After that, he was all out of friends.
“I’ll email you through the details. You need to be there by noon tomorrow with your, uh… guy. You’re still not married, right? That’s definitely not a thing?”
“I’m not married,” Ben agreed.
This was easily the worst idea he’d ever had.
He’d let his mouth run away with him, too busy defending Eliot to think about the consequences. What if Sam didn’t agree?
What if he did?
A part of Ben wanted a second chance with him. A shot at getting things right this time, being honest about what he wanted. Letting himself have the one good thing in his life, the thing he’d thrown away out of cowardice and confusion.
Dragging him off to a couples’ retreat was almost certainly not the way to go about it.
Except… maybe it was. It wouldn’t have been the first time they’d let people assume they were together to their advantage.
The adventures they’d gone on, the ones that had started out as terrible ideas… those had been the best times. They were happiest when they were doing something stupid and a little risky together.
Maybe Sam was different now. Maybe he wouldn’t want to get caught up in Ben’s bullshit again. But was it the worst thing to take the chance that he would?
“Good. I can’t reassess my entire mental picture of you at once,” Claire said. “You care a lot about Eliot,” she noted. It definitely wasn’t a question.
“Of course,” Ben said. “And I care a lot about Ballsy, too. I want it to succeed.”
Why had he volunteered for this? He couldn’t admit to Sam that he wanted to spend the weekend with him.
He did want to spend the weekend with him, though. Seeing him again had dredged up so many old feelings that Ben felt like he was drowning in them.
He wasn’t used to feeling anything like this anymore. He’d thought he was past the stage of his life where feelings were this intense.
That was why he’d volunteered. Not just to save Eliot. But because he’d seen an opportunity to get what he wanted most out of it.
It had worked for Eliot, after all. Why shouldn’t it work for him?
Aside from the fact that this was a completely different situation.
The only thing Ben was sure of right now was that he was unsure of everything.
“Okay. Good luck, then. I’ll see you Monday.”
“Thank you,” Ben said, standing. He wasn’t exactly sure why he was saying thank you.
He’d just had his entire life upended in the space of five minutes. He’d volunteered to do something he wasn’t sure he could, with a man he wasn’t sure would even want to help him after all this time.
But if it saved Ballsy, it was worth it. This was his baby. The thing he’d been working toward for years. The chance to do what he really wanted to with his life.
If a few days of potential discomfort with an old friend were the price of that, he was getting off lightly.
He hoped.
