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He doesn’t get out enough.
Ben knows it. His mother tells him constantly, as do his friends, and of course, he would like to do more than work and sit at his house, but he hardly feels like he can find a free moment because one project ends and another immediately begins, and he swears that he’s spent the past six months stumbling from one project to another, never more than a few weeks between writing and book signings and press and more writing. A break will do him well.
The old brownstone shop has caught his eye since the moment he had moved to the edge of the sleepy little town. As a writer, he thinks it’s blasphemous that he hasn’t stepped into that small little bookshop, never bustling but rarely empty, and with a break finally on the horizon, it’s time to step inside.
Bookshops are strange for him; he had always felt at home in them, ever since he was a child, devouring books by the day, and he had practically lived in the library when he was in his teens. Ever since he had been published, though, he felt as though he was always on his toes. The sight of his name on those shelves had once been something he had yearned for, but now it made him shiver uncomfortably. He didn’t want to be bombarded in his home, in someplace he was meant to be relaxed and secure. That was the nice thing about writing, he supposed. The anonymity of it all. It was rare anyone recognized him, and those pictures on the back don’t really do him any justice. It’s more peace than he would find in music, or sports, or acting.
The bell above his head tinkles to announce a customer’s arrival and somewhere in the back, he hears muffled, “Welcome to Bookends!”
He hums into response, breathing in the soft, comforting smell, a mixture of printed pages, and a candle that shines next to the register system. God, he had missed this. It seems that the store is empty, only the sound of an employee shuffling in the back and some quiet piano music, so low that he almost couldn’t hear it. With almost tentative steps, he moves toward the shelves, shy fingers reaching for the spines of books that have just been lined up. The store is pristine, but not clinical. Warm and homey, comfortable, but spotless, books lined up in straight lines and dusted to perfection. It makes him smile.
“Y/N, you’re off!” Someone cries, breaking through the relative silence of the shop, and Ben hears what he thinks is the sweetest laugh he’s ever heard in his life, silvery and sweet, and it feels like it could kill him.
“Thanks, Al!” The voice to match that laugh fits perfectly well. Ben isn’t one for company or even one to think twice about someone he hasn’t even seen, but he almost thinks about peeking around the corner when Al waves whoever this Y/N is off. He listens for that laugh again, but before he can hear it again, he’s getting distracted by one of those tempting titles in front of him and he’s sucked back into a fantasy where his book wasn’t placed directly beside it, like he was just a teenager in the city library again.
***
Ben likes to be alone.
The house is settled in what looks like the middle of nowhere. Across the unpaved road, there’s a house nearly identical to his, if not a little bit smaller, but it had been empty as long as he had been living at the end of the long, poorly kept road.
It makes sense, then, that someone would have to move into the house eventually. Still, he doesn’t like it. He likes the life of solitude he lives, and he isn’t sure he’s ready to let someone even close to that. His heart aches when he hears the moving truck pull up, and with a huff, he listens to the crowd of people outside, unloading boxes and laughing and singing loud music. Now, a neighbor he could deal with, in theory. But a neighbor this loud? He could already feel a dread settling in his stomach and pain taking over his head.
No, this wouldn’t work at all.
In the first few days, he seems to avoid his new neighbor entirely. They’re busy, of course, unpacking and getting settled and whatnot, but Christ, the music. It’s not too loud. If he were playing his own music, he likely wouldn’t even notice it.
Ben likes music. He prefers silence, though. He can’t listen to music when he writes and it feels like he’s always writing, which means that he never really listens to music, he supposes. When he cooks and when he cleans, and sometimes when he works out, but other than that, never. The loud music seems like it never ends, starting before he wakes and going long after he lies down at night. His neighbor has taste, at least, no matter how far-reaching and perplexing that taste is.
Either way, when he didn’t think about the music, it was easy to say that his neighbor was fine. They left him alone and that was all he asked for, for the most part. It’s wishful thinking, really, that they would at least keep themselves removed from him. A week after they move in, presumably after they had unpacked and fixed the house to their liking, a knock sounds at Ben's door.
One of the charms of living in the middle of nowhere is that Ben doesn’t get visitors. In fact, it was one of the selling points when he first bought the house. They live in the country, for God’s sake, and who moves to the country except for social hermits who want to be left alone?
They have to know that he’s home. He never really leaves, except to go to the grocery store, and after a week of living in the quiet peace that was the end of Verdant Lane (a poorly chosen name, Ben thinks, because he’s never looked at the dirt road, surrounded by wheat fields and weeds and thought it looked lush at all), his neighbor ought to have realized that Ben didn’t leave, didn’t want to leave, and didn’t want any company, either. So they knock, and no, he doesn’t answer.
And they knock again.
Ben still doesn’t answer. So they leave.
And then, tomorrow, they knock again.
Ben begins to think that he’d prefer the loud music every hour of the day rather than have to dodge his overly-friendly neighbor all the time because, after a few days, he realizes they are not giving up on him. Which he could appreciate, in a way. They were certainly tenacious. On the fifth day of them knocking at his door, Ben presumes they give up. He watches through the curtains as they—she—walks back to the house across the road and he notices the little bounce in her step, but more than that, he notices the neatly wrapped plate on his doorstep. His brow arches.
He’s not one to take baked goods from strangers. It wasn’t a moral standpoint, not at all. Nor is it an ego thing, exactly. More fear-based. He had heard far too many stories of writers being poisoned from his agent, a mousy, anxious little man who had cautioned Ben against...well, everything, it felt like. But the rule against baked goods was the one that had stuck with Ben. However, he doubts that his new neighbor is crazy—in fact, she probably doesn't even know what he does and who he is. And then he begins to feel guilty, because this person is trying to get to know him, and he won’t let her.
