Chapter Text
Ben fingered the freshly-minted apartment key, sitting alone at the same pizza place where he’d taken Rey for their first date. The metal almost seemed as if it was still warm from the key-cutter at the hardware store down the street. He’d gone there after work to cut the key, knowing it was presumptuous. She might not want the key.
He had a list of pragmatic reasons, in case he needed to convince her. Her neighborhood wasn’t safe. Her rent was too high, and she was only a junior project engineer, after all. He was willing to concede that he would take the trash out for her.
But it wasn’t just a key. It represented something he’d never thought he’d have – commitment, normalcy, cohabitation. Someone to make coffee for in the morning and argue over vacuuming with. If he was more sure of himself, and she was more traditional, he might have bought a ring, instead. His moments of crippling self-doubt – how could she want to tie herself, forever, to someone with a potentially debilitating mental illness? – stopped him from doing that.
A key was symbolic than a ring, in some ways. Ben was offering to share his private space with her. That was more intimate than sex and sleepovers. If she accepted, she was implicitly saying that she trusted him enough to stay with him, in his apartment, even if he took a turn for the worse.
“Hello, love.” Rey kissed his chin, leaning across the table before she sat.
“Hi.” She looked absolutely guileless. She didn’t seem to realize that this was the same pizza place. Before he could lose his nerve, Ben blurted out, “I have to ask you a question.
Rey blinked, and then looked around the pizza parlor. Ben could all but see the gears turn under her glossy brown hair. He winced. He could have been a little more subtle – said, can I ask you a question? or ordered food, first. “Wait, this is – this is where we… you aren’t proposing, are you?”
“No, I – wait, would you say no if I did?” Suddenly, Ben was a little offended. A little offended, and a lot disheartened.
“No, I just…” Rey flushed. “I don’t know if I, I don’t know, believe in marriage. It doesn’t matter. What was your question?”
Ben squirmed. He’d always thought that people who said they didn’t believe in marriage just didn’t believe they wanted to marry the person they were with. If she didn’t want to marry him, she probably wouldn’t want to move in with him. “Now I don’t want to ask it.”
Rey exhaled, exasperated. “Ben.”
Ben huffed, stubbornly, and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Then I get to ask you a question.” Rey fingered a napkin, tearing it into little bits. There was a stubborn jut to her jaw now. “I... I have a job offer in London.”
“That’s a question?” Ben didn’t mean to sound so sarcastic. It was a fight-or-flight response to horrible news. He couldn’t run away, so he would pick a fight. “That just sounds like you’re breaking up with me.”
Rey looked up from the napkin. “I’m asking you to come with me.”
“London?” Ben’s throat bobbed, doubtfully. “My job…”
Rey scoffed. “You’re brilliant, Ben, you could work anywhere. They’ve offered me chief project engineer, doing bridges and skyscrapers and stuff.”
Ben floundered. “Gwen is here.”
Something like jealousy flickered across Rey’s face. “They have psychologists in England.”
Ben looked down at his hands. He would never choose a job over Rey, or Gwen over Rey, or anything over Rey. But she wasn’t just asking him to give up anything – she was asking him to give up everything. He’d spent eight painstaking years learning how to navigate this city and his job. It had taken him a long time to feel safe in his apartment and in his cubicle. It had taken him a long time to learn to trust Gwen. He would have to start anew in England with no support system and no safety net. His anxiety spiked just thinking about it.
In a falsely cheerful voice – he knew it was false because her eyes got wet when he didn’t answer her question – Rey chirped, “Pepperoni or sausage?”
“Rey – ” Ben felt like crying, but he didn’t want to see her cry. That would break his stoicism.
“Pepperoni it is.” Rey avoided his eyes. Ben envisioned her leaving him behind, going back to England, and suddenly, he wasn’t very hungry.
***
They had sex at his apartment, and it felt like the last time. It would have been mechanical – the job offer had put a damper on his desire – if he hadn’t been so desperate to do everything, and to commit it to memory. It ended up being exhausting, rather than half-hearted.
Afterwards, Ben lay mute on his back in bed while Rey mumbled something about a shower. She showered for much longer than she usually did – Rey was nothing if not efficient – and when she slipped into bed again, her fingers were pruneish on his skin. Wrapping herself around him, she kissed his shoulder blade.
