The Break-Up Clause by Niamh Hargan
Chapter Forty
Fia half-expects that New York will have changed somehow when she returns to it – or, at least, that the way she feels about it might have changed. In fact, things are much the same on both counts.
Traffic on the way into the city from JFK feels as souldestroying as it ever has, but all the life on the pavements once they cross the bridge into Manhattan feels as heartening as it ever has, too. Fia still loves the sunshine, still hates the humidity. Kavita’s home when she gets into the apartment, and they order a pizza from Numero 28, eating quietly together as they each work at their laptop screens. By the time Fia goes to bed that night – surrounded no longer by remnants of adolescence but by all the ephemera of her current self – it feels like her life here has just been waiting for her to slot right back into it.
Monday morning brings more bright blue skies, and she’s on her way to work – high heels back on as she marches across the lobby – when she spots him.
That Benjamin would be here, walking into this skyscraper where thousands of people are employed, at the exact same second as she is? Honestly, that doesn’t even strike Fia as especially unusual at this point. She feels as though Benjamin Lowry could show up at her gynaecologist’s office, as her gynaecologist’s part-time fucking apprentice, and she’d be about ready to accept that as simply another manifestation of God’s sense of humour.
‘Hi,’ she says, as they each come to a stop, standing just a few feet away from one another.
‘Hi,’ he replies.
‘Your forehead looks a lot better,’ she says, which is true. The gash is just a neat little line now.
They take each other in for another moment, before Benjamin turns pointedly to look at the turnstiles that will lead them to the lifts. She follows his gaze; then they each turn back to one another, time seeming to stretch out, even amid the masses of other people.
Of course, it’s extremely clear that they should go on upstairs. They should settle into their office, do some work, get through the reminder of the time they must spend together this summer. They should stick to the plan.
Benjamin tilts his head, nodding backwards at the street. ‘You wanna just …’
And it must be some sort of sorcery, Fia thinks, or perhaps a more delightful kind of magic. Whether it’s ultimately for good or for evil, what else could explain the way everything but the man in front of her seems to melt away?
‘Yeah,’ Fia hears herself agree, with barely a second’s pause, no hint of hesitation in her tone.
He turns on his heel then – and, wordlessly, she follows him. She follows him all the way outside, into the sunshine and a swarm of commuters.
They march across 52nd Street together, not another word spoken, and Fia wonders if Benjamin knows where they’re going, because she has no idea. From the way his eyes are darting around, she’d guess he’s winging it here, too.
They come to a parking garage belonging to a hotel and – though they’re a tolerable distance from the office by now – still Benjamin takes a cursory glance around before he grabs her hand, tugging her into the space.
It’s dark and cavernous, and Fia senses her heartbeat quickening as he leads them to a corner hidden from view.
Though she’d never say so out loud, what she imagines might happen next is that he might grab her – take her in his arms and kiss her so thoroughly she can only respond in kind.
He doesn’t, though. Instead, he edges backwards so that he is resting against a wall, with her facing him.
This time, he’s going to make her do it. Choose it.
And, in the end, she doesn’t waste any time wondering whether it’s a good idea or what it will mean. She’s spent the last week in Dublin, one way or another, thinking and thinking and thinking. It feels incredibly good, now – it feels like such a profound relief – to just let herself have this: one thing that, at least in this moment, she suddenly knows for sure that she wants.
She presses her lips to his, her hands on his face, and immediately, they’re in it together, utterly. He wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her close to him, and she remembers this feeling from Garrett Castle: the way he angles into her, seems to kiss her with his entire body. All-encompassing, intoxicating.
At some point, she leans back from him just a little. She lets her thumb drag over his lower lip and down his chin, and it’s unbelievable, the thing that she can see in his eyes when she does. She’s spent so much time trying to make sense of the particular power he seems to have over her that she really hasn’t given much thought to the other side of the equation: the power she has over him. It’s written as plainly as day on his face now, though. It’s in his blown pupils, the slight hitch in his breath. In this moment, he would probably do absolutely anything that she wanted him to. That’s quite a thing to realize.
He dives forwards again, his mouth recapturing hers hungrily, and Fia is only too happy to allow it, her hands clutching at whatever parts of him she can reach.
Whatever is happening between them, it won’t be until death does them part. She knows that. But could it be until their divorce does them part? Strange as it may sound, she’s starting to think that might be an excellent way to spend the remainder of what could even be her last summer in New York. She’ll need to keep her wits about her, make sure it doesn’t get out at work. But doesn’t she have quite a lot of practice in that regard by now?
The key will be in picking the right moment to end things. And she willbe the one to end things with Benjamin – she promises herself that, even as he’s kissing her, as her own good sense threatens to desert her altogether. In any relationship, it is much better to be the one who leaves than the one who is left. Fia knows that all too well by now. This time around, she will be better at protecting herself.
