Chapter Text
Rey wakes not to sunlight or an alarm, but a hand stroking her arm. It’s barely dawn. She grunts a protest and goes to hide her eyes in the crook of her elbow, but she’s thwarted by a kiss on her cheek. By a Ben.
She smiles in spite of herself, and opens her eyes. He’s propped up on one elbow next to her. He still hasn’t showered since his parking lot workout, so he smells, and his hair is cowlicked on one side where he slept on it. She can’t stop smiling, so she covers her mouth with her arm instead. “Hi,” she says, muffled.
His smile is everything. “Hi.”
“What time is it?” she asks, her mouth still safely buried in the crook of her arm.
“It’s early, 6:30. I woke you because I need to go to the bathroom and call off from work, and I didn’t want you to wake up alone and think I had left.”
There’s a years-old pressure on her chest that she hadn’t realized was there until this instant, when it lifts. “So you woke me up?”
He nods solemnly. “Should I not have?”
Her arm isn’t across her mouth anymore; it’s wrapped around his neck to bring him down to kiss him because it’s imperative that she kiss him just now. And he lets out a surprised yelp that lasts about half a second before his elbows are planted on either side of her head on the pillow and he’s kissing her back like she’s someone who should be kissed, if she wants to. And with his mouth on hers it’s easy to believe that she is.
She shifts to burrow further underneath him so his hips rest in the open cradle of hers, and she breaks the kiss and nudges at his elbows until they scoot higher up above her head and he’s lying on her with most of his weight—not all, she can feel it in the tension of the muscles at his sides, how he’s trying not to crush her—and this feels closer to perfect than anything this whole flawed world has ever given her.
“Rey,” he breaks the kiss to say, looking down at her with something like adoration. “Rey.”
She reaches up for a fistful of hair to pull him back down again, and she smiles even as she moans when he ducks down to nuzzle at her neck and kiss the hot skin he finds there. And he presses his hips up into hers and she feels him hard and wanting against her mound.
“I think we should have sex,” she says.
He groans and takes his head out from where it’s buried in her neck and says, “I should shower.”
“You could fuck me, and then shower.”
His hips have started an unconscious series of small thrusts against her, desperate for her friction. “I want to make you come again.”
“I want that too.” She loops her arms under his armpits to hold onto his shoulders as he ruts.
“I want to eat you out again.”
“It’s pretty remarkable, how much we’re on the same page right now.” She smirks.
He groans. “I don’t want to be fired. I need to call my boss.” His mouth doesn’t seem to agree with his brain, though, because as soon as it’s finished talking it kisses her again. “I want to shower and make you breakfast and then make love to you and do it right. ”
A blue car. A woman and a man and a rusty blue car driving away, and a sidewalk with cracks. A heart with cracks, too.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“What’s wrong, Rey?”
“I’m fine.” She musters a smile and kisses his nose playfully. “Go shower. Call your boss.”
“If I go now, will you tell me what’s wrong after?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Rey.”
“Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
He kisses her oh so gently. “Okay. Good.”
He extracts himself from her draped limbs, and he picks up his phone but before he leaves the room he looks back at her with a tentative, small new green shoot of a smile. Like something beginning.
She lies in her bed on her back and senses the memory of his weight and breathes. His presence is oxygen.
When she hears the shower turn on down the hall, she exerts herself to sit up and look around the room. She runs her hand across her bare abdomen and down her thigh and back up to her breast. Not to arouse herself, just to feel what it feels like: a body that’s had an orgasm. And not just that—a body where someone lives who’s cared about. Someone cares about her. A whole other human who’s not in her brain cares about her.
I love you.
A blue car.
She shakes her head to try to dislodge the thought, and gets out of bed. She should shower too, but while it’s occupied she throws on an oversized tee-shirt and goes out to the living room. She surveys the contents of the fridge and decides on French toast. She has the eggs whisked and the griddle hot by the time he emerges with a towel wrapped around his waist. When she glances over her shoulder at him, the puppy is back for an instant in the look he gives her: the look that says I wanted to do that for you . But he doesn’t say anything, just comes up behind her and kisses the back of her head. He doesn’t wrap his arms around her waist, but she reaches back to take his hand and guide it there. He brings his other arm up too, without her having to ask. His biceps bulge as he pulls her into him with a sigh that she thinks is relief. It’s easier, this silent request for intimacy, when he can’t see her face.
