Chapter Text
Rey gets on the Brown Line at Washington, her hands shaking as she pulls out her phone and taking a deep breath.
It’s chilly now that the sun’s gone down, the sunshiny days that prelude summer not quite being enough to combat the wind and shadow from the tall buildings of the Loop. Rey crosses her arms over her chest to hide the way her nipples are responding to the chill and opens up Tinder.
You have intimacy issues, Rey, Finn had told her months ago, before she’d started using the health care benefits that her company provided her to go see a therapist. Dr. Tano phrases it differently. Of course you are afraid to trust—after what your family did to you. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can’t. Look at Finn.
Tinder had seemed like a good idea at the time. A way to meet people, maybe find a hookup or—dare she dream—a boyfriend. But Rey rarely matches. There’s something about her profile, maybe, that is unappealing—or maybe she just has high standards and swipes left on everyone the app sends her.
Why are all of these profiles identical? Fish photo. Shirtless photo. Puts height in bio. Out to drinks with four completely undifferentiable friends. Which one is he in this group shot? Does he have a personality at all? Likes tacos; likes dogs; likes travel; likes fun. A string of emojis. Fish photo. Photo in front of Machu Picchu. She swipes sometimes before she’s even looked at more than just the first picture because they’re all exactly the same.
She Tinders on the train to and from Ravenswood every day, something to do that’s not just refreshing her Facebook feed for the nineteenth time since she got on the train. Something to do, because she finds that she gets too distracted by the announcements about stops on the CTA to read.
She pauses when she sees a profile that is different from the usual straight dude profile she finds on Tinder.
Ben, 35. Probably too much of an asshole for you, but my therapist is trying to convince me that assholes deserve love too, so here’s me on Tinder.
It makes her smile. That’s why she’s on Tinder too, after all—because her therapist told her she wasn’t even trying to trust people, now that she had Finn, and a job, and her cat.
His pictures are shitty, but Rey’s used to that. Men don’t know how to make dating profiles. That’s patriarchy for you, Rose had told her, when—to make sure she wasn’t going totally crazy—Rey had gone through her Tinder feed with her. The profiles had all been horribly bland, and Rose had confirmed for her that they were all thoroughly uninspiring, and that had made Rey feel at least a little less crazy. Ben’s photos are a little blurry, as though he’d found ones that he was in but which he wasn’t the center of and added them to his profiles—a shot of him in a suit; a shot of him at some party, clearly in the middle of speaking so that his face just looked weird; a shot of him and a woman who was veering into elderly territory and who was probably half his height sitting on a beach, looking terribly awkward.
But my therapist is trying to convince me that assholes deserve love too, so here’s me in Tinder.
Rey swipes right, and isn’t really expecting anything from it as the Brown Line makes its way through the Merchandise Mart stop. It’s late enough in the evening that there aren’t crowds and crowds of people getting on, which is a relief, but as the doors ding closed, a low voice says,
“So do you want to just talk in person instead of making awkward small talk on Tinder?”
Rey almost jumps out of her skin because yeah—that’s Asshole Ben standing there right over her and good god he’s tall. Like Rey knows she’s sitting down, but his entire body seems to stretch on for days above her. She glances down at her phone and sees the It’s a match! Start chatting or keep swiping? screen on her phone.
“Hi,” she says. “I’m Rey.”
“Ben,” he replies, as if she didn’t already know that. Should she extend a hand?
“Awkward small talk is bad enough on Tinder, so now you get to watch me have no idea how to start a conversation in person,” Rey says.
He snorts. “Is this better or worse than unsolicited dick pics?”
“Depends on how good the dick pic is, and how bad the conversation.” His lips twist into a wry smile at that.
“I can’t tell if that’s a low bar or a high one,” Ben says.
“Me neither,” Rey replies, smiling despite herself. “I suppose it depends on how much of a stalker you are, given how we literally only just matched.”
His wry smile fades at that, and something apologetic creeps into his face. “Didn’t mean to creep you out. I just looked up from my phone and there you were. Figured this would save us some time.”
