Always, Ben

Chapter 2

Ben finally succeeded in dragging himself to the front door of the apartment he shared with his boyfriend. He fumbled to get the key out of his pocket. Once he had it in his hand, it took him a full minute to find the lock and slide the key into it.

God, they’d been so in love then, they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other. Not to say they weren’t in love now—Jesus, he was so exhausted he wasn’t making any sense. Rick was busy with his thesis, and Ben was working as much overtime as he could get, saving up for a house of their own.

He could just see it—a white, split-level ranch with green shutters and trim, the broad lawn with mature oaks and willows, and a white picket fence. As for the inside, since it would be just him and Rick, the number of bedrooms was immaterial, although if they should ever decide to adopt…

Of course Rick wasn’t ready for that yet, not the house or the kids or even the floppy-eared puppy Ben dreamed of, but that was okay. They still needed about ten thousand dollars more for a decent down payment, and while his paycheck was going to be a hefty one this week, the insurance for both their cars was coming due, as well as the rent.

Still, he should be able to put something into their savings account.

He turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

“Hey, Rick. Sorry I had to work so late tonight.” For the past eight weeks, he hadn’t even been able to make bagpipe practice. He’d fallen in love with the Highland pipes after he’d seen an airing of Braveheart on Showtime when he was thirteen. His dad had found a teacher for him, and he’d been bagpiping ever since, first with his union in DeKalb, and then for the past three years with the local American Legion band in Greenedale. He was damned good at it, but because of all the overtime he’d been putting in, the fall parade season was pretty much going to be a wash. “You know there’s no saying ‘no’ to the boss when he—” The heavy silence in the apartment suddenly struck him. “Rick? Sweetheart?”

The kitchen was dark, and so was the bedroom, but the light in the living room/dining room was set to dim. He’d wired the dimmer switch when they’d first moved in, unable to resist showing off his ability, especially since that wasn’t the type of wiring he usually did. His dad—his heart stuttered as he thought of the distance between them. He squeezed the bridge of his nose and fought back tears. His dad had taught him how to do that.

Ben had always thought Rick was proud of what he did, just as he was proud of Rick, but a few months ago, out of a clear blue sky, Rick had said, “Blue-collar workers are so low-class.”

The words whispered in Ben’s brain. No matter how hard he tried to dismiss them, they kept coming back, even though he knew Rick had just been overtired and stressed from the students he had to teach and the research he had to do. He hadn’t meant them. So Ben intended to make Rick see that maybe he worked a blue-collar job, maybe he came from a middle-class union family, but his talents were just as valuable as his boyfriend’s.

He unbuckled his tool belt and left it where it fell. Rick would be unhappy about that, but Ben would face his irritation later.

He flipped on the light switch in the bedroom. The bed was neatly made. Rick never made the bed. Not that Ben minded. A genius of his lover’s magnitude didn’t have time for mundane things like tidying their apartment.

So why had he done it today?

Ben left their bedroom. The bathroom door was closed, and he knocked and waited a few seconds, because Rick didn’t like it if anyone came into the bathroom while he was using it. When there was no answer, Ben peeked in.

Rick wasn’t there. His toothbrush and all the products he used had been put away.

This wasn’t like Rick at all. The only time he would do that was when they were expecting company. Ben couldn’t remember him saying anything about needing to be home early because they were entertaining. Had Rick…?

Ben opened the vanity under the sink. “Oh.” The hair products hadn’t been put away; they were gone. The shelf was bare.

He rushed back into the bedroom and flung open the closet door. The side of the closet where Rick kept his suits and shirts was empty. Opening the dresser drawers revealed more of the same.

There’s no need to panic, he told himself. So what if Rick’s clothing isn’t where it usually is? He probably just had a last minute seminar or something he needed to attend. That had happened frequently in the past eight or nine months. Ben was willing to bet Rick had left a note.

And of course Ben would find it. He just had to keep looking.

The kitchen was spic and span. The Crock-Pot was in the appliance garage; obviously Rick hadn’t planned to make him dinner.

Okay, so no note on the counter or the table in the breakfast nook. That left the second bedroom, which they used as a computer room. Although lately, whenever Rick had friends over, he’d pat the Murphy bed in the wall and tell them this was Ben’s room.

More than once, they’d quarreled over Rick making it sound like they were nothing more than roommates. “What do you care what those cocksuckers think of our living arrangements?” Ben had demanded the last time it came up.

“I really hate when you use language like that. Look, Haggerty. I could lose everything if our ‘living arrangements’ came out. My scholarship, my position as Professor Armistead’s teaching assistant…everything.”

Ben knew Rick was pissed when he used Ben’s last name, and he’d do whatever needed to be done to keep his lover from being unhappy.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I just don’t like them looking down on me.”

