38 – The Road Home

Felicity watched bubbles of carbonation form on the straw of her soda. "I just… I thought he was different."

Like a true friend, Shelly puffed with indignation and sat on the next barstool. "He's a jerk. You don't need him. Cute jerks are still jerks."

"Yeah, I know," Felicity murmured. She stirred her soda restlessly with the straw.

Shelly laid a hand on her friend's arm. "Sure you won't dance with us?"

Felicity shook her head. "No. I think I'm just going to finish my drink and go home, if that's okay with you. I'm tired, anyway," she lied.

Shelly frowned in sympathy. "Okay. If you change your mind, we're going to Rudebaker's after this. I'll see you later."

"Yeah. Thanks." Felicity wrapped a sneaker around the leg of the barstool. Shelly gave her arm a brief squeeze and went back to the dance floor.

A sudden flurry of noise made her look up. Felicity turned toward the doorway for the source of the disturbance to see a small group of laughing young men enter the bar. She recognized the one in front as Kurt. Two others entered behind him, arguing over something. Great, just what I need. Ben's friends.

Then Ben stepped through the doorway. He stood on the threshold with his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets. He swept the room with a casual glance, and his eyes landed on her. He stared across the room with an unreadable expression.

Felicity looked away first. She pulled her soda toward her and hunched over it. The fast song ended, only to be replaced by another. To Felicity's mortification, Kurt crossed the room and bellied up to the bar to ask for four beers. Fake ID, no doubt, she thought with a smirk.

While Kurt waited for the bartender to fill his order, he looked around. She could almost feel the moment when his gaze landed on her. He stared so hard she wanted to squirm in her seat. She almost felt like she was back in high school, the frizzy-haired nobody that guys like him only looked at when they wanted to ridicule someone. She set her jaw and tried to ignore him. It still hurt.

He edged closer. "So, what are you doing here?"

The old Felicity would have slunk away, or looked around to see if he was talking to someone else. The new Felicity surprised her by taking over in a burst of indignation. She eyed him. "What's it look like?"

Kurt raised his hands in a mock show of fending her off. "Don't get your panties in a twist. I was just wondering, you know, if you had a hot date."

She tried to come up with a snappy reply, something to shut him up. Nothing came, so she settled for her most withering show of indifference and turned back to her soda.

"Hey, where do you get off being so high and mighty? I'm just trying to be friendly, here." Kurt laid a hand on her shoulder.

She grabbed it and threw it off. "Don't touch me."

"Whoa, hey. Check out the ice queen. I guess I was wrong about you and Ben, wasn't I?"

She bristled. More than four years of harassment by his ilk finally became too much to bear. The old Felicity cringed in expectation of the outburst. "Why don't you take your jock friends and go bother someone else?" she said, loud enough for most of the bar's patrons to overhear. A nasty little part of her hoped Ben heard it, too.

Kurt scowled at her. "I always did think you were a frigid bitch. Thanks for proving me right." He snatched his beers, threw a few bills on the bar, and stalked away.

- - - - -

Ben caught Kurt by the sleeve on his way back from the bar. "Hey, man, what did you say to her?"

"Nothing she didn't deserve."

Ben made a face of disgust. "She wasn't bothering you. Why do you have to be such a dick to her?"

"Why do you care, Covington? She's not worth the time. She's nobody special." Kurt shrugged him off and headed back to their table.

Ben followed. "Look, what's your problem? You used to be less of a jerk than this." Sitting at the table, Jason and Eric gave him curious looks.

"Yeah, and you used to be fun to hang out with," responded Kurt, raising an eyebrow at him. "I fixed you up with a hot girl, and you barely blinked."

"If you'd bothered to talk to her first, you would have known she's already into somebody else!" Ben fumed.

"Who cares about some stupid girl? Let's play pool," Eric interjected. He jerked his head toward the billiard table in the corner of the bar.

"Stay out of it," Ben snapped. Eric blinked at him, startled into silence.

Jason held up his hands. "Will you both just lay off each other? We're here to have a good time."

"Yeah? Don't go asking for Porter's phone number," Kurt jabbed.

Ben snarled. "You know, I've had enough of your crap, Kurt. You may not like her, but let me tell you something about Felicity. She's been a better friend to me in the past year than you have in seven." To Jason and Eric, he said, "I'll see you guys around." He walked away.

