Lies, Love, and Breakfast at Tiffany's by Julie Wright

Author:Julie Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Shadow Mountain Publishing
Published: 2018-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

“Because I don’t love him, and he doesn’t love me.”

—Reggie Lampert, played by Audrey Hepburn in Charade

They danced two more dances, but as I watched, Ben kept Alison at a distance farther than he’d kept me while we’d been dancing. Shouldn’t he have held her closer? They laughed a little, but it seemed like Alison did most of the talking, and he only seemed to be half-listening, like his attention was somewhere else. The crease in his forehead appeared several times while they danced. The crease was Ben’s biggest tell for confusion. Why would he be confused? Was it something she said?

I sat back at the table and hated myself for staring at them. Toward the end of their last dance, Ben’s eyes fell on me and stayed on me. When the song ended, he pulled away from his date and moved in the direction of the table, even though Alison tugged on his hand and smiled as if to say, “Done already?”

He apparently was, because he didn’t hesitate in claiming the chair between me and one of Grandma’s friends from her new assisted-living villa, which meant Alison had no choice except to sit next to me on the other side—my blind side.

“Ben tells me you’re willing to have lunch with me and view my work sometime,” she said.

I had to turn my whole body to face her so I could actually see her. “Sure. We can do that sometime.”

Sometime, however, was not good enough. Alison seized the elusive and noncommittal sometime and was determined to pin me down for an exact date. I finally tugged my phone from my handbag, checked my calendar, and gave her a few dates to choose from. I shot a scowl in Ben’s direction, but with me turned away from him so completely, who knew if he saw or not, or what his response was if he did see.

Once Alison had my promise to meet her for lunch and an actual time and meeting place picked out, she turned her attentions entirely to Ben, directing the conversation to things they did in college, professors they had, crazy antics they got into trouble over. She mentioned things I knew Ben had mortality statistics on, but he never once said, “Your chances of dying from . . .”

For my part, I stayed silent. The conversation didn’t have anything to do with me and was awkward, considering that I sat between them but couldn’t see her at all. It was my own fault. I’d sat in a chair different from the one I’d occupied during dinner.

Grandma and Walt finished dancing and finally found their way back to the table. Ben turned his attention to Walt. They both had an apparent love of baseball, and Walt boasted owning a whole collection of signed balls from various famous ballplayers. He suggested that Ben come over to see his collection. Ben happily accepted the invitation.

Walt. Grandma’s boyfriend. I shook my head. Grandma’s boyfriend? Would that ever seem normal to say?

Alison

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