“You hardly know me. It’s only been a few days.”
“Well, it doesn’t feel that way. At least not to me.” He picks up his wine glass and takes a swig. “Anyway, time is just a construct.”
In spite of herself, Greta laughs. But Ben is still serious.
“Look, I’m sure it’s more complicated than it seems,” he says, leaning toward her again. “And it’s not like you owe me an explanation. But I can’t help thinking you don’t want to deny it because you’re still in love with the guy.”
“I’m not,” Greta says flatly.
“Then what?”
“You just said I don’t owe you an explanation.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it again, looking caught out. “Well, I guess I lied. Can you at least tell me more about Luke? Why’d you end things with him?”
She sighs. “Why do you want to know?”
“I just do.”
“This isn’t a relationship. We don’t have to do the thing where we talk about our exes. Especially when yours isn’t quite so ex.”
“Okay, fine. What do you want to know about her?” he asks, looking like someone about to submit to a drug test. He downs the rest of his wine, then pours himself some more. “I’ll tell you anything.”
Greta gives him an exasperated look. “I said we don’t have to do that.”
“Come on,” he says, and then he actually claps his hands. “Give me your best shot.”
“Fine. What was her least favorite thing about being married to you?”
He looks surprised, then he laughs. “Okay, I changed my mind. This is a terrible idea.”
“I told you,” she says, smiling at him. His eyes are shiny in the light, and he looks younger in his shirtsleeves, undeniably attractive, but also so unassuming it’s easy to miss it.
Greta thinks about what he’d said earlier, about what would happen if they’d met in New York. She’d gone straight to picturing him at one of her shows, a fish out of water, but now a new image starts to assemble itself in her mind: Ben making a pot of tea at her stove, the two of them reading in bed together, walking through Tompkins Square Park with ice cream on one of those perfect New York days.
The fact that she’s never done—or even wanted—any of this before doesn’t strike her as odd. It wouldn’t have made sense with any of the other guys she’s dated. Jason, because he was always working. And Luke, because he thought he was too cool. Her college boyfriend, Wesley, existed almost entirely in his dorm room, smoking pot or playing videogames. And the few minor relationships she’d had in her twenties—Ryan the digital ad guy, and Pablo the coder, and Ian the hedge fund manager—hadn’t lasted long enough to reach that phase where even the most mundane things feel special in the right company.
But with Ben, she can somehow imagine it. And though she knows it’s less a personal fantasy than an amalgamation of every romantic comedy she’s ever seen, every love story she’s ever been told, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come from someplace hopeful or wistful or true. Maybe even someplace genuine.
Underneath the table, she bumps her knee lightly against his, a conciliatory gesture. “It’s not about Luke,” she says. “This whole thing. It’s about me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m in kind of a weird moment. It’s hard to explain. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just embarrassing.” She sighs. “I hate this part.”
“What?” Ben asks. “Being embarrassed? If it makes you feel any better, right before you got here, I realized I had toilet paper stuck to my shoe.”
Greta shakes her head. “No, opening up to new people. Don’t you ever wish you could skip forward, like on a record, and know everything without having to go through the motions?”
“God, no,” he says. “I love this part. It’s like conducting research before you sit down to actually write. You find all these interesting facts and random ideas, but you still don’t know exactly what they’ll turn out to be yet. It’s all possibility.”
Without thinking about it, Greta kisses him, one hand on his knee, the other on the table, the starry lights all around them. When she leans back again, she takes a deep breath and says, “My mom died suddenly, and then I broke up with Luke, also suddenly, and then I tried to perform a song I’d only just written and fell apart onstage—like, really fell apart—and the video went viral, and the critics trashed the song, and my new album got pushed, and I completely stopped performing, which is the part I’ve always loved most, and it was only supposed to be for a little while, but now it’s been three months, and I haven’t been onstage once, and I’ve got to play Gov Ball this weekend, and the label is worried I’ll go rogue again, so they want me to stick to the script, showcase the new album, play some of the hits, and basically make a clean break from what happened last time, since they’re counting on the livestream to get things back on track, but I’m starting to wonder if that’s not the right move here, if maybe Mary is right and the only way out is through, and I owe it to myself to try again, but at this point, I’m worried that no matter what I play, I’ll fall apart for a second time because I’m still kind of a mess, and if it goes badly again, I’m honestly not sure my career can survive it, and then everything else will come crashing down too because it’s pretty much my entire identity, and honestly, I really hate the idea of my dad being right about it all, not to mention everyone else who doubted me along the way, especially Mitchell Kelly, who heckled me when I played ‘Lithium’ at the eighth-grade talent show, even though he’s probably working some depressing desk job now and would never listen to music as cool as mine, and before you say anything, I realize this is all psychological, but it feels very, very real at the moment, especially the fear, which is something that was never an issue for me before, and yeah, maybe I’m lucky to have gotten this far on hard work and sheer nerve and blind fucking faith, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want more, because I do, I want so much more, and I keep thinking about this profile that Rolling Stone did of me a little while back, with the headline GRETA JAMES IS FLYING HIGH, and this picture of me floating up in the clouds, and how lately, it’s felt like just the opposite, like I’m sinking fast, and if I don’t do something, I might never be able to pull out of it, which I have to—I have to—because the only thing I know for sure is that I’m not ready to come down yet. Not by a long shot.”
She pulls in a shaky breath, and Ben stares at her for what feels like a long time.
“What,” he says finally, “is Gov Ball?”