Then again, he moved out here because he was sick of people ‘getting to know him,’ and is this not surrendering his very standing ground?
That’s dramatic.
With a hum, he opens the door as little as he can and grabs the plate off his ironic welcome mat, and prays to God she isn’t looking at him from her windows. Right on top, on a light pink sticky note, his neighbor has written, I wanted to get to know you but I think I keep missing you! Hope you enjoy these.
He does.
He had always been praised for being observant. Ben noticed things, sometimes things that other people wouldn’t notice. He understands people, and he understands the things that they do because he has seen them done a thousand times over; it’s exactly what makes him a good writer. And a bad neighbor.
Call him creepy, or call him obsessive, or hell, call him delusional, but he thinks he can get away with not meeting his neighbor for a while. Or forever. So, in true Ben fashion—the perfect mix, in his opinion, of observant, obsessive, and yes, a little creepy—he keeps his eyes out the upstairs windows of his house for a few days. He watches, carefully, noting the times she rolled her car out of the garage and down the packed dirt road, hoping to see some kind of defined schedule. And as luck has it, she has one.
Mondays through Wednesdays and Fridays and Saturdays, from 9 AM to 6 PM, he has the road all to himself. It’s much too much work when he could easily just get it over with, finally meet the woman and give in to his defeat; he knows he can’t escape her forever, but by God, he is going to try. He will deceive himself, make himself believe that he doesn’t have to meet her until the day he does.
For a homebody, Thursdays and Sundays easily become Ben’s favorite. It only takes a week or two before he’s settling into an easy routine, where he’ll spend most of the morning at Bookends, reading to his heart’s content, always careful to pick up something small so the man behind the counter doesn’t glare at him when he comes in and plucks a book off the shelf just to settle himself in one of the armchairs in the windowed corner of the shop for a few hours. Afterwards, he’ll pick up lunch, go get groceries, if he finds his pantry running low, and if he has extra time, he’ll stop somewhere for dinner, too. It’s simple, but it’s the life he yearned for when he was holed away writing for months at a time, a life of leisure, where he can do what he wants when he wants, with no worries. He’s reading excellent books and eating great food and yes, he’s really quite pleased with himself.
***
“How are you liking the new house?”
Y/N glances over the counter to Alex, who raises a curious brow at her. She smiles. “Yeah, it’s good. I’m finally settling in, which is...nice,” she nods, closing her book to give her full attention to him.
Unconvinced, he settled on his elbows. “And?”
With pursed lips, she matches his stance. “Nothing, I really like the house. It’s just...y’know, it’s so lonely out there. I’ve tried talking to my neighbor, but I think they’re some kind of like...hermit, or something, because I’ve knocked a few times and they haven’t answered. I kind of just miss having someone around, you know?”
Alex’s face twisted in confusion. “No, I don’t know. I’d kill for your life.” Y/N giggles, rolling her eyes and skirting out from behind the counter. “Five roommates, Y/N. Five! All I’m saying is that if you get really lonely, I suppose I could take one for the team and move out there with you.”
“No,” she laughs, shaking her head. The bell above the door rings, but Y/N wiggles her brows at her coworker as she slips into the back room. “Go help the customer.”
It’s a Tuesday.
And for some reason, Ben doesn’t want to be at home.
It’s rare that he gets in these moods, where he gets stir-crazy at home. Most days, he’s perfectly content to stay home, and he does—only really leaves when he has to—but he can’t be there today. It’s gray and wet and dreary outside and all Ben wants is a nice coffee and his favorite window seat, so he drags himself all the way into town and gets himself breakfast before showing up at the bookstore.
That familiar greeting sounds, and Ben smiles at the man near the counter for a second before he’s slipping off to find the book he’s nearly finished. It’s a good day to do nothing—not that he does much most other days—and he plans on making the most of it, already having cleared his remarkably intense schedule of cleaning the house and watching five hours of television in order to spend the rest of the bookstore’s remaining business hours reading.
He can hear speaking in the back, something that is unusual but not entirely irritating. It’s usually just the man—Alex, his name tag reads—to watch over the store while he’s here, and Ben has to admit that he’s curious about who’s back there, and if it’s that girl he heard the first day he came in. As far as he knows, she hasn’t been here when he has since that first day, and he’d reluctantly admit that he had wondered about her. It must be a side effect of being so lonely, thinking about girls whose faces you had never seen, but Ben has thought about that laugh, wondered what she looked like.
He shakes the thoughts from his head, blinking to focus his eyes on the pages in front of him. For a while, he allows himself to get lost in the words, immersing himself in the story and letting his coffee grow cold with inattention. It’s not his business.
Y/N stepped out from the backroom, the inventory sheets in her hands and a puppy-dog look on her face, ready to beg Alex to do it for her, and he huffs at the sight of her. “I’m not doing that.”
“Please, Al. Please?”
Ben glances up curiously, green eyes focusing on the woman standing beside Alex, and he furrows his brows. No.
“No, Y/N. I’ll do a lot of things and inventory isn’t one of them,” Alex grunts, and she pouts at him.
