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The Bennett lunch table had that kind of energy Wyatt had experienced in very few places in his life, which could be described as organized chaos—in the sense that everything happened at the same time, yet somehow everyone kept eating and nobody spilled anything, though the latter had come close on at least two occasions since they sat down.
Susan had placed Wyatt between herself and John, which in theory was the most comfortable position at the table, but in practice turned out to be exactly the opposite because John had Ted on his other side, and Ted could see Wyatt from any angle with a completely unobstructed line of sight that he took advantage of from the very first minute.
Blaire was sitting across from Wyatt with the expression of someone who knows the best thing they can do in this situation is eat with their head down and hope everything ends as quickly as possible, a plan that was clearly not working.
"And you say you're Blaire's college classmate?" Matty asked from the far end of the table, his fork halfway to his mouth and his eyes on Wyatt with the same evaluative expression as before.
"Yes, sir," Wyatt responded.
"What are you studying?"
"Business Administration with a concentration in sports marketing."
Matty processed that with a slow nod. "And do you play on any team?"
"Football," Wyatt said.
Matty stared at him for a moment with his fork still in the air before narrowing his eyes slightly, wearing the expression of someone trying to place something on the edge of their memory. "Wait," he said. "Haven't I seen you somewhere before?"
Wyatt felt Blaire, who was across from him, pause the movement of her fork for a fraction of a second before continuing to eat as if nothing had happened.
"I don't know, sir," Wyatt responded calmly.
"I swear your face looks familiar to me," Matty insisted, narrowing his eyes a bit more without looking away from Wyatt, with the concentration of someone searching their memory without finding exactly what they were looking for.
"Matty," Susan said from his side with a small smile. "Let him eat."
"I'm just saying he looks familiar," Matty responded before finally returning to his plate with the slight frown of someone who has archived a pending matter they haven't been able to resolve just yet.
Susan gave Wyatt a brief look accompanied by the expression of someone who has been married long enough to know exactly when a topic is going to remain unresolved for the night.
It was Ted who took over with the natural ease of someone who had been waiting for his turn. "Hey Wyatt," he said with his signature tone of manufactured innocence. "Is this your first time in Framingham, or do you already know the area?"
Blaire looked up from her plate and glared at her cousin with an expression that meant enough to stop anyone with a minimum instinct for survival.
Ted had no such instinct.
"It's just that Blaire had never mentioned to us that she had college classmates visiting her," Ted continued with the same casualness. "Right, John?"
"Never," John confirmed with the same calibrated innocence, looking at his fork as if it were the most interesting thing at the table.
"She must have forgotten to mention it," Ted said.
"Must have," John said.
"It happens," Ted said. "When you have an unexpected visitor, sometimes you forget to warn the family in advance."
"Especially if it's a visitor who already knows the house," John added.
The silence that followed was different from the previous one, and Wyatt noticed how Susan looked from Blaire to John with an expression that processed the subtext of what had just been said, while Matty kept his eyes on Wyatt with that evaluation that hadn't yet produced a visible verdict.
"Have you been here before?" Susan asked directly, looking at Wyatt with genuine curiosity.
"Briefly," Wyatt said.
"Very briefly," Ted muttered toward his plate.
"It was in October," Blaire said with a perfectly controlled voice. "He stopped by to borrow some books from me, and it was nothing of importance."
"And how long is briefly?" Ted asked without looking up, but with a smile Wyatt could clearly hear in his voice.
"Ted," Blaire said.
"I'm asking because briefly can mean many things," Ted said. "It can mean five minutes, it can mean an hour, it can mean..."
"It meant what it meant," Blaire interrupted with the definitive tone Wyatt already recognized as the signal that the topic had officially reached its limit from her perspective.
John nodded with the expression of someone who respects the limit while simultaneously ignoring it completely. "What we think is great, Wyatt," he said, addressing him directly, "is that you came to visit our cousin during the holidays. That speaks well of you as a person."
"Speaks very well," Ted confirmed.
"Good friends do that kind of thing," John continued.
"Very good friends," Ted pointed out.
Blaire glared at them both with an expression that in any other circumstance would have been enough to stop the conversation, but tonight it didn't have its usual effect, possibly because John and Ted had correctly calculated that Wyatt's presence at the table changed the usual balance of power.
Susan refilled Wyatt's water glass with the same smile as before. "And where is your family from?" she asked, changing the direction of the conversation with the specific skill of someone who knows exactly when and how to do it.
"From Katy, Texas, ma'am," Wyatt responded. "I spent Christmas with them and then came over here."
"Do your parents know you're here?" Susan asked with natural curiosity.
"Yes, ma'am. I called them before the flight."
Susan nodded with an expression of quiet satisfaction, like someone who had received information that seemed correct to her, and Matty, from the other end of the table, made a sound Wyatt couldn't quite classify but that didn't sound negative.
The lunch continued with the rhythm of family meals where conversations overlap and interrupt one another, as Matty talked about the Patriots with Wyatt, who responded with the knowledge of someone who grew up watching football and knew perfectly how to talk about the subject with someone who loved it as much as Matty clearly did.
"The Patriots' problem this year," Matty said, pointing with his fork, "is that the offensive line isn't protecting Brady well, and Brady without time to throw is a different quarterback."
"The line has had issues all season," Wyatt agreed.
"See?" Matty said, now pointing at John. "Someone who understands."
"I said that too," John responded.
"You said something else."
"I said the same thing in different words."
Susan asked questions about Wyatt's family with a genuine curiosity she had for people, while John and Ted contributed with comments that on the surface were completely innocent and beneath the surface were not at all, with that specific skill of people who have spent enough time practicing the art of saying one thing while meaning exactly another.