“You’re not wrong,” Rey says.
“And if you do decide I’m a creepy stalker you can fake your exit on the train and get on the next one, and I’ll be none the wiser.” And then, the apology in his face merging oddly with the dryness in his voice, “So—you know, to dispel the idea that I’m a creepy stalker—heading home?”
Rey snorts. She doesn’t know why, but she believes he’s not a creepy stalker. Something in her gut, maybe, or the fact that he’d taken her joke seriously. So she leans back in her seat and says, “Yeah. Just got out of therapy.” Probably not the right thing to say to a Tinder stranger, but he’d mentioned a therapist in his profile, and it’s not like this is a normal conversation to begin with, so she decides it’s fair game.
“Good session?”
“Are they ever really good?” she asks and his eyebrows twitch knowingly. “I sit there, I cry, my doctor tells me that I’m still recovering from trauma, as if I didn’t know that, and that I have high expectations of myself, as if I didn’t know that, and that I’m looking for my parents in every boss and mentor figure I ever have, as if I didn’t know that. And then I get to do it again next week.”
“Sounds familiar,” his lips are quirking. “Only mine is more about needing to control anger and emotional reactions to things that make me feel powerless. Yeah—I know. Great dating material.”
“You didn’t falsely advertise at least,” Rey says. “The number of dates I’ve been on where someone says they like tacos and then they order a burrito.”
“Liars and frauds on Tinder. At least I’m an honest asshole. Too honest. That’s something my therapist tells me too.”
“I imagine it goes hand in hand with being an asshole.”
Ben rolls his eyes. “You tell one person that they’re woefully and miserably incompetent and their university should refund them the tuition they spent on their degree and suddenly you’re the asshole, even if it’s the truth.” She can’t tell if he’s joking—she can’t tell if she wants him to be joking. There’s something oddly charming about his deadpan.
Finn would hate him, she thinks. But Rey…
“Going well for you, I see,” she teases.
“Thirty-five and chatting up younger women on Tinder. Exactly as planned.” He sighs and his eyes go serious. “I’m working on it. It’s hard. Family stuff, you know. That shit hits you hard.”
Rey knows so very well—or at least, she does in theory. She knows because she doesn’t know. Because she doesn’t trust, because she’s terrified that someone’s going to leave her behind again, and she’ll be alone, alone, alone and miserable and worthless, and every time she lets herself think about it, her throat closes up and her eyes get bright with tears and—
“Hey,” Ben says, his voice gentle and he’s watching her very closely. “It’s ok—whatever it is. It’s ok.”
“Hits you deep,” Rey says quietly, and the tech bro sitting next to her in his hoodie gets up and Ben slips in the seat next to her.
“I know this is exactly what you might want from some stranger you just matched with on Tinder—but if you want a hug…No strings attached or anything.”
Rey leans into him sideways and he wraps an arm around her shoulder, rubbing a hand up and down her arm. “I don’t know what it is,” he tells her quietly, “And you by no means have to tell me. But whatever it is—you’re not alone.”
“Thanks,” she mumbles. He’s still got his arm around her and it shouldn’t be this comforting—it really shouldn’t be, but the weight and warmth of it, and the heat from his body right next to her is easing the sudden constriction in her chest. “Usually I’m better at handling it.”
“You just got out of a therapy session. All wounds are open after a therapy session.”
“How long have you been in therapy?” Rey asks him.
“Six years,” he says automatically. “Should have started way sooner, but shit hit the fan when I was twenty-nine.”
“What happened? Or—no. No, you don’t have to tell me.”
He’s watching her, and his arm is still around her, and he has really expressive eyes. That’s one thing that she doesn’t think any dating app could capture. Ben, 35. I’m an asshole and I have the most expressive eyes you’ll ever encounter. She loses herself briefly in the emotions she sees there. He licks his lips as though they are too dry. He looks almost nervous.
