“It’s fine,” he assured himself, reaching for his phone. His palm slicked clammy and nervous sweat against the back of the casing as he waited for the facial recognition to unlock the home screen. “No one knows, and even if they did, it’s not like it was before.”
He swiped through his apps until he reached the last page, the last app he’d downloaded. The one that had been sitting there for weeks, ignored.
“It’s okay to want this,” he whispered, pressing the pad of his finger down against the icon. “It’s okay to want to know what it’s like to be with another man.”
CHAPTER3
BEN
Ben staredat the chain lock on his door, watching it rattle against the wood with every thump of Cody’s fist against the frame.
“I’m going to call the cops,” he said.
Ben sat on the floor in the entryway of his apartment, knees pulled up to his chest and his palm flat against the door. He could feel the vibrations of Cody’s incessant pounding travel up through his forearm and into his shoulder.
“Baby, just let me in so we can talk,” Cody pleaded.
“I don’t want to talk. I’m done talking.”
“You know I’d never hit you, right?”
Ben let his hand fall away from the door, his wrist hanging limp over his knee. The denim of his jeans felt like sandpaper against his skin and he dropped his head against the wall with a thud.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Enough is enough.”
“Are you breaking up with me?” Cody sounded mad, and the door rattled as it was hit again from the outside.
“We aren’t even really…” Ben sighed, changing his tactic. “Yes.”
“It’s Valentine’s Day,” Cody reminded me,
“Okay.” He looked up at the dinner he’d made for them, spread across the table and untouched. Two white taper candles sat as the centerpiece, the wax burning down and pooling on the glass top of the table. Ben had always fancied himself to be a romantic person, but Cody was clearly not cut out for that and wasn’t deserving of Ben’s attentions anyway.
After their fight two weeks before, things had been relatively calm, but that had only lulled Ben into a false sense of security. He thought that, for the first time, Cody had taken him seriously when he’d said he wanted things to change. Ben had fallen for the act all over again. He was the one who’d suggested they stay in for Valentine’s Day. He wanted to cook, and he wanted to be away from prying eyes and close to a bed. He didn’t want his boyfriend—or whoever Cody was—to show up with a hickey peeking out of the collar of his shirt.
A hickey from someone who definitely wasn’t Ben.
“Let me come in so we can talk,” Cody begged again.
“There’s nothing else to say.” Ben closed his eyes. “Whatever this is between us is over. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“Baby. What if I do?”
“It honestly doesn’t matter. Because I don’t. You can go be with whoever left that bruise on your neck for all I care, but if you don’t leave, Iwillcall the police.”
Cody started to argue with him, but Ben was done. He stood up, double-checked the locks and went into the other room. He climbed into bed, fully dressed, and turned on the TV. He made it about ten minutes into a true crime documentary before turning off the TV and attempting to smother himself with a pillow. Thankfully, the noise from the front hallway had quieted down, so he decided to go make sure Cody had left.
A quick look through the peephole didn’t reveal anyone in the hall, but Ben wanted to be certain. He undid the locks and stuck his head out, finding the hallway empty, save for the battered roses Cody had brought for him. Upon seeing the hickey, Ben shoved them right into Cody’s chest and kept the momentum going to push him right out the door.
Cody had left the roses discarded on the doormat, which almost seemed like a waste. Ben bent down and picked them up, re-locking his doors and taking the bouquet into the kitchen. When all was said and done, he’d been able to save four of the twelve roses, and he trimmed the stems before dropping them into a pint glass filled with water. He didn’t have a vase, he realized, which felt weird. He’d have to pick one up the next time he went to the store.
Ben didn’t want the dinner he’d made—roasted chicken and twice-baked potatoes—to go to waste, so he poured himself a glass of wine and sat down at his table for the saddest Valentine’s Day dinner in the history of Valentine’s Day dinners. The chicken was perfect, as he knew it would be because the recipe he used had belonged to his grandmother. He’d grown up loving her roasted chicken, but she only made it the first Sunday of the month so it was like a treat. She’d refused to give Ben’s mom the recipe, instead willing it to Ben when she passed with the caveat he wasn’t allowed to share it with anyone besides the person he wanted to marry.
Even back then, he realized his sexuality was a giveaway for the people closest to him. He made it through high school with a lot of ideas about what it meant to be gay, and by the time he reached college, he’d recognized he didn’t want to have to choose. With one leg on either side of the line, Ben came out to his grandmother as bisexual before he’d confessed to anyone else. He knew she wouldn’t care. She’d always been kind and loving, and she scoffed at his admission, asking if he would have felt the need to tell her if he was straight. The answer was, of course, no, and so with that, she waved off his confession and went on from there.
Things hadn’t gone as well with his parents, but they’d come around. His mom’s biggest concern had always been getting grandchildren, which he assured her could happen regardless of whether he married a man or a woman, or even if he didn’t marry at all. She remained unconvinced, especially of the latter, but that was all for another day, she’d told him. Either way, he knew Cody wasn’t ever going to get his eyes on the roasted chicken recipe, but Ben hadn’t seen the harm in cooking it for him. He liked it himself and had never maintained his grandmother’s cooking cadence anyway.
As the night crept on, Ben washed the dishes and scraped the wax off his table. He took out the trash, he drank a bottle of wine, and then he decided to make a very bad decision. He opened One-Night and turned on his location. Ben had never shied away from a casual hookup, and with the wine pumping through his veins, he was just buzzed enough to go for the gold. He knew that anyone online at 10 p.m. on Valentine’s Day was going to be in the market for one thing and one thing only—and that was perfect for him. Hell, he’d even host.