The sun shines. The griddle sizzles. The microwave watches.
She lets herself want to be held. He holds her.
She breathes.
At length, when she turns around to face him, he keeps his arms around her. She smiles and presses up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I’m going to shower.”
He smiles a world of tenderness. “Okay.”
She showers half in a daze, her mind struggling to reconcile all the things that have changed. Going from nothing to all . It’s a plenty life has never offered before. And it is an offer: it’s up to her to take it. To lick his hand and let him pet her. She could let him take her home and curl up on his hearth and she could belong there, in his life. So could he in hers. And that should be terrifying, so why isn’t it?
She puts on a fresh big tee-shirt and goes back out to the kitchen. He’s just setting the plates down on the coffee table, the French toast dusted with powdered sugar that she didn’t even know her pantry had.
She turns on the TV and puts on Netflix and resumes Chef’s Table and they don’t talk, just eat. She burrows her feet under his thigh and he lets her, and their French toasts shrink and their bellies fill. When all that’s left are sticky plates, she untucks her feet and scoots around so she can lean back against his chest. Not between his legs, this time, and without her hand between hers. But he brushes her hair aside and kisses her neck anyway.
He says, “My life hasn’t been perfect. I’ve done some things that I shouldn’t have, and other people have done bad things to me. But I’ve been talking to someone about things. A professional. I’m not a professional, but you can talk to me. If you want.”
They sit for a while in silence.
She takes a breath.
“They were addicts,” she says, holding onto his leg for comfort. “I didn’t even know what drugs were until later, what high was. I thought it was just them. You know how every child thinks their experience is universal? I thought that’s just how it was. Sometimes they took care of me, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they loved me, even. It was okay. I was okay. I survived, didn’t I?” She doesn’t expect an answer, she just has to say it. He strokes her arm. “I didn’t know they were going to leave, when he told me to get out of the car. I mean, sometimes they left, but they would come back. So when he told me to get out it was okay, you know? It was normal. But then she turned around in her seat and she looked at me and...” She tries to hold the tears in. “She looked at me, right in my eyes, and she said, ‘I love you.’ And then I got out. And then they drove away.” The tears threaten and her throat starts to ache, but still she says, “That’s what’s wrong. She said she loved me, and she left. So if you ever...” She has to fight to keep the tears at bay. Just a little longer. “I’m not saying you ever would, but if you ever wanted to say that, maybe don’t? Okay, Ben?” His name is a sob.
This time, out of all the times she’s cried while wrapped securely in his arms, is different. These tears do something new. They tilt the storage space where a lifetime of feelings is stacked, so they all tumble over. There’s nothing neat about them, nor compact. There’s no room for her inside her head, with all these feelings littering the floor. So she kicks them and punches them and fills her arms with them and gives them to another pair of arms to carry instead: a pair of arms wrapped around her. It’s messy, so messy, and there are so many feelings. More than any one person should have to keep. So that’s why she gives him some. And he takes them and he holds her.
She cries until she’s cried out, and it takes a long, long time, but he doesn’t mind. He offers his body as a haven. When sleep comes knocking, she succumbs. She sleeps encircled by safety.
When she stirs awake she feels his arms still there. He doesn’t move, and she thinks he might be asleep. But he smooths her hair and kisses her head and says:
“You deserve love, Rey. And you deserve someone who understands that it’s hard for you to hear that. I won’t say it if you don’t want me to. But I plan on being here, in your life, for a very long time, long enough that you’ll maybe start to feel that and you’ll want to say it to me. So whenever that day comes, I’ll say it back. But not before then.”
She twists in his arms so she can look at his face. She finds no lies.
He watches her. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
One month in
Two months in
Three months in
Four months in
Six months in
