Saving Ben Read Free Page B

acknowledge my suffering as a result of her mistake. I wanted her to explain to me how she could’ve cheated on my father, and I wanted her to apologize for the disgrace she’d brought on our family. But the parents I once knew, the mother and father who’d raised me since birth with love and affection, were lost to me. My mother, immersed in her own pity party, retreated to her room with a pitcher of martinis every afternoon around four; and my father, engrossed in trying to save his marriage for the sake of his family, joined her with a dinner tray every night at six. He spoiled her with boxes of Godiva chocolates and bouquets of exotic orchids; but despite his efforts, the only thing that changed was the sound of their arguments, growing louder as my mother’s mood swings became more extreme.
    Ben handled the crisis of our mother’s affair better than I did, but then again, he was older and more mature, in his tenth-grade year at St. Paul’s, the all-boy counterpart to St. Anne’s. Unlike mine, Ben’s friends not only stood by his side, they followed him around like little Ben wannabes. They played the same sports, dated the same girls, and applied to the same colleges. And because Ben protected me, his friends protected me.
    So when I found the three of them waiting for me just inside the front door of their fraternity house that first night, I realized they would ruin my life if I didn’t establish some boundaries.
    I looped my arm through Emma’s. “Meet Spotty Watkins and Reed Randolph, Ben’s best friends since birth. Literally. They were born in the same hospital three days apart.”
    “I was first, of course,” Ben said, sticking out his chest. “Then came Spotty, and naturally, Mr. Always-late-to-the-game Reed was last.”
    Emma turned to Spotty. “Do they call you Spotty because of these?” she asked, tapping the skin along the bridge of her nose.
    Spotty’s face turned several shades of red. “No, Emma,” Reed answered for him. “Spotty is short for Spotswood. He was named after his grandfather and the two before him.”
    “So, I take it the two of you are Lambda Deltas with Ben?” Emma asked Reed and Spotty who nodded their heads in unison.
    I rolled my eyes. “Welcome to Virginia, Emma, where people are born together and die together and spend every day in between either sucking up to one another or stabbing each other in the back.”
    “Ouch, that hurts,” Reed said, rubbing his arm as though someone had pinched him.
    Ben waved me away. “Don’t listen to her. She’s been in a pissy mood all day.”
    “Of course she has.” Spotty wrapped his arm around me and squeezed. “This is an emotional time for her. The start of a new chapter in her life—‘Hello Kitty Goes to College.’”
    “Awh . . . ” Reed pinched my cheek. “Look at you all grown up.”
    I gave him the once over. “And look at you all tan. Did you actually get a job this summer or did you surf the whole time?”
    “I’ll have you know I worked as a lifeguard on the beach this summer.”
    “Some job.” I rolled my eyes. “Saving damsels in distress in their thong bikinis.”
    “Ha! The only woman I saved had no business wearing a bikini.”
    I nudged Emma and cut my eyes at a group of cute boys across the room.
    “No way,” Spotty said, stepping in front of me to block my view. “You’re here to listen to the band, right? Because if you came over here on the prowl, let me be the first to say that there is no man in this house good enough for you.”
    I took a deep breath. “Listen up, you two.” I pointed my finger first at Spotty and then at Reed. “Y’all need to back off. I’ve already warned Ben about this earlier today.”
    Spotty and Reed turned to Ben for help, but he shrugged them off. “I told you she was in a bitchy mood.”
    “Seriously,” I said. “I’m in college now, same as you. And I’ve earned the right to be here, same as you. As far as I’m concerned, we are on a level