“They don’t, Benjie.”

Ben loved Rick, so he didn’t mutter, “You could have fooled me.”

Rick threaded his fingers through Ben’s hair, something else he loved. “Keep in mind you’re a pretty talented cocksucker yourself.” And Rick had dragged him off to their bedroom to let him prove it.

* * * *

The computer room was as tidy as the rest of the apartment. Rick’s laptop wasn’t on the desk, but a white square of paper was. His exhaustion forgotten, Ben crossed to the desk, picked up the message, and unfolded it.

Benjie, I’m sorry to do this to you, but duty calls, and I have to go. Things aren’t the same between us—let’s face it; they haven’t been for a very long time—

What was he talking about? They’d made love last night…the night before? Ben squeezed the bridge of his nose. He’d been working such crazy hours, he’d lost track, but it was this week, he was certain, and it had been as good as always.

—and it’s distracting me from my work. Dr. Putnam, Professor Armistead’s associate, has noticed it, and he’s the one who suggested it might be a good idea if I find other living arrangements. I’m transferring to another university where Dr. Putnam teaches. I’ll finish my thesis at his university and then prepare the topic of the dissertation for my doctorate. It will only be temporary, Ben, I promise, but I need this time away, so please don’t try to find me.

Hugs,

Rick

Hugs? Hugs? Who did he think Ben was, someone he’d met online? What had happened to “love?” What had happened to seven years together?

There was a PS, but Ben didn’t have the heart to read it just then. More depressed than he’d been since he’d left his family in DeKalb, he muttered, “I need a drink.”

Although that might not be a good idea, since he was almost staggering with weariness by the time he reached the kitchen and opened the fridge. He stared into it stupidly for a moment. Where had the six-pack of Budweiser gone? He was positive he hadn’t drunk it. He’d been so tired when he’d come home from work this past week and a half that he’d barely been able to stay awake long enough to shower, eat dinner, and hit the sheets.

In spite of his exhaustion, Ben took inventory of the contents of the fridge—a container of 2 percent milk on one shelf, half a loaf of rye bread on another, the package of sliced olive loaf for his lunch in the meat tray. He’d picked it up from the supermarket deli this past weekend.

Was this what Rick expected him to have for dinner?

God, he needed that drink. He went to the pantry, but the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black—they could afford better than the five dollar a bottle of Double H whiskey Rick had found in his uncle’s liquor cabinet when they’d been teens—that should have been there was gone.

The recycling wouldn’t get picked up until the beginning of next week. He opened the cabinet under the sink and pulled out the bin they chucked their empty bottles and cans in.

So that’s where all the Budweiser went to.

And the whiskey bottle. But mixed in with them were a number of empty Amber Bock bottles. Neither Rick nor he drank Amber Bock.

“Oh, Rick,” he groaned. “Who’d you have here?”

Of course there was no answer.

He picked up the whiskey bottle and gave it a shake. Not even a single drop left.

No whiskey. No beer. No lover. Goddammit, what was he supposed to do?

He dropped the empty bottle back into the recycling bin, took out the rye bread and olive loaf, and made himself a sandwich.

* * * *

That was early in August. By the middle of October Ben couldn’t stand their apartment. It had become cold and dark and lonely. Well, no, not really cold and dark—he had a decent heating system and plenty of east-facing windows—it just felt that way with Rick gone.

But it was lonely.

Ben couldn’t stay there any longer. His lease was coming due in a couple of months, so he started checking out the rentals in the Greenedale Daily News during his lunch hour. When that didn’t turn up anything, he decided to check with Annie, the office manager for Acme Electric, the company his union’s local had sent him to work for. If there was anything she didn’t know, it wasn’t worth knowing.

When he’d first started at the small shop a few years ago, Annie had tried to hook him up with any of her single girlfriends. He’d finally had to tell her he was gay, and she’d taken the news good-naturedly and tried to set him up with her single gay friends. That had been difficult to get around, since Rick didn’t want anyone in Greenedale to know they were anything more than roommates.

He walked into the office just as she snarled into the phone, “Well, you just better f*****g find the money you owe us, you goddamned son of a b***h!” She slammed the phone down, muttering, “Who does he think he’s screwing with?” She looked up, saw Ben, and smiled. “Hi, Ben. I’m telling you, you just can’t give some people an inch.”

“I guess not.” He’d heard Annie swear before—the office managers for all the other companies were scared of her—and it didn’t surprise him.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I need a new place to stay.”

“Oh?”

“It’s lonely since my…my roommate moved out.”

“Really, Ben? Your roommate?”

“What?”

“I’ve known he was your boyfriend for years.”

Ben felt his jaw drop. “How?”

“Please. You turned down the cutest guy I could come up with. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together.”

