FF: Snapshots Left on the Negative (4a/4)
Title: Snapshots Left on the Negative (4a/4)
Word Count: ~8,200 (this post)
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: Up through 3x08 "Camping"
Author's Note: THIS IS NOT THE END. Instead it is the first section of part 4 which has slowly shaped itself into an absolute behemoth of a part and by the time it is done it will be probably as long as the rest of the fic combined (It turns out I really messed them up and these two like to be deliberate about things). Since livejournal won't let me post 20,000 plus words for a part in one go (or even two gos) and that all seemed a little overwhelming anyway, here we are. But it should be noted that I still think of this all as one chapter so the climaxes and builds will work accordingly. Also, laughingduchess continues to be the most awesome person in the world.
Summary: Simple version? Five conversations Leslie and Ben have in formal wear. (But of course life is always more complicated than that).
One | Two | Three
Ben is not, as it turns out, a terrible golfer.
He is an abysmal one.
Truly the consistency with which he sucks is actually kind of impressive. Most golfers she knows are only semi-decent at best, but they get one or two great shots a game-a beautiful drive, a spectacular putt-the kind you talk about afterwards, the kind that make you keep coming back. If there’s a great shot in Ben’s future, he’s hiding it well.
By contrast Diane apparently played in college, and Paul is obviously a fan of the sport if not one of it’s more accomplished participants. And the imbalance strikes her as peculiar. Usually people like to play with someone who’s evenly matched, who won’t slow down or speed up their game. But Diane and Paul seem unperturbed by pace, and Ben approaches the whole thing with a strangely good-natured insolence that’s almost a statement, that says he’s aware of the deficiency and has decided he doesn’t care.
By the fourth tee she breaks down and asks, because she has know. “I don’t understand. Are you being punished for something?”
“Many things. He is being punished for many things.” Paul calls out from behind the cart where he’s selecting his club.
Ben stops working on the crossword he has clipped to the steering wheel and looks over at her. “Paul once made the mistake of getting into a two-hour snowball fight the night before his comparative-economics final with someone who grew up in Minnesota and played baseball. Calling it a massacre would be the kind description.”
“You sir, cheated.”
“There aren’t any rules to follow!”
“There are the rules of war, the rules of human decency! You violated the Geneva convention that night.”
Diane, who had been in the middle of teeing-off, stops and steps back from her ball to admonish them both. “It was over twenty-years ago children. Now shut-up and let the adults play.”
Ben sinks a little in his seat and drops his voice to a whisper. “Because Paul is petty and holds a grudge, we do this once a year for his birthday so he can have the satisfaction of beating me at something.”
“And you don’t care.” Leslie whispers back.
“Nope.”
“So at the end of the day, you still win.”
He flashes her quick, conspiratorial smile and goes back to his crossword. “Yup.”
Leslie blinks and sits back in her seat, trying to come to grips with the fact that Ben, her Ben, nice, sweet, kind-of-dorky Ben, might just be the tiniest bit evil.
That’s been the most surprising and difficult thing about this day so far. She’d known it would be awkward. Had been ready for it to be awkward. Painfully so. Had spent the entire forty minute drive-back this morning preparing herself for it-talking herself down, managing her expectations. She was ready for him to regret inviting her, was ready not to quite fit with his friends, was ready for the whole thing to be a disastrous mistake.
What she hadn’t been ready for, apparently, was him. This him. Ben refracted through the prism of a long-established friendship. It’s not that he’s a different person with them. He’s still everything she remembers, but he’s more somehow, like she’s finally getting to see the full spectrum, the complete picture. The Ben who’s the insider, who has the running jokes she doesn’t know, the favorite stories she’s never heard, the traditions she’s never been a part of.
The Ben she might have met if she hadn’t wrapped him up in ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t’ and ‘shouldn’t’ and tucked him away for a later that never came.
She finds herself simultaneously grateful for Paul and Diane and resentful of their presence. They’re terribly nice, and their affectionately obnoxious push-pull somehow sets her at ease faster than she ever would have managed on her own, but Ben wears their friendship like armor. He can smile at her and laugh with her and it can all feel pleasant and natural and damn near perfect, but only if Paul and Diane are involved. Only if it’s an old-story or a four-way conversation.
Only if it’s not actually about the two of them at all.
And she can’t decide if it’s a shield or sword. Thinks it might be a little bit of both. Thinks that yes he probably wants the protection, the shelter that Paul and Diane afford him. But there’s still something cutting about it, something pointed and sharp, that says all too clearly ‘I was happy before you, and I’ve been happy since.’
Says ‘I don’t need you.’
Leslie isn’t entirely sure Ben’s the only one being punished today.
---
Paul kidnaps her somewhere around the sixth green, insisting she start riding with him so they can have their full and frank discourse about his serious and legitimate concerns. Despite Ben and Diane’s protests to contrary, Leslie finds arguing with him to be a lot of fun. He’s one of those rare individuals who enjoy it for the intellectual exercise more than the victory, and it feels a little like debate prep, sharpening her vision of the kind of public-servant she wants to be on the whetstone of his objections.
They’re partway through a bit on trade barriers, when she stumbles onto something she’s been trying to articulate for weeks now.
“You’re asking me the wrong question.”
Paul blinks good-naturedly, “Really? Whether or not you think a protectionist trade stance is harmful to our country’s economy isn’t relevant?”
“Putting aside the fact that in state government I’ll have pretty much no control over international trade? It’s still the wrong question.”
“Dear it’s your turn.” Diane calls out.
But Paul just holds up a hand like a pause, his eyes still fixed on Leslie. “Okay, tell me the right one.”
She got everyone’s attention now, even Ben’s. She can almost feel him looking over at her from the other cart. But she doesn’t care, for a moment this is beyond that, beyond everything.
“You keep asking me how I think things affect the country as a whole, whether it’s good for everyone. But it’s the wrong question. It’s admirable, but it’s too big. I’m not trying to figure out what’s best for America. I’m not even trying to figure out what’s best for Indiana. I just want to do what’s best for my district, for Pawnee and Eagleton and the surrounding communities. I grew up in a town that’s gone from four major employers to two, and if someone tells me being a little less global with our trade practices might keep them from going to one? I’d listen. Just the same way I’ll pay attention when my small business owners tell me they worry about the impact of healthcare costs on their sustainability or when the teacher’s union tells me the current education budget hurts our kids. Ask me whether I think it will benefit my district, my people. Convince me it’s in their best interest. That’s the right question. They’re the ones I’m asking to serve. They’re the ones that have to matter to me. Everything else? It’s too big. It’s noise.”
