“We don’t speak of him.” Ben covered Lara’s mouth with his hand and she pursed her lips against his palm, smacking him away.
“You deserve better than him.”
“Do I?” He scrunched his nose, drink still empty, so he took hers and finished it off, sputtering at the disgusting sugary flavor that exploded in his mouth. “Jesus, Lara. What the hell is that?”
“It’s called a Summer Slam.” She laughed and took her glass out of his hand, setting it on the table beside his empty one. “And yes. You deserve much better than Cody. Do you really doubt that?”
“Sometimes,” he muttered.
“Are you being serious with me right now?”
“It’s new.”
“It’s wrong.”
Ben sighed and shrugged. “In my heart, I believe that. In my head…I don’t know. It’s a little more complicated. Being with Thomas seems to help.”
“But that’s just a hookup.” Lara tilted her head to the side and narrowed her eyes.
“A hookup,” he confirmed. “A rebound.”
“Does he know you’re using him to get over someone else?”
“He knows that what we are is all we’re ever going to be,” he said. “It’s fine. I promise you we’ve talked about it.”
“Yeah, but the way you’re acting makes me feel like you want it to be more than that.”
The waiter appeared—finally—to refill their drinks, and Ben drank half of his in one swallow. How dare Lara be so intimately in tune with him that she was able to pick up on that without him even saying a word about it. And, sure, he’d thought on a few occasions what it would be like to be more than friends with Thomas, but he’d done his best to nip those thoughts in the bud before they bloomed into something untamable.
“He’s not the one,” Ben said.
Lara inclined her head to the other side, expression still tight with disbelief.
“He’s not,” he said again.
Their meals arrived, and Ben wondered the whole time if maybe moving things along with Thomas wasn’t as bad of an idea as he’d originally worried. Not like he wanted to be boyfriends with him, but if Thomas was new to being with men, he’d need a friend. He’d surely want someone he could confide in or talk to about his experiences. Ben could be that person. Maybe seeing Thomas outside of the bedroom without any intent behind it was what he needed to draw his mind back from racing toward imaginary fairy tale finish lines that could never exist for them.
And that was what he told himself when he drove home and parked in his assigned parking spot. When he sat in his driver’s seat with the engine off to text Thomas and ask for his address. When he locked his car and started in the direction of Thomas’s building, which was closer than he’d ever thought. Even when Thomas had said it was walkable, this wasn’t what he’d imagined.
He stopped in front of the building and looked up, already knowing Thomas lived on the fifth floor, that he had a balcony, that he was so close. Ben pulled out his phone and fired of a text.
Ben:Do you want to come downstairs?
Thomas:Are you here? I can buzz you in.
Ben:I am, but like… do you want to go for a walk? There’s a gelato place a little further down the road.
Thomas didn’t answer, but less than two minutes later he appeared in the lobby, legs covered in dark and tight denim, paired with a simple and plain black t-shirt with a v-neck that exposed the tease of the top of his coarse chest hair. He wore Converse on his feet and held his phone in his hand. Thomas joined him on the sidewalk, expression slightly confused.
“I didn’t think we did things like this,” Thomas offered in lieu of a hello.
Ben wasn’t drunk, but he was a little buzzed. He probably shouldn’t have driven home, but the alcohol had ebbed and flowed over the course of dinner, finally hitting him in full force when he caught a whiff of Thomas’s cologne. Had he worn cologne the other times they’d gotten together? Ben couldn’t remember. He knew Thomas smelled good, but he didn’t remember him smelling like this, like clouds and pine trees and petrichor.
“Like what?” Ben slipped his phone into his pocket.
Thomas gestured at the night sky like it meant something.
It did, Ben knew.
