The Perfect Couple(108)

“Hey, Keira,” Marty says when she answers. “This is Marty Szczerba. I have a question for you.”

“Hey, Marty,” Keira says. Just the sound of her voice reminds Marty that he still harbors a terrific crush on Keira. “I have a question for you. When are you ever going to ask me out?”

Marty blinks. The phone grows warm in his hand. Featherleigh who? he thinks. “How about tonight?” he says.


Celeste texts Benji to let him know she’s taking a taxi back from the hospital.

I’ll just come get you! Benji says.

Please don’t, Celeste responds. Three dots appear and then a second text comes through. We can talk when I get back.

Benji feels suddenly hot and prickly, uncomfortable in his own skin for the first time in his life. How he longs to shed his identity at this moment. He no longer wants to be a Winbury. Celeste has obviously learned about Merritt and Tag. They were having some kind of affair, some kind of something—Benji couldn’t bear to press for details—but he has a feeling his father is to blame for Merritt’s death.

His own father.

You think your family is beyond reproach, Celeste had said. But you’re wrong.


Benji meets Celeste out in the driveway but she gives him a hollow look and says, “I need a minute, please, Benji. I have to talk to my parents.”

He says, “Your parents aren’t the priority right now, Celeste. I’m your fiancé. We were supposed to get married today.”

She walks right past him and into the house, and it’s all Benji can do not to follow behind her like a puppy dog.

Instead, he heads to the kitchen and watches Thomas pile a plate high with sandwiches and potato salad and summer fruit that the caterer had dropped off earlier that afternoon as scheduled—it was supposed to be the pre-wedding lunch—and when Thomas notices Benji staring at him, he says, “What? I’m hungry, and my wife is pregnant and needs food.”

Benji says in the calmest voice he can manage, “Is this Dad’s fault? Was he screwing her?”

“Sounds like it,” Thomas says matter-of-factly. He notices the look of disgust that crosses Benji’s face. “Oh, don’t be such an altar boy, Benny.”

Altar boy? Benji thinks. Does it make him an altar boy to expect his father to be a man of character and integrity, to not cheat on their mother with someone Benji’s age, someone who also happened to be Celeste’s best friend? “Did you know about this?” Benji asks.

“Not really,” Thomas says. “But I saw Dad in the bar at the Four Seasons downtown a few weeks ago and he hid from me. I figured something was going on.” Thomas blinks. “Now I know what that something was.”

Benji shudders. The Four Seasons downtown? It was like that, like an affair from a novel or a movie? Thomas disappears down the hall with his plate before Benji can ask what Thomas had been doing at the Four Seasons downtown.

He doesn’t want to know.

Benji loiters at the mail table at the bottom of the stairs until he hears Celeste leaving her parents’ room, then he races to the second floor and catches her right before she enters her/his/their bedroom. His bedroom that she was using as a bridal suite that will become their bedroom in this house.

“Celeste.”

She turns. “I need to lie down,” she says.

“I understand you’re tired,” he says. He lets her enter the room, follows her, then closes the door behind them.

“Benji,” she says.

Her wedding dress is hanging on the closet door; it’s as unsettling to him as a headless ghost. “You’re not going to marry me,” he says. “Are you? Like at all, ever?”

“No,” she says. “I’m sorry, Benji, I’m not.”

Benji’s entire body goes numb. He nods but he feels like his head is being pulled by a string. Celeste! He wants to talk her out of it. He wants to explain that she shouldn’t judge him by his family’s actions. He’s not his father. He’s not his brother. He’s a good, true person and he will love her forever.

But he stops himself. Every single thing that Benji has comes from his parents—the money, the apartment, the education, the advantages. To denounce his family, to deny his unconditional love for them, would be disingenuous, and Celeste would recognize it as such. He has taken the privilege for granted for twenty-eight years, and now he has to accept the shame.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

“I’m not sure,” she says. “Maybe take a trip. Maybe not.”

“I know it seems inconceivable right now,” Benji says, “but you will get past this. I don’t mean to say you’ll ever stop missing Merritt…”

“Benji,” Celeste says, and Benji clamps his mouth shut. He sounds like an ass. “My decision doesn’t have anything to do with Merritt.”

“It doesn’t?” he says.

She shakes her head. “It has to do with me.”

She doesn’t want to marry him.

He would like to say this comes as a complete shock, a wrecking ball out of nowhere—but it doesn’t.

“Your stutter is gone,” he says.

She smiles, sadly at first, but then with a touch of relief—or triumph. “Yes,” she says. “I know.”