For moment no one says anything, and Leslie is suddenly uncomfortably aware that she’s just come alarmingly close to giving a stump speech to three non-constituents in the middle of a golf-course. Dammit, she’s always been a little bit too passionate for polite company.
Then Paul purses his lips, nods his head once like he’s confirming something and looks over at his wife. “Okay, you can give her our money.”
Diane rolls her eyes. “Excellent because I was holding my breath for your approval dear.” She hands him a club and points out to the fairway, “Go play now. There’s a good boy.”
Leslie glances over her shoulder to find Ben still looking at her, his gaze rendered unreadable by the aviator sunglasses he’s put on against the noon-day sun.
Steeling herself, she gets up and goes over to him on the pretense of selecting a club from her bag.
“What?”
“Nothing. I-” He stops and gives her a small, bemused smile, “I’d just forgotten exactly how good you are at that.”
Pulling a water from the cooler, he extends it out the other side of the cart in a way that invites her to come sit back down beside him.
It’s not quite an apology.
But it might be an olive branch.
---
Later she’ll realize she should have seen the next part coming from a mile away. Because neither she nor Ben have ever been called inscrutable. Because Diane is not a stupid woman. Because it’s exactly the kind of thing she’d do for one of her friends.
Still when Diane tells her to ‘hop-on’ in the middle of the thirteenth hole while Ben and Paul go searching for their balls in rough, Leslie fails to see the warning sign before it’s too late.
It’s not until she driven them up to the green in absolute silence and parked the cart a safe distance away that Leslie knows what’s coming.
For a moment, Diane doesn’t look at her, just stares straight ahead, as if still coming to a decision about the whole thing. “Paul told me to stay out of this. Told me to leave it alone, but-” she shrugs, presses her lips together in a wan smile, “well, you’ve seen how well I take orders.”
Leslie doesn’t say anything. Just because she thinks she knows where this is going, just because she might understand the impulse, it doesn’t mean she intends to make it any easier. Maybe there is some argument that Ben’s friend has the right to ask what she’s about to, but Leslie doesn’t really feel like conceding the point.
Finally after another long uncomfortable pause (and really, why is there never a rabid possum around when you need one?), Diane turns to her and with a frankness Leslie’s learning to expect, asks, “You and Ben were more than colleagues before, weren’t you?”
Even though she knew the question was coming, it still raises her hackles, makes her angry. And that’s not really a surprise. It’s intrusive and personal and puts her immediately on the defensive. What’s surprising is what-or more specifically who-she’s defending.
“I’m guessing from your question that Ben didn’t tell you.”
Diane shakes her head. “No. Maybe I had a few suspicions from the way he talked about you. But until I really sat down and thought about it last night when he went after you? No, I didn’t know.”
“Then, excuse me for saying this, but I think you need to talk to him.”
For a long moment Diane holds her gaze, staring her down in quiet challenge, and Leslie finds herself thinking that she’s glad she never had this woman for a professor. Frankly if it wasn’t about respecting Ben’s choices, she’d probably cave. But as it is she just stares right back.
Finally Diane looks away and leans back in her seat, propping a knee up on the steering wheel. “He won’t talk to me, not about this. And he won’t talk to Paul because unfortunately for Ben we’ve never been that good at keeping secrets from each other. And you apparently won’t talk to either of us, which I actually kind of like. Ben should get a champion. But I’ve known him longer, and I’m not quite ready to relinquish the role. So I’m going to talk at you for a minute and then as far as I’m concerned this is done. Okay?”
“If I say no, would it stop you?”
“Never has before,” she flashes a quick tight smile that’s almost a grimace and then sighs, “Okay, so here’s the thing. I don’t know what happened when he knew you. In fact until I thought about it last night, I’d forgotten he’d taken a job in Pawnee for that year. And I don’t know what made him stay or why he left. But here’s what I do know: Whatever did or didn’t happen, it took us almost a year after he moved up to South Bend to really get our friend back, and I- well, I’m just selfish enough to not want to go through that again.”
There’s just the tiniest quiver in Diane’s voice, an almost imperceptible break. It’s small and quickly covered, but it’s there all the same and the sound of it, of this unexpected crack in such an impenetrable exterior, cuts sharper and deeper than any rebuke or warning could have.
Because Leslie can only imagine what caused it.
“Look, I-”
But Diane holds up a hand cutting her off. “No, my time’s up and you were right. Paul was right, though don’t tell him I said that. You don’t owe me anything. It’s not my business, and frankly now that I’ve met you, I’m not sure I want it to be my business. Because I really do think you’re marvelous and if you’re going to be around Ben I’d like it if we could be friends, you know, once you get done hating me for being a busybody. But I think it’s fair to warn you that at the end of the day? We’ll pick him. Every time.”
She’s not entirely sure how to respond to that. There’s a part of her that wants to tell Diane to go to hell, and there’s a part that wants to ask for all the details she can get, and there’s a part that just want to hug the other woman for maybe caring about Ben almost as much as she does.
What she winds up saying is.
“Ben should get a champion.”
---
Despite her best intentions, when they all finish the hole and she gets back in the cart, it takes Ben all of three seconds to read how shaken she is and put two and two together.
“Leslie- You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Well, I mean I just did a four-putt on this hole, so obviously that kind of sucked. But other than that I am hunky-dory.”
It’s probably the unfortunate use of ‘hunky-dory’ as a viable descriptor of her emotional state that clinches it.
Ben’s face goes flat, and he tightens his hands on the steering wheel, the muscles on his forearms tensing with the strain, as his gaze swings over to the other cart where Diane is putting up her clubs and pointedly not looking at them.
“She said something to you, didn’t she?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
But the protest doesn’t ring true even to her own ears. Ben leans forward, rests his forehead against his fists, and sighs. “Yeah. Okay.”
Only a split second later he seems to decide it’s not okay at all because he’s up out of the cart, and Leslie has to lean over the seat to grab his hand to stop him. “Don’t. Please.”
That makes him pause, and he looks down at her, his expression softening into something she can’t quite read. God, she wishes he would take those sunglasses off so she could see his eyes, know what he’s thinking.
After a brief second of decision, he gives her hand a tiny squeeze of reassurance and sits back down with a sigh, motioning to Paul to go on without them when the other man hesitates.
Finally, he takes off his sunglasses and rubs a hand over his eyes, muttering, “Diane needs to learn to mind her own business.”
“She was just trying to look out for you. Really it’s okay.”
And it is actually. Okay, she’s probably not going to be adding the other woman to her speed dial any time soon, but well- It came from a good place, and Leslie gets the impulse, and frankly somehow Ben’s reaction on her behalf, knowing that whatever he might feel, however he might want to punish her, he doesn’t want anyone else to do it? It makes it all kind of worth it.