“Ran over my dad with a car,” he says quietly and Rey inhales sharply. “It was an accident, but he died anyway. There was a lot of shit going on—I have a lot of unresolved bitterness about him. But I also didn’t want to kill him. So yeah. Therapy.” He’s breathing shakily, and she can tell that it’s hard to talk about—can tell that he probably doesn’t tell anyone about this.
“Do you want a hug?” Rey asks. She’s still cuddled into his side and he gives her a wry smile.
“I’ll take that as a ‘it’s not awkward that my arm is still around you,’” Ben replies, trying to smile, trying to lighten the conversation back up—but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Because I’ve been worrying about that.”
“Not awkward,” Rey says. “Calming really.” She blushes. She hadn’t meant to say that, it had just slipped out.
Ben looks at her, and her blush only deepens at the expression on his face—like she’d said something magical, or admitted that she was in love with him or something. “I don’t think anyone’s ever described my presence as calming before.”
“Another unfortunate connection with being an asshole?” she asks.
“Probably,” he replies, that dryness coming back to his voice. He does that thing where he tries to smile, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes—his eyes, which are suddenly sad.
“You don’t like being an asshole, do you,” Rey asks him quietly as the train pulls into the Armitage stop. He grimaces.
“It was easier,” he says as the doors halfway down the car from them part for train riders to pop on and off. “Easier than feeling all the other shit. If I made people hate me, then it would at least be understandable why they would.” He swallows and gives her a nervous look. “How’s that for too honest?”
“Doesn’t seem very asshole too honest,” Rey says. “Seems vulnerable.”
“Being an asshole is easier than being vulnerable.”
“Optimistic’s mine,” Rey says. “Always hoping, always having faith. Easier to do that than to admit that shit’s fucked and I couldn’t fix it.” There. She made it through that one without hyperventilating. Progress. Right?
“I’ll trade you,” he says. “Some optimistic denial seems like exactly what I need to get through conversations with my mom these days.”
“Oh, I bet,” Rey thinks. She can’t imagine that his mother had taken her son accidentally killing her husband with a car very well.
“Not sure it’s a fair trade, though,” Ben says. “Not sure anyone deserves preventative-asshole as a coping technique.”
“Not sure I’d pull it off very gracefully.”
“The nice thing is you don’t have to.” He looks almost cheerful again. “In fact, it’s probably better if you don’t. Really commit to the asshole vibe. If you want. I won’t foist it on you if it’s an unfair trade. But if you need a teacher…” He gives her a look that would be debonair if it didn’t have self-deprecation pulsing through it. Or perhaps that was what made it almost debonair.
There was something almost intoxicating about watching him just be…honest. There’s something brave in it, she thinks. She’s always thought of herself as brave, and Dr. Tano tells her that she is whenever she worries that maybe she’s wrong, but sitting here with Ben—she takes a deep breath, and her throat goes dry, but she actually manages to say it. “I don’t think I could pull off asshole. It won’t make me feel better about my parents. But I could probably learn how to be a little more honest with myself.”
And just like that, the debonair self-deprecation is gone again, and his hand is moving comfortingly up and down her arm. “That’s hard,” he tells her. “It’s really hard. Important, but hard. Life-changing, really.”
“Yeah?”
“I quit my job and talked to my mom for the first time in ten years,” he says quietly. “And it still hurts like hell, but at least I’m not blind to shit I’ve done that’s hurt people—myself included.” He clears his throat and mutters, “Myself most of all, sometimes.”
That sounds exactly right. Who are you helping when you think these things, Rey? Dr. Tano had said not even an hour before, Obviously getting yourself through the day when you were young and alone was one thing. Coping is important. But you’re self-sufficient now. You have a job, you have friends. Who does it help to keep hoping that they’ll be back for you? Why do you even want it?
He’s watching her very closely, and ordinarily, when Rey’s feeling vulnerable, she looks away, she tries to hide it. But for some reason, his gaze is steadying, like his arm around her, like the sheer open admission that he is an asshole and he might deserve love too.