Ben has only seen his neighbor from behind, so he can’t be entirely sure, but he is...mostly sure. And then, she glares at her coworker and sets the papers back down on the counter, matching his crossed arms as they stare each other down. Alex, after only a few seconds, relents, huffing and puffing when he snatches the papers off the counter, and Ben is entirely sure that the girl he’s been thinking about for a few weeks is the same girl who plays her music too loud, because when Alex stalks out from where he stands, Y/N bounces after him with a victory grin. He had seen that bounce, and he had seen that girl, and he’s suddenly irritated, because it was the stupidest plot twist he had ever seen in his life—and he hadn’t even seen it coming.
And then, after a moment, he’s even more irritated, because it can’t be enough that his loud neighbor is his kind-of-crush, she has to be just as beautiful as he had imagined.
He wants to curse under his breath but decides against it as the only customer in the store. Instead, he closes his book and cuts his plans short, returning it to its rightful place before leading himself out and sulking all the way home.
***
When Y/N knocks again, he pauses.
It’s the first time she’s tried in a couple of weeks, and usually Ben wouldn’t think twice before he left her standing on his porch, but now he chews at his lip. He curses himself as he stands up and he wishes he never would have found out, because damn it, it’s hard to resist the girl at the door when he thinks there’s the tiniest, most minute chance that he’ll get to hear that laugh again.
The front door swings open with a loud creak—a squeaky hinge that Ben keeps forgetting to grease—and she’s already halfway down his walkway when she spins around, her mouth open in surprise. “Oh,” she breathes, shaking her head and taking a few tentative steps toward him. “Oh. Hi.”
Ben’s lips quirk into a tiny smile. “Hi.”
She shakes her head again, a grin steadily growing on her face as she steps back up onto the porch. It’s only then he notices the plate in her hand, and his smile grows the smallest bit. Cupcakes. “Oh, wow. I’m—I’m glad you’re home! I made you these, but I thought they would melt on the porch, so I didn’t want to leave them. Hi!”
Ben finally allows himself a laugh at his neighbor’s enthusiasm, stepping onto the porch. “Hi!”
“God, it’s so good to finally meet you. I’m Y/N, I’m across the street.” She reaches out her free hand to shake his and he takes it easily.
“Ben. It’s great to finally meet you.” Ben decides that perhaps bringing up the fact that he’d been doing absolutely everything to not meet you for the past few weeks
“Well, uh, I hope you like these! And I hope to see you around,” she grins.
And he’s really about to just let her walk away. Like an idiot.
Sharply, and a little clumsily, like he’s never said the words before (and really, he might not have), he clears his throat and asks, “Hey, do you want to come in?” And then, just below the surface of his cool exterior, all of his insides twist because, what the hell?
Ben, chronically antisocial and devastatingly private, is inviting a stranger into his home of his own free will and volition. Like an idiot. But she smiles, and she nods once. “That sounds great.”
And then he doesn’t feel like an idiot anymore. In fact, Ben feels, if he may, a little smug.
He ushers Y/N inside, trying not to flush when he catches her looking at the sitting room curiously. It feels like she’s looking directly into him, in a way; the house has practically become an extension of himself. It’s lived in and decorated to fit him and he won’t lie, he’s feeling rather vulnerable, but she turns to him with the sweetest smile and he feels a little better.
“I did get your cookies,” he blurts, guiding her into the kitchen.
When he pulls out a chair for her, she beams at him. “Oh, good! Good, I was afraid they got left out or something.”
He shakes his head, sitting across from her. “No, no, I got them. They were nice.” He cringes. Nice? It had been too long since he had talked to anyone, so why was he thinking the best way to jump back into socialization was to talk to the girl who makes his head spin? Every eloquent turn of phrase or metaphor he had ever thought, written, or spoken was suddenly gone and the only way he could explain the way he felt was woozy.
She doesn’t seem to notice though, so he just uncovers the cupcakes and glances at her before he takes one, forcing away a smile at the hopeful look on her face. “So, Ben,” she starts, taking a cupcake of her own and raising a brow at him. “I’ve been living across the road for over a month now and you have managed to avoid me until now, and that’s not an easy task.”
Bashfully, he laughs, nodding once. “Yeah, sorry. I’m just…” Antisocial? Awkward? An acquired taste? “Not used to guests.”
“I guess it’s hard to be, living out here,” she responds easily. “You aren’t from around here, right?” With nothing else to say and a mouth full of cake, Ben shakes his head. “Well, are you liking it so far? What have you found to do around here?”
He pauses for a moment to think. There wasn’t much he did at all, really, and he liked it perfectly well. “I hate to admit that I haven’t found much. I spend most of my time here, usually. When I’m not here, I’m at that little bookshop in town.”
Her brows raise in surprise, eyes bright with excitement. “Really? Bookends?” She laughs, leaning forward. “I work there! I’m surprised I’ve never seen you.”
Again, his cheeks warm at his own indiscretion. “Yeah, Bookends. It’s a really sweet place.” He smiles. And then, because he knows his least favorite question coming, he clears his throat and squares his shoulders.
“Well, what do you do?” She asks, picking at her cupcake casually.
He smiles bashfully. “I’m a writer, actually.”
Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Seriously? Anything I would have read?” She teases, brow quirking with mirth. He freezes for a moment, shifting with a nervous chuckle and she sits up a little straighter in interest. “Wait, what’s your last name?”
“Jones.”
He watches realization dawn on her face and his shoulders tense when she snorts. “So that makes my job embarrassing.”
Ben can’t help himself. He laughs. It’s loud and boisterous and he has to reach across the table and grab her hand to steady himself. She’s giggling, too, and he can’t find it in himself to feel embarrassed anymore. “No, it doesn’t,” he says, words still tilted up at the edges.