But Ben’s not so easily reassured.
“Leslie, whatever she said to you. Just-” he sighs, “Just ignore it all right. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about and it’s not her place to-”
“To worry about you?”
“I was going to say meddle.” He shakes his head in exasperation. “I have two sisters and a mother, and Diane can’t look after a houseplant. You’d think she’d leave it to the professionals.”
They exchange a brief companionable smile at that, then look away and fall silent again.
Leslie looks down at her hands and debates what she’s about to say, turns it over and over in her head, looking for an out. Because she doesn’t want to say it, really she just- She wants this. Or at least what it feels like this could be, what it could grow into. She’s not stupid. She knows better than to wish for what they used to have. As much as she misses it, misses him, she has enough distance now to know it was unstable. It was electric and all-consuming and wonderful and she’d never give a single second of it back. But it was a firework, never meant to last beyond that brief, brilliant, breath-taking instant.
But there’s still something left, she can feel it. A cinder, a spark, an ember in the ashes. It’s small and might be all too easily extinguished, but it’s there and she thinks given time and space and breathing room it could grow, could be something strong and warm and steady. And maybe it will never be a roaring fire, maybe it will always just be that small glowing ember to hold in her hands and take the edge of the chill. But she thinks she’d like that all same. Maybe even more. After all, the ember is less likely to burn.
Still she can’t get that hitch in Diane’s voice, that break in her composure and all that it implied, out of her head.
“Maybe she’s right to worry. Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” It comes out surprisingly calm, certainly far steadier and less needy than she feels, and Leslie hates herself just a little for how rational she sounds about the whole thing when Ben’s head snaps up in surprise and disbelief.
For a moment he just stares at her and there are dozen emotions running across his face-shock, frustration, anger. Even a tiny flicker of relief that dances through his eyes and makes her heart sink. But it’s quickly followed by something else, something writ large and strong, that settles in and takes up residence-disappointment.
“Is that- I mean, is that what you think?” he ventures, trying to cover it. Slipping into that attempt at professional detachment they both tend to fall back on when they’re trying not to let their emotions get the best of them and are about three seconds away from failing miserably.
And even though the sight makes her heart want to do a celebratory jig, she forces it to sit down and shut up. This is too important to gloss over simply because it would make her happy.
“I don’t know. I mean I know what I want. That hasn’t changed since last night. But-” she trails off.
“But?” Ben prompts.
“Diane said some things about, um,” she stumbles a little, forces herself to regroup, “about how you were after you left Pawnee.”
“Ah.” He leaves it there for a beat, and while he doesn’t turn away, his eyes shift a little so he can stare past her over her shoulder. Then he shrugs in offhand dismissal, “Well, I’m not going to tell you it was fun. But here I am. I survived, and I’m fine.”
“Ben-”
“Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t really want to do a play by play of that time with you. At least-” he breaks off and runs a hand over his face. Looks back over at her, something resigned and tired in his eyes, and sighs, “I just- I was having a good time today. With you.”
“So was I.”
“Yeah?”
She gives him a small smile. “Yeah. Absolutely.”
“Could we maybe just do that, then? Could we maybe just take everything else off the table for a little while and do that?”
“I just don’t want you to feel obligated or-”
Ben shakes his head and laughs under his breath. “God, you’re as bad as Diane. You know, despite all apparent female opinions to the contrary, I’m a pretty well-adjusted guy, fully capable of taking care of myself. So just let me do that, okay? Let me figure out my end and trust me when I tell you what that is. That’s what I want right now. Can you give me that?”
Leslie nods, bites down a smile. “Yes. Yes, I can give you that.”
“Okay then.” He turns back to face forward as if to close the book on the subject. Taps his thumbs on the steering wheel. “So we should probably go try to catch up with Paul and Diane.”
“Probably.”
Neither one of them sounds particularly thrilled about the prospect.
Ben doesn’t release the brake. Taps his thumbs a little more, thinking.
“Oooor,” he drags the word out, and tilts his head over towards her, “We could just skip ahead to the burgers and beers at the clubhouse and wait for them there.”
“Wouldn’t that kind of undermine Paul’s birthday retribution?”
Frowning like the thought had never occurred to him, he nods slowly, “You know, it probably would.”
“So we probably shouldn’t do that then.”
He shifts the cart into drive and grins. “Probably not.”
They wave at Paul and Diane when they pass by and get a table out on the deck, taking advantage of a rare sunny April day and the pleasant, mild spring breeze.
It takes them a little while to get their footing again, but they finally find solid, comfortable ground in the trials and tribulations of playing god-parents to children of first-time mothers. Ann and Greg (the high-school principal Ann never really wanted Leslie to date after all) have become the ecstatic, sleep-deprived parents of a gorgeous five-month old baby-girl named Abigail, who Leslie can already tell is going to be brilliant Supreme Court Justice (it’s all in the eyes, they’re very wise). Greg is of course convinced his daughter is going to follow in her mother’s footsteps and go into medicine. Ann keeps saying she just wants Abigail to sleep through the night.
Ben’s younger sister, Lauren, an apparently fairly high-strung attorney up in Chicago (and there’s a quiet kind of guilt in his eyes when he describes her, that makes Leslie wonder if he takes some of the blame for that, if he thinks Lauren would have turned out differently if she hadn’t grown up in Partridge with the last name Wyatt), had a son two years ago. And Leslie can tell from the way Ben talks about him that as much as he loves his work and Indianapolis and milder winters, he still misses being close to his nephew.
There’s a brief moment when she has the impulse to ask him if he’s ever wanted children, but as soon as the though occurs to her, the memory of what she’d said in the hotel room (“We’ve never talked about whether you believe in marriage or if you want kids”) comes with it and she shuts it down.
Just this for a little while. That’s what he asked for. She can give him that.
---
By the time the other couple joins them, they’ve fallen into an easy rhythm that reminds her how good at this they used to be. The burgers are delicious and the beers are cold and Ben keeps urging her to try his sweet potato fries, and it feels nice, feels uncomplicated and natural.
Feels like something stable. Something that could endure.
When they come over, Paul wastes no time slumping down in the chair beside Ben with groan, signaling to the waitress to bring another round of beers over to the table as he does so. But Diane hesitates, catching Leslie’s eye as if seeking permission. It’s a small thing, and maybe you could argue it was empty (they both know she’s not going to say no), but it doesn’t feel that way, and Leslie appreciates the gesture.
She points over to Ben’s plate. “You should try one of those fries. He keeps telling me how good they are, but I’m waiting on a second opinion.”
It’s all the invitation Diane needs. Smiling she reaches over her husband to grab one of the fries, chewing thoughtfully as she sits down.