His cheeks felt on fire. “Um…”

“Never mind. That isn’t important. You know, Caravan Point has a condo up for sale. It’s nice, it’s not expensive—”

“Why?”

She continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “—and it’s fully furnished.”

“It’s also filled with old people.” He wouldn’t say “farts” in front of Annie. She was a nice woman, even if she did swear worse than any of the construction workers he knew.

“No more than any other place.”

“But why is it so cheap?”

“Not cheap. Inexpensive.”

“Okay, but why?”

“The…uh…previous owner—”

“I knew it. He dropped dead in the bedroom.”

“Nothing like that.”

“In the bathroom, then, while he was on the john.”

“Silly. It’s just the economy.”

He and Rick had planned to buy a house, but each time he found something he thought was perfect, Rick would point out one wrong thing after another. “You don’t want to spend all that money and then not be happy, do you?” he’d ask, and of course Ben would have to agree with him. Rick was so smart…

He had to stop thinking about what he and Rick were going to do—it seemed there was no longer a he and Rick. “I’ll think about it,” he told Annie.

He really hadn’t intended to, but the apartment got him down to the point where he did more than think about the condo—he went to see it.

And Annie was right. The second floor unit was nice, nicer than he expected. Two bedrooms, two baths, with an open floor plan. In spite of how he and Rick had made fun of Caravan Point and its older residents—well, at twenty-two, anyone older than thirty was an old fart; now, at twenty-five, not so much—he found he liked it. The amenities were better than he’d expected—a fitness room, a pool, even its own restaurant, and the furniture that came with the condo suited him. While masculine, it didn’t scream I might be gay, but you’d never guess because this place looks so butch.

There was no one to tell him if he bought this condo, he’d wind up with buyer’s remorse, so he went ahead and put in a bid. Considering the way his luck had been running since August, he almost expected the inspection to turn up all sorts of deficiencies, but other than updating the lighting fixtures, the place was in excellent shape.

By the beginning of November, it was his, and by Thanksgiving he had moved in.

* * * *

“Jesus, this is the worst Christmas I’ve ever spent.” Ben sent a quick glance heavenward. “Sorry, God.”

Holiday lights were up everywhere, and the television was filled with all sorts of commercials celebrating this time of year, but instead of filling him with the joy of the season, they just depressed him. The one from Heart’s Greetings, the greeting card franchise that was sprouting up everywhere, especially had him tearing up every time.

A gorgeous, dark-skinned woman smiled into the camera and greeted the viewers. “Hello. I’m Monique, president and CEO of Heart’s Greetings.” She rose, walked around the desk, and continued. “At this company, we love love, and we love family—” She gestured behind her to a photograph on the wall of herself with a fair woman and two happy children. “—and we have a gift and a card for every occasion. As our motto says, family isn’t just those we’re bound to by blood, it’s also those chosen by our hearts. It makes no difference if you’re gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, or non-binary. We here at Heart’s Greetings would like to say, from our hearts to yours, family is love. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all.”

Family is love. Ben inhaled noisily and grabbed a tissue to wipe his eyes and blow his nose. He had no family. Oh, sure, before this, he and Rick had been together, and before that, Ben had been with his own family—which he’d given up for Rick. Now…Now he really was alone.

Oh, he got some Christmas cards—one from his boss, one from Annie, a few from the people he worked with, even one from his insurance agent. But how could he put up the tree Rick wouldn’t be there to decorate with him? How could he go to the local Heart’s Greetings to buy new ornaments, something they’d done together every year?

Ben admired a suit in the window of Brooks Brothers, but why bother to go in? There was no Rick to buy it for.

He watched the families strolling along the thoroughfare, window-shopping, going into the stores to let their kids sit on Santa’s lap, ice skating and having hot cocoa afterward.

Skating was one of the things Ben was good at, but since Rick didn’t care to skate, they didn’t do it often. This December, Ben had no desire at all to take to the ice.

He bought a turkey breast and made himself a nice dinner with all the trimmings, but it didn’t matter. It still tasted like cardboard.

* * * *

“You can’t string together two solid thoughts,” Rick had said at dinner one evening, about a month before he’d left. Of course he’d just been teasing.

“It never bothered you before,” Ben murmured. He’d always liked to say he was in the top eighty percent of their class—if he made fun of himself first, no one else could.

“How can I take you to any faculty functions?”

“Are you ashamed of me, Rick?”

Rick had flushed. “No.” But his eyes hadn’t met Ben’s.

“As soon as the overtime stops, I’ll go back to school.”

Only he hadn’t had the opportunity to do that, because by that time, Rick had left.

And, all right, maybe he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he had friends who were.