At what point do I just drop in casually that I was abandoned by my parents and have abandonment issues, Finn? she had demanded one night when someone she’d been chatting with for three days had ghosted her. It had hurt more than it had any right to—that this stranger (one who liked tacos, and dogs, and adventures, but who had had a nice smile) had just disappeared from her life, throwing her away like she was worthless. Finn had just hugged her and hadn’t known what to advise and Rey had known that, like always, she’d have to figure it out for herself. At least I can acknowledge that I have abandonment issues. And commitment issues. And parental issues. And issues, issues, issues.
People never thought she might be fucked up because of her bright smile and her perpetual optimism. Who are you helping with all of it, Rey? Yourself?
“Yeah,” she says when she realizes she’s been quiet for a long time. “Yeah. I—”
She swallows and watches as the flurry of people run across the platform at Belmont to switch to the Red Line. “I spend a lot of time trying to be happy, because if I look happy, and people think I’m happy, then I don’t have to admit to myself that I don’t know if I’ve ever been happy.”
Her heart is pounding like she’s run a mile. She knows all this, of course. Has known it forever, really, and has talked about it regularly with Dr. Tano for months now. But actually telling someone—a stranger—who isn’t Finn… Trust issues. Commitment issues. Abandonment issues. Looking for your parents in everyone. And Asshole Ben isn’t even really part of her life, not yet, they’re supposed to be flirting and seeing if they’re compatible and figuring out if they want to get tacos/coffee/beer before they drift apart because that’s what fucking happens with Tinder matches.
Ben squeezes her shoulder. Her mind goes still.
“Happiness is transient,” he tells her quietly. “I’m not saying that to be an asshole—I’m saying it because it helped me understand that the opposite of misery isn’t happiness. It’s not being miserable all the fucking time. Happiness is a cherry on top that happens every now and then, and it’s more every then than every now when you’re dealing with deep-seeded shit. You will be happy. Just like you’ll be sad. And angry.”
“Emotions aren’t worth it,” she mutters, trying to smile at him.
“Yes they are,” he says fiercely. “What else tells you what’s fucked up in your life? Reason? You can reason yourself into anything if you’ve got coping mechanisms as strong as mine—and, I suspect, yours.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Rey snorts bitterly. How many years had she wasted waiting for her parents to come back for her?
Ben’s hand tightens on her shoulder, inhaling sharply—not a supportive squeeze. His fingers are digging into her skin through her shirt. “They left you?”
She’d said that out loud. Oh god she’d said that out loud. She hasn’t said that out loud to anyone except Finn and Dr. Tano. Not a single person. Except, it seems, Asshole Ben.
And now, to make matters worse, tears are pricking at the corner of her eyes, and she sets her jaw and does her absolute best not to, because she thought she’d cried enough at therapy today, but nope. Nope, there they are. Dripping down her face and Ben’s grip on her shoulder changes and it’s back to being supportive and this time he wraps his other arm around her and she finds herself with her face pressed into his shoulder as she shudders for breath. He’s so warm. She hadn’t really noticed that the chill hadn’t really left her from the shadow and wind in the loop. He smells nice too.
“Great first Tinder date,” she mumbles as she pulls herself back together. He pulls away from her, though he leaves his arm around her shoulder. She doesn’t know what she’d have done if he’d have tried to pull it away. “Hi, I’m Rey and I have abandonment issues because my parents left me at the town dump when I was six and I never found out what happened to them.” She tries to smile, but Ben’s face is deadly serious when he looks at her and something about his gaze, the intensity of his eyes as he stares at her takes her breath away.
“Fuck them,” he growls at last. “Fuck them for doing that to you. Fuck them.”
Finn’s said that to her before—that her parents could go fuck themselves for what they’d done to her. And Dr. Tano had made it clear that she would suffer none of Rey’s attempts to justify what had been done to her. You were a child, the psychologist had said firmly. There is no justification in the universe for what they did. Nothing. Nothing you could have done or been to have deserved it.
But hearing Ben’s anger, simmering under his words, sends a shiver up Rey’s spine. His arm around her, his eyes—so deep, so intense—but god his anger makes her feel oddly safe with this stranger.