“I’m serious!” Y/N laughs, squeezing his hand. “Ben, we sell your books.”
Green eyes dancing with joy, he shakes his head. “I don’t think your job is embarrassing,” he grins, pulling his hand back slightly. “In fact, your job might be my dream job.”
Snorting again, she rolls her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
He ignores her words, resting his chin in his palm. “How long have you been there? Do you like it?”
She feels her cheeks warm in humility. “Well, y’know, it was a college job, and then I graduated, but I just never...left. I’ve been there ever since.”
He smiles fondly. “I didn’t finish.” Which is a great surprise to her, because how can someone so unbearably talented not have a college degree? And then she thinks that, no, Ben doesn’t seem the type to like being in college. He has a casual elegance in him that it seems he was born with, and she thinks he must have just been born with all those ideas bouncing around in his head, too.
Somehow, between all their giggling and getting to know one another, talking about their jobs and their families and their lives, the sun goes down and it’s well past time for Y/N to go home. She’s about to, too, but Ben glances down at his watch and hums. “I’d say it’s dinner time. Would you like to stay?” She nods before she can even think about it.
And it seems that Ben had found the one thing he didn’t want in the first place: a friend.
***
He doesn’t know what to write.
He’s not supposed to be writing at all, really, but that’s only because he has no ideas. He had specifically told his manager that he wouldn’t be writing for a while, that he was taking a long break, because he felt that he had used up all of his creativity and that he was scraping the bottom of the barrel with the last book. So no, he doesn’t know what to write.
The wonderful thing about knowing his neighbor is that he can spend time out on the front porch, the same one the previous owners had ripped out and replaced brand new right before he moved in, so he’s bathed in the sun, brows furrowed in thought, when he hears her footsteps.
“Whatcha thinking about?”
Despite himself, his lips quirk in a smile. “Writing.”
“Ooh, writer boy has to write a fancy book,” she plays, and she’s grinning when he opens his eyes, the sun making them so clear that she pauses on the steps, taking him in for a moment.
“Writer boy doesn’t have to do anything but brainstorm for a few months,” he corrects, patting the arm of the chair beside him. “And you’re welcome to sit, if you let me think.”
“My lips are sealed,” she promises, plopping in the seat he has offered and opening her book.
He really does mean to think about the book he’s meant to start in a few months, but all he thinks about is her. They were fast friends, but he supposes that they had no choice, considering they were the only two people for a couple miles out. Instead of brainstorming, even after she has promised not to speak to him, he leans forward to ensure she’s still reading the book he recommended. “You like it?”
“So far,” Y/N says, glancing up at him. “You’ve got some eclectic taste.”
With a laugh, he sinks in his seat and shrugs. “Trying to open your mind.”
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she shakes her head and suppresses her smile. When he reaches for her book, she allows him to take it and lolls her head to the side to watch him curiously. “Aren’t you supposed to be thinking?”
He smiles slyly over at her. “You’re distracting me.”
While she exclaims in offense, the idea hits him. Why not write about the only thing he’s thought about for the last few weeks? A content smile settles across his face and his eyes slip closed again. With narrowed eyes, she stares at him. “What?”
“I’ve got it,” he admits, pleased to just roll the idea around in his mind for a while before he starts on an outline. She gasps in excitement, sitting up for just a moment.
“And?”
Ben chuckles quietly, shaking his head. “You’ll have to find out with everyone else.”
She grumbles, and he tucks that little tidbit away: she’s a little bit of a complainer.
Tonight, he’s going to her place for dinner, which is a change from their usual routine. Likely because Ben still hasn’t listened to any of the albums she has recommended even though she had nearly finished the book he had lent to her, and he can’t get away from the music if it’s playing through her speakers. He doesn’t mind, really; it isn’t that he doesn’t want to listen to the music, more that he forgets, or he doesn’t want to multitask.
He’s right, too, because she already has it queued up when he knocks on the door, allowing himself in at her invitation. “I’m in the kitchen!” She exclaims, and Ben takes a few extra seconds looking around her sitting room before shuffling back toward the kitchen, unable to keep the smile off his face as she begins the music, beaming at him over her shoulder, already beginning to sing to him along with the music as she added the finishing touches to their dinner. With pink cheeks and a steadily increasing heartbeat, Ben leaned over the counter to watch her, unable to keep his mind from racing, every last thought about her.
It’s been a long time since Ben has spent so much time with someone, probably since he had an actual office job, and that had been years ago, so he’s just getting used to being with someone again. She makes it easy, though, which is all he can ask for. He’s forgotten how much he misses being around someone, how much he missed having to laugh along with the dumb things he does all day long. It feels nice to have someone to make dinner with, and someone to watch television with. Mostly, it’s nice to just be able to talk to someone. Before Y/N had commandeered his couch, he would go days without saying anything at all, and he’s more pleased with the company than he would have imagined he would be.
Ben can’t deny his feelings for her, not that he particularly wants to. He misses the dazy intoxication of romance, one that begins to cloud most of his days, whether he sees her or not. Just the thought of her sends him reeling in such a pleasant, rosy way that it leaves a smile on his face. Dinners become longer and talks on the porch do, too. Eventually, instead of movie nights ending with the movie, the two of them talk into the early hours of the night, and he can’t be sure—he’s never been good at this sort of thing—but he’s convinced that she’s sending the same signals right back to him.
