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She was gone. Ben had searched the house high and low, throwing open doors and scaring drunk couples hiding in the dark, but she wasn’t behind any of them. She wasn’t anywhere.
Why was she overreacting to this? He was basically paying her a compliment, after all. What was her problem?
What was she talking about? Panic settled heavily in Ben’s chest as he sank down against a wall, his world devolving into little more than his phone screen and the words on it. He couldn’t hear the party anymore at all.
This wasn’t happening. This was not happening. Ben’s head spun as his thumbs, too big and too clumsy for proper spelling or punctuation flew across his screen. Fear had overridden his need to be grammatically correct.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
None of his texts sent. His calls would ring once - maybe just for half of a second - and then went straight to voicemail. He didn’t leave any messages, just sent string after string of hurt she would never read.
“Solo, you okay?”
Shit. He was crying. He was crying on the floor at a party like some heartbroken loser.
“Yeah,” he said, standing and surreptitiously wiping his eyes. “I’m fine.”
It was a lie, but they didn’t need to know that.
He spent the weekend trying to contact her, but to no avail.
Her friends refused to help him - which he should have suspected. They were never his biggest fans in the first place. But even Poe had gone radio silent since the party.
It didn’t matter that Poe annoyed the hell out of him. They’d known each other since they were in the womb. Rey shouldn’t get to have him in the break up - not that they were actually broken up… Right?
No one from their friend group spoke to him on Monday. Rose asked if she could switch lab partners in chem. Jessika knocked his shoulder in the hall, her eyes daring him to say something. Anything at all. He didn’t, of course.
Ben decided that didn’t matter. None of it did. Hux and Phasma weren’t pissed at him for no reason. He hung out with them and things almost felt normal.
Almost.
He hadn't seen Rey anywhere. Not in the halls. Not in any of their shared classes. Not at her art club after school. It was like she hadn’t come in today at all. That, or she’d found some way to disappear completely.
He tried to contact her, but of course she still had him blocked.
It was hard to be mad at someone you cared about so much, but Ben tried.
He’d always known that he was hard to love, but he’d thought that Rey was stronger than his parents and everyone else. He thought that she loved him - she’d told him that she did. But maybe she lied.
The next weekend, he snuck out and drove to her house. He knocked three times on her window, just like he always did to signal he was there, but she didn’t throw open the blinds. Her light switched off instead.
Rose Tico texted him at two in the morning - not ten minutes after he’d left Rey’s.
Ben stopped trying to speak to Rey at lunch. He looked down at his shoes when he passed her in the halls. He gave her space and time and everything else he could think of to help her forgive him, but she didn’t.
Maybe she never would. Maybe Rose was right and he’d fucked up so monumentally that there was no way to fix what he’d broken.
He kept texting Rey - or, her number, at least - even knowing he wasn’t going to get a response.
It had started as a reflex, almost. She was the first person he told everything to, after all.
Eventually, it turned into something of a diary. A sounding board that couldn’t sound back. A void to cry out into when the world seemed unfair. Which was just about always.
Military school didn’t actually help much. It gave him discipline, sure, and some distance from the mess he’d made of his life, but he wasn’t any less miserable. Though, that might not have been the goal in the first place.
His parents re-enrolled him in the same school for his senior year. They must have been happier without him.
Things got better when he left for college (Illum U - not too shabby, considering his high school career), but only marginally.
He left his family and his town and his life behind, but one thing stuck with him. #fobsfic
Nothing actually got better until he started going to therapy. He’d resisted it at first because he was scared. What might it mean about him? That he was broken or wrong, somehow, just as he’d always feared.
Then, he was afraid that it just wouldn’t work. That he would go and actually try but, in the end, the cracks inside of him would just be too deep to mend.
Luckily, Amilyn was fantastic. She helped him to see that he didn’t need to be fixed because he was never really broken. She helped him heal and forgive; first, his parents, then his uncle, and then, hardest of all, himself.
He didn’t text Rey nearly as often as he once had (he just didn’t need that crutch as much anymore), but he found that he couldn’t just stop completely. Still, he tried to keep it to holidays and special occasions.
He never, ever, in his wildest dreams imagined that she might actually respond one day.
Fuck.
What did he do now? She wasn’t supposed to respond. She *never* responded. She’d had him blocked for years.
He could lie, of course. It wouldn’t be beyond the scope of possibility for him to have gotten a new number at some point, or for someone else to have gotten his. But he could never lie to her.
Ben’s heart almost stopped. How did she know where he lived? A traitorously sipt of hope flamed to life inside of his chest. Had Poe told her? Had she asked?
Of course he agreed. It might have been a mistake, he knew that in his bones. Seeing her again might undo all of the progress he’d made toward letting her go, but he was too weak to say anything but yes.
Still, he tried his best to temper his expectations.
He told himself that she still hated him (because she probably did) and that she was probably seeing someone else (because she probably was). Hell, she could have been married by now. To someone that treated her right. She might have kids.
He didn’t care. Whatever pain he would endure after this - because he was certain that there would be some - would be worth it just to see her face again.