Then suddenly he’s looking away, breathing deeply, staring out the window in front of them as the train turns. The sky is a hazy shade of purple outside as the sun sets to the west. His face is twitching, as though he’s trying to control himself. Rey can’t help but stare at him.
Only mine is more about needing to control anger and emotional reactions to things that make me feel powerless, he had said when they’d been talking more lightheartedly about all this.
Is he trying to control himself? she wonders, somehow, in her gut, knowing that he is. Then, Why? He doesn’t know me? Why would he care that much?
Except just as clearly as she knows that he’s trying to control himself, she knows that that’s right too. That this tall, self-deprecating man has, over the course of however long they’ve been on the train together, started to care about her. And part of her—the part that speaks very much with Finn’s voice—is telling her that that’s fucking creepy and she should run away, hard and fast, or at least remove herself from under his arm.
But the part of her that’s been sitting on the train, talking to him, hushes that voice. I haven’t told him anything about myself, but I’ve told him about the core of me, she realizes. If he cares, it’s because I’ve Trust issues. Abandonment issues. Commitment issues. Looking for her fuck them parents everywhere. given him something to care about.
And he has cared.
She had been on so many Tinder dates where the guy just drones on and on and on about himself, assuming that she’ll follow along raptly, and wait politely for him to ask her about her, without actually asking a question that matters to her, or sees her as a person to get to know. It always made her feel angry, feel small, like she was supposed to be some man’s vanity project or something. But within twenty minutes on the Brown Line, Asshole Ben has—has—
“You’re really not an asshole, are you?” she asks him quietly, and that gets his attention back to her. “You haven’t been to me, at least.” He swallows and looks suddenly nervous. “An asshole wouldn’t have cared, or would have, I don’t know—I don’t know. But you’ve been really kind to me.”
He rocks his jaw back and forth, as though trying to figure out what to say, to that. But Rey, who is tired of crying and who feels warm, and wants to see if she can make that nervous look on his face lighten up, says, “I’d change your Tinder profile to recovering asshole. I think that’d fit more.”
His mouth opens slightly in surprise before an almost bewildered look crosses his face. Then he gives her a half-smile. “Thanks for the marketing advice,” he says at last. “I could probably use a rebrand.” His eyes are very gentle now. He swallows and she watches as his eyes dip down ever so slightly, as though he’s looking at her chin, before jerking back to her eyes.
Rey can’t really get past his eyes. Neither of them seem to know what to say, but neither of them seem to be able to look away from one another. He’s got the deepest, softest brown eyes she thinks she’s ever seen. There are flecks of lighter brown in there that—next to the darker brown—almost look gold. And his pupils seem a deeper black than any other she’s seen.
“When you started talking to me,” she begins. Her voice is dry, and she clears her throat, “Did you think it would be like this?”
“I thought it would be just as disappointing as most conversations I ever have are—Tinder or otherwise. Then I’d go home, drop my shit off, go to the gym, and beat up a punching bag for an hour to let out my frustration with myself for even having the gall to hope that I’m not just some irredeemable asshole.”
Rey shifts for the first time since Ben had hugged her, twisting in the plastic seat of the train car and curling one of her legs up onto it so that, for the first time since he’d appeared right in front of her, she’s facing him. His arm falls away slowly and if it had happened at any point before now, she’s quite sure that she’d feel bereft of it, but now she is determined.
Rey has always trusted her instincts—it’s what has gotten her this far, she thinks. For all Dr. Tano thinks she work on being more open, in the past, Rey’s instincts have kept her alive, kept her sane. Ordinarily, her instincts tell her when to run from someone, when to block them out of her life, when to keep them away from her heart.
And every single instinct is telling her to run towards Ben. Ben who had given her a hug—no strings attached—twice now. Ben, who had just met her and yet seemed hell-bent on taking care of her, not because he seemed to want to possess her, but because he didn’t seem to want her to be in pain.
“I refuse to believe that you’re an irredeemable asshole,” she tells him firmly. “No matter what you’ve done, and how it’s affected you.” She takes his hand.