Neither of them will say anything, though, and they’re confined to shy touches and smiles under the low light of Ben’s living room. He’s trying to work up the courage to ask her out—really, genuinely trying, because all he wants is to eat a dinner that hasn’t been burnt with her, but every time he opens his mouth, all his thoughts jumble. So he waits.
***
It feels like he’ll never stop waiting.
To Ben’s credit, he has never had to confess his love for a girl before. The word love makes him shudder, really, because how long has he known Y/N? A couple months? Still, he’s never had to confess his...pining to a girl before, and it’s a pretty daunting task. Especially when said girl is his only friend, and is the first person he’s even thought of in a romantic way in years. It’s hard to find the perfect time. It’s hard to even find a sufficient time.
And then, before he knows it, it’s been six months since he met Y/N, and he still hasn’t found the right way to tell her, not even with all the time they spend together. Ben has listened to countless new albums and Y/N has probably read a hundred new books and by the time winter ends, he feels like she’s falling asleep on his couch more than her own bed, and good God, does he adore her more than ever.
The book, at least, is getting somewhere, though the outline is a little tongue in cheek for his taste, about some girl living in some house in the middle of nowhere, the most generic kind of thriller he can think of, but his agent likes the idea so far and the publisher says they’ll take pretty much anything he writes so long as it isn’t a blatant rip-off of something else, which sets the bar rather low for him. It’s nice to have at least one of his worries subsided, even if it is because the publisher would “take literally anything, Ben. Send us your diary and we’ll change the names and publish it.”
There are a few other customers in the shop, but everyone seems to be content with sitting in their own little world, which means Y/N is free to sit with Ben on the condition that she keeps an eye on the register in case someone needs her. Even so, she seems to know everyone else in the shop, so instead of what she likes to call ‘work mode,’ she relaxes at Ben’s side with her book, her foot shaking to a silent beat that only plays in her head, and he watches her furtively from the corner of his eye. She seems on edge, even when she’s humming, and he gives himself another excuse automatically; he can’t tell her when she’s stressed. He doesn’t want to bombard her.
It’s kind of pathetic, really, how far he’ll go to convince himself that he shouldn’t tell her, but he really isn’t feeling great about the outcome of his confession. She breaks him from his thoughts when she leans over to whisper something to him, fingers gripping his wrist with the sweetest smile on her face, and he thinks he really might die if he doesn’t tell her soon.
She’s coming over for dinner—as per usual—and the way she lingers close to him makes his heart stop. Tonight, he decides. To hell with it all, it’s the night he tells her.
He pulls out all the stops when he gets home, even down to changing his shirt, and to be honest, he feels like a real dolt, because who is he kidding? It’s not like she hasn’t seen him looking like a disaster, so the idea that he has to dress up to make a fool of himself only makes him more flustered. He plays her favorite album and cooks her something he thinks she’ll like and works himself up into a tizzy in the process of it all. For a writer, the script he has going in his head isn’t looking good, because he can barely sort his own thoughts out, let alone organize them in some poetic and eloquent way.
When she finally knocks, Ben curses loudly, running a shaky hand through his unkempt hair. His stomach turns and his palms sweat, and when he opens the door, he feels a wash of dizziness at just the sight of her, the tangible reminder of this resolve crumbling. He feels like a teenager and he wants to die, especially when she smiles back at him. “Hey. It smells good in here, what did you make?”
He doesn’t answer, because she’s already on her way to the kitchen before he can. If he’s acting wildly out of character, she doesn’t seem to notice, or doesn’t plan on pointing it out, and Ben is glad that he has already plated their dinner, because he wants to get this over with as soon as he can.
This, though, she notices. He’s on her heels when she steps into the kitchen and as soon as she sees the table set up, she turns to look at him with a sparkle in her eye. “What are you up to?” She asks, looking back at the table with a smile growing.
“I wanted to talk to you about something,” he admits, his hand finding the small of her back and leading her to the table.
She sits, watching him curiously and hopefully as he sits across the small table. His fingernail scratches at the dark wood and he clears his throat; nervous habits, she guesses, because she has yet to see him act this way, fidgety and quiet, so she smiles encouragingly at him. “This looks delicious, Ben, thank you.” The two of them sit in silence for a long moment before she chuckles, reaching over to grab his hand. “Are you okay?”
With a huff, he squeezes her hand. He’s being ridiculous. This was Y/N, for God’s sake. If she didn’t feel the same way, she would be gracious, and Ben could handle being alone again. If she did, well...he hadn’t thought about that. He hadn’t wanted to get his hopes up. “Stop me at any time, please,” he insists, but she just raises a brow at him, bidding him to continue, and he grunts quietly, ignoring the small quirk of her smile. “I like spending time with you. A lot. And I completely understand if you say no, really, I do, because I know how uncomfortable this can be, but I would really like it if you would allow me to take you out. On a date.”
There is a beat of silence, and Ben stares at her anxiously. And he waits.
And then she giggles. Bringing their entwined fingers up to her face and pressing the back of his palm to her cheek, she looks at him fondly. “Oh, you’re so clueless,” she says, voice feathered with adoration. “It took you long enough.”
Words are lost on him as relief flushes in his system, face softening and a breath forcing its way out of his chest. His mouth opens and closes again, confusion clouding his response. “It did?”
She leans further into his hand. “I mean, maybe I was reading signals wrong, and maybe I haven’t been clear enough, but...I kind of figured that, in a very, very casual way, that’s kind of what we were already doing.”
“Am I just an idiot?” He asks with a quiet laugh, eyes twinkling when she squeezes his hand.
