-May, 2015. One year before the accident.-
Rey was perched ready and waiting on her second-hand floral print sofa, wearing a borrowed cocktail dress that was-as Rose had very solemnly told her-a "I'm ready to lose my v-card tonight" shade of bright cherry red.
It was supposed to be seductive, but Rey had no intentions of luring anyone into her bed. She just wanted to eat, really, make conversation and maybe a connection. She wasn't expecting much.
Which was good, because she was still just sitting in her silent apartment, alone, listening to the clock on the wall ticking time away in a steady, maddening pattern of tick, tock, tick, tock.
She hated waiting. In her twenty-three years of life, she had gotten very good at it, but she never liked it. It always seemed to lead to disappointment.
And tonight, it appeared, would be no exception.
She checked the time on the wall again and then scowled, huffing as if the clock was personally at fault for the tardiness of her date.
8:45. He was forty-five minutes late.
At what point should she just give up, throw her jammies back on, and watch The Office reruns like she did every other Saturday night?
She groaned, throwing her head back. She was starving, could almost hear the left-over Chinese food calling out to her growling stomach from the depths of her (mostly empty) refrigerator.
But no.
She was still waiting for fucking Ben Solo, whoever he was, to show up.
She was trying to give him the benefit of a doubt, she really was. Poe and Kaydel liked him, they'd been the ones to set this date up, and they had her best interests in mind, right?
Right?
It was hard to be sure. The waiting was making her irritable, and hunger was dampening her ability to keep an open mind about him. Or any of it.
"It's kismet," Kay had told her last week. "He's Poe's best friend, you're my best friend. You're both single, you're around the same age."
As if those things meant they were somehow destined for a relationship. Rey rolled her eyes, but she'd agreed to it because; "Poe asked him to be the god father of our baby, and since you're the god mother, you should at least get to know each other, right?"
Now she was wondering why they couldn't have just friended each other on Facebook and spared themselves the awkwardness of a blind date.
And in Rey's case at least, the awkwardness of a first ever date.
Foster care had left her too unstable for dating during high school. On top of a mass of insecurities stemming from her abandonment, she was never able to stay anywhere long enough to have friends or love interests. She bounced from home to home, school to school, until she was emancipated at seventeen and started fending for herself.
Then, in college, she'd been too focused, pouring all of her time into her studies so that she could get her business degree and open her own bakery.
Now, the bakery was open and doing well. She'd even been able to afford hiring outside help, which had in turn afforded her time off.
Time being wasted now, just sitting here on her ass.
It was when she'd finally decided to take her shoes off and turn on the television that the doorbell rang.
An entire hour after it was supposed to.
Instead of being irritated that he wasn't here, she suddenly found herself irritated that he was. Why even bother at this point?
She took her time getting to the door, putting her shoes back on and checking her reflection. Rose had been over earlier to lend her the dress and do her make-up and hair.
Rey was hopeless when it came to that sort of thing, but Rose had a talent both in baking and with make-up, to take something plain and boring and turn it into something beautiful.
She'd worked her magic on Rey, giving her smoky "bedroom" eyes and a lipstick shade that matched her dress. She set her long chestnut hair in waves around her face and told her, "If this doesn't get you laid, I don't know what will."
Well, Rey thought nervously as she opened the door, here goes nothing.
The man on the other side of it was not what she'd expected at all.
Kay hadn't been lying when she said he was the tall, dark and handsome type. He was very tall, and built like a brick house.
But he was also wearing jeans and a black button down, and she suddenly felt overdressed. He clearly wasn't planning to take her anywhere fancy.
Or to make any sort of effort what so ever.
He even had on a baseball cap, tucked over long wavy black hair. It fell near his chin, which was clean shaven and sculpted under pillowy lips and a large nose. It fit his mole speckled face somehow, all of it coming together with his dark puppy eyes to make him very attractive in an odd sort of way.
Still, he was an hour late, and part of her was still annoyed by that.
He, however, seemed oblivious to it.
"Am I late?" He asked curiously, in a voice that was rich and silky and completely unapologetic.
"Um...yes," Rey answered with a frown, "An hour."
"Shit," he mumbled, taking his hat off and running his giant hand through hair that had no business looking as soft and shiny as it did. "There was traffic, and I don't have a clock on the bike."
"You...biked here?" Jesus, where did Poe and Kay find this guy?
He raised an eyebrow at her question, then elaborated, "Yes. On my motorcycle."
"Oh," she replied, looking down at her dress. Of course he would be the type to have a motorcycle, the bad boy James Dean rebel without a cause, like Poe. "Uh, I'm not...I'm not really dressed for forty mile an hour wind."
"Right," he looked down at her dress too, and then dragged his eyes over the rest of her body before glancing away quickly.
She wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not. All she knew about these sorts of things was what romance movies had taught her. According to those, he should have been complimenting her already, and offering her his arm or something.
He didn't. He just stood there, waiting for her to decide what to do.
"I could drive," she offered. "I have a car. I just...I need to grab the keys."
She didn't invite him in to wait. It wasn't even something she considered, being unaccustomed to having visitors who didn't just make themselves at home in her place. She shut the door out of habit, crossed into the kitchen to grab her keys from the counter and when she opened it again, Ben was already half way down the hall.
"Are you leaving?" She asked, bewildered.
He shrugged, "Might as well, right? Or would you rather we wasted more of our time?"
Rey blinked at him, stunned. "We've barely even spoken to each other and you've already decided that this is a waste of time?"
"I mean...yeah?" He answered, running his hand through his hair again and giving a humorless laugh. "Let's be honest, Rey. You're not crazy about this idea and neither I am. The only reason why either of us is going through with it is because our mutual friends set it up. So, we can keep faking it if you want, or we can just call it a night. Personally, I have other things I'd rather be doing right now."
"Wow." Rey felt like he'd just slapped her. What the fuck was happening?
Seriously, why did he even bother showing up?
"You're..." she couldn't even think of a word insulting enough, so she settled for, "Such an asshole! What were Kay and Poe thinking?"
He huffed a laugh and shook his head, "I don't know, clearly they weren't thinking at all. Anyway, enjoy your Saturday."
And just like that, he put his hat back on and disappeared down the hall, leaving her sputtering angrily for a moment before she slammed her door shut.
Once safely behind it, she snatched her phone out of the purse she'd been clutching and dialed Kaydel.
"Hey there," her friend greeted, entirely too cheerful. "Didn't expect you to call so soon, how's it going?"
"It isn't going," Rey told her, heatedly, "He was an hour late and then he told me he had other things he'd rather do and left."
"You're kidding?" At least Kay had the decency to sound as indignant over it as Rey felt.
"I wish I were," she groaned pitifully, "Why did you set me up with him?"
"He's usually a nice guy." Rey snorted, finding that very hard to believe. "I mean, I heard he was...difficult to get along with sometimes, but I thought it was just with his coworkers. He's never behaved like a dick around me."
"Count yourself lucky, then," Rey grumbled, wondering what it'd been that made him suddenly turn into such a rude bastard.
"I'm so sorry," her friend told her, commiseratingly. "Is there anything I can do?"
Rey narrowed her eyes, folding an arm around herself. "Just promise me that aside from the baby's birthday parties, I'll never have to see him again."
A heavy sigh came from Kaydel's end of the line, and then after a moment of hesitation she said defeatedly, "Alright. I promise."