He got to the bar about twenty minutes early and then sat in his car for fifteen of those, just trying to center himself; a trick he’d learned from the yoga classes Amylin had insisted he attend.
When he did finally wander inside, his eyes found her instantly. Like they knew where she was, somehow.
The magnetic pull she’d had over him as a teenager hadn’t diminished over the years. If anything, it might have intensified. He found himself drawn to her, his feet taking unconscious steps forward, even as he drank her in.
She was just as beautiful as he remembered - more so now, possibly. And when she smiled at the bartender (all dimpled cheeks and shining hazel eyes), he felt a bittersweet lance of pain inside of his chest.
He used to make her smile like that, dazzling and bright.
That was what he wanted out of tonight, he decided. Just a smile. Just a physical assurance, no matter how small, that the pain that existed between them was buried. Or that it could be, someday soon.
She looked up and saw him before he’d even had a chance to say anything and he wondered if maybe she still felt that pull too, just a little.
There was no smile for him, not quite yet, but she didn’t seem particularly upset either, so he counted that as a win.
“Hello Rey,” he said, finding his voice after a moment of mutual silence. “You look -” incredible. Gorgeous. Too good for words. “Lovely.”
He wasn’t even sure, considering their past, if it was appropriate for him to be commenting on her appearance, but the words were out before he could think better of them. Luckily, she didn’t seem offended.
“Thank you, Ben.” She looked him over; from his face to the shine of his wingtips. He wondered, as she did so, what she saw.
He’d thought long and hard about what to wear tonight, and after long consideration, he’d settled on a plain suit (dark navy, not black) sans tie and a long, wool overcoat. It was put together, but not overly formal. Relaxed, but not too casual. He hoped.
“You look nice too,” she continued. “Would you like to get a table?”
He agreed, and if she’d asked him why he pulled out her chair, he would have insisted it was instinct. She didn’t ask.
There was a lot of quiet between them (that and tension) as they ordered their drinks; her, a cocktail with a name that alluded to the beach, and him, a scotch on the rocks he was pretty sure he wouldn’t even touch.
“So,” Rey began eventually, one finger trailing along the edge of her glass. Her nailpolish was red and glittery and chipped like she’d been wearing it for a long time, maybe since Christmas. “It’s been a long time.”
Too long, Ben’s mind supplied. He didn’t actually say that, of course, even if that was how he felt. He nodded, instead, and hummed quietly. “It has.”
“Years,” she said. “I don’t even know how many.”
He did, of course. He suspected that she probably did too. But the number didn’t really matter, he supposed.
“Yep.”
“So why did you text me?”
She looked at him hard, like he was a puzzle she was struggling to sort out. Like some of the pieces had been left out of the box.
“What happened? Why did you decide to, out of the blue, wish me a happy new year however many years later?”
“It wasn’t out of the blue.”
This seemed to surprise her. “What?”
“I mean, I sure it was for you, but for me - I never stopped texting you.”
God, that was embarrassing to admit. He could feel his ears burning beneath his hair.
“What?” She repeated, no less shocked. More so, probably.
“When you blocked me after our fight, I kept trying to reach out. I’d hoped that, eventually you would -” ‘Calm down’ was not the right expression to use. He knew that, yet, it still hung from the tip of his tongue, threatening to open the door for his foot on its departure. “Forgive me,” he continued, hastily. “Maybe. And I just, kind of, never stopped.”
Her brows furrowed. He was sure that the puzzle in front of her was beginning to change shape.
“Even after I promised to leave you alone, I -” this part was harder to say. “You were the only person I talked to about a lot of things, so it was nice to have something like that when I couldn’t have you.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away, unable to meet her bewildered gaze head-on any longer.
“I know it’s not the coolest thing in the world to do. It’s probably… creepy, I guess. I’m sorry if I upset you in any way…”
“You’re lying.”
Ben snapped back up to attention. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not.” He laughed at the sheer absurdity. “Why in the world would I make something like this up?”
“Then show me.”
“Show you?”
“Show me,” she said again, more firmly this time, and stuck out her hand.
He was left with no choice.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. He had plenty of choices.
He could have laughed in her face. He could have gotten up and walked out and left this ridiculous and invasive request behind.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he pulled his phone out of his pocket, opened his text conversation with Rey (the last message bubble being hers was still strange to see, even now, hours later), and handed the whole thing over.
She scrolled through quickly, her eyes widening as she took in the length of his one-sided conversation. The blush on his face deepened intensely.
“I’m going to stop, obviously. I should have a long time ago. It just became a habit. A bad one.”
Ben felt like his face was on fire. Like maybe the entire bar was.
Rey kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. Each flick of her finger was another shovel-full of dirt atop the (entirely too-deep) grave he’d dug for himself.
“I’m sorry,” he continued, feeling the need to say something as she scanned over his most personal thoughts for the past several years. “If I’ve made you uncomfortable in any way. I can just leave if -”
“No!” She practically shouted the word. Patrons at other tables looked up. The bartender frowned at him. A gentleman nearby cracked his knuckles - which, of course, could have been completely coincidental, but, to Ben, it was the rallying cry of someone ready to toss some dickhead who couldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer out on his ass.