With a bright grin, Y/N replies, “If you are, then I am, too.”
***
For someone who enjoys being alone so much, Ben feels like every moment he isn’t with Y/N is a waste of his time.
When they aren’t together, he’s thinking about her, or listening to the music she recommends to him, or writing a book about a surrogate for her, and he’s annoyed with himself, really, but it doesn’t matter, because she’s pleased with him and it feels like that’s the most important thing. Ben does not cling, and neither does she, usually, but when the two of them spent most of their time together anyway, adding romance to the relationship makes them both a little closer.
It’s comfortable, but not stagnant; it feels the exact same as their friendship, mostly, with a little more in-depth conversation and a lot more affection, and Ben finally feels like he’s making good headway on the book he’s not even meant to be writing, even when he strays from his outline. Even Y/N feels rejuvenated, motivated to wake up and go to work knowing that Ben is waiting for her at the end of every day.
She needs him more than ever tonight after a horrifically busy day at the bookshop. He had brought her lunch and she hadn’t even been able to take her break to eat with him, and though she knew he didn’t mind, guilt had been eating at her all day long, paired with the consistent need to cry.
She doesn’t even stop at her own house when she gets home, parking in Ben’s driveway and letting herself in, ready to lie with him and grumble about her day all night. The sigh of relief she releases when she sees him typing away on his laptop on the couch is involuntary, wide green eyes looking at her in surprise before his shock melts away into a smile. “Hi,” he greets quietly, already closing his laptop and opening up his arms for her.
With a discontented grunt, she falls onto the couch beside him, closing her eyes when he wraps an arm around her, pulling her into his chest. “I’m quitting my job,” she complains, and he smiles, his hand moving to scratch her back.
“You love your job,” he reminds her, but she presses her cheek into his chest, sighing tiredly.
“Not when it’s like this,” she says quietly. “This whole day I was just thinking about how I went to school for years only to work retail for the rest of my life. It was just...rough. I keep thinking that if I had just gone straight to a real job— ”
“It is a real job,” he defends.
“But not the real job I wanted. Not the real job I planned for,” she said, breathing his scent in.
Ben is silent for a moment, considering the advice he should give her before his brows furrow. “Then use your degree.” For a moment, her grip tightened on his shirt, and he continues rubbing her back, shrugging minutely. “You’re so capable, Y/N, and you worked hard for your degree. You could do more, if you wanted to. You worked hard for that degree, so use it.”
She sighs, lying down and putting her head in his lap, staring up at Ben. He was so easy to admire, even at the odd angle he’s forced to look at her from, and her eyes upturn at the sight of him; she entwines their fingers. “I can’t leave Bookends. Can I?”
With the utmost reverence, he leans down, smiling when she meets him in the middle to share a sweet, chaste kiss. Honestly, he admits, “I think you would be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t try.”
And it seems like that’s that. They spend the rest of the night wrapped up in one another and the next morning, she wakes up and goes to work, and the conversation is almost entirely forgotten by Ben. His words stick in the back of her mind, though. It was something she had thought about, every once in a while, but not enough to really do anything about it. She had always been at Bookends, and she likes it fine, really. But it feels like she really is wasting her degree.
There’s no reason for her to stay where she is. She was content at her job, but she wasn’t happy.
Being with Ben makes her want to be happy. It makes her want better for herself, and he wants better for her, so one night, when she returns home after a night with Ben, she pulls out her laptop and stares at her wallpaper for a long time, weighing her options. She would test her fate, she decides.
Alex, who had been lovingly trying to push her out of Bookends for years, had told her about this internship a few days ago, some program an ex of his was setting up in the city they had grown up in. It had intrigued her, of course, but the idea of moving so far away from the town she loved, her home, to start a job she had no practical experience in terrifies her. But she remembers Ben’s words, the same words that had been playing back in her head in the weeks since they had had that conversation. She is capable. She had worked hard.
Before she can talk herself out of it, she’s sending her application to the email that Alex had sent her in hopes that she would actually step out of her comfort zone. Her stomach turns and her palms sweat and she slams her laptop closed. She’s likely one of a hundred applicants, and with no experience and such a large gap between her graduation and now, she soothes herself. One application won’t make a difference. She’s just testing herself.
Even so, she doesn’t sleep that night.
***
Six months feels like nothing. It’s how long Ben denied and hid his feelings from his girlfriend before he finally opened up that night. In the long run, six months is practically immemorable.
Four months feels even less. It’s only how long they’ve been together and it feels like the beginning of something that’s going to last.
Two months is even shorter; it’s how long she had considered leaving Bookends. Seriously considered leaving, and she had kept it all to herself, even lied to Alex when he asked if she had thought about applying to that program.
But one month...one month feels like a lifetime. It takes the program exactly one month to get back to her.
It’s a Wednesday night, which is usually a night the two of them love, because Y/N doesn’t work on Thursdays, which means they can spend the night doing whatever they please knowing they get to wake up together the next day and annoy each other until it’s time to lie down at night. She’s content, too. It was a slow day at work, and she can’t think of a better way to finish a boring day than listening to Ben tapping away at his computer whenever an idea hits him, reading one of the books from the stack he has gathered up on the coffee table for you.
He has his feet kicked up, his laptop settled in his lap as he types, his eyes narrowed as he stares at the bright screen of his computer. She wants to giggle, really, because he’s cute; he insists that he doesn’t need glasses but he’s leaning closer and squinting and she knows she’s right, even if he refuses to acknowledge it. Placed atop her stomach and ignored in favor of her book, her phone vibrates, and, in need of a break from the morbid unpleasantness of her story, she grabs it. She flexes her toes underneath his leg, shaking the book at him when he glances over at her. “This? Terrible. Awful.”