Jason watched him go with a look of regret. Eric shrugged.

Kurt hissed and slammed his beer bottle on the table. "What a total—"

"Give it a rest, Kurt. If he likes her, that's his business," Jason sighed.

Kurt eyed him, then glanced at Eric.

Eric gave another philosophical shrug. "Whatever."

- - - - -

A slow song started playing on the loudspeakers. From the corner of her eye, Felicity saw couples pairing off on the dance floor, and felt a pang. This is a good time to leave. She pulled a few bills out of her wallet and left them on the bar, then slid off the barstool.

A shadow fell across the bar. "Hey."

She turned to see Ben come up beside her. Felicity gulped back the knot in her throat, but she couldn't stop the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She swiped a lock of hair behind her ear and turned to go.

"Can you—Can you just give me a second?" he asked, stepping into her path.

"Why? I'm nobody special." She meant to snap it, but it came out choked off. She tried to move around him.

He grabbed her sleeve. "Felicity..."

She grasped at the last shreds of her dignity, already bruised from her run-in with Kurt, and looked up at him. She fought to keep the tears from spilling over. "Your friends are waiting for you."

"You are my friend," he said, cutting off her attempt to leave again. "You're—You're more than that."

She sank back onto the barstool and wiped at her eyes, looking away from him.

Ben looked down at the floor, then back to her. "I'm sorry. I was a jerk, and I know I don't deserve somebody like you in my life. But Felicity…I want you there."

She sniffled. Angry that she was crying in front of him, she scrubbed at her eyes again. "You've got a funny way of showing it."

"I know. I know." He paused. "I saw your painting at the library. The people in it—"

"They were saying goodbye," she murmured.

Ben shook his head vehemently. "No. No, they weren't. They were saying hello. You painted it. You couldn't see it?"

Felicity looked up at him, frowning in puzzlement. She backed up a step.

He took a corresponding step toward her. "I was stupid to listen to Kurt. I don't know what I was thinking. You've been a better friend to me than I deserve. I should have stood up for you."

"Yeah," she whispered. A few tears escaped to trickle down her cheek.

Ben took a quick breath and looked at the floor again. She saw his jaw clench and unclench. When he looked back up, she saw the guilt and apology in his eyes. "Come dance with me."

"You don't dance," she pointed out. She couldn't keep the hurt out of her voice, and she hated herself for it.

"I do right now," he responded softly.

Swallowing hard, she said, "What will your friends think?"

"I don't care what they think. It's not about what they think." He ducked his head and sought out her eyes. "I'm sorry. I really am. Can we start over?"

More tears coursed down her cheeks. She sniffled again, and attempted to wipe them away.

Ben's hand came up to her cheek, and he brushed away her tears with his thumb. "I miss you. I miss you ridiculing my food and telling me I don't know how to drive, and picking out the craziest things to see on the best trip I've ever been on in my life."

She drew a shuddering breath and gave up trying to stop the tears from falling.

"I've got to leave for Mexico in a week for that job, and I don't want to leave it like this with you. I don't know what this is that we've got, and it scares the hell out of me…but I do know I don't want to lose it. Please dance with me?" He held out his hand to her.

She looked from his eyes to his outstretched hand and back again. "Are you sure you want to be seen with a frizzy-haired freak?"

The corner of his mouth twitched upward. "There's not many things I've ever been sure about…but this is one of them. Come on, who's going to fold my road maps if it isn't you?"

She laughed through her tears, hesitated, and took his hand.

Smiling now, Ben led her to the middle of the dance floor, bathed in the violet-blue glow of the spotlights. He wrapped his arms around her and laid his cheek against hers. "I'm sorry I hurt you," he whispered.

Felicity put her arms around him and sniffled tearfully one last time, hugging him. "Thanks."

He arched back from her and reached up to brush her hair away from her face with both hands. Bending his head, he kissed her softly, in front of everyone on the dance floor: his friends, her friends, people they'd grown up with, who'd always been at opposite ends of the popularity spectrum. Suddenly, it didn't seem to matter anymore.

The old Felicity and the new Felicity both smiled, from the heart outward. Ben wrapped his arms around her again, holding her close against him, and they danced. The smoky spotlight threw their shadows across the floor, melding them into one.