear and I turn around. Bennett is looking down at me. He says something but I merely shrug. His words are taken away in the music, lost in the crowd. He tries shouting this time – I can tell by the way his mouth moves – but I can’t make anything out.
He looks frustrated. Emily is bobbing to the music, oblivious. He motions over to the docks, where I was heading anyway. I nod and together, the three of us try to make our way through the crowd. Once we get through the worst of it, we are in front of an ice cream store and we stop.
“I didn’t know you were here,” he says to me. “I didn’t see you.”
“Here I am,” I reply.
I am aware that Emily is nearby. Even though she is drunk, I can’t imagine her not picking up on some of this. She is on her phone now, looking engrossed. I realize I should probably stop her because she might drunkenly text Adam.
“You looked angry with me and when I saw you storm off –” someone jostles into Bennett and he practically falls into me, “Stephanie saw you.”
“Who the hell is Stephanie?” I reply, sounding more irritated than I wanted to.
“The girl I was with. Anyway, she saw you and I wanted to speak to you–”
“So, what, exactly? If she saw me, and you’re with her, why are you here?”
“We haven’t spoken since that night,” he says to me, lowering his voice so I strain to hear it. “Don’t you think we should?”
“Why? It is pretty clear you’re already seeing this Stephanie person.”
His features darken, “Why don’t you let me explain before you decide you know what is going on?”
The song ends. In the few seconds of silence we have before the next track will kick up, all I hear is the murmuring of the crowd. Someone next to me has come out of the ice cream shop with a huge ice cream cone. The bright blue color of the ice cream distracts me for a moment as I debate what to do.
“April?” Bennett presses.
Suddenly, I realize that Emily is not near me. Alarmed, I look around.
“I have to find Emily,” I say to him. “Do you –?”
A song kicks up, startling me. Even though I can hear Bennett where we are, I need to find Emily. She is drunk and a mess of emotions and can’t be alone right now. Whatever this man has to tell me, about us, or Stephanie, can wait. I don’t want my best friend out there, drunk and alone.
I move past Bennett. Our shoulders brush together and even though the touch isn’t on bare skin, I still flinch. I quickly walk away from him, heading off down the pathway where Emily might have wandered off to. She had just been on her phone, after all, and maybe she wanted to call Adam away from all the noise.
I leave Bennett behind and try to find her. On the way, I ask a few groups of wandering people if they have seen her. In the third group, a tall, lanky looking man nods.
“Saw a girl like that head down to the docks. I think she was crying.”
I take off in that direction as my heart is pounding although I don’t know if it is because of Bennett or Emily. The docks are almost empty – since the sun has set, there is no one setting out and no one trying to clean their boats. I see her almost instantly. She is at the end of dock number five, looking out at the water.
I jog up to her. She doesn’t seem to hear me. I can tell by the way her shoulders are moving that she is crying to herself.
“Em?” I say slowly, not wanting to scare her.
It takes a few seconds for Emily to turn her tear-stained face to me. Her hands are empty.
“What are you doing down here?” I ask, relieved that she isn’t hurt. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“I was going to text Adam,” Emily replies, her voice sounding hollow, “but I knew it was a bad idea. So I came here. I threw my phone in the water.”
She’s going to regret that when she sobers up, I think to myself, but I merely nod my head and stand next to her. It is an oddly cold night and the wind coming off the water is a bit chilly.
“Do you want to go home?” I ask her.
She shrugs. “I think I’m drunk.”
“You are. It’s okay, though, I’m here.” I try to smile at her and she gives me a tiny smile back in return.
“I’ve been thinking,” Emily says, and she slurs the ends of her words slightly, “about my dad. About how sick he is… in the head. What if I end up like that?”
“You won’t.”
“We don’t know that though, April. We get a lot of stuff from our parents. What if… what if that’s why I can’t figure out what I want to do with my life? I’m too fucked up.”
“Emily, you know that isn’t true,” I tell her and turn her away from the water. “Let’s go home, okay? No more of this.”
I can tell she wants to tell me more but I think the best thing for her now is to get her safely home and in bed. She is swaying, as if the wind is going to knock her over. I grip her hand tightly and we leave the dock. Emily is silent the entire time. We get in my car and I make a mental note that I am going to have to pick up her car tomorrow.
The drive home is silent. Emily falls asleep almost instantly, which leaves me to thinking about Bennett. I think about how this Stephanie woman kissed him so easily. Who is this woman? Where did she just magically appear from, going on a date with Bennett?
I know I should be furious but after taking care of Emily all night, plus trying to figure out what my sister, Spencer, is up to, I just feel exhausted. Emily lets out a loud snore next to me as I wait at a red light. In a couple of days, I have the yacht launch with Anderson. I need to be preparing for that, not dwelling on what is going on with me and Bennett.
Emily stirs a little but doesn’t wake up. I glance at her as the light turns green. I think back to her life. She has never told me before that she worries she will end up like her father. How long has she been worried about that? It is hard to see her so upset over losing Adam. I am glad that she blew off some steam tonight but it is going to take time to get her on her feet again.
I manage to get her awake and back in bed without any issues. She falls asleep almost right away. I close her bedroom door and head to the kitchen. I go through the process of staring in the fridge, closing it, going to the cupboard, and then opening the fridge again. Part of me is starving and another part of me is ready for bed. Unsure what to do, I end up staring at the same box of instant mashed potatoes for what feels like ages.
Finally, in the silence of the apartment, I go back to Bennett. He did come after me, wanting to talk. That counts for something – maybe. He was still there with this Stephanie woman, letting her kiss him. But he’s always been a playboy. Even I know that. Maybe it is just my own mistake for letting myself get caught up in him.
“It’s for the best,” I say aloud to myself, hoping I believe it. I mean, wasn’t I just thinking that the two of us were on different paths? Things wouldn’t work out for us anyway. So, if he is going to be dating someone else, it isn’t any business of mine. We never made anything concrete or future plans together. Maybe we just slept together to get rid of all those years of irritating, sexual tension. Now we can both move on.
But even as I think this, I wonder why my chest feels so hollow.