He frowns, snatching it from her hands and looking at the book fondly. “You don’t like it?”
She picks up her phone and gives him a knowing look. “Oh, I’m loving it, but you can’t deny it’s grim.”
With a smile, he sets it on the coffee table closer to her before he turns back to his laptop. Now that he isn’t looking at her, she allows herself to smile, unlocking her phone and glancing at her notifications. Right on top, with capital letters, she sees that familiar name, and it feels like all the air in her lungs has been sucked right out.
She sits up straight, pulling her toes out from under Ben’s thigh, and he gives a harumph, turning back to her with surprise at her sudden start. “Oh, my God,” she breathes, furrowing her brows. The email sits unopened, but she can still see the exclamation marks. Congratulations! It proclaims, and her heart only races faster. After two weeks of not hearing from them, she had just assumed her application had gotten lost in the shuffle, or she hadn’t been picked, and it had felt...fine. Not great, but she would be fine. As scared as she was, she couldn’t deny that the opportunity excited her, but she had shrugged it off and decided it wasn’t in the cards for her. And yet.
“What?” He asks curiously, sitting up straighter and closing his laptop, leaving it forgotten on the side table. She opens the email, her hands shaking, and she just shakes her head, shuffling closer to Ben as she reads the words on her screen.
“Ben,” she says quietly, fear and excitement and confusion warping the normal functioning of her brain, and she can’t help her disbelieving laugh. “Oh, my—Ben!” She laughs, pushing her phone into his hands. “Look!” With a confused laugh, he takes it, blinking hard to clear up his eyesight, but he hasn’t read a single word before she’s rambling again. “I applied to this stupid thing like, weeks ago, and I hadn’t head from them so I just figured that they didn’t want me but look.”
He reads over the email quickly, a breathless laugh falling from his lips. “Holy shit, Y/N,” he grins, glancing up at her. Her skin burns with excitement and she squeals, throwing her arms around his neck. With a tight hold around her waist, he buries his face in her neck. “What did I tell you? Huh?”
She feels dizzy with all the emotions rushing around inside of her, pulling away from Ben for a moment with a hazy smile to stare at him. “I mean—that’s insane, right? The one application I sent in? There has to be some mistake, right?”
Vehemently, he shakes his head, grabbing her face in both his hands. “No,” he stated firmly. “That’s all you.”
Both of them giggle, still too wrapped up in the excitement and victory of the news that for a moment, neither of them are thinking about the future.
There isn’t really a question about it; she’s going to take it. As though it’s even a choice. And Ben wants her to take it, he does. He wants better for her and he knows that she’ll never find that where she is, but he also wants her. He wants her across the street and working only a few miles down the road. He wants to wake up with his skin smelling of her and to cook her dinner and listen to that loud, obnoxious music she likes and listen to her complain about the books he gives her even and then for them to fall in bed again at night and do it all over again. It’s selfish, so unbearably selfish that it feels toxic to even think about it, but he wants her with him. He’ll never tell her, of course. Leaving is going to be hard enough on her, she doesn’t need to be worried about him on top of it.
He likes to be alone.
Well, he used to.
***
It isn’t that Y/N is miserable, per se.
She’s lonely, certainly, and she’s exhausted from working all the time, and she misses Ben so much that it feels like a piece of her is constantly missing, but she isn’t exactly miserable. She doesn’t eat enough and between phone calls with him and staying so late at work and her general unrest, she isn’t sleeping enough, either, and they’re both rundown, they can feel it, but it’s hard to want to vent to your partner when the time you have is so limited. They don’t want to waste what little time they have together complaining about their lives, so she just gives that sad little shrug every time they talk and they both pretend things are normal. Things are fine. She’s been gone for what feels like ages yet, but Y/N assures him that it’s only been three months since she packed up her entire life and left him behind to build something bigger.
Things really are fine, on the off chance that they get to see one another, which is what excites him so when he calls her after a particularly long day for the both of them. They fill the beginning of the call with that boring small talk she can’t stand and he’s practically bouncing when he asks, “Think you can handle a visitor in a couple of weeks?”
She gasps, beaming at the camera when she asks, “You’re coming? Why are you coming?”
“My editor has an office just a few miles from where you are. I had to meet with them anyway, I just asked if I could go somewhere else.” Even in the low light of his bedroom, Y/N thinks he looks as though he’s glowing, and her stomach flips at the thought of seeing him in person again.
“Of course, I can handle a guest.”
“Maybe for a few weeks?” He suggests lightly.
Her brows shoot up in surprise, a light laugh falling from her. “A few weeks? Why so long?”
It doesn’t matter to her, really. All she wants is to see him and there really isn’t much keeping Ben tied down where he is; he works from home and travels for all his stupid meetings anyway. Pretending to be back to normal with him for a few weeks really sounds like heaven to her. As for Ben, well, he just needs to see her, no matter how long. Y/N may not be intrinsically miserable, but Ben is. His only source of interaction is gone, the only person he wants to watch television with and eat dinner with and fall asleep with every night is gone and he’s wearing thin, as is his resolve to keep them apart, so he draws a deep breath in.
