Art said everything was alright, and Ben didn't believe him, but he had to pretend to, didn't he? He didn't, ostensibly, have any reason to suppose they weren't alright. And maybe they weren't. Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe things were fine. Maybe nothing had happened at all. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

And Art said he knew they could talk, so if things weren't alright, or if they became not-alright, he knew Ben was here. Was that enough? Had he done his due diligence as a friend by making the offer? Ben didn't feel good about this, but he didn't know what else to do in the moment.

"Alright," he said, with a nod. He tried to convince himself he was okay with this, as a resolution to the conversation; failed; took a drink. "Alright. Good. I'm glad," he continued, still trying to convince himself — but now he worried that it sounded obvious he was trying to talk himself into it, and subsequently obvious that he didn't believe it — obvious that he suspected what Art was doing, which was as well as admitting that he could've stopped it a week ago.

"Not that I thought it wasn't," he added, speaking just slightly too quickly.