“Yes, Allison’s family. Who else?”
I exhaled, took a long sip from my own flute, and licked my lips. “I think I’m just going to go outside for a second. Get some air.”
I remember pushing my way through the crowded dining room, throwing shy smiles at my coworkers. It was strange, seeing them there, dressed in black. Their demure expressions and ill-fitting clothes; the way they stood huddled together, shoulders tense, in packs of three. It was almost like I hadn’t even realized they existed outside of the walls of the office, even though we had socialized together so many times before. It reminded me of one time in Beaufort when I had run into the liquor store and bumped into my childhood pastor; he was clutching a handle of vodka at nine in the morning, skin sagging, and didn’t even bother to hide it. It made me realize that we like to organize the people in our lives into tidy little compartments, keeping them there to make ourselves feel safe, so seeing my coworkers there, like that—ripped from our emotionless cubicles and conference rooms, wiping snot on their shirtsleeves and their eyes red and raw—felt unnatural and wrong, driving home the realness of it all.
I opened the back door and stepped onto the porch, the cool breeze feeling good on my face. It was warm in there, stuffy. Too small a house for too many people. Then I walked over to the porch steps and sat down, placing the champagne on the ground, and put my head in my hands.
“Isabelle?”
I swung around, hand to my chest, realizing I wasn’t alone. Ben was standing just to the side of the house, hidden behind some bushes, although I recognized his voice as soon as I heard it.
“Ben,” I said, standing up. “What are you doing?”
He lifted his arm, a cigarette lit between his fingers, and shrugged.
“I didn’t know you smoked.”
“I don’t.”
I took a few steps forward, glancing through the windows at the back of the house. Nobody was looking outside; they were all too busy mingling, gathering near an appetizer table arranged with plastic trays of sweaty cheese and baby carrots the texture of ashy elbows. They were eying the family pictures that cluttered up the walls—Allison on a soccer field, in a graduation cap, a wedding gown—shaking their heads and muttering the same recycled lines.
“Ben,” I said again, stepping off the porch and onto the grass, closer to him. We were hidden then, behind the house and beneath the trees. Nobody knew we were out there; nobody could see. “I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Thank you,” he said, sighing. He leaned his head back, his eyes on the sky. “I just had to get out of there. Away from … everybody.”
“I get that.”
“You have no idea how many people I’ve had to talk to over these last few days,” he said, looking back at me. His eyes looked so tired, like he hadn’t slept in a week.
“I can imagine,” I said, taking another step closer. And I could imagine. I had been through it before; or, at least, something similar.
“And the entire time,” he said, taking another drag of his cigarette, the tendons in his neck bulging, “I was just thinking about how badly I wanted to talk to you.”
I stopped mid-stride, unsure if I’d heard him correctly.
“I know I probably shouldn’t say that, especially here … but fuck, Isabelle. I don’t care anymore. I don’t. Life’s too short.”
There was a crash from somewhere inside, loud, like someone dropping a glass. I heard a sob erupt and peeked around the corner of the house, seeing a flutter of bodies through the window running to something—or rather, someone—on the ground. It was Allison’s mom, I realized, crumpled into a heap on the floor. She was kneeling in a pile of shards—a broken wineglass—with bloody knees, crying.
I motioned to the back door, mouth half-open, like he should get back inside, but Ben didn’t flinch. He didn’t move. He just kept looking at me, kept talking.
“These last couple years with Allison have been tough,” he said. “She had a problem, Isabelle. A problem I didn’t know how to handle. I tried to help her, but—”
He stopped, pinched the bridge of his nose. The cherry-red tip of his cigarette was dangerously close to his skin, and I was sure that he could feel it. The burn of it, right between his eyes.
“I came home from the office Monday night and found her on the bathroom floor. She was pale. Her eyes were open. That’s not the first time she had, you know … but this time, the way she looked, I just knew that she was—”