Ben understood that wound. When she explained her parents’ divorce shortly after her birth, he only nodded. He already spoke the language of a loveless home. Some wealthy families made a hobby of quiet cruelty, and Ben’s parents were just like hers. It took her too long to realize he wanted to continue his father’s legacy.
Charlotte took a deep breath. Before her confidence could fail her, she asked, “Can I say something that’s been bothering me?”
“Yeah, please.” Reece rushed to reassure her.
She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she chose her words with care. “You were a bit snide on Thursday when…when I said I was recovering from my relationship with Ben.”
Reece sat up on his towel, a wet lock of hair falling across his forehead. She longed to reach up and brush it back, but she braced herself for him to get defensive.
Instead, he kept his expression controlled, not letting his emotions leak out. He chose his words as deliberately as she did. “I’m sorry. Breakups are hard. I shouldn’t have been dismissive.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Charlotte ran her hand down Misty’s coat, unsticking clods of dirt. The dog stared at her with those big brown puppy eyes, giving her nothing but love. “I wasn’t heartbroken. I was recovering from…trauma, I guess?”
Reece folded his legs up to his chest and rested his chin on his knees. She had his full attention.
Charlotte took another deep breath. The word trauma felt self-indulgent, a Lifetime Channel for Women overstatement. She associated trauma with plane crashes and child abductions, not the obnoxious behavior of college boyfriends. It still felt like exaggerating to claim it as her own.
But she was getting ahead of herself.
Use your words, Charlotte Thorne.
“Our relationship was not great.”
Reece’s mouth turned into a hard line. He waited a moment before asking, “Did he hurt you?”
Charlotte concentrated on Misty as she considered her words. “Not physically.”
It had been a long time since she’d talked about Ben. These days Jackie preferred to pretend Charlotte’s ex-boyfriend was simply dead.
But he wasn’t dead. Ben was very much alive, and successful, and maybe within a five-mile radius of this conversation. Charlotte reflexively scanned the quarry for his blond hair.
Reece seemed to figure out what she was looking for, his brow furrowing. “I always thought the guy was a snob, but I didn’t know him. Do you want to tell me about it? About him?”
No.
Maybe.
Reece’s face was blank. She suspected he would keep it that way.
And, well, he asked. No one ever asked.
“I can start from the beginning,” Charlotte said. He nodded, and she took a deep breath. “Okay. Junior year, Jackie went to Paris for fall semester. I had to stay here to finish requirements for my sociology minor. I missed her more than I expected. Obviously, I had other friends, but we’d been inseparable for two years and I was lost without her.” She gave Reece a weak smile. “Probably some codependency issues there.”
“Who among us?” Reece joked, and she laughed.
The levity didn’t last. She ran a fingernail along the soft skin of her thumb, the sharp bite grounding her. “That’s when I met Ben,” she continued. “He was intense. I’ve never known anyone like him.”
She liked it in the beginning. Ben Mead didn’t do anything by halves. With Jackie away on study abroad, Charlotte’s world hollowed out, and Ben leapt in to fill the void. He saw her standing off to the side at a party for the newspaper staff, and he chatted her up, remembering a portrait she’d drawn of him. When they went home together that night she assumed it was a one-night stand. But as sunlight crept into his bedroom at the Sigma Delt frat house, he tucked her hair behind her ear and said, This is something real. I already know.
When she got back to her room at Acronym the next day, a bouquet of roses waited for her on the mat. On Friday, he took her out for Thai food off campus. I’m a feminist, he told her as he dropped a metal credit card on top of the check. But as long as there’s a wage gap, men should pay for dinner.
They talked about everything: the future of journalism, her favorite classic movie posters, his political ambitions, their families. After years of campus hookup culture, everyone competing to care the least, Ben’s seriousness disarmed her. It scared her a little too, but Ben assured her that was her fear of commitment talking.
It’s not your fault you don’t know what love looks like, he said. Your parents didn’t teach you.
And then there were the Faber-Castell colored pencils as a one-month anniversary present, and Thanksgiving with his family in Tahoe. She got swept away. Finally Charlotte got to experience the kind of love that Nina and Eliza had, the Technicolor joy she always worried she wasn’t born to feel. Ben didn’t just create space for her in his world; he made her its center. He wasn’t afraid to want her. To show up for her. To know everything about her.
But as the first snow fell on the eaves of Acronym, Ben’s intensity showed a different side.
“I guess you could say he was clingy.” Her thumb returned to her mouth, her teeth snagging a torn cuticle. An old fear returned that she was exaggerating, or that she misunderstood Ben’s behavior. It wasn’t like she had much relationship experience to compare him to. She’d had partners before and since Ben, but none that felt that serious, that intense. It was hard not to see him as her only Real Relationship.
Charlotte did her best to set her doubt aside. Jackie told her again and again that her feelings mattered and that she wasn’t making it up. She couldn’t smear Ben’s reputation in the privacy of her own mind.
“No, it was worse than that,” she said. “He was controlling and manipulative. When I told him I needed more alone time, he said I was being selfish. If I told him he hurt my feelings, he said I was too sensitive. He could turn every conversation around and make me the bad guy.”
Her throat tightened and she stopped for a second to breathe. The wound in her chest smarted and ached. Ben’s words sounded crisp and new, burned into her memory.
You’re so pathetic, Charlotte. Christ, what’s wrong with you?
“He made me feel crazy,” she breathed.
Reece recaptured Misty’s tail and rolled her fur between his fingers, listening in silence.
“I should have seen through it. I did see through it. But he told me I didn’t know what a real relationship was because of my parents. That I was lucky he was so patient and understanding. And I believed him.”
That hurt more than Ben’s words: She felt complicit in his behavior. Every so often she stirred as if from a deep sleep and saw their relationship clearly, only to get sucked back in again. She didn’t want to know. Finally, someone had chosen her. Finally, she was ready to be chosen. Finally, someone loved her, and it felt so good when it didn’t feel horrible.
The illusion of their relationship took more work to maintain when it had a witness. “Jackie saw right through it,” Charlotte said. “When she got back from Paris in January, she just…she hated him. But I didn’t want to hear it, you know? I loved him and Jackie didn’t know him. That’s what I told myself.”