“No,” she repeated, more quietly this time, pink tinting her cheeks. “No, don’t go.”
“Okay,” he hadn’t even stood, but she was watching him with an almost pseudo panic like he’d been halfway out the door.
“You really,” she began, stopping halfway through with a small stifled snuffle. A single tear escaped her, but she quickly swiped it away. “God, you were telling the truth. And you were so hurt…”
“By my own hands,” he assured her. She didn’t deserve to feel a lick of guilt about how things ended between them.
She laughed then, a little ruefully, before sliding his phone back with a trembling hand.
He wanted to interrogate her, to dissect how she was feeling, to understand the what and how and why, but he let silence settle. He let her take her time. If she wanted to tell him anything, she would.
“I guess I didn’t really know how much I meant to you.”
He reached for her hand but thought better of it at the last second and grabbed for his drink instead. “You meant the world to me, Rey.” He swirled his glass, let the condensation run over his fingers and listened to the ice clink against the sides. “I was such an idiot back then. I’m so sorry I ever let you feel any different.”
“I can’t really still be upset about something that happened when we were teenagers, right?” Ben didn’t see why she couldn’t be. He had been, after all, clearly. Maybe she just meant that it wasn’t healthy for her. For either of them. “We were young. And stupid.”
“I was stupid,” he corrected.
Her lips turned up at one end. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was pretty close to one. “I was hard-headed. Stubborn. Proud…”
“You were hurt. I hurt you.” He had to steel himself for this next part. Because he knew what was coming. He’d run over this speech about a thousand times over the years. “You were everything to me and I treated you like you weren’t. Maybe I was stupid and young, but you deserve an apology. I’m sorry - not just for what I said. For everything. I should have been better.”
She’d turned her head as he was apologizing, like she just couldn’t bear to face it, but then she looked back. Her eyes shone in the bar’s dim light. And she smiled - it was a sad, watery one, but it was real. He’d gotten one.
“I forgive you.”
He could have cried. “You don’t have to,” he sighed, relief suffusing his bones. “But you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to hear that.”
She shrugged. “Maybe I do.” Her smile grew. “I’ve missed you a lot, Ben. I tried not to, and for so long I convinced myself that I didn’t, but then I saw your name on my phone and it all came rushing back. I told myself I was letting go of the past when I unblocked you. That I was giving myself a fresh start. That letting go of old grudges was my new years’s resolution. But I think I was hoping…”
She trailed off. Her eyes met his and he saw something there - something beyond words. Something they both knew. Something they both felt. And he held fast to that.
His throat was thick with emotion, but he swallowed and spoke past it. “Hey, are you hungry?”
Rey’s face brightened, and not just because of his question (he hoped), but because of the memories it stirred. Of nights spent in the back of his father’s car or laid across his bed in that old attic room, that same question hanging in the air. He already knew the answer, of course, every time. It was always the same.
Her grin turned teasing. “I could eat.”
The bar’s in-house bourbon burgers weren’t very good (too much bourbon, not enough burger), but Ben didn’t care, and it seemed, at least to him, that Rey didn’t either.
She told him about her engineering degree. About the PHD she was currently working towards and the dissertation that made her want to tear her hair out most nights.
He drank in every word. Delighted by whatever pieces of herself she was willing to share.
Eventually, it was his turn, which he dreaded. In his mind, the story of his intervening years was far less interesting than hers. Still, she insisted he share, and who was he to deny her anything?
He skimmed past military school as much as he possibly could. It wasn’t a good time in his life and thinking about it for too long tended to bring him down, even now. Rey didn’t seem to mind.
He told her about his mercurial college major. Of trying to find himself in a sea of unknown faces. Of failing and flailing until he finally found a lifeline and managed to pull himself back to land.
He worked in publishing now, which she found interesting. But he was a nepotism hire. Resistance was his mother’s publishing house and he was fairly sure he’d gotten his position entirely because his mother still felt guilty for sending him away as a teenager.
Well, at least that had gotten him something, in the end.
They stayed until the bar closed, and when Ben offered Rey a ride home, she said yes. When she invited him upstairs to her apartment, he said the same.
They didn’t have sex that night. Which was fine by Ben. He’d had no illusions about that when he set out for the evening.
Plus, if they did things right, if they built a strong foundation now, there would be time for that in the future. If that was something Rey wanted, of course.
They talked all night. Just talked and cried and laughed and forged a path back to each other through the murk of the past.
In the early hours of the morning, they laid down on opposite sides of her mattress and tucked themselves beneath layers of blankets. Ben took Rey’s hand across the sheets and she smiled.
“I’ve missed you,” he said. It must have been the hundredth time.
“I know,” she responded sleepily.
He pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “I love you.”
This time, she beamed, and it was brighter than the sun just beginning to peek out over the city’s hazy skyline.
“I love you, too.”