“Oh no,” she shakes her head even as she’s pulling the plate towards her. “You don’t want any of these. They’re terrible.”
She pops another on in her mouth.
“Hey!” Ben protests.
Leslie laughs, “See that’s what I thought.”
All in all, it winds up being a very good day.
---
It’s not perfect of course.
They’re not perfect.
There’s still something tentative and fragile about them. They stumble into the occasional uncomfortable silence, make a misstep into memories they’re not ready to dissect.
She invites him to come with her to the pancake dinner in Eagleton that evening on impulse and knows immediately from his face she’s reached for too much too soon.
He stutters about Paul’s birthday, and she fumbles to reassure him it was just an idea and their goodbyes end on a more awkward note than she would have liked.
But there’s a text-message from him on her phone that night, saying he had a great time and reiterating his offer to buy her lunch if she’s ever up in Indy.
And he sounds genuinely pleased when she calls a few days later to say ‘thank you’ for the golf-outing.
And it doesn’t necessarily feel like the beginning of a passionate affair or a grand romance or even a lifelong friendship.
But it does feel like a beginning all the same.
---
Still that might have been it. They might have been nothing more than Christmas cards and the occasional email and lunch once a year when the other’s in town. Friendly and companionable, but distant, removed.
Might have been all, were it not for Diane.
Diane calls in early May and announces without introduction or preamble, “Before you hang up on me, just know that my intentions are honorable. There are brilliant you minds at stake here.”
It takes her a moment to put the whiskey-smoke voice and Indianapolis area-code together and by the time she does Diane’s halfway through her pitch for Leslie to come fill a slot on the capstone panel for her leadership course in two days. “I wouldn’t do this, really I wouldn’t, but the flaky bastard cancelled last minute, and I asked Ben, but you know how he is with crowds, so he told me to call you, and I am seriously two seconds away from begging here.”
She really wishes she’d caught up earlier. It would have been easier to refuse. Still she gives it her best shot. “I’m sure there are people your students would be more interested in hearing from.”
“It’s not about the resume. It’s about perseverance. These kids are the best the university has. They’ve been at the top of their classes the past four years, and they’re about to go out into a world where success isn’t instant or guaranteed no matter how smart or talented they are. I want to give them panelists who’ve kept at it. And I want to give them panelists who will take their calls six months from now.” In a wheedling tone she adds, “I’ll set up interviews beforehand with two hardworking freshman from your district who are willing to volunteer for credit.”
Leslie sighs, sensing impending defeat. “You really don’t take no for an answer, do you?”
“Oh, like you do.”
Fine, she has a point.
---
The panel actually turns out to be a lot of fun. Diane’s put together an incredibly eclectic group of speakers, and true to her statements on the phone, Leslie can immediately see it’s not about the resume at all. There are no judges, no surgeons, no whizkid entrepreneurs. Instead it’s people with stories that are, in their own ways, similar to hers-a successful female restaurateur who first business failed, a marketing executive who went back to school at fifty to become a math teacher, a thirty-two year old summa-cum-laude graduate who deferred law school when his mother was diagnosed with bone-cancer and wound up directing a not-for-profit instead-passionate, ordinary people who simply endured.
Leslie’s always enjoyed an audience, and the students are for the most part surprisingly attentive, and she’s a little giddy by the time it’s over. High on the number of students who come up to talk to her afterwards, on the realization that they actually found her story inspirational, might even view her as a role-model. And when Diane offers to take her out to lunch in thanks she agrees readily.
“Sure, is there some place good around campus?”
“Eh, there’s a few, but it’s such a nice day I thought we might go down and eat on the Canal Walk. Ben’s office is only a couple blocks away, we could kidnap him, force him to see sunlight? I owe him for suggesting I give you a call, but-” she shrugs, “your choice.”
Leslie hesitates for a moment, but only a moment. They’ve spoken a couples times on the phone the past few weeks, at his initiation as well as hers, but there’s a persistent question mark that continues to hang over her every time she thinks about calling, that lingering need for an excuse. And here an excuse is, readymade.
“The Canal Walk sounds great, if you don’t think Ben will mind.”
---
Ben turns out not to mind at all. Either that or like Leslie he’s learned the futility of trying to say no to Diane. When she knocks on his open office-door with a sharp rat-tat-tat and announces, “Grab your wallet, you’re taking us out to lunch,” Ben doesn’t even look up from his computer, just holds up a finger as he finishes reviewing something on the screen.
The photo triptych of the Harvest Festival hangs on the wall across from his desk, and the sight makes Leslie smile. Without thinking she says, “You kept it.”
At the sound of her voice, Ben knocks over his pen cup.
Leslie kneels down on the floor with him to help clean up. Diane goes to steal chocolate from his assistant.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you.”
“Yeah, no, you didn’t- I mean you did, but it’s not- You’re not-” He drops his head, blows out a breath, and looks back up at her over his glasses (she’s never going to get used to that) with a rueful smile. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“So I’m taking you two out to lunch, huh?”
“Apparently.”
---
Despite her proclamations to the contrary, Diane actually does pay for lunch. Unfortunately she does it halfway through the meal by throwing down a few twenties on the table when she gets a phone-call from her graduate assistant. “Darby- No, Darby listen to me, we can get the visa issues worked out. Call international admissions and have them pull the file. I’ll be back in thirty minutes and we can talk with the vice-provost. Darby, calm down.”
Covering her phone with her hand, she looks over at Leslie in apology and whispers, “I’m sorry about this. If you want to get a box for that, I can drop you off at your car on the way back.”
Ben speaks up before she gets a chance to respond. “You go ahead. I’ll take her back.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I mean unless Leslie needs to get going.”
They both look over at her in askance. She shakes her head, “Umm, no, no I don’t have to get back.”
Diane sighs in relief, “Wonderful. Leslie, you were a lifesaver, thank you. Ben, next Saturday when Paul gets in. Brisket, right?”
He nods and makes ‘shooing’ motions with his hands, mouthing ‘Go,’ until Diane finally takes direction and hurries off, phone glued to her ear. “Darby, just tell them . . .”
Leslie looks after her and asks, “What was that all about?”
Ben shakes his head. “Not the slightest clue.”
“Thanks for offering to take me back.”
“Well, you’re only halfway through your lunch. It seemed silly to cut things short just because of that.” He leans back in his chair and looks up at the sky, “Besides it’s a really nice day, and I don’t have anything all that pressing on my desk for once. There’s every possibility I’m using you as an excuse to play hooky for a little while.”
She laughs and spears another bite of her pasta, “Then I’m happy to help.”
