South Hillford's annual Labour Day weekend flea market and barbecue were in full swing. The streets of the little New England town were absolutely packed. The last of the straggling summer tourists and the locals milled about happily up and down Main Street.
Ben felt the warm familiarity of home wash over him as the last tendrils of homesickness finally melted away.
He'd been away from home so long, finishing his degree and his work placements in New York, and he was glad to be back. Most people spent their lives trying to run as far away as they could from the small towns where they grew up, but not Ben. So, when his uncle had called him with a job opening, he'd jumped at the chance to leave the claustrophobic, sweltering stink of the city behind him for good.
He had decided that he'd take his time and reacquaint himself with his hometown on his way to meet his mother and uncle for an early lunch to discuss his contract. He couldn't suppress the grin on his face as he weaved his way through the crowd towards his favourite old haunt.
'The Odd Book' was an ancient lopsided building snuggled in-between two much newer buildings. The bell above the door clanged loudly, and he breathed in the smell of dust and dry paper and old ink. He spent the next few minutes enjoying the quiet of the used bookstore, the world a muffled blur outside.
He was perusing a well-worn copy of Age of Innocence when the doorbell rang again. Up until now, he'd been alone in the store, and the sound pulled his attention away from the foxing pages. He glances up, and his breath caught in his chest. She was a vision of sun-kissed skin wrapped in a bright floral sundress. She smiled and greeted him with a cheery lilting "''Ello!" And he was sure he'd made a fool of himself, just standing there gawking at her, but she was already making her way down an adjacent aisle.
He stood there a moment longer rooted to the spot until she rounded the corner and made her way up the narrow row towards him. He thought she might speak to him again, but she was scanning the titles intently, focused on the books higher up on the shelves. He watched as she rose up on her toes, reaching for a thick volume just out of reach.
He moved to help her before he could second guess himself. He closed the distance between them with a few short strides coming to stand close behind her.
He felt his mouth water at the sight of her shoulders, dotted with constellations of adorable freckles that extended all the way up her arm. His gaze followed her reaching hand and easily plucked up the copy of Middlemarch.
"Thank you," she dimpled up at him.
"No worries," he smiled down at her.
They talk quietly for a long time, pressed close together in that narrow space. She's young. Younger than him. She doesn't flirt with him or bat her eyelashes, but there is a wicked intelligence in those wide hazel eyes that draws him in regardless.
"I hope I'll see you around," he said, and his eyes narrowed at the way she bit the corner of her lip.
"I hope so too."
He was twenty minutes late for lunch.
"What the hell took you so long?" His mother chided him even as she returned the kiss he planted on her cheek.
He settled into his chair and smiled.
"I met someone."
His heart sank when he saw her again. She sat not ten feet away, stone-faced and studiously ignoring him. Flowered sundress replaced by a drab ill-fitting grey uniform jumper.
"Rey Niima," he said her name like an accusation.
She didn't answer, just raised her hand limply in response.
His stomach roiled with rage and guilt and want.
She was his fucking student.
What made everything worse was he had been right about Rey. She was young but inexplicably mature for her age. She was well-read, articulate, and insightful. She was brilliant.
When he'd dared to ask the other faculty about her, they told him she was a gifted student, played on the field hockey team and volunteered on the weekends. She was on the shortlist for valedictorian but had few friends because she was a scholarship student.
She was a foster kid, given a place in a private school so that she could hopefully get the best chance at beating the system. So, because she was a charity case and had dared to get the best marks too, the rich kids (being the assholes they are) teased her at every opportunity.
Ben probably made it worse for her after a very memorable class not even halfway through September.
He had gotten them to read The Outsiders. It hadn't been part of his curriculum originally. Still, there had been such a staggering lack of modern literature taught that he thought it was necessary.
He'd opened the floor for discussion, their final thoughts on the book before they moved into something more demanding.
The response had been little more than a lukewarm smattering of mumbled nonsense when Rey spoke up for the first time in his class.
"It's very frustrating when you think about it." She admitted. When he pushed her to elaborate, she just shrugged her shoulders and responded matter of factly, "Johnny wouldn't have died if he'd been a Soc."
She followed up that statement with a well thought out explanation about the social commentary evident in Hilton's classic. And the disparity between the consequences the greasers and the socs would have faced due to their socioeconomic backgrounds.
Ben was so enthralled by her analysis that he'd unconsciously drawn her into a friendly debate on the topic. It was so similar to having an in-depth discussion with a peer that he'd let himself get swept away in the conversation. It wasn't until someone coughed and the spell was broken that he realized that he and Rey had been lost in their own world together for nearly ten minutes.
Despite the awkwardness that followed and obvious embarrassment that had Rey's face burning red, Ben couldn't help but feel pleased. It was so rare to find someone who could meet him on his level.
Even if she was only seventeen.
The teasing must have gotten worse because Rey stopped engaging in class after that incident. Still, Ben found himself desperate to talk to her. He wanted to listen to her thoughts and feelings about the themes and characters that deeply moved her. So he found himself calling on her more often in class, starved for another intellectual exchange like their last, but she didn't rise to meet his challenge.
Annoyed and with no other avenues left so that they could speak to each other as they once did, he pulled out his trump card.
"Miss Niima, I'd like to speak with you after class."
The Friday before Thanksgiving was a miserably cold and rainy mess, made even worse by the fact that Rey hadn't come to school. She had turned eighteen on Wednesday and had been absent for two days. He was annoyed until the talk in the staff room made his blood go cold.
