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They broke up eight months ago.
That’s a long time, especially in college. That’s multiple semesters. They broke up multiple semesters ago. Dozens of professors and syllabi and new classrooms to stake claim on one seat. Hundreds of classmates to learn to hate or love. Hell, Rey had a whole other boyfriend in that time between when she loved Ben and when she stopped being with him, until this time, now, where she was somewhere in the middle. She was a free agent, that was the important part. Because after two failed relationships just in her junior year alone, it was important to remind herself that she didn’t have to be in a relationship. It was okay to play the field.
So she did.
She was.
–– really.
There was Poe, the one she was flirting with at parties and in texts and in class, basically everywhere. And there was Finn, who was meeting her after work and walking her home, stalling goodbyes for a kiss he wasn’t getting or a date he was too nervous to ask for. Then, of course there was that random two-month boyfriend whose name she would not speak because fuck that asshole, but she still saw him every day in class and had to avoid him and the drama he carried around.
And there was Ben. Ben, whom she broke up with eight months and four days ago, and who she spent the darkest hours of every night with, tangled up in his sheets or hers, and his limbs and his skin and the way he’d grunt and gasp her name into her mouth.
Okay, she was a free-ish agent.
But tonight at this party it was all of them. Poe was in the kitchen, arguing about the recipe for the jungle juice in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Finn was playing beer pong in the dining room, on a table never used for dining. And Rey could deal with that, the two of them, in her periphery, unaware of each other as competition for her attention and affection because it kept her mind off the asshole ex smoking weed and playing video games in Hux’s room upstairs. Because as long as it was just those three mild players for her to ricochet off of, she would make it out of this weird social situation alive.
And then Ben walked in.
All four now, and their eyes, and their feelings, and her heart, under one roof at this stupid house party.
He found her right away.
Granted, she was easy to spot so close to the front door, standing against the flowered wallpaper of the staircase with Rose and giggling about something Professor Holdo said in Psych. But even the smoke filtering from the kitchen or the darkness of the hallway wouldn’t have been able to hide her. He always knew where she was.
“What are you doing here?” Rey hissed.
“What do you mean?” He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall next to her, surveying the crowd.
“You know what I mean, Ben. I thought you hated parties.”
“I never said that.”
“Yes, you did.”
Finn moved through the end of the hall then, and he smiled eagerly for a brief moment when she caught his eye, until he noticed Ben, and frowned. Rey felt her cheeks burn with embarrassment as he changed course and disappeared into the crowd of bodies in the next room, the party folding him in like a shutting door. It felt like rejection that both relieved her, and infuriated her.
“You hate parties, you don’t even drink,” she insisted again.
“I do drink, just not at parties.”
“I have never seen you drink.”
“Well, we don’t hang out much. I do a lot of things you don’t know about.”
“You don’t have to be an asshole.”
“I’m not being an asshole.” He rolled his eyes and pushed off from the wall, standing his full height.
“Why are you here?” Rey pressed, heedlessly. Furious. Desperate.
“I was invited.” He wasn’t looking at her anymore. Not even a glance. Not even that way that he didn’t look at her but she knew he was still watching her, if that made any sort of sense. Not this time. He was completely, unquestionably not looking at her. Instead his eyes scanned over the heads, seeking out someone else he might know, someone who wasn’t going to yell at him for existing like she was.
She didn’t blame him, she’d want to get away from her too. But this was his fault. He came here, knowing full well she would be here too, with her red plastic cup and her free agency.
It was his fault that nothing felt like when his eyes met hers from across the room.
It was his fault that her skin crawled with desperation, too tight too hot, until he touched her and then she felt like she belonged.
He wasn’t touching her now.
He hadn’t touched her in days.
“But you hate parties.”
“I’m walking away now, Rey.”
And he did. He simply turned his massive shoulders and left her skin and her fury in his wake, washed up against the old peeling wallpaper.
-
He didn’t leave the party.
He helped tap a keg. He laughed at something Kaydel said, twice.
Rey couldn’t help but watch.
Poe tried to get her to dance. Finn brought her a beer she didn’t want.
But it was all too bright, and too loud, and too crowded, and she couldn’t see Ben not looking at her for another moment.
She bummed a cigarette from Rose, and left the party without a single goodbye.
Silent city streets and a glowing ember took her home.