“Good, and stop picking the asparagus out it’s the best part.”
Just for that she starts putting the asparagus on his plate instead.
He actually eats it.
Sometimes she really worries about him.
---
As if by some mutual, unspoken agreement they don’t go back to his office immediately after lunch. Instead they amble down the Canal Walk, stopping for iced coffee at a café obviously geared more towards the medical students than the government workers. There’s a rubber-duck race happening in the Canal (for what she doesn’t know) and they sit on one of the benches, watching the mass of bath toys floating by, debating the appropriate nomenclature (Leslie disputes the word hoard as too aggressive, but Ben thinks flock is an inadequate description), and rooting for ducks of their choosing in made up mini-races.
It is also possible that Leslie sings ‘Rubber Ducky You’re the One’ more than once, but of course that’s ridiculous, she’s running for the State Assembly and is far too mature for such nonsense. (Plus Ben swears not to tell).
They’re having a such a good time, that Leslie actually looks twice at the clock on her phone before she believes it’s as late as it is. “Wow, I’m sorry. You probably need to get back.”
Ben pulls out his phone, checking it. “Well, I don’t have any messages, and from my email it doesn’t look like anyone’s trying to burn the place down.” He slips it back into his pocket. “Unless you want to get back to Pawnee before dark, I’m good.”
“You’re committed to this hooky concept, aren’t you?”
“What can I say? You’re a bad influence,” he teases.
“Ben Wyatt! You take that back. I have never been a bad influence in my life.”
That makes him raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Never?”
Leslie crosses her arms and puts on her most superior face. “Not once.”
Ben starts to protest, then stops and shakes his head. “You know what? I actually believe that.”
He’s looking at her as he says it, elbow propped on the bench, head in his hand, and there’s something in his face, something wistful and dangerously fond that reaches in and tugs at the strings tied around the box of emotions she’s put in the back corner and labeled ‘off-limits.’ She drops her gaze, fighting back the flush she can feel creeping up her neck.
As if suddenly aware of the inadvertent turn, Ben shifts in his seat and clears his throat self-consciously. “I, um, I need to tell you something. I mean maybe I don’t need to tell you, maybe it doesn’t matter. I hope it doesn’t matter, but I don’t want to um-”
Because he might go on like this for another minute if she doesn’t do anything, Leslie reaches out and briefly touches his arm to stop him, pull him back. “What?”
Still not looking her, he clamps his mouth shut, his other hand moving absently to cover the spot on his forearm where her fingers just were. Finally after an excruciating few seconds, he speaks.
“I have a date this Saturday.”
There’s a moment right after he says it, where she thinks she might have hallucinated it, where her mind actually rejects the concept. But Ben’s still talking and she can feel at least part of her, a rational centered part of her, absorbing the words, acknowledging the reality.
“As I said, I’m hoping it doesn’t matter, and I’m probably making an ass of myself by even thinking it might. But I don’t- I want to be upfront about this. We said friends, but I didn’t want you thinking that maybe I was playing games or being coy. God, I actually just used the word coy, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
He sighs and rubs a hand over his face, “Just- just stop me, please.”
Leslie doesn’t say anything immediately, just finishes her coffee and gets up to go throw it away, buying time. This was going to happen. She knew this was going to happen. Somewhere deep down, she knew it. They don’t have any claims on each other. They can’t. Anything else would be messy and unhealthy. Old patterns they shouldn’t fall into. Sooner or later this needed to happen.
It doesn’t make it hurt any less.
But at the same time, she finds herself strangely . . . relieved. It’s an odd sensation. Knowing some part of her still wants him, probably even still loves him, and yet knowing she’s half-terrified of the prospect that he might feel the same way, because she’s not sure she wants the responsibility, the obligation that would come with that. It helps in a way, knowing exactly where she stands, having such clear lines of demarcation, takes the pressure off, gives them room to breathe. It’s like a lancing a wound, unpleasant, even painful, but necessary if you want it to heal.
She turns to find him watching her from the bench, face guarded, but still so easy to read. He wants her to be okay with this, needs it even.
Walking over, she sits back down beside him. “What’s her name?”
He blows out a breath. “Lauren.”
“Is she nice?”
“Well, it’s our first date, so I can’t be certain, but-” he shakes his head “no, I’m pretty sure she’s awful.”
His delivery is so perfectly deadpan, Leslie laughs despite herself. “Come on, I’m trying here.”
Ben smiles. “Yes. I met her at the dog park. She seems nice.”
“Good. You deserve someone nice.”
He looks over at her. “Thank you.”
It’s quiet and grateful and about much more than what she just said about him deserving someone nice. And it feels like they’ve come to some kind of new understanding, moved to new ground.
She smiles at him, then gets up before it can take a wrong turn, adding as she does, “Just a little tip though, do not offer her the free MRI on the first date. It may sound sexy, but trust me it just gets weird.”
He laughs and moves to follow her. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Oh also, don’t show up with another woman. Or light your sleeve on fire. In fact you should try to stay away from fire in general.”
“No other women and no fire. Check.”
“And Ambien. Don’t take Ambien beforehand.”
“I feel like maybe I should be writing this down.”
“Probably.”
“Anything else I should know? I want the full benefit of your experience here.”
“You could try showing up drunk at her house the night before to tell her how awesome the date will be. I’ve had some success with that.”
“Oooh,” he shakes his head, “I don’t know. That sounds like a level of difficulty I might not be ready for.”
“Amateur.”
---
She’d been a little afraid that she’d obsess over Ben’s date, that she’d watch the clock on Saturday night and wonder how things were going. But Saturday comes and she volunteers to babysit for the evening so Ann and Greg can have their first night out in six months, and between Abigail’s new fondness of rolling as her primary mode of transportation and Ann’s check-in phone-calls every hour, she’s pretty much forgotten anyone named Ben exists.
So when her phone rings at nine-thirty less than twenty minutes after Ann’s last check-in, her choice to answer with a slightly irritated, “She’s fine. She’s sleeping. Go back in the movie and give Greg your phone,” is perfectly justified.
“Okay, I don’t know what’s happening here.”
At the sound of Ben’s voice, Leslie sits bolt upright and the board book that had been lying splayed on her stomach goes tumbling to the floor with a clatter. She freezes, holds her breath and prays to whatever gods watch over babysitters-Please don’t wake up. Please don’t wake up.
“Leslie, whats-”
“Shhhh.” she hisses.
“But-”
“Shhhh.”
Getting up from couch, she picks up the baby monitor and tiptoes out to the front porch. “Okay it’s safe now.”
“Are you under-attack?”
“Baby-sitting. I just got Abigail to sleep.”
“Ah.”