“I was going to ask you to move in with me.” Ben heard himself say.
“You can still ask.” Rey told him.
“What’s the point?” Ben fought the urge to shrug her off of him. Normally her weight pressed against him in bed was comforting. Now it felt smothering. “You’ll be in London.”
Rey’s breath tickled the back of his neck as she considered it. “If you won’t go with me, I won’t go.”
Guilt roiled the pit of Ben’s stomach, then. He’d let his mental illness hold him back – from promotions, from adventures, from love, from sex, from his family – for years. He had come to terms with the fact that it would always hold him back.
Ben couldn’t bear to hold Rey back. She was too vibrant. She had too much forward momentum to be tied down by someone like him. He felt enormous guilt for the fact that she loved him. She should love someone else – someone who would happily ride double-decker busses and take silly photographs outside of red telephone booths with her. Someone whose mental illness she wouldn’t have to cope with.
Ben knew he should let her go. He even thought he could cope with losing her. It would be hard. Depression was inevitable. Psychosis was possible.
But Rey was stubborn and self-destructive. Every time he tried to push her away, she had held on tighter. She didn’t know what was good for her. He let her, because she was good for him.
Maybe, he reflected, she was good for him because she made him uncomfortable. She made him try to be a good boyfriend despite his mental illness. She made him vulnerable when he wanted to close himself off from the world. She made him talk honestly about himself. She made him do things that scared him.
Turnabout was fair play. If she could ask him do things that scared him – like moving to London, Jesus Christ, he thought – he could ask her do things that scared her, too.
“If I come with you to London,” Ben rasped, rolling over and feeling her breath hot on his face, “will you reconsider your position on marriage?”
Rey was silent for a second, and then she started laughing, startled. He felt her laughter vibrating through her chest and belly, and into his body wherever they were touching. She kissed his chin and nose in the dark, missing his mouth. “Yes.”
“Then, yes.” Ben found her mouth, somehow and kissed her the way he’d wanted to all day. “My answer is yes.”
***
“Dr. Kanata comes highly recommended.” Gwen told Ben.
Ben sunk deeper into the couch. He didn’t want to stand up. This was his last appointment with Gwen, in this familiar room, on this familiar couch, and it had already run ten minutes late. “By who?”
“By me.” Gwen laughed. “She was my mentor in graduate school.”
Reluctantly, Ben stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets, awkwardly. “She’s not you, Gwen.”
To his surprise, Gwen teared up. She held out her arms, her lip quivering. “Stop that. Give me a hug. You’re not my patient anymore.”
Ben folded her in his arms, carefully. It felt odd, after years and years of remaining at a at least somewhat professional distance. “I’ll miss you.”
“Call me any time.” Gwen smiled up at him. “But now that I’m not your psychologist, I want you to only call me with happy news, okay? I expect there to be a lot of it.”
***
“Did you pick up your prescriptions?” Rey asked, as she stacked boxes near the door. They had suitcases – six of them – packed. They’d sold his furniture and just thrown hers away, because it was so shabby and old. Everything else was boxed up, bound for a storage unit.
“Yes.” Ben looked around the bare, stark apartment. “Did you print the boarding passes?”
“Yes.” Rey stood on her tip-toes to peck his mouth. “Did you clean out your cubicle?”
“Yes.” Ben counted the boxes. So few, considering how much of his life he’d spent between these walls. “Did you give away all your plants?”
“All but my miniature ficus.” Rey grinned. “I’m smuggling that one with me. Are we forgetting anything?”
Ben wasn’t forgetting anything, but he had been putting something off. He kissed her one more time. “One more thing. Give me a minute?”
Obligingly, Rey started taking boxes to the storage unit. Standing in the empty room, Ben dialed a telephone number he still had memorized. The dial tone repeated several times before the click.
“Hello?” The familiar, gravelly but still somehow feminine voice was fuzzy. The connection was bad, but it was the first one he’d had with her in years.
Ben should have apologized for being away for so long, or for not calling, and said that he was doing better. He should have told her he’d met someone. That he loved her, loved her madly, probably, because he was moving to London for her.
Instead, he cleared his throat. “Is Dad there?”