Rey’s heard the term sparks flying before. She has heard people describe a certain feeling in their gut, across their skin when they touch someone for the first time. She’d all assumed it was just people trying to find words to justify how strongly they feel about someone.
But she swears a spark jumps from his hand to hers when she touches him. And what’s more, she knows she’s not imagining it because she hears him inhale sharply and sees the way his face goes very, very still. He felt it too.
He swallows, he moves his jaw as though biting back words, and his eyes are bright. He takes one deep breath, then another.
“Recovering asshole,” he says at last, clearly trying to joke.
“There’s kindness in you,” she tells him firmly. “More than you let yourself acknowledge, I’d guess.” His eyes are very bright, and for a moment, she thinks he’s about to cry. “It’s ok,” she whispers to him. She’d cried, after all. She’d cried and he’d held her. If he cries, she’ll hold him.
But he doesn’t cry.
He just stares at her, and it’s as though years have been taken off his long face somehow. He doesn’t look like Ben, 35, Asshole, he looks like he’s fifteen and the world is scarier than he’d thought it would be when he was a child who just wanted to grow up.
“My parents’ marriage fell apart because of me,” he tells her at last. “My mom—she says they always used to fight, but it was sort of playful fighting. And then I was born, and I was loud, and uncontrollable, and they blamed each other for me. My dad…” He shudders and Rey squeezes his hand. “My dad just…I don’t know. When I was a kid I just wanted to be my dad. And then as I got older…” he swallows and looks nervous again. He looks away from her, but this time, it’s as though he’s hiding from her, as though he’s can’t bear to see the look on her face when he tells her what he’s about to tell her. “Look, there’s me being an asshole to people, and then there’s systemic assholery. And I fell in with some really bad shit when I was younger. And it took me until I was twenty-nine to really shake myself of it. And I’ve got to live with who I’ve been, and what I’ve done and—”
“Bad is relative,” Rey begins, trying to sooth, but his eyes snap to hers.
“Alt-right shit?” he demands and there’s defiance in his face and immediately Rey winces. “American proto-fascist shit? I don’t think that’s relative. And fuck knows my parents didn’t think it was either. I meant it when I said that I’m some irredeemable asshole. Even if I also think I am trying to recover.”
Rey doesn’t know what to say to that. Her breathing is shorter now than it was before, her heart is pattering in her chest with this. Her hand is still in his. Her grip is sweaty. She stares at him, looking at his lovely long face, his expressive eyes—so hard now where they had been so soft before—and that determined set to his jaw which had been so vulnerable only moments before. Am I idealizing him so I don’t have to face the hard truth of him? she wonders. She can practically see Dr. Tano hesitating.
“And you and your dad—that changed things for you?”
“It might have,” he said, “The kicker was my boss making a joke how it was one less liberal snowflake in the world. That catalyzed everything. Quitting. Therapy. Calling my mom for the first time in ten years.” He’s looking at her now as though daring her to release his hand, as though afraid that she’d do it.
“What do you do now?” she asks him.
“I’m an immigration lawyer,” he says. “Helping people with visa statuses, helping transition permanent residency to citizenship. That sort of thing.”
It is not what she’d been expecting at all, in truth, but she also hadn’t known what to expect at all. Apart from him being a force of comfort for her in the short period of time she’d known him, and that he’d killed his father, and had a strained relationship with his mother, and that he’d had a major change of ideology, she doesn’t know much about him.
Except no. No—no that isn’t right. She does know a lot about him. They’d covered a lot of groundwork since he’d gotten on the Brown Line.
If there’s one thing that she trusts, it’s how point-blank honest he is. Brutally so, brutal to himself as much as to her. Too honest, he’d described it earlier. But he’s also not shying away from it, not trying to hide it from her, not trying to soften it. If anything, that feels kinder than if he’d lied and let her find out about it later. Rey knows all too well that a kind lie can be far more damaging than a hard truth.
If I made people hate me, then it would at least be understandable why they would, he had said. Is that what he’s trying to do to her now?