"And do you have siblings, Wyatt?" Susan asked.
"No, I'm an only child."
"What a responsibility," Susan said. "Only children are usually very mature."
"Or very spoiled," Ted added.
"Ted," Susan said.
"It's a statistical fact," Ted responded.
"Wyatt is clearly neither of those two things," John said with the expression of someone being completely reasonable. "I mean, he came all the way here on his own without anyone asking him to come, which speaks of a person who makes independent decisions."
"Very independent decisions," Ted confirmed. "Decisions one makes when something matters to them enough to act without anyone telling them to do it."
Blaire set her fork down on her plate with a sound slightly louder than necessary.
"Are the beans good?" Susan asked, looking at Wyatt with complete innocence.
"Very good, ma'am," Wyatt responded.
And so the lunch continued, with Matty ending up adopting Wyatt as a valid conversational partner on the subject of football after Wyatt gave his opinion on the Patriots' defensive system with enough technical detail to earn an "this kid knows" from Matty, which in his own vocabulary was equivalent to a formal welcome, and Blaire eating with the concentration of someone counting down the minutes left for this to end.
When the plates were empty and Susan started clearing them, Blaire left her napkin on the plate and stood up, looking at Wyatt with an expression that admitted no alternative interpretation.
"We need to talk," she said in a completely neutral voice.
She grabbed him by the arm without waiting for an answer and led him toward the hallway with the same determination with which she did everything she had decided to do, while from the table came Ted's voice saying, "sure, sure, talk in peace," and John's saying, "take all the time you need," and Matty's calculated silence, which was probably more eloquent than anything his sons had said.
Blaire's Room
Blaire's room had books on every available surface and the desk lamp lit over one she had left open when the doorbell rang. Blaire closed the door behind them before turning toward Wyatt with her arms crossed.
"Explain," she said simply.
"What do you want me to explain?"
"Why you're here, Wyatt," Blaire said. "And don't tell me you had free time."
Wyatt looked at her in the light of the lamp before deciding this conversation wasn't going to get any better with more time. "Because I couldn't stop thinking about you," he said. "And it reached a point where ignoring that stopped making sense."
From the other side of the door, a very specific silence suggested the hallway wasn't as empty as it should have been.
Blaire said nothing, just looking at him.
"I'm starting to feel things for you," Wyatt continued. "And I think you feel them too, and we both know it."
Outside the door, a sound was heard that could have been a contained throat-clearing.
"Wyatt," Blaire said.
"Tell me."
"You have your life in Clemson."
"I know."
"I have mine in Boston."
"I know that too."
"It's more than a thousand kilometers."
"Geography is a logistics problem," Wyatt said.
Blaire looked at him. "What?"
"That distance isn't a good enough reason," Wyatt said.
Blaire let out her breath and took two steps toward the window. "It's complicated, Wyatt. Your whole life is football, practices, games, seasons. You don't have space for..."
"For what?" Wyatt interrupted gently.
"For this," Blaire said without turning around.
"I took a plane during the holidays without warning," Wyatt said. "That seems like enough evidence to me that I have space."
Outside in the hallway, a very brief whisper was heard, followed by nothing.
Blaire turned toward the door. "Ted."
Absolute silence.
"John."
More silence.
"I know you're there," Blaire said with the specific patience of someone who knew the exact quality of her cousins' silence.
A soft knock on the door. "We're not listening to anything," Ted's voice said.
"Practically nothing," John confirmed.
"I admit I did hear the part about the thousand kilometers," Ted added. "But not the rest."
"Get out of here," Blaire said.
The sound of footsteps moving away was followed by a silence that this time lasted exactly four seconds before another whisper was heard from further away than the previous one, meaning John and Ted had moved approximately two meters, but no more.
Blaire turned back toward Wyatt with that expression she still hadn't resolved.
"Do you feel something too?" Wyatt asked directly.
Blaire looked at him for a moment and then let out a small laugh that wasn't out of humor, but the kind produced by honesty when it arrives after too much time avoiding it. "Yes," she said.
"Then..."
"Then nothing. I still think it's complicated, Wyatt. You and I are completely different people who live in completely different cities and have lives that don't fit in any obvious way, and that doesn't change just because one of us takes a plane without warning."
"Don't repress what you feel, Blaire," Wyatt said simply.
Blaire looked at him.
"That's the only thing I'm asking you," Wyatt continued. "I'm not asking you to resolve anything tonight, nor to make any decisions. Just don't repress what you feel, because we both know it's not working, and I think we've both known it's not working long enough to admit it."
Blaire opened her mouth and closed it again.
"I came all the way from Texas, Blaire," Wyatt said with his usual calm. "Without warning, during the holidays, I took a plane, gave the address from memory in the taxi, and arrived here. And if that doesn't tell you something about how I feel, then I don't know what else I can tell you that would say it better."
Outside in the hallway, the silence was now so complete that Wyatt could perfectly distinguish the absence of movement, which was different from actual silence.
Blaire looked at him for a moment longer with that expression of hers, which belonged to someone processing something they don't want to admit they already processed a while ago, and who has simply been looking for arguments to avoid having to admit it.
And what happened next was not a conscious decision by either of them, because when two people have spent enough time in the same room with enough things left unsaid, and suddenly run out of arguments, what is left is simply what was always there.
Outside in the hallway, Ted's voice was heard, in the lowest volume Ted Bennett was capable of producing. "I owe you twenty dollars."
And John's voice responding, "yeah," with the same brevity with which he answered everything when he was right and knew it, which in this case was enough of an answer because John Bennett needed no more words when circumstances had already said it all.
Author thought
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