In the meantime, though, it seems there could be all sorts of new things to be discovered. When eventually they pull away from one another properly, Benjamin is smiling an almost shy little smile – one just for her.
‘Welcome back,’ he says.
‘Thanks,’ she replies, sounding no less dizzy than he does.
She watches his gaze shift to the surroundings then, taking in the cars, the general grubbiness, the big dumpsters in the corner.
‘I take you to all the best places, don’t I?’ he asks, and she laughs.
‘Turns out this would actually be ideal content for my Instagram account.’
‘What?’ he asks, his brow furrowing in confusion.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ she replies. Because right now – at least for ten minutes, before they are both officially late for work – she wants to do nothing but this.
What follows over the next few days is complicated sometimes, in its practical aspects. There is so much fucking glass at ZOLA. And, annoyingly, they each have so much legal advice to be getting on with providing.
It’s undeniably a little bit exciting, though – the sneaking around.
Midmorning on Thursday, and Alyvia Chestnut is waiting for them downstairs, this time with her son in tow. Fia and Benjamin are on their way to greet her, marching along a corridor, when suddenly Fia finds herself tugged through a doorway on the left-hand side. It’s a stationery cupboard, apparently, though she barely has time to take that in.
‘What are you doing?’ she squeaks, but he doesn’t answer. Instead, he just reaches for her right away, pressing hungry open-mouthed kisses to her cheeks, her jawline and – at last – her lips.
She sucks in a breath through her nose. By now, that clench low in her stomach is familiar to her in a way, but still deliciously new.
‘So, I don’t even know what the point of this meeting is,’ she manages, as he makes his way down her neck. She snakes her hand in underneath his suit jacket, his skin tantalizingly close through the thin fabric of his shirt. ‘Just, by the way. Like, I’ve served our response to Jonathan’s lawyer already …’
She loses her train of thought slightly then, as Benjamin’s lower half angles into hers just so. Still, she makes a valiant attempt to continue. Whoever said two people couldn’t make out among the paperclips and notepads of their workplace, while also keeping it extremely professional?
‘All we can do at this point is wait for the reply. Also, I was kind of …’
She trails off again, and something about it makes Benjamin pull backwards a little to look at her this time.
‘Arsey,’ she confesses. ‘In my letter. I, uh … I didn’t really go for the “keeping it vague” in the end. It was more of a “let me burn you and everything you own to the ground” sort of approach, to be honest. I may have … had some personal feelings to work out on the page.’
That had been the day of her fight with Benjamin, after she discovered his Facebook messages, after all the ugliness that followed.
Making the admission to him now, she finds her body tensing a little, bracing for the possible fallout. As it is, though, Benjamin still has that look in his eyes as he scans every bit of her. Fia wouldn’t know how to characterize it, exactly, but it makes her mouth go dry. Suffice to say his interest in arguing with her over matters of legal strategy seems to be at an all-time low.
‘… Arsey?’ he repeats, and the tone of his voice, the expression on his face, draws a peal of laughter from her.
‘That’s a Latin term,’ she says, as condescendingly as she can manage in the circumstances. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’
He laughs then, too, so loudly it makes her worry about being overheard from the corridor outside. There’s no time to raise the issue, though, because he’s kissing her fiercely again. It’s all she can do to stop her knees from buckling under her as he moves from her mouth to her clavicle, smoothing his tongue across her skin, dipping lower to the part of her chest left exposed by her top. As he does, he lets out a strangled, indistinct sort of sound from the back of his throat, his fingers pressing a little more firmly into her hip. And, in response, Fia feels something surge inside her, like a quickening of her pulse that she feels everywhere.
It is the way of things in films – and, perhaps consequently, in life – that women are often the ones who make all the noise, all the faces. They are the ones socialized not just to enjoy an experience, but perhaps also to slightly perform their enjoyment of it. With Benjamin, these past few days, it hasn’t been that way at all, though. There has been no one-sidedness in that regard.
When they are together like this, he moans into her mouth, the sound always instinctive, as though he’s swallowed a delicious morsel, been massaged at just the right pressure point. He smiles against her lips and breathes out her name, and none of it ever feels even remotely like a performance. It simply could not be clearer to her, when he is kissing her, that it is entirely his pleasure to do so.
For her own part, Fia isn’t sure what’s wrong with her, but she’s starting to feel as though she has never before known what it was like to want anyone or anything. The need for the next fix, the next stolen moment, seems to heighten, not lessen as the days (the hours) go on.
She grabs for a handful of his hair now, tugging him upwards to look at her for a moment. ‘… How does this feel so good?’ she asks him, when their eyes meet. The question tumbles out of her mouth before she has a chance to edit it, and when it does, he seems somehow to understand that it is not rhetorical; she’s actually asking him.
For a moment, he appears to think about it right along with her. Then, he just shakes his head a little. ‘I have no idea.’