“Do you like it?” she asks. And with that one little question, he visibly relaxes. She hasn’t run away screaming, she hasn’t decried him as a fascist, she hasn’t called him an asshole and meant it this time. His thumb runs along her hand, and she runs hers back along his.
“I feel like I do good work,” he says, sounding a little more settled. “It’s complicated, and I had to go back and do a ton of additional training to do it. But it’s good. Yeah. Yeah, I think I like it.”
“You sound so convinced,” she teases.
“Happiness is transient,” he shrugs again. “But it’s definitely got moments of strong satisfaction. And I know somewhere I’m pissing Snoke off by helping foreigners actually get here and stay.”
“Snoke’s your former boss?” The name is familiar—the sort of name she might have read in a news article the past few months about the rise of authoritarianism.
Ben nods. “Spite is probably not the purest motivation when it comes to having gotten here, but sometimes the impact is more important. Or at least that’s what my therapist tells me.” He has definitely relaxed. He is facing her in the seat now too. She hadn’t noticed when he’d shifted for it, but he’s leaning sideways, and his legs—so much bigger than hers—are stretched out straight. Were the car not predominantly empty, she’s sure that someone would be complaining about how he’s manspreading. “What do you do?”
Rey takes a deep breath. “I’m an inventory specialist,” she says. “It’s fine. It pays my bills. The commute is too long, but I like my roommate too much to move.”
“But it’s not what you want to be doing.”
“I don’t know what I’d rather be doing,” she says. “Sometimes I feel like I could be doing more, and my therapist has to remind me that sometimes just getting through is a lot of work. But I could like it more.”
“You good at it?” Ben asks. It’s an odd question.
“Yeah,” she replies. “I am. I just—” she pauses and sighs. “It’s just one more thing I’m going to have to solve on my own, I guess.”
That makes Ben frown. “You don’t have friends to help you? I know parents are a no-go, but—”
“There’s only so much that Finn can help,” she replies. “My best friend,” she adds. “My roommate. Him and Rose—they’ll help. And they do try. But at the end of the day, I still have to figure it out on my own, don’t I?” Ben nods, understanding now gleaming in his eye. “And I appreciate that it’s good to be independent. And honestly I’d hate someone telling me what to do, or what I wanted, which is the most frustrating part of it. I guess…I guess sometimes I like to hope life can be easy, but it never will be, will it?”
Ben shakes his head. “Probably not. I certainly don’t expect it to be at this point.”
“I just keep hoping…” then she laughs bitterly. “But that’s me. Hoping until I’m able to stomach the hard truth.”
“Yeah—that sounds miserable and you should stop,” Ben says dryly. “Not to be that asshole telling you what to do or what you want.”
She laughs again and leans her head against the window of the train car. She always comes out of therapy feeling as though she’d been put through an emotional wringer, but right now she feels even more as though she’s felt every possible emotion in the past few minutes. She’s laughed, she’s cried. Her stomach rumbles and she glances out of the window. The sky is inching towards deep blue now, and the streetlights are on and—
“Shit,” she says. The Brown Line is at street level. “Shit I missed my stop.”
Ben jerks his head out the window too. “Ah fuck.” He starts to laugh.
“Where were you supposed to get off?” she asks.
“Montrose,” he replies. “You?”
“Western.”
They both pull themselves to their feet and he’s a good head and shoulders taller than her. It’s unreal. “Do you—” Ben begins before cutting himself off. “Do you want to grab dinner?” He looks nervous, as though he can’t believe he’s asking it. Quite the opposite of the way he’d burst into her life at the Merchandise Mart stop.
“Sure,” Rey says, startled by how breathless her own voice sounds. “There’s a good Thai place near my apartment if you like Thai food. I don’t really know what’s up here.”
“Thai sounds great.” He looks as though he’d have agreed to anything. He tugs his phone out of his pocket. “Uber? So we don’t accidentally end back up in the Loop?”
She laughs and he hands his phone to her and she plugs the address into the app. Then she navigates to his contacts app and adds her name and number.