The Break-Up Clause by Niamh Hargan

Chapter Twenty-Six

One drink turns, as it so often does, into a couple more than one. Still, though, Fia manages to make an exit before midnight. It’s muggy on the street outside, and of course there is the usual amount of revelry and traffic. Compared with the heat and the concentrated din of the bar, though, it feels like a relief.

She’s at the corner of Bryant Park, on the lookout for a cab, when she senses him approaching. And, truthfully, that’s what it has felt like all night, in the hours since Annie and Kavita left. She and Benjamin haven’t had deep and meaningful conversations – in fact, surrounded as they have been by lots of other people, they’ve barely had anything that could be called a conversation at all. However, all the while, there has been something – just a certain awareness. Fia had actually forgotten about that – about the fact that for a brief time in her life, across the summer of 2015, the first thing she could have said about any room was whether or not Benjamin Lowry was in it. Such was the degree to which he … aggravated her.

‘You headed home?’ he asks, once he gets near enough to be heard. And without the presence of other, much more inebriated people to skew the data range, he does sound a little buzzed now. Fia realizes that, undeniably, she is probably in the same state herself.

‘Yep,’ she replies. ‘You?’

‘Yep.’

If this strikes Fia as coincidental (which it certainly does), she elects not to mention it. For a moment or two, they stand alongside each other on the corner – she attempting to flag a cab heading Uptown on 6th Avenue, his attention on the cars going across town on 42nd Street.

It doesn’t necessarily feel as though either of them is doing their best work on that front, though. A taxi with its light on actually whizzes right past Benjamin, because his arm is raised so half-heartedly.

‘So, you looking forward to getting back to Ireland?’ he asks, conversationally.

‘Yeah.’

‘To see your special friend,’ he prompts, and although she can see now that his opening gambit wasn’t just conversational at all – it was a trap – something about his goofiness makes it hard for Fia to stay serious.

She gives it a solid attempt, though. ‘Ryan and I are co-workers,’ she replies.

‘Well, that’s a relief. I mean’ – he holds his hands up, as though by way of a disclaimer – ‘I’m just thinking of you, here. Ryan Sieman?’

It takes her a second to catch his meaning. ‘Oh, hilarious, yes,’ she says then, deadpan. ‘It sounds like semen.’

‘Literally exactly like it,’ he replies, nothing short of gleefully.

She rolls her eyes – although, again, she just can’t quite seem to fully commit to disdain. ‘I might have known that would appeal to your sophisticated sensibilities.’

‘Come on! It’s not a good name,’ he protests laughingly, as Fia does her best to remain po-faced.

‘… You’re telling me you’d want to be Mrs Sieman?’ he presses.

‘Like I said, Ryan and I are co-workers, so that’s not really a relevant question,’ she replies. And then, because she can’t help it, because he really seems almost to have purposefully set her up for it: ‘But I have to say, at this point, if it’s a choice between that and being Mrs Lowry …’

Even as he grins, Benjamin clutches at his chest like he’s been shot. ‘Oh, Fia! You wound me!’ he exclaims, and Fia lets herself laugh out loud, at last. She just can’t seem to help it.

‘So, your roommates … at this point, I should just take it that they know everything about me, huh?’ he asks, after a moment.

She studies him for a second, to work out if he’s genuinely annoyed. He doesn’t seem to be, though. So, her response comes casually. ‘Whatever I know about you, they know about you, yeah,’ she replies. She’s beginning to suspect that, for all his many friends and acquaintances, there might actually be very few people who know Benjamin Lowry all the way. The tidbits of information he offered last night, on the rooftop, don’t seem to have satisfied her at all. If anything, they have only increased her curiosity about him.

It is at this point that one of the most undeniably impressive things she’s ever seen in her life occurs. With a brief glance out into the traffic, Benjamin spots his mark, and suddenly he lets out a shrill whistle. No fingers to his lips, no apparent effort whatsoever, and yet – like magic – the yellow cab coming across 42nd Street pulls over, slows to a stop a few feet away.

Benjamin doesn’t immediately go towards it, though. Instead, with a brief gesture to the driver that he’s on his way, he veers in her direction. She’s about to comment on the whole display – how could she not? – but he gets in there first.

‘You know what, Fia?’ he says, and he has ended up pretty close to her now. A few more inches, she realizes, and she’d probably be able to feel his breath. ‘The thing is, we can do all this,’ he says quietly, with a vague gesture between the two of them. ‘It’s fun, or it’s fucking irritating, or it’s both. Whatever.’

She watches his Adam’s apple bob, feels him move just fractionally closer into her space, notices how his voice drops even further until it’s little more than a murmur.

‘But let’s not pretend I couldn’t have you begging inside about a minute.’

Fia’s breath hitches in her chest, and she finds herself frozen – powerless to deny or confirm or even to look away from him. And probably the noise of the city does not dampen, as though she’s been suddenly plunged underwater; probably all the surrounding activity does not smudge into a blur, and time does not suspend – but, standing there, with Benjamin, it feels an awful lot like that.

She doesn’t know if it’s a relief or a let-down when he turns away from her at last. She seems to hear her own exhale inside her head, slow and tremulous as he strides off towards his cab.

When he opens the door, though, he stands back from it, holding it out. He has, apparently, hailed this cab for her. It occurs to Fia that perhaps his purpose out here in the first place – or, at least, one of them – has been to make sure she gets home safely.

She is gobsmacked, on just about every level a person can be gobsmacked, and she makes her way over to the taxi as if she’s operated by a remote control. As she slides into the backseat, he lingers, his hand resting on the doorframe.

In the circumstances, part of Fia wouldn’t be at all surprised if Benjamin intended on following her into this car, and again, she cannot honestly say how she feels about such a prospect, how she might respond to it. However, he makes no move to join her. He just looks down at her. She realizes that she must, in turn, be looking up at him.

‘I mean, I’m not saying the reverse isn’t true,’ he continues, in that same quiet, almost pragmatic, tone of voice. ‘The reverse is definitely true. We both know that, too.’

And then he closes the door, gives the roof a quick tap by way of signal to the driver. Fia watches him through the window for a second until it strikes her that her face could very well be flushing, betraying her somehow.

She turns instead to stare resolutely forwards, every part of her abuzz as the car speeds off into the night.