39
Ben
Claritea’s chai maple cider tasted like shit. Ben took another sip of it, hoping that it would magically taste better, but of course, it didn’t. If anything, it tasted worse. The maple was too overpowering, too obviously artificial, and Ben was fairly sure their ‘cider’ was just cloudy apple juice. God, he missed the Press Room. The first cold snap had hit the night before, and a London Fog would have helped to ease the transition into fall. Ben wasn’t about to risk seeing Sam, though.
In the week since he had been home, he had done everything he could to avoid seeing him. That meant doing his grocery shopping on the other side of town, staying in instead of going out, and avoiding the Press Room like the plague. He’d meant it when he said he never wanted to see Sam again. The thought of running into him kept his anxiety levels high, so he had thrown himself into his work, instead, preparing for the exhibition that was opening tomorrow. The photographs had been hung precisely as he wanted them, and all that was left was to show up for the reception.
Which meant there was nothing left to do but take a look at the pictures he had taken at the reunion. Ben had avoided his camera for that very reason, but Joel, his boss, was insistent that he put together some photos to send out to an exhibition in New Haven. He pulled up the file and stared at the thumbnails, preparing himself to open the pictures individually. The pain was going to be intense, but maybe if he braced himself, it wouldn’t be too bad.
He was wrong. Of course the first picture he clicked on would be Sam. It was a candid that he had taken while Sam had been driving, before they had stopped for gas and started talking. There was a tension in Sam’s face, but that made sense. They were on their way to lie to Sam’s family for a weekend. But his family weren’t the only ones who had been lied to.
“Why do you look like someone killed your puppy?”
Ben jumped, splashing hot cider all over the desk. “Fuck, Joel, give a man a warning, why don’t you?”
“Mate, I literally hip checked the door on my way in here. If you didn’t hear me, that’s on you.”
In spite of himself, Ben couldn’t help but be amused at the director’s accent. No matter how long he’d lived in the States, he would always sound like he’d just been transplanted from Manchester.
“Really, though, what’s got you all bothered?” Joel walked closer and peered over his shoulder. “It’s not him, is it? I thought I told you ages ago to leave it alone.”
And if he’d been smart, he would have followed Joel’s advice. Instead, he had brushed him off as one of those older, jaded guys who had never been able to find love and therefore didn’t want anyone else to, either.
“Yeah well, I didn’t, did I? And now I wish I had never met him.”
Joel frowned and walked around to the other side of the desk to flop down on his sofa. “Go on, then. Tell your Uncle Joel all about it.”
Ben leveled him with a stare. “I’m only telling you on the condition that you never call yourself ‘Uncle Joel’ ever again.”
“Fine. Now you were saying?”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Ben took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He didn’t know where to start. There was so much to the story, and so much he didn’t want to share.
“Okay, so you know how I went on vacation with Sam and pretended to be his boyfriend for his family?” he started.
“A bad idea, and I told you so. Nothing good’ll come of it, I said, didn’t I?”
“Is this entire story going to be you saying, ‘I told you so’? Because if it is, I’m going to stop right now.”
Joel made an impatient noise. “No, it won’t be. Now tell me what happened.”
“So I went and things were awkward at first. I mean, I was meeting his family and trying to convince them that we were actually a couple. Which shouldn’t have been hard, since I really wanted us to be a couple, but I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression—”
“The wrong impression that you wanted to be a couple? Cause if you ask me, that was the right impression you wanted to give off.”
This was going to be a nightmare of a story to tell. But Ben kept going. “Anyway, the first day was pretty awkward, but during the second day, things started…changing. I started to think that maybe he wasn’t as closed off to the idea of dating as I thought he might be. We got pretty cozy in a hot tub on his yacht.”
“He has a yacht?” Joel yelped.
Ben waved a hand dismissively. “It’s his family’s. They’re rich.”
The thing was, he didn’t even care that they were rich anymore. That was just the fact of the situation. What he cared about was that Sam seemed to want him to be rich, too, and for no other reason than to impress his family.
“To make a long story short, things happened and we ended up having sex. More than once.”
God, it had been really good sex, too. He had allowed himself to imagine, even if just for a few minutes, that they would be able to have sex whenever they wanted, now that they had moved past the initial fear of rejection. Now that they were together, they could have each other any time. And then that fantasy had come crashing down around him.
“I fail to see the correlation between shagging and looking like your dog just died,” Joel said, sitting forward.
“The thing is, he lied.”
“Yes, to his family, I’m aware. That’s sort of the entire reason you went, wasn’t it? So that he wouldn’t look like a total fool in front of his family?”
“Yeah,” Ben said with a sigh. “Except, he didn’t just lie and say that he was in a relationship. The boyfriend he made up was…well, he was me. Only fake-boyfriend-me was rich and famous. Things he never claimed he cared about.”
Joel was silent for a moment. “Ah,” he said eventually. “Bugger.”
“So you can understand why I’m upset. I’m not rich or famous, and him lying about that really hurt. I mean, I expected him to make up a few things about his boyfriend, but he took my life and adapted it to suit his needs.”