Then it hits her what time it is. “Wait, aren’t you supposed to be on a date right now? Why are you calling me?”
“Yeah, about that.” Ben gives a low mirthless chuckle and a sigh, “So I have a new one for your list. Don’t order the veal saltimbocca before you find out whether or not your date happens to be a vegan for reasons of conscience.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. And you know, the worst part-”
“You never got the veal.”
“Never got the veal. Ended with the appetizers.”
“Wow.”
“Tell me about it. It’s the dish they were known for, too,” he sighs, “So you’re my bad first date Yoda. What’s the next step here?”
That one’s easy. “Alcohol.”
“Okay. Classics. Good. Now will beer do or do I need something else?”
“I usually go for something pink with an umbrella.”
“Yeah. I’m not doing that.”
“Then beer is probably fine. Oh also, eat something since you haven’t had dinner yet. Or there could be embarrassing text messages in your future.”
“Good call. Anything else?”
She sets the baby-monitor down on the table and sits on one of the chairs, tucking her bare-feet underneath her. “Well you’re probably going to have to find another dog-park for awhile or at least start going at another time.”
Ben groans. “Harrison’s never going to forgive me.”
“You named your dog-” she shakes her head and laughs, “never mind I don’t want to know.”
“It’s a perfectly good name.”
“Have you ever considered that you might be taking your Star Wars obsession a little far?”
“No.”
“Well okay then.”
“So alcohol, no drunk text-messaging and concerted avoidance. Anything else?”
“Other than just trying again? That’s really all I’ve got.”
“Really, you’re really giving me ‘if at first you don’t succeed?’”
“What can I say? It’s a cliché because it’s true. You’re a good guy. Any woman would be lucky to have you. If this Lauren person couldn’t see that, it’s her loss. I’m sure the next one will.”
She says it without thinking. Says it because it’s what you say to a friend when they’ve had a bad date. Says it because it’s true. And it’s only in the after, in the echo that she can see the warning signs, the cliff she’s inadvertently steered them towards. (If he’s such a good guy, if any woman would be lucky, then why not her? If it’s so obvious, why didn’t she see it?) At the moment she’s not sure she has a good answer.
But Ben either doesn’t hear it, or chooses to ignore it because his response remains light and untroubled. “All the same, for the sake of peace in my house, I think I’m declaring the dog park off-limits as a dating-pool.”
Leslie releases a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Well, I’m sure Harrison will appreciate the gesture.”
“I don’t know he’s kind of a player.”
She winces on his behalf. “Yeah, don’t use that word again. Ever.”
---
It actually gets better after that. They’re able to stop dancing around the issue, to stop circling each other quite so carefully, and they settle into the business of actually being friends with an unexpected aptitude. She no longer tries to come up with an excuse to call him beyond the fact she wants to talk. He no longer sounds half-surprised, half-on-guard every time he answers the phone.
They don’t talk all the time. They’re both far too busy for that. But there’s a two week period in late June when she gets tied up with the mayhem that always comes with city council’s vote on the budget for the coming fiscal year and Ben actually winds up sending an email to her work account asking if everything’s okay because he hadn’t heard from her in awhile.
She meets him once more for lunch when she goes shopping up in Indy for new suits, and he finds a summer music festival in Brown County that they’ll each only have to drive an hour to get to.
It’s surprisingly nice having him on her speed dial again. Ann’s still her very best-friend and they’d still drop everything if the other needed something, but their lives are doing that thing that happens when you have different priorities. Abigail is Ann’s world right now, and rightfully so, and Leslie really can’t begrudge her the fact that she doesn’t want to spend what might be her only thirty free minutes of the day listening to the ins and outs of a proposed zoning rule. Ben not only listens, but he contributes. Sometimes by offering a perspective she doesn’t particularly want to hear, but contributes all the same. And she realizes it’s been a long time since she’s had a friend who cared about the same things she does and who didn’t work for her (because it does matter, no matter how much she wishes it didn’t).
Not that they just talk about their work. In fact that’s the best part-how much they don’t talk about work. After eight months of self-imposed professionalism and nearly five years of radio silence, they seem to be almost greedy for the opportunity to simply talk about anything and everything. No subject is too ridiculous, no topic too personal (well except for the obvious, but they’ve gotten very good at maneuvering around that particular curve). Ben tells her about getting death threats in the first town he audited, and she tells him about getting turned down for three other jobs before she got hired on to the Parks department.
She calls him the day she sees Jessica with her mother in a grocery store over in Eagleton and can’t think of anything to say. He calls ten minutes before he has to go in to give a report to a Senate subcommittee he knows they aren’t going to want to hear.
One rainy Sunday afternoon in early July, Ben calls for no other reason than he’s bored, and they spend an hour talking about everything from herb-gardens to her efforts to put a community garden in the pit (and the subsequent great-pot-grower stakeout) to his mother’s talent for making jam and her mother’s talent for making political allies and enemies.
“Is that what got you into politics? Your mom?”
“Well a lot of things got me into politics. I mean Pawnee’s such a great city. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?”
“Yeah but when you clear all that away and stop practicing campaign answers for three seconds. Your mom was at least part of it, right?”
Leslie looks over at the framed picture on her mantle of her mother on the phone in her office, face alight, gesturing emphatically. She’d snuck it with her camera phone a few years back, and it’s still one of her favorites. Marlene Griggs-Knope in her element.
“You should have seen her run a school board meeting.”
“I can imagine.”
“I used to go and sit in the back and watch. And there would be all these men. These principals and businessmen and teachers union reps who would come in and they’d be used to getting their way. But my mom could put them in their place with a look. I wanted to be just like her.”
Ben doesn’t respond immediately, and then, “Okay, I’m going to say something and don’t take this the wrong way, but . . . I’m kind of glad you’re not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure your mom is great and everything, but I don’t know I’m having a hard time picturing her as the kind of person who’d come up with something like the Harvest Festival to save her friends’ jobs.”
And even though Leslie’s long ago come to terms with the fact that she and her mother are very different people, that for all she admires her mother and for all she wants her to be proud, she needs to do things her way, it’s still means something to hear someone else tell her that’s okay.
“Thank you for that.”
“Hey, I’m just telling the truth. Given the choice, I’ll take a Leslie Knope every time.”
“Watch out or I’m putting that on a campaign poster.”
---
He goes on at least one more date that she knows of. Leslie tells him to have a great time and is almost eighty-five percent certain she really means it.
She doesn’t date anyone, but that has more to do with her schedule than anything else. The campaign is shifting into another gear completely, and she’s still trying to juggle her city council responsibilities. And now is not the time to be starting a relationship while she’s under at least limited public scrutiny, and there are actually some nights she’s so tired that anything requiring more effort than pulling her pajamas sounds like too much work.