-
Her apartment was dark. Her roommate was with his boyfriend, and wouldn’t be home until tomorrow. The streetlight outside her window cast a translucent orange square on the bed, and she toed off her shoes and sat in the middle of it.
Her apartment’s front door had three brass bells hanging on a string from the knob. Rey never knew why, some kind of art-student, shithole security feature, but she heard it, and it made her body jump to attention because she knew that the next sound was his feet on the stairs, and then her bedroom door knob would turn and Ben would be there, just there.
And there he was.
No words, as always. And he didn’t kiss her right away anymore. Kissing was for people who loved each other, who were committed to that love. Now he would undress her or watch her undress and look look look. (Finally finally finally.) Those sharp, discerning eyes roved over every curve and angle of her skin. Like they needed to take inventory. Like they needed to know if she’d changed anything about their favorite landscape.
And when he knew that she was intact, that her cells were still hers and therefore still his, his eyes softened with adoration, an expression that she was sure nobody had ever seen other than her. His huge hands would close around her hips, or her neck, or her soul, and he would draw her toward him like she was fresh water on the most brutally hot day; cupped and careful, pulled into his body where he needed.
Tonight, it was the same, except tonight she needed him.
Tonight she needed him more than he’d ever, ever needed her.
She raked her fingers into his dark hair and pulled it fiercely, his face into her neck. She gripped his shoulders then and jumped to wrap her legs around his waist, where he instantly caught her, hands on her rear as she hooked her feet behind him.
“Closer,” she whispered, “closer.”
“Rey,” he whispered back. “What do you want?”
He set her down on the edge of the bed, right on the edge of the square of streetlight, like it was the bed itself.
“More, more,” she murmured, trying to reel him back in with her feet while he undressed. He turned to her next, making short work of her outfit she’d been wearing at the party. It smelled like cigarettes and grease, like other hands and missing him.
He dropped to his knees, his goal unmistakable. It was his favorite thing, after all, to taste her. To make her back bend as she cried out his name.
“No, don’t — it’s been too long, I just want you inside of me.”
“It’s only been two days.” he said against her inner thigh, nuzzling and kissing the soft, sensitive skin.
“That’s two days too long,” her voice cracked into a moan when she felt his nose nudge at the underwear over her sex. “Come on, Ben. Fuck me."
His body stilled and he sat back on his heels.
“I think you can wait.”
“What?”
“I think you can wait,” he repeated, “You’ve been telling me what to do all night. It’s my turn.”
“But–”
She tried to wriggle free, to get the upper hand that she lost moments ago, or was it days? Months? Two years ago when she saw him for the first time?
Giant hands tugged the underwear down her legs, and pinned her thighs open so he could lick and hum her to orgasm (arching back, broken gasping “Ben, oh god.”)
And when she was still wet and dazed from it, he pulled her gently to the edge of the bed, pushed her hair out of her face, and touched the tip of his cock to her lips. Rey felt sloppy with her lust for him and opened eagerly, desperate to gulp him down while the aftershocks of her climax still rippled through her body. She felt like she existed only for his pleasure.
She wanted to always only exist for that.
His face was dark and fierce when he pulled himself free from her drooling mouth, intent on burying himself in the wet, empty, clenching space between her legs. He turned her on her belly, ass in the air as her legs dangled off the edge, and pushed in.
“Feels good,” she grunted into the mattress under her cheek. “Missed you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, don’t stop.”
“Never,” he said between gritted teeth, the slide of him inside of her overwhelming them both. She felt her arousal drip down her thighs, just another shred on the mountain of evidence that she was his, she always was, she always would be.They both tumbled over the edge together, his body curled over hers, in hers, rearranging her organs and claiming this space, here in the square of streetlight.
-
“Why did we break up?” Her voice felt enormous in the dark, post-coital quiet of her room. He was sprawled next to her, both of their naked bodies on top of the rumpled blankets as their skin cooled.
“I wasn’t happy enough for you,” he answered simply.
She rolled onto her side to stare at him. “Did I say that to you?”
“Not in so many words,” he murmured. “But you were frustrated that I wouldn’t be… more.”
“I think you’re enough,” she whispered, “I think you’re everything.” He blinked at her as she put a hand on his face. He covered it with his own. “I want to be yours again.”
“Rey,” he closed his eyes, hand falling, “I haven’t changed. This is who I am. I can’t have you walk away from me again because you think something else will be better.”