“Because I miss you. I missed you when you would go home and I missed you when you walked to the kitchen, and I missed you when you turned your back to me to change your clothes and now I just—” he pauses to take a ragged breath. “I miss you always. I used to think that I liked being alone but I've finally realized that I just never had the right person. You are my right person, and I missed you even when you were here, so us being apart is tearing me in two.”
“Oh, Ben,” she breathes, her fingers aching to hold him even more than they already did. “God, I miss you. Of course, you can come for a few weeks. Come for as long as you like.”
***
It’s practically back to normal the moment they’re together.
Laughter and kisses and music and books, they settle back into that routine from the moment he shows up at her door. It’s truly perfect. They’ve both been running themselves ragged, but Y/N sleeps better with him by her side and he feels lighter when they’re together and they finally feel as though things are right again for the first time since she left.
It really does make the most sense, her leaving him. He knew it would be coming at some point but he doesn’t expect it to hurt so bad. He still has his girl, they just aren’t together. Not all the time. Not like they were used to. He had considered, when she had found out about the internship, following her here, and every day they spent apart only made the idea more appealing to him. It’s too soon for him to pack up his life, too, but being back with her is so good that he nearly reconsiders. It’s so good that it burns. It’s pleasure with a bite, knowing that he has to savor their moment together in preparation of their inevitable separation and from the moment they are back together, he’s dreading the day he must leave her.
He allows her to drag him around the city she has become so acquainted with, mostly because he adores the way her face lights up when she feels she gets to teach him something. Ben is so knowledgeable, she always insists, that she takes great pride in the moments that she is able to add to that vast well of knowledge, pleased that she gets to leave her own fingerprints on his mind. Otherwise, he just likes to spend time with her, even if that means wandering the streets instead of cuddling up in her cozy little apartment.
Tonight, she drags him through a million little shops she’s found throughout her course in the new city, places she thinks he’ll like, with lots of books and antiques and random little trinkets she insists on buying for him to take home, only to finish at a near-dingy restaurant not a block from her apartment, and he reckons they must have run a circle around the whole city.
They’re that couple Ben used to sneer at, holding hands across the booth and smiling stupidly at each other between bites of their food, and Y/N’s whole body aches at the proximity. All she had yearned for in the past few months was to be back with him, and it feels like she’s back to herself, like she had finally tightened a loose screw in the machine that had rattled since they had been apart.
Neither of them speak for a long time, just soaking in the rare time they can get together, and Y/N sighs softly, pressing a kiss to the back of his hand. Quietly, so quietly that Ben almost doesn’t hear her, she says, “I wish it was like this all the time.”
Of course. He had been thinking the exact same thing, and the thought had been amplified with him staying in that little shoebox she called an apartment. “I know,” he sighs too, squeezing her hand. “I do, too.”
Ben does not understand adult relationships. He hadn’t been a part of a functional one for years before Y/N, and his hesitance is palpable as the two of them stare at one another across the table. Of course, he wants everyday to feel like this, to wake up next to the girl he loves and to follow her around some city with a thousand people crowding him no matter where he goes and to eat at a dark restaurant a few doors down too many times a week. How soon is too soon? And how does she feel? Does she want Ben the same way he wants her, and more importantly, will she continue to want him? All the same questions and insecurities he’s internalized in the past few months pile up in his head until it hurts, so he breathes out and looks out the window.
“I was thinking that you could stay a little longer,” she admits bashfully, watching his reaction carefully.
With a quirked brow, he asks, “How much longer?”
Her chest warms and she laughs nervously, shrugging. “A lot longer.”
He feels her tighten her grasp on his hand in a moment of anxiety, and he mirrors her action from just minutes ago, pulling their hands to his face to kiss her knuckles gently. In a teasing voice that sounds much more self-assured than he feels, he says, “Is that how you’re asking me to move in with you?”
Her anxiety melts away and she kicks his ankle softly with a good-natured huff. “Unlike someone, being well-spoken is not exactly in my job description.”
Ben grins, shaking his head at her. “My mistake, of course,” he says, tilting his head to admire her for a moment. In a much more serious voice, full of reverence and adoration, he says, “I’d follow you anywhere. I hope you know that.”
“Even into the city?” She teases quietly. With a shake of his head and a disbelieving laugh, he agrees,
“Even into the city.”
***
A new place is his only condition for moving in with her, and she can’t say that she’s upset to see the apartment go. The house is nice; a few too many neighbors for Ben’s taste, but he’ll get used to them, he’s sure, if they manage to mind their own business and stay off his and Y/N’s porch. Boxes fill their foyer until he can barely see her behind the stacks, having to find his girlfriend by following the sound of her playful giggles.
He jumps out from behind a rather large pyramid of boxes, startling her into a loud laugh, and he’s got his arm around her waist, about to teach his girl a lesson when a knock sounds at the door.
For a moment, both of them stand in silence, but then a quiet groan falls from his lips at the same time her face twists in excitement.
“Let’s ignore them,” he insists, leaning down to kiss her, but she frowns, leaning away from him with pinched brows.
“No.” It’s a warning, a well-earned one, too, but he truly had not planned on meeting his neighbors at all. It was a task much more suited to Y/N and he had graciously planned on allowing her to handle it, but she has her hands on her hips despite his arm still around her waist, and he whines.
“Y/N…”
“Ben, you promised me! You promised me you would be friendly with them!” She huffs, leaning away from another kiss meant to distract her.
“That’s because I didn’t think you’d actually make me do it!”
“Shut up,” she laughs, playfully shoving him toward the door with a quiet encouragement. With a breath in and a smile plastered on his face, Ben swings it open.