Once the election comes and goes there will be plenty of time to worry about her personal life.
It doesn’t have anything to do with Ben.
She’s almost eighty-five percent certain she really means that.
---
Ben comes down to Snerling in late July for a three-day due-diligence review prior to approving a special construction bond issue, and makes the forty-minute drive over to Pawnee one-night for dinner.
Because it’s first time he’s been back since leaving and Leslie can’t resist, she calls Tom and enlists his help in rounding up people to come to the Snakehole Lounge that evening in a mini-reunion.
And even though she’s generally avoided the club since taking public office, the look on Ben’s face when she drags him inside is completely worth the relatively minor risk of negative publicity.
Later that night he smiles down at her, his expression happy and open and adorably incredulous, “I can’t believe you did this.”
She grins back, “I told you, you’d be missed.”
The bar is loud and warm, and they’re standing closer than usual, yelling in each other’s ears over the music in order to be heard. Someone jostles her from behind, and he brings a hand to her elbow to steady her at the same time she puts a palm on his chest to keep her balance, and for a moment she is sharply, painfully aware of him. The fabric of his shirt under her fingers, the touch of his hand on her upper arm, the way he still smells faintly of coffee and Irish Spring soap and printer ink.
And in that moment, for just that moment, every emotion and sense memory that she’s shoved down and pushed aside comes to the surface in a heady, dizzying rush. Ben looks down at her, expression unreadable in the dim lighting, and all she can think is if he kissed her right now she’d be totally lost.
He lowers his head.
“You okay?”
She blinks and takes a step back. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I, um, I don’t think my tolerance is what it used to be.”
Ben smiles. “Me neither. How about I go get us some ice waters, okay?”
Leslie nods and goes to sit down on one of the couches.
Tells herself she just avoided a mistake rather than missed an opportunity.
---
( Part 4(b))
Word Count: ~8,200 (this post)
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: Up through 3x08 "Camping"
Author's Note: THIS IS NOT THE END. Instead it is the first section of part 4 which has slowly shaped itself into an absolute behemoth of a part and by the time it is done it will be probably as long as the rest of the fic combined (It turns out I really messed them up and these two like to be deliberate about things). Since livejournal won't let me post 20,000 plus words for a part in one go (or even two gos) and that all seemed a little overwhelming anyway, here we are. But it should be noted that I still think of this all as one chapter so the climaxes and builds will work accordingly. Also, laughingduchess continues to be the most awesome person in the world.
Summary: Simple version? Five conversations Leslie and Ben have in formal wear. (But of course life is always more complicated than that).
One | Two | Three
Ben is not, as it turns out, a terrible golfer.
He is an abysmal one.
Truly the consistency with which he sucks is actually kind of impressive. Most golfers she knows are only semi-decent at best, but they get one or two great shots a game-a beautiful drive, a spectacular putt-the kind you talk about afterwards, the kind that make you keep coming back. If there’s a great shot in Ben’s future, he’s hiding it well.
By contrast Diane apparently played in college, and Paul is obviously a fan of the sport if not one of it’s more accomplished participants. And the imbalance strikes her as peculiar. Usually people like to play with someone who’s evenly matched, who won’t slow down or speed up their game. But Diane and Paul seem unperturbed by pace, and Ben approaches the whole thing with a strangely good-natured insolence that’s almost a statement, that says he’s aware of the deficiency and has decided he doesn’t care.
By the fourth tee she breaks down and asks, because she has know. “I don’t understand. Are you being punished for something?”
“Many things. He is being punished for many things.” Paul calls out from behind the cart where he’s selecting his club.
Ben stops working on the crossword he has clipped to the steering wheel and looks over at her. “Paul once made the mistake of getting into a two-hour snowball fight the night before his comparative-economics final with someone who grew up in Minnesota and played baseball. Calling it a massacre would be the kind description.”
“You sir, cheated.”
“There aren’t any rules to follow!”
“There are the rules of war, the rules of human decency! You violated the Geneva convention that night.”
Diane, who had been in the middle of teeing-off, stops and steps back from her ball to admonish them both. “It was over twenty-years ago children. Now shut-up and let the adults play.”
Ben sinks a little in his seat and drops his voice to a whisper. “Because Paul is petty and holds a grudge, we do this once a year for his birthday so he can have the satisfaction of beating me at something.”
“And you don’t care.” Leslie whispers back.
“Nope.”
“So at the end of the day, you still win.”
He flashes her quick, conspiratorial smile and goes back to his crossword. “Yup.”
Leslie blinks and sits back in her seat, trying to come to grips with the fact that Ben, her Ben, nice, sweet, kind-of-dorky Ben, might just be the tiniest bit evil.
That’s been the most surprising and difficult thing about this day so far. She’d known it would be awkward. Had been ready for it to be awkward. Painfully so. Had spent the entire forty minute drive-back this morning preparing herself for it-talking herself down, managing her expectations. She was ready for him to regret inviting her, was ready not to quite fit with his friends, was ready for the whole thing to be a disastrous mistake.
What she hadn’t been ready for, apparently, was him. This him. Ben refracted through the prism of a long-established friendship. It’s not that he’s a different person with them. He’s still everything she remembers, but he’s more somehow, like she’s finally getting to see the full spectrum, the complete picture. The Ben who’s the insider, who has the running jokes she doesn’t know, the favorite stories she’s never heard, the traditions she’s never been a part of.
The Ben she might have met if she hadn’t wrapped him up in ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t’ and ‘shouldn’t’ and tucked him away for a later that never came.
She finds herself simultaneously grateful for Paul and Diane and resentful of their presence. They’re terribly nice, and their affectionately obnoxious push-pull somehow sets her at ease faster than she ever would have managed on her own, but Ben wears their friendship like armor. He can smile at her and laugh with her and it can all feel pleasant and natural and damn near perfect, but only if Paul and Diane are involved. Only if it’s an old-story or a four-way conversation.
Only if it’s not actually about the two of them at all.
And she can’t decide if it’s a shield or sword. Thinks it might be a little bit of both. Thinks that yes he probably wants the protection, the shelter that Paul and Diane afford him. But there’s still something cutting about it, something pointed and sharp, that says all too clearly ‘I was happy before you, and I’ve been happy since.’
Says ‘I don’t need you.’
Leslie isn’t entirely sure Ben’s the only one being punished today.
---
Paul kidnaps her somewhere around the sixth green, insisting she start riding with him so they can have their full and frank discourse about his serious and legitimate concerns. Despite Ben and Diane’s protests to contrary, Leslie finds arguing with him to be a lot of fun. He’s one of those rare individuals who enjoy it for the intellectual exercise more than the victory, and it feels a little like debate prep, sharpening her vision of the kind of public-servant she wants to be on the whetstone of his objections.