“Nothing’s better than this. Than us,” she spoke against his temple “Than you.”
He pulled back to look at her.
“Poe is better. Finn, too.”
Her hand dropped to the sheet between them as she stared at him incredulously.
“That’s not fair, you know I don’t think that.”
“Don’t you? Isn’t that why you’ve been spending so much time with them?”
“I haven’t fucked them, if that’s what you mean.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“But isn’t that what you’re asking?”
“There’s more to love than fucking, Rey.”
It was enormous, the implication of that tiny sentence. He almost seemed surprised that he’d said it, maybe even regretful, like he’d cracked open his heart but didn’t want to show her the pieces. That was it, the kernel of his fear, that all of the months before 8 months ago when they broke up, and all of the months before that when he was hers, it meant nothing to her. What had been shrouded in silence all this now had words.
Rey took a deep breath, and then asked softly, as careful and tentative as broken pieces deserve.
“Do you… do you think I didn’t love you?”
It snapped, whatever control he had left.
“You LEFT” he cut the air above him with an angry hand, “You left and started dating that douchebag and then when he treated you like shit you stood on my doorstep and cried and you told me how stupid you were, and you were, Rey, you were so stupid, but you are you, and you looked like, so sad, and then I kissed you, and we fucked on my floor, and I thought - this is it, she’s back - and you weren’t. You left. AGAIN. And I’d watch you have lunch with Finn, or watch you hang on Poe, and my heart would break all over again, over and over.”
There was a wobble to his voice but his body was tense, hard. He wouldn’t look at her, venting to the ceiling just to avoid her eyes. He pressed his fist against his forehead in frustration, speaking through clenched teeth.
“But then you’d text me, that stupid little text, asking me to come over, and like a fucking idiot I would, just so I could be near you again.”
His bare chest heaved as his eyes closed, skin half-lit by yellow electricity and hurt and exhaustion. She’d never heard him say so much at one time.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Ben,” she sniffed, full of regret, eyes welling, “I didn’t know.”
He turned his head toward her and reached for her hand again, placing it on his cheek like it had been before, keeping it covered with his hand so she couldn’t pull away.
“I love you more than I’ve ever loved anything, Rey. I love you enough to keep taking whatever you’ll give me like a dog begging under the table, but do not keep yanking on the leash. I haven’t changed, so…” he trailed off, and then, “If you didn’t like me before, you won’t like me now. I’m just me.”
The tears kept coming, hot and fast, rolling down her face and dripping into her hair and pillow, sweat and salt and sorrow.
“I am so, so sorry. I can’t say it enough. But I’ve changed,” He huffed a wishful sound and moved her hand to his lips. She choked back another sob. “I have, Ben. I didn’t see you before, but I see you now. I do, I understand now. I always thought you didn’t care. Or at least it always felt like you didn’t really totally care, but now I see I wanted you to care-- that is that I wanted you to show me that you loved me the way I wanted you to, but you were showing me the way YOU wanted to. I thought it had to be… typical. It had to be… what I see in others. It had to be normal. And it doesn’t, Ben. It just has to be us.”
She tried to pull her hand back but he held it fast against his lips.
“Please,” She was begging, she knew. She was desperate. Now that he had laid himself bare, she needed him to know he was safe. Even after her clawing and her cowardice, she HAD changed, or at least she would, for him. He was enough. He was enough. He was enough. “Please, give me a second chance.”
A long moment, longer than any other. Then, he nodded under her hand.
“Okay,” he whispered.
Her eyes flew to his. “Okay?”
“Yes, but you need to know that this is it for me.”
“I know, I know. I won’t screw it up.” She kissed his forehead, his temple, his brow.
“No, I mean, YOU are it for me. You are the one.”
“Oh,” she felt the elation well up inside her, like sunshine in her lungs bursting into her brain and beaming from her face. “You’re it for me, too.”
“I’m serious, Rey. Do you understand what I’m saying? This doesn’t end for me.”
She shook her head, and then nodded, agreeing in every way. “Me neither. I love you.”
“I won’t let you leave me again.”
“So don’t.”
“You’re mine.”
“Always, always always,” she chanted against his mouth as he pulled her over on top of him and she felt him grow hard between her legs again. Wet, happy kisses, his arms wrapped around her. Just them now, and their eyes, and their feelings, and their hearts, under one roof.
There was a reason she never put her heart into playing the field. It had only ever been his.