Author's Note: Be sure to review! Thanks :)
Andy's car wasn't in the driveway when Ben pulled up to the house. It seemed so unlikely that Andy actually had some place to be that he was sure April had arranged something for him. He checked his face in the rearview mirror before going inside; a huge red patch still throbbed on his face but the swelling on his lip had gone down. He kept saying he'd get her back for doing these things to him but he couldn't ever think of anything. Humiliating her in front of the entire office didn't even seem to measure up to the ache in his face at that moment.
Inside the house, April sat alone in front of the television paying no attention to it and instead focusing on her iPod. She hadn't heard him come in, or if she had she didn't seem to care. She nursed a beer and had two empty ones in front of her. Ben hoped at least one had been Andy's.
"April," he said but she didn't move. He approached the couch slowly and leaned against a wall, waiting for her to notice him. He saw that she'd seen him in her peripheral vision him but she still pretended she was doing something very important on her iPod.
"April," he said a bit more briskly. He was tired of letting her be in charge of what happened between them.
"What, loser?"
"Can we have a normal conversation or are you just gonna stare at your iPod?"
"Ugh!" she threw her head back and set down her iPod. "What?" she drew out the word and groaned as if it were punishment to talk to him.
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Excuse me? You can't yell at me in my own house!"
"I'm pretty sure you'd be living in a pile of your own shit and eating off Frisbees if I didn't live here."
"So?"
"So – I live here too. And this has nothing to do with who owns the house. I just want to know why you told me that you are fine with me and Leslie when clearly you're not."
"I don't understand." She took a long drink from her beer.
"Why are you so fucked up?"
"I think you should be asking yourself that question," she sounded drunk when she said this.
"April!" He was tired of her childish banter. "We need to stop this."
"What? Why?"
"Because clearly you can't handle me being with Leslie and I can't handle you being with Andy and neither of us are dumping them any time soon."
April knew he was right. "I could… pretend to handle you with Leslie… if I had to."
"It's too late."
He sighed and walked away, instantly regretting what he had said. He'd have to really move out now, take things more seriously with Leslie.
"Ben!" April hollered after him, giggling. She had to support her weight on the couch to prevent herself from falling over. "Mister Wyatt! Get yourself back here, sir."
"April, what the fuck, not now." He paused and turned to her; her beer, her third beer, remained clutched in her fist nearing it towards her lips. She inched near Ben as steadily as she could. "Ben this is stupid. I don't care about Leslie… you don't care about Andy. We like to fuck each other – what's the problem?"
Ben squinted his eyes at her and frowned. Was she serious – did she really want to stay together with him or was she just too drunk to think straight? She couldn't have been that drunk.
"I'm gonna have a beer," Ben suggested, stepping aside towards the kitchen. "So we can talk about this." He wasn't sure what the logic was behind this, he just really needed a beer.
April returned to her seat on the couch and Ben joined her with a cold beer in hand. She leaned over a kissed the red patch on his cheek.
"Sorry I hit you," she slurred. "It seemed appropriate at the time." She waited for a response from him but he didn't have one. He sipped on his beer, trying to act like they were just two normal housemates instead of fuck buddies. It was very difficult. And he found it especially difficult when she lay her head down into his lap and his left hand found itself stroking her hair. She didn't move for a while and he couldn't see if her eyes were closed or not. He wished for a minute that he could cuddle next to her, instead of being left on the outside to stroke her hair. He remembered that he was trying to not think of her in that way and then he stopped caring.
He was noticeably hard within the next few seconds and was both embarrassed because he knew she could feel it and in slight pain because the side of her head was pushing down on him.
"Ew, you've got a boner," she said monotone. He knew that she was probably grinning to some extent and was upset he couldn't see her.
"That's what tends to happen… when you have a penis." He drew out the last clause of his sentence and April turned her head to look up to him.
"Ew, don't use that word."
"What? Penis?"
"Yeah, it's gross."
"The word penis is gross to you? Are you sure you're not still in middle school?"
"Yeah, it's a gross word. Only old people use it." Ben feared for a moment that April thought he was old, but she let a silly smirk sit on her face and gazed at him and he felt better.
He resisted the terrible, terrible urge to run his hands down her chest and stomach. He didn't know who he was kidding, trying to pretend that he didn't to be with her. That he didn't want to be with her more than anyone else he knew. She sat up and Ben's heart dropped, thinking she was leaving, but she kept her eyes on him, a smile still plastered on her face. It was odd to see her look so genuinely happy for longer than a five second span of time. She actually enjoyed being with him, maybe even as much as he enjoyed being with her. He wrapped his arms around her back and held her to his chest. When he hesitated too long to kiss her, she took the liberty to act first.
It was one of the first nice kisses that they shared together. Soft and tender, unlike most kisses Ben had ever shared with anyone. A horrible word fell into Ben's mind that he tried desperately to erase but it lingered for much longer than he would've liked.
"Shall we retire to the bedroom, Mr. Wyatt?" April whispered into his ear.
"When's Andy coming back?" Always a priority in Ben's mind. He figured he was still too young to die.
"Tomorrow afternoon. It's his mom's dog's birthday. He's not getting any younger." She said it as if that's how she'd said it to Andy. He planted another lingering kiss on her.
"Come on," she said into his parted lips, beginning to stand, clutching his hand. He stood along with her her, lips still pressed to hers, walking her backwards into his bedroom. Doing it in the bedroom with April seemed so foreign. April attempted to turn Ben around, to have her turn at pushing him into the room. They'd just reached the doorway to his room and whack, Ben's head smacked against the wall.
"Oh, shit," April said, grabbing his face. His eyes started to roll shut as he struggled in and out of consciousness for a second. The room was spinning, he forgot what was happening. April's hands on his face felt hot and cold at the same time and the next thing he knew he was laying on his bed, head nestled into her lap as she stroked his face with a warm towel.
"You trying to kill me Lugate?" he managed to say.
"You're alive!" she exclaimed and threw her body around him. "Thank god, I thought I'd have to bury you in the backyard and push your car into a lake."
"Sorry I had to deprive you of that."
"Don't be stupid." She continued nursing a large bump on his head that he'd just become consciously aware of. His face contorted in pain and she leaned over and kissed his forehead.
"And things were going so well," he tried to hint that he still wanted more from her but he wasn't thinking straight.
"Maybe another time," she cooed
They ordered take-out and finished off Andy's six-pack and talked nonsensically over the sound of the buzzing old television in Ben's room which only received two channels and just sort of cuddled in his bed for the rest of the night. April didn't bother sleeping in her own bed; Ben whined too much stating that if he died in the middle of the night he didn't want to be alone. They laughed at how corny he sounded with the help of a few pain meds but Ben knew what he was saying wasn't any different from his actual feelings. The word he was thinking earlier, that he could probably verbalize now if he wanted to, burned in his mind again. He wanted so badly for it not to be true.