Fred Lancaster, the guy who ran the computer lab at Howe U., owed him big time for getting the lab rewired way before the deadline, and on top of that, he liked Ben.

Fred will be able to find out where Rick went. That wouldn’t be stalking, would it? I mean, I have no intention of following Rick to wherever he’s gone. And Ben could send him a card for his birthday. This way Ben could also let his boyfriend—his former boyfriend?—know he’d moved. Ben came to an abrupt halt. Oh God, talk about stupidity! Rick was right when he teased Ben about having the IQ of a bunch of Brussels sprouts. How could Rick get in touch with him if he didn’t know Ben had moved?

Ben refused to pay attention to the voice at the back of his mind that whispered Rick could have called him. Ben’s phone number hadn’t changed.

Although Rick’s must have. Ben had tried to call once, but the man who answered the phone had told him no one named Rick was there.

Okay, I’ll wish him a happy birthday and let him know where I am. And when he answers, I’ll know where he is and that he’s okay.

* * * *

The address Fred gave him was in Wooster, another college town about a hundred miles from Greenedale. Ben found a card he thought wouldn’t make Rick barf all over his shoes, came up with a message that also wouldn’t make Rick toss his cookies, and mailed it at the post office so it would get there soonest.

He tore up Rick’s address as soon as he got home. The idea was to convince Rick to come home, not piss him off with a barrage of messages, and the last thing Ben wanted was to have temptation knocking on his door.

And…if he had to, he could always rely on Fred to get him the address again.

* * * *

Ben was proud of himself. He didn’t start to haunt the mailbox until a week after he’d mailed the card to Rick.

He didn’t really think Rick would answer him, but he hoped—oh God, how he hoped!—that after the months apart, Rick would have had time to realize what they’d had was too good to throw away.

If he were truthful with himself, he’d have to admit Rick had actually been gone for longer than four months. Oh, his body had been there in the apartment they shared, but that was all.

Hindsight was supposed to be twenty/twenty, but he still couldn’t pinpoint the moment when Rick had grown bored with him, with them.

They’d been together since high school. Ben had known he didn’t have the smarts to get into college, not even DeKalb Community College, but that was okay. His dad and uncles were electricians, and they’d gotten him into the local union, which dealt with low voltage. He wired office buildings for multi-line telephones and internet access and did occasional side jobs for private homes. The thing was, his job entailed a lot more skill and knowledge than Rick and his friends gave him credit for.

Ben didn’t resent the fact he’d worked harder than Rick, taking those side jobs when he had to in order to cover the insurance on the sporty little car Rick drove. As a grad student who was working on his master’s degree, the only job Rick could get was as a teaching assistant; he just hadn’t had the time to work a job that paid more than minimum wage, which barely kept him in lunches at Burger King, never mind the Dockers and Nikes he favored.

They’d both enjoyed going out clubbing on the weekend. When had they stopped doing fun things together?

He must have been the world’s worst boyfriend not to see the extra hours he was putting in were damaging his relationship with Rick, but those hours were for them, to build up the savings account slated for the house they were going to buy together.

In the PS in the note Rick had left, he’d said he was only withdrawing his share of the money in their joint bank account, which would have been about a quarter of what was in there. But Ben had been stunned to see how much the account had been depleted; apparently Rick considered his share to be a good deal more than he’d deposited.

Not that Ben didn’t think Rick should have that money if he needed it. Rick had had to put up with a lot from him toward the end. Ben would come home dirty and sweaty, and while Rick used to say he liked the way Ben smelled after a hard day’s work, in the months before Rick had left, he would push Ben away. “Take a shower,” he’d snap. “You smell like a tramp.”

Which wasn’t fair, but Ben would go into the bathroom and get washed up.

* * * *

By the second week after he’d mailed the card, Ben was becoming antsy. He’d race home from work and rifle through the mail, but there was nothing with the Wooster postmark.

By the third week, his boss was getting ticked. “Jesus, Haggerty, would you get a grip?”

“I just have to—” The certainty that Rick had answered him today was so strong he had to go home to see what was in that day’s mail.

His boss gave a helpless shrug. “All right, go.”

“I’ll be right back. You won’t even have time to miss me.”

“Doubtful,” the boss said, but Ben was out of there before the last syllable.

Caravan Point was so large, it had its own mailperson who went from door to door, delivering the mail through the individual slots.

Ben almost dropped his key twice, but he finally got it into the lock. He was careful turning it, because the last thing he wanted to do was break it off. Finally, he pushed open the door and stared avidly at the pile of mail on the floor.

Bills, advertising flyers. Requests for political donations.

Nothing. Not one f*****g thing from Rick.

He banged his head against the door frame.

God, what was he doing to himself? Even though Rick had promised he was coming back, it had been four months…almost five... How much longer could he go on like this?