Ben's POV
After Mal walked out of the house to meet her friends, Ben made his way to the kitchen, where Lonnie was pretending to look for something in the refrigerator and not listening to his conversation with Mal. Ben smiled and told her to get her head out before she caught a cold, and she had the decency to laugh.
"Sorry, I try, but usually you are not very good with details, and you know I need them, Ben. So, what is this about her friends acting rudely towards you? If they did, you need to tell me because I'm in charge of your personal protection until Jay is here and I took self-defense classes." After saying that, Lonnie made what she hoped was a mean face while karate chopping the air.
Ben walked towards her and hugged her; he assured her that it was just a big misunderstanding and there was no need to worry. Still, Lonnie made him tell her the story, and she announced that as his personal security, she decided that Ben was not to be alone with those two.
"Lonnie, honestly, they were just worried about Mal, and it was a strange situation if they saw it from their point of view. Look, Carlos went looking for his friend just to see her apartment destroyed and then Mal told him to meet her at a stranger place. They never heard of us, and suddenly she is moving in; of course, they are worried I would too if I was in their shoes." The girl nodded but told him that both of them knew that there was no way he would say something like that if he was in the same situation.
Lonnie then went ahead and told him that Mal did know her, sure they weren't close, but she knew of her through Jay, and in the end, the girl decided to accept their help. "Ben, you are a good guy, but there is no need for you to justify them. Also, Mal is not a stranger; you used to tell me that you watched Jay's vlog when she was in them, and even though they weren't many, you got a sense of her personality." Ben blushed a little and tried to change the subject because he remembered telling her he thought Mal was beautiful.
His mind wandered to the first vlog she appeared in with Jay, he was still living in New York, but he worked so much that he didn't get to see his friend a lot. What he did do was watch his vlogs the moment Jay posted them, which was early in the morning. So Ben would get to his workstation, and while waiting for his machine to load, he watched the vlogs on his phone. When Mal appeared on the screen, he paused it; Ben couldn't help himself; the girl had beautiful purple hair and green eyes with mesmerizing flecks of gold. Ben knew that Jay usually posted his vlogs a week after he filmed them, so he went on to see the rest of the video and was sad when Jay said that Mal was going home at the end of that week.
Typically he would have told Jay that he liked the girl, but since his last breakup, his friend had been pushing him to get out there, and he feared that Jay would do something to "help him". After that, Ben felt like faith was against him meeting Mal because every time the girl appeared in a vlog, she would have already left town or could not meet his friend. That's how two months before Ben moved and just after Mal's last visit, the boy went out with his friends, and when Lonnie appeared alone at the bar announcing that Jay was late because he was doing a collab, Ben shared his thoughts with her about Mal.
Sadly the girl didn't return to New York before he left, but he did see her in the new vlogs once he was leaving for Seattle. After moving there, he always wondered if he would cross paths with her, but it never happened. Ben also made a conscious decision to never look for her channel because he didn't want to act like a creep; if he saw her someday, he would approach her and say hi, but he wouldn't actively search for her.
That's why when Lonnie and Jay came and told him that Mal was going to come to the house and meet them one day to show them the city, Ben was beyond himself nervous. Of course, when days passed, and Jay made his way back to New York, Ben found it comical that they weren't destined to meet even then. After Jay left, Lonnie and Ben made a habit of having dinner together, and that's how one night, the girl shared with him that Mal was finally in town and would be coming to pick her up the following day. It took everything in Ben not to chocked on his food, but he knew Lonnie noticed how nervous he got about the comment.
He didn't know what to do with himself the following day, so Ben decided to fix the laundry room. Of course, logic would mandate that you shouldn't start big projects if you are distracted, and that's how he ended up messing with the faucet and getting soaked completely. He took his t-shirt off and put it aside after cutting the water supply; a couple of hours later, Lonnie came down and saw the mess and almost chuckled.
The floor and the rest were clean, but Ben was shirtless and dirty, and she could see the unfinished table in the corner. Lonnie told Ben that she was going to run out and buy some groceries, and she would come back and leave with Mal, the boy nodded, and the girl went on her way. He finally finished the projects around the room and turned just to see the Nust house screen showing Mal outside their door; he tried to tell Mal that he was going there, but she didn't seem to be listening to him. So he made his way to the door as fast as he could, ready to finally meet Mal; however, the second Ben opened the door scaring the girl, he freaked out and acted like he didn't know exactly who she was.
The second he asked her if she was Mal, he wanted to facepalm himself; of course, he knew she was Mal, but there was no turning back then, and she probably wouldn't even remember what he said, right?. Well, from there, things happened so quickly that he wondered if he would be able to spend more time with her and get to know her. The girls went out, and Ben went on with his day, trying not to think what a weird impression he made on Mal.