She aged out of the system, and her scumbag of a foster father had kicked her out. He'd called the previous morning to have his name taken off her file as her guardian and his address removed as her place of residence. Rey wasn't absent; she was in the wind, set adrift without an anchor.
He found her at the station, soaked to the skin with nothing but a backpack and a ticket west. It took him less than a minute to convince her to let him take her home.
She was back in class the following Tuesday.
She stood in front of his desk and handed him a gift, simply wrapped in silver paper.
He knows it is a book the second it's in his hands, he smiled up at her, but her face stayed closed, her eyes not meeting his.
The paper slides away to reveal a new hardcover volume, a simple white cover with scrolling black text and his smile drops.
Lolita
When he glances up at her again, she's watching him knowingly, and his smile returns.
After the winter break, the teasing that Rey faced became far worse, slowly turning malicious and nasty. Even Rey's normally stoic reception to the bullying begins to crack despite her best efforts. When he finally heard the rumours first hand, it made Ben's blood boil in outrage.
"You know she's got Skywalker wrapped around her finger." He overhears a teenage girl complaining to her friends one day as they pass around a lighter.
"Tck! Well duh? How elsewould some homeless skank get valedictorian?"
"'Cause, she's got the top marks in every class?"
"No," one of the girls sneered. "The little bitch's fucking the teacher."
"No way!" one of them said dismissively.
"She absolutely is!" The girl argued. "Have you seen the way Mr Solo looks at her? It's fucking obvious." The last few words were mumbled, the girl holding something between her lips.
Ben heard the click-clickof a lighter and then the acrid smell of weed.
"Oh my god!" someone else cried in realization after a moment. "Oh my god, you're right!"
"Right?" the girl sounded vindicated, now that one of her friends believed her. "Fucking slut."
"Not so loud!" Another girl tried to admonish them even as she laughed along with them.
"We should tell someone." A new voice says suddenly.
"Why?"
"What if he's, you know…."
"What if he's what?" One of the snaps impatiently.
"What if he's hurting her?"
Her question was met with silence, and Ben had heard enough. Furious, he emerged from where he'd been listening to them.
"Ladies," he drawled menacingly.
A devilish feeling of satisfaction rushed through him at the sight of their faces gone white in panic. Whether from being caught spewing such ugly gossip or for being caught smoking weed on campus, he didn't much care, but he was going to make them pay regardless.
He had been careless. He had been in such a rush to take her in his arms he hadn't paid attention to the fact there were still teachers roaming the hallway.
He didn't see the woman's face go slack with shock or her lip curl in disgust mere seconds later before storming off down the hall the way she'd come. He only had eyes for Rey.
When he let her go, her face was wet with tears, and he didn't stop himself from brushing them off her cheeks.
"I'm so proud of you." He breathed, and she dimpled up at him like she had that day they met.
She lets out an excited little squeak holding the letter to her heart before launching herself into his arms again.
Neither of them heard the raised voices coming from down the hall.
Luke storms into his home unannounced that night. He paced in Ben's front hall like a beast in a cage, raging at the top of his voice.
"I trusted you!" Luke roared over and over again.
"I don't understand what this is about!"
"I let you into my school, and this is how you repay me?"
"Luke, what is this about?!"
"How dare you!"
"'How dare I' what, Luke?!"
"Tell me the truth, right now!"
"About what?!" Ben shouted back. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Are you fucking Rey Niima?!"
Ben went rigid, his anger and frustration evaporating into white-hot terror. The room went still, and neither of them spoke. Instead, they stood there in the dim hallway facing each other, one man waiting for the other to damn himself, the other stunned into damning silence.
"What?" He breathes, appalled at the man standing before him.
"You heard me." Is all Luke says in response.
He sways on his feet, suddenly unsteady as if Luke had punched him in the gut. His heart beating so hard in his throat he's unable to draw a full breath around his fear. He tried to speak, to deny the accusation, but he choked on his own terror instead.
When Luke left less than a minute later, Ben still hadn't said a word in his own defence. He just continued to stand there, mouth working, tears in his eyes, and a pit in his stomach.
Ben Solo resigned at the end of May without a word. Rey found him in The Odd Book when she was supposed to be in his class.
"You shouldn't be here." He told her gently.
"We didn't do anything wrong." She sobbed, tears spilling over onto her cheeks and it took all his strength not to reach out for her.
She walked across the stage on a bright June afternoon. She shook hands with the headmaster stone-faced even as he beamed at her like a proud father.
She didn't throw her cap in the air, and she didn't cheer or clap alongside her classmates. Instead, she just sat there and watched the shadows at the back of the auditorium, where she knew he was watching her right back.
The problem with small towns is that they're small, and people talk. He watched as she packed everything she owned into a suitcase and a duffle bag and then unceremoniously threw them into the back of his car without a second thought. He takes one last look around at the tourists and locals milling around on Main Street, all decked out in their 4th of July finest and feels the wanderlust set in.
He watched as she settled into the passenger seat of his vintage car. Sun-kissed skin wrapped in a bright flowered sundress, and a pair of red heart-shaped sunglasses perched on her adorably freckled nose.
They'd only just hit the town limits, a peeling whitewashed sign inviting them to 'Come Back Soon', but they both knew they wouldn't be coming back to South Hillford anytime soon.
She smiled up at him warmly when she reached out to turn the knob on the radio, and he rested a loving, possessive hand high on her leg as The Police played their song.