Messy Ending

“Ben?” My feet rested atop his lap days later. It was only days before the twenty-second of November, Thanksgiving. We hadn’t ever really spoken about how any of us would spend the holiday.

He glanced toward me. “Hmm?” His fingers ceased in moving playfully over my bare ankles, exposed with the shorts I wore.

I rested my head on the cushioned back of Ben’s couch. We still hadn’t made anything in the relationship we had with each other official, but I’d spent a lot of my free time at Ben’s place; if I wasn’t with Sammi. “Are we doing anything for Thanksgiving?”

He considered silently for a moment. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I suppose that all of us, you, me, the guys, and girls included could do something. We’d have to talk to them about that before we decide anything, of course.” The hand that had frozen in movement glided up my leg, headed toward my thigh.

“That’s another thing I wanted to speak with you about…” I covered his hand with mine, interlocking our fingers on my thigh.

The smile across his lips was replaced with a puzzled frown. “Huh?”

“What are we, Ben? Are we together or what?” I blew out a sigh. “I wanna know, Ben.”

The questions had clearly caught him off guard. “Oh… I… I hadn’t thought about that either.” He continued on once my face fell. “I’d just been so content spending time with you… It kind of felt like we already were together.” Bashfully, he avoided the gaze I had turned toward him.

“So… you do want to be together?”

His gaze met mine. “Of course I do, Dai.” It was in rare times such as these that I enjoyed Ben’s company more than ever. Ben definitely had the capability to be that sweet, caring guy that the tabloids portrayed him to be the complete polar opposite of.

“So… where does that leave us?”

He grinned. “I’d say we can make it official.”

With a nod, I lowered my eyes to our intertwined hands and up again at a ray of sunlight piercing through the room to the far, cream colored wall once the door creaked open. Footsteps were soon to follow and Danny, accompanied by Sammi, came into our view from the entryway of the foyer.

Ben slipped his hand from mine and took it from my thigh. He spoke to Danny once he sat up, fingers gliding through his unruly hair and my feet pressed into his lap. “You know, it’s great that you just let yourself into my house as you please.”

Danny flashed Ben a toothy grin along with a sheepish shrug of the shoulders. He had plopped himself in the recliner pushed against the opposite wall with a tired gesture that Sammi join him in the small chair. They had been together since Ben had brought us to his house the first time and they’d been nearly inseparable.

“Dai asked me a question earlier,” Ben started, looking toward Danny. “She asked what we were doing for Thanksgiving-“
Danny cut Ben’s sentence short with the words, “We never celebrate Thanksgiving.”

“I know that, but I figured this year we could.” Ben’s hand slowly traced along the length of my leg. The small movements of his warm, calloused hand sent a rain of shivers along my spine. “The only reason we haven’t celebrated it in the time we’ve lived in the states is because we’ve always been on the road during that holiday.”

Danny’s eyes remained hidden beneath the sunglasses he’d been wearing the moment he’d entered the room, but his head tilted, thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s true. We could always ask Steph if we can do something at the diner.”

“I have to be at work soon. I can ask her,” I offered, bringing my wrist up to examine the watch I was wearing. “Holy shit. I have to be at work in ten minutes.” I pushed up off the couch, slipping my shoes on and pressing a quick kiss against Ben’s soft lips.

“See you after work,” he called at me, unmoving from his spot at the end of the couch.

I took his face in my hands and pressed another kiss against his pierced lips once I had gathered my black, Avenged Sevenfold messenger bag over my shoulder. “I’ll see you then,” I murmured against the lips that I had captured with my own in a kiss that I never wanted to end.

