“Now, how about we go back to the old ones before we just sit here weeping?”
Ben laughed and fixed the music situation while I started the car and got us back on the road.
* * * *
I hadn’t driven such a long distance in a while. The last time was when Lake and I took a road trip to Vermont a couple of years back, because we both wanted to see the fall colors. I’d been incredibly stressed over my studies, and Lake had made an executive best friend decision that we needed to get out of New York for a long weekend. It had been fun, but I didn’t miss driving these kinds of distances.
As I navigated to the house through the busy neighborhoods, I was pretty damn happy that my normal commute took me from the countryside to the edge of town and back. At least the trailer was easy to pull and maneuver.
We parked by the curb right in front of the cute two-story house.
“This looks nice,” I commented, then smiled as I saw a rainbow flag a couple of houses over.
“Yeah, it’s been very nice. Ideal, really, if I wanted to stay here,” Ben mused.
He pulled out keys, but before he could open the door, a spitfire of a woman wrenched it open and tackle-hugged him enthusiastically.
“Yay! I’m here when you came home and Cade’s not so I get the mattress!” She pulled away from him, then grinned. “Hi.”
Ben seemed a bit surprised. “Hi. Uh, River, this is Shelly. Shelly, this is River.”
“The boyfriend. It’s so nice to meet you!” She held out a hand and we shook.
“You, too.”
“Come on in!” She went inside, and Ben rolled his eyes at me.
I didn’t mind the exuberance, so I smiled.
Ben reminded her that getting dibs on the mattress meant that she also needed to help us carry stuff. She promised she would and that she’d order pizza for us while we packed.
It took us maybe an hour to get everything into the boxes we’d brought. Most of it was books.
“You don’t have much stuff,” I commented.
“Neither do you.”
“Touché.” I closed the box I’d been filling. “To be fair, we still have some stuff in New York. We need someone to ship all of it to us. It’s not like we need most of it, but…” I shrugged.
“It’s your stuff.”
“Yeah. There’s nothing important in there. We weren’t at a point where we could’ve bought furniture that mattered.”
“You could always ask someone like Anderson. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind helping out,” Ben mused.
I hummed. “Maybe. Though he might rent a truck and drive it to the rescue just so he can come back to cuddle with the animals.”
Ben grinned. “So Lake wasn’t exaggerating?”
“Not in the least.” Lake’s once-client and short time boyfriend was a wonderful guy who had gotten sucked into a strict lifestyle of a career-oriented upbringing. Much like Ben, he’d never had pets. Maybe that was why Ben could relate.
“It’s almost funny to me. Well, no,” Ben said, stopping what he was doing and looking at me. “It’s not funny how I never got a pet because of that one mishap with a dog I can’t even remember. But you know, I now really like Bucky a lot and the others are good dogs, too.”
We ended up staying the night because Shelly and Cade wanted to throw a farewell party for us. By the time we went to Ben’s old room, everything was packed in the trailer and we curled up under a blanket on the mattress Shelly and Cade were still arguing over.
As Ben gracefully received their hugs of goodbyes after an early breakfast, he turned to them and deadpanned, “Or you could do something about this sexual tension between the two of you and decide to share the mattress. Just saying.”
I cackled as I jumped into the passenger’s seat. Yeah, Ben could be full of surprises and his now former roommates hadn’t expected that in the least.