“Yeah, no, that’s just not on. What did he say when you found out?”
“He tried to apologize. He didn’t try to make excuses, which, I’ll give him credit for that. Spencer always made excuses.”
No, what Spencer had done was worse. Spencer’s excuses had always been Ben. If he had only dressed better, or tried harder to make friends with Spencer’s buddies, or put out more, then maybe they could have made it work. So Ben had adapted, but that still had never been enough.
Would it be enough for Sam if I were actually rich?
The thought flitted through his mind before he had a chance to stop it, and he hated himself for even thinking it. It shouldn’t have mattered whether or not he was actually rich. Sam had said once that he liked Ben for who he was. But it sure as hell didn’t feel like it to Ben.
“What did you say when he apologized?” Joel asked.
“I didn’t let him. I told him I didn’t want to hear what he had to say, and I still kind of don’t.”
Except now, Ben was the liar. There was a large part of him that wanted to hear Sam out. To understand why he had done what he had. Why he had changed that one detail about Ben.
“Kind of don’t?”
Damn. Of course Joel would call him out on that. He was incredibly perceptive, when he wasn’t being an ass.
Ben sighed. “It’s eating at me, why he did what he did. Was I just not good enough for his family, or was it something else? He keeps saying that we didn’t know each other that well when he made up the lie, but we had known each other for six months. That’s not a short amount of time.”
Joel crossed his arms. “You’re not going to solve anything by being mad and not finding answers. But on the other hand, if I were you, I would have given him a black eye and told him where he could put his money.”
“No you wouldn’t have. You would have eviscerated him with your words and left him bleeding as you walked away.”
They both knew that Joel would never hit anyone, even someone who had hurt him the way Sam had hurt Ben.
The door opened and Ben glanced up to see a girl carrying a giant bouquet of white and purple flowers. He raised an eyebrow and looked over at Joel.
“You have an admirer you’ve not told me about?” he asked with a grin.
“Not unless they haven’t told me, either.”
Certainly they weren’t for him. Ben had no one to send him flowers. Unless…but, no. Sam would never think to do something so incredibly stupid. He would never be so naïve to think that flowers would fix their problems. But sure enough, the girl walked up to the desk.
“Which one of you is Ben Matheny?” she asked.
He was going to fucking kill Sam.
“Me,” he gritted out.
She set the vase to the side of the desk. “I need you to sign here and say you got them.”
Taking the clip board, he scribbled his name and handed it back to her. Once she’d left, he took the card attached to the vase and opened it.
Ben,
I asked the lady at the flower shop and she said that purple hyacinths represented asking for forgivingness, while white tulips represent rebirth and hope for the future. I don’t know if either of those are right, or if she was just selling me a more expensive bouquet, but I thought it was worth a try. Things can’t be fixed with flowers, and I know that, but I hope that you’ll at least give me a chance to talk to you and work things out. I really care about you. I meant what I said—I like you just the way you are. If nothing else, think about it. I miss you.
Sam
His first instinct was to throw the entire bouquet in the trash. Apology flowers ranked right below public proposals on his list of things that were never acceptable in a relationship. But they were pretty, and more than likely, Sam had spent a lot of money on them. Money that he could afford to spend, because he was rich. That bolstered his anger once more, and he plucked the flowers from their vase, his hand hovering right over the trash can. Ben bit his lip and pulled two of the prettiest flowers from the bunch, then let the rest drop.
“Well clearly you’re not over him,” Joel said, leaning back in his chair. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have hesitated. And you wouldn’t have kept two of those flowers. And you would have ripped that card to shreds. What did it say, anyway?”
“He—” Ben’s voice broke, and he cleared his throat. “He said that he misses me, and he told me what the flowers stood for. I didn’t even know flowers had meanings. He wants me to give him a chance to explain himself.”
“And are you?”
Ben ran a hand through his hair, and then his beard. “I don’t know. I want to, but I don’t know if I could handle being put through that pain again.”
“Do you know why I’m still single?” Joel asked, and Ben shook his head. “I’m still single because some twat decided that it would be a fun idea to cheat on me while we were together. In a long-term relationship. I’m not talking six months. I’m talking six years. I don’t trust anyone not to do the same thing again. So the way I see it, you’ve got two options. You can give him a chance to explain himself and who knows, maybe you get back together, maybe you don’t. Or you could push him away even more, never trust anyone again, and end up in a sorry state like me. At least we could share a nursing home room, then.”
The dryness in his tone had Ben smiling reluctantly. Joel had a point. Sure, it was blunt and sarcastic, but that was just who Joel was. Hopefully he would find someone who could give just as good as he got, but Ben worried that would never happen. A shame, too. Joel didn’t deserve to spend the rest of his life alone.
“You think I should let him talk to me, then?” he asked finally.
“I think if you don’t, you’re always going to wonder what might have happened if you’d cleared the air.”
Sighing, Ben nodded. He grabbed the paper Claritea cup and tossed it in the trash with the flowers. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
Joel smiled. “Because I’m right?”
He really had to stop indulging the man, but not today.
“Because you’re right.”