The kiss, eventually, did end and I lifted my hand in a wave to our friends across the room and a small, shy wave to the man I could now call my boyfriend.

~~~

Ben

Dai had exited the house and Sammi spoke up in the soft way of hers, “Now that you two aren’t attached at the hip would be the perfect time to plan her birthday.” She moved from Danny’s lap to sit, cross-legged on the soft, carpeted floor in front of the black, leather couch on which I sat.

I shifted my eyes to Danny. He had fallen asleep in the interval of the time he’d arrived and the time that Dai had left.

Sammi’s gaze followed mine. “He’s so cute!” she gushed, pressing her hand over her chest, dreamily.

I chuckled, softly. “Can we make the plans for her birthday now, Sam?”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” She smiled sheepishly and tugged her protruding, iPhone from the pocket of her dark wash skinny jeans with a slight laugh.

“What are you doing?” I questioned, joining her on the floor of my house.

She tapped with her skinny fingers on the screen of her phone. “Hold on a second.”

The ringing that followed her words startled me into a jump. “Sam? What’re you doing?” I repeated, wide eyed, running my fingers through my unruly hair once again.

“Hush,” she ordered me, one finger held up to silence my words.

“Samantha,” an elderly voice came through the telephone line. “How have you and Daidara been?”

“Great, Grandma,” Sammi smiled, brightly. “How’s Papa?”

“Well, he’s getting along just fine, dear,” she took a moment in continuing. “Was there a specific reason you called?”

Sammi ran a hand through her reddish, black hair. “Yeah, actually. Dai’s boyfriend is sitting right beside me and for Dai’s birthday he wants to take her up there to Kingsburg.” Sammi met my nervous gaze with her reassuring one as she waited for the woman to speak again.

“Dai has a boyfriend?” the woman questioned, rhetorically. “I knew it was just a matter of time. She is such a beautiful girl,” she continued, gushing to an extent.

Mentally, I agreed with the woman I had never before met. Dai was by far the most stunning girl I had ever come across and I considered myself as lucky to have gotten her to agree to be with me.

“Yes,” Sammi paused, in a thoughtful way, with a considering glance in my direction. “Can I ask a favor of you for Dai? It’s not much I promise.”

“Oh, of course, Samantha. Anything for you girls. What is it that you need?”

“Ben will leave with Dai early the morning of her birthday and I need you to make sure that by at least ten in the morning Caitlin is there with Travis, Atalie, and Jax. Dai knows nothing of this and I’d like to make sure it stays that way, please.”

“Only as long as I get to see my girl. Will you be joining them up here?”

“No. This would be your time to get yourselves acquainted with Ben and spend your granddaughter’s birthday with her.” Sammi grinned, tracing patterns with an index finger into the plush carpet we sat on. “Listen, I’ll talk to you later, Grandma.”

The lady mumbled out a goodbye just seconds before Sammi disconnected the call and tossed the OtterBox protected cellphone to the side of her.

“The lady I was just talking to was Dai’s grandmother, Patricia. Caitlin is Dai’s sister. Travis is Cait’s husband and Atalie and Jax are her children, Dai’s niece and nephew,” Sammi explained, laying back flat on her back. She sunk, slightly, into the plush, white carpet of my living room floor.

I pushed myself up from the floor with the palms of my hands and tugged the jacket I had draped across the arm of the couch over my very slender torso. My keys had been placed at the other side of the couch on the table cluttered with useless papers and junk mail. I had thrown them there the last time I had finished using them.

“Where are you going?” Sammi mumbled, eyes closed in a peaceful way. She was still sprawled across my living room floor, backside sunk a bit into the plush carpet.

I snatched my keys into my hand from the table. “Gonna go by the diner. You and Danny are free to hang out here if you’d like. I’ll be back when Dai gets off, if not before.”

Sammi stayed in her spot on the floor, silent. Presumably she had fallen asleep just as her boyfriend had done no less than thirty minutes before. Her and Danny, as a couple, in my opinion worked well together. I hoped to have the same relationship with Dai now that we had that mutual agreement of who we were to each other.

The moment I slid into the orange car of mine, parked beside Danny’s black Mercedes I twisted the key to bring the car to life.
I twisted my body in the seat to glance out the back window of the car in order to pull out of the gravel driveway as safely as I could. No one hardly ever passed by my house, it was one of the many reasons I’d purchased the damn thing in the first place, but I still took precautions as if it were the busiest highway. Despite my reckless reputation, I was about as safe a driver as you could get with the occasional exception of the distractions that could arise, mostly all of them involved Dai being sat in the passenger side.

A strange rattling noise rose to my ears and moments later I realized it was my phone, vibrating in the built in cup holder of my car where I had placed it upon entering the car. Normally, while driving, I wouldn’t have answered the call, but I had stopped for a stop sign at the end of a nearly dead road and I did pull the phone to my ear, forgetting the caller ID flashing across the glass screen.

“Hello?” I kept driving straight down the street in the direction I knew the small diner where Dai was employed was located.

“Ben!” an all too familiar voice chirped through the phone line. “I thought you had forgotten all about me!” Ali continued on in a pouting voice.

“I couldn’t forget about you, Babe,” I lied with a forced sound of happiness in my tone. “How’s your dad doing?”

“He’s actually making progress.” I could visualize the happy smile that must be pasted to her lips, but instantly forgot the image as quickly as it had come. There was a small pause and the continued speaking. “I’ll be back a few days after Christmas, Ben.”

My heart dropped to my stomach. I’d never actually thought of her returning. I’d been too caught up with Dai. I had to break it off with Ali, but now? Over the phone? I couldn’t do that to her no matter how much I wanted to be free of her. I’d just have to do it immediately after she arrived back no matter the consequences.