Deciding to make the most out of his day, Ben called two of his friend from work, Ryder and Azis, to help him with some projects around the house. Both of them met Ben in university; they would work together in most if not all projects that they could from the start. Aside from Jay, Ben considered them his close friends; that's why when they found that the place they work was looking for new talent to develop a new project, they applied for it with Ben's info. They told Ben this after they secured an interview for the boy and, with the help of their coworkers, made several recommendations to HR about him and the value he would bring to the company.
The three boys started working in measuring and cutting wood for the trims they would put around the living room when one of the boys asked where Lonnie was because she usually helped them. The moment Ben shared the information with them, both boys turned to see him, and Ben knew that all the work was going to stop and questions were going to take their place. His friends knew that Ben thought the girl was beautiful and that her personality was compatible with his, and they all hope that one day they would meet just to see if it could be something between them.
Ben was what people called a relationship guy, sure he would date sometimes, but the end goal for him was to be in a stable relationship. His last one ended up after three years, and Ben was sad about the situation; in the end, he decided that being alone was the right move for him. After a while, he went back to hang out with his friends and found the joy that one gets when they are comfortable with being themselves after years of morphing into the person he thought his partner wanted him to be.
Sure, his friends told him that Audrey was not the right person for him; she would go on and on about her needs but never thought about the pressure she put on Ben, but the boy still felt that he failed to set boundaries which made the situation more complicated for them. Accountability was significant for Ben, and everyone wanted the boy to put the same standards he set for himself for the people he associated with, but for now, they would be the ones doing it for the boy.
The friends spent the afternoon talking and then went out to eat out and enjoy themselves; Ben made his way back close to nine and noticed the lights out and got ready to bed. He went over some plans, and time flew by until he heard a knock on his door. Ben got up, prepared to say goodnight to Lonnie, and asked her if she wanted to do something the next day. After that, everything was a blur; Mal stayed at his house for a night, and then everything blew up the next day.
Ben felt horrible for the girl that lost her place; he couldn't even phantom if something like that had happened to his house. Before moving to Seattle, he decided that he would get a place of his own, and after years of saving and a steady job, the boy finally was able to buy his dream fixer-upper. When he did it, he planned to sell it but sometimes at night, he dreamed of keeping it and wondered if that could be the place he would raise his kids someday.
When they got to the girl's apartment he was shocked soon his brain shift to work mode and he started seeing all the things that needed to be done and he went on. After that he offered Mal to move in with them without a second thought and only stopped to think about the ramifications of the situation for their relationship once Lonnie asked him if he understood that while Mal was living there, they all were going to be friends. Ben nodded; at least he would get to know the girl, and honestly, he just had a crush on her base on nothing, so there was no need to worry about making the situation awkward for her.
The next day he walked into Mal making changes to his blue prints and he smiled at the girl that was smiling and looking calm for the first time since Saturday. When she shared with him what she was doing and told him that they could talk about it at dinner that night, Ben couldn't help but feel a little excited about the situation, but he made a conscious choice to remember she was helping him because she was living there with them.
So when her friends came in worried for her wellbeing and the entire situation, Ben was happy to see that she was as love as he assumed she was. Now when they looked at him funny and pretty much accused him of having something to do with the situation or that maybe he had ulterior motives for Mal to be there Ben felt horrible. He wasn't sure what exactly he had said or done to make them think he wanted to harm the girl and even though Mal defend him the boy couldn't shake the feeling of guilt that came over him after that. Was he doing this for the wrong reasons? Was he trying to make the girl feel like she owe him something for helping her? Mal went upstairs and Ben felt sick with himself, he knew that he like her but he honestly wasn't going to share that with the girl or even hint at it while she was there or even after if he noticed that she didn't want to be more than friends. Maybe Mal wouldn't even want to be friends with him and she was being polite with him because he offer her a place to stay and that's why she wanted to move out as soon as possible.
His mind was in overdrive until he heard a noise coming from the stairs and saw Mal loosing her footing on the last step of the stairs. Ben made a mental note to see if it needed fixing and move to checked on the girl. After that, he asked her to talk before she left the house and tried to apologize just for Mal to stop him, the moment the girl put her hand over his mouth he was shocked at how his body tingled at her touch.
When she left and he had his talk with Lonnie, the boy decided that he was overthinking the entire situation. He offered her a place to live just like he would have to any person that endure what Mal had yesterday; Lonnie went to sleep and he texted Mal that he would be staying late to open the door for her. Time flew by while he checked on his work and soon enough she was texting him to open the door and when he did there she was there with a bag of sweets and a smile.
They spent the next couple of hours eating and talking about their lives, and Ben smiled knowing that they were going to be good friends. The couple fell asleep and woke up when Lonnie came down the next morning, in the shower Ben couldn't stop smiling and it took him a little of effort to slow how excited he was about the night before.
