Ben sounded so sure. And Ari knew it didn’t help – hadn’t ever helped, maybe – to think this way, about deserving, but there was something about hearing it from other people’s voices that made it sounded truer than thinking it in his own head.
From here, Ari almost believed it. He tried to believe it anyway, intentionally let his shoulders and his eyes soften. What they had had between them had been good, maybe, on the whole – years of pain had been followed by a long spell of happiness, and if Ari had hurt his wife and her son in the process of being with Ben, then the alternative argument was that he had been hurting them without having Ben in his life too. So maybe Ben was right, and it was not that he hadn’t deserved him, but that Ari had only been looking for another new way to punish himself by pretending that was true.
So he had, very faintly, smiled at Ben, and had opened his mouth to say something like and I want to make you happy, if I can, when Ben’s hand shifted up his wrist. Ari – unthinkingly, instinctively, with more force than he had meant – jerked his arm roughly out of Ben’s grasp, recoiling. His sleeve had pushed up his forearm in the process, which was precisely what Ari didn’t want Ben to see, or to feel (he wanted him to be happy, after all), because Ari’s skin was still littered with those scars, from the thin cuts that had been reopened so often that they had never entirely managed to heal. Hastily, he swallowed and tugged his sleeve down again, already regretting the way he had flinched away.
From here, Ari almost believed it. He tried to believe it anyway, intentionally let his shoulders and his eyes soften. What they had had between them had been good, maybe, on the whole – years of pain had been followed by a long spell of happiness, and if Ari had hurt his wife and her son in the process of being with Ben, then the alternative argument was that he had been hurting them without having Ben in his life too. So maybe Ben was right, and it was not that he hadn’t deserved him, but that Ari had only been looking for another new way to punish himself by pretending that was true.
So he had, very faintly, smiled at Ben, and had opened his mouth to say something like and I want to make you happy, if I can, when Ben’s hand shifted up his wrist. Ari – unthinkingly, instinctively, with more force than he had meant – jerked his arm roughly out of Ben’s grasp, recoiling. His sleeve had pushed up his forearm in the process, which was precisely what Ari didn’t want Ben to see, or to feel (he wanted him to be happy, after all), because Ari’s skin was still littered with those scars, from the thin cuts that had been reopened so often that they had never entirely managed to heal. Hastily, he swallowed and tugged his sleeve down again, already regretting the way he had flinched away.