They’re partway through a bit on trade barriers, when she stumbles onto something she’s been trying to articulate for weeks now.
“You’re asking me the wrong question.”
Paul blinks good-naturedly, “Really? Whether or not you think a protectionist trade stance is harmful to our country’s economy isn’t relevant?”
“Putting aside the fact that in state government I’ll have pretty much no control over international trade? It’s still the wrong question.”
“Dear it’s your turn.” Diane calls out.
But Paul just holds up a hand like a pause, his eyes still fixed on Leslie. “Okay, tell me the right one.”
She got everyone’s attention now, even Ben’s. She can almost feel him looking over at her from the other cart. But she doesn’t care, for a moment this is beyond that, beyond everything.
“You keep asking me how I think things affect the country as a whole, whether it’s good for everyone. But it’s the wrong question. It’s admirable, but it’s too big. I’m not trying to figure out what’s best for America. I’m not even trying to figure out what’s best for Indiana. I just want to do what’s best for my district, for Pawnee and Eagleton and the surrounding communities. I grew up in a town that’s gone from four major employers to two, and if someone tells me being a little less global with our trade practices might keep them from going to one? I’d listen. Just the same way I’ll pay attention when my small business owners tell me they worry about the impact of healthcare costs on their sustainability or when the teacher’s union tells me the current education budget hurts our kids. Ask me whether I think it will benefit my district, my people. Convince me it’s in their best interest. That’s the right question. They’re the ones I’m asking to serve. They’re the ones that have to matter to me. Everything else? It’s too big. It’s noise.”
For moment no one says anything, and Leslie is suddenly uncomfortably aware that she’s just come alarmingly close to giving a stump speech to three non-constituents in the middle of a golf-course. Dammit, she’s always been a little bit too passionate for polite company.
Then Paul purses his lips, nods his head once like he’s confirming something and looks over at his wife. “Okay, you can give her our money.”
Diane rolls her eyes. “Excellent because I was holding my breath for your approval dear.” She hands him a club and points out to the fairway, “Go play now. There’s a good boy.”
Leslie glances over her shoulder to find Ben still looking at her, his gaze rendered unreadable by the aviator sunglasses he’s put on against the noon-day sun.
Steeling herself, she gets up and goes over to him on the pretense of selecting a club from her bag.
“What?”
“Nothing. I-” He stops and gives her a small, bemused smile, “I’d just forgotten exactly how good you are at that.”
Pulling a water from the cooler, he extends it out the other side of the cart in a way that invites her to come sit back down beside him.
It’s not quite an apology.
But it might be an olive branch.
---
Later she’ll realize she should have seen the next part coming from a mile away. Because neither she nor Ben have ever been called inscrutable. Because Diane is not a stupid woman. Because it’s exactly the kind of thing she’d do for one of her friends.
Still when Diane tells her to ‘hop-on’ in the middle of the thirteenth hole while Ben and Paul go searching for their balls in rough, Leslie fails to see the warning sign before it’s too late.
It’s not until she driven them up to the green in absolute silence and parked the cart a safe distance away that Leslie knows what’s coming.
For a moment, Diane doesn’t look at her, just stares straight ahead, as if still coming to a decision about the whole thing. “Paul told me to stay out of this. Told me to leave it alone, but-” she shrugs, presses her lips together in a wan smile, “well, you’ve seen how well I take orders.”
Leslie doesn’t say anything. Just because she thinks she knows where this is going, just because she might understand the impulse, it doesn’t mean she intends to make it any easier. Maybe there is some argument that Ben’s friend has the right to ask what she’s about to, but Leslie doesn’t really feel like conceding the point.
Finally after another long uncomfortable pause (and really, why is there never a rabid possum around when you need one?), Diane turns to her and with a frankness Leslie’s learning to expect, asks, “You and Ben were more than colleagues before, weren’t you?”
Even though she knew the question was coming, it still raises her hackles, makes her angry. And that’s not really a surprise. It’s intrusive and personal and puts her immediately on the defensive. What’s surprising is what-or more specifically who-she’s defending.
“I’m guessing from your question that Ben didn’t tell you.”
Diane shakes her head. “No. Maybe I had a few suspicions from the way he talked about you. But until I really sat down and thought about it last night when he went after you? No, I didn’t know.”
“Then, excuse me for saying this, but I think you need to talk to him.”
For a long moment Diane holds her gaze, staring her down in quiet challenge, and Leslie finds herself thinking that she’s glad she never had this woman for a professor. Frankly if it wasn’t about respecting Ben’s choices, she’d probably cave. But as it is she just stares right back.
Finally Diane looks away and leans back in her seat, propping a knee up on the steering wheel. “He won’t talk to me, not about this. And he won’t talk to Paul because unfortunately for Ben we’ve never been that good at keeping secrets from each other. And you apparently won’t talk to either of us, which I actually kind of like. Ben should get a champion. But I’ve known him longer, and I’m not quite ready to relinquish the role. So I’m going to talk at you for a minute and then as far as I’m concerned this is done. Okay?”
“If I say no, would it stop you?”
“Never has before,” she flashes a quick tight smile that’s almost a grimace and then sighs, “Okay, so here’s the thing. I don’t know what happened when he knew you. In fact until I thought about it last night, I’d forgotten he’d taken a job in Pawnee for that year. And I don’t know what made him stay or why he left. But here’s what I do know: Whatever did or didn’t happen, it took us almost a year after he moved up to South Bend to really get our friend back, and I- well, I’m just selfish enough to not want to go through that again.”
There’s just the tiniest quiver in Diane’s voice, an almost imperceptible break. It’s small and quickly covered, but it’s there all the same and the sound of it, of this unexpected crack in such an impenetrable exterior, cuts sharper and deeper than any rebuke or warning could have.
Because Leslie can only imagine what caused it.
“Look, I-”
But Diane holds up a hand cutting her off. “No, my time’s up and you were right. Paul was right, though don’t tell him I said that. You don’t owe me anything. It’s not my business, and frankly now that I’ve met you, I’m not sure I want it to be my business. Because I really do think you’re marvelous and if you’re going to be around Ben I’d like it if we could be friends, you know, once you get done hating me for being a busybody. But I think it’s fair to warn you that at the end of the day? We’ll pick him. Every time.”
She’s not entirely sure how to respond to that. There’s a part of her that wants to tell Diane to go to hell, and there’s a part that wants to ask for all the details she can get, and there’s a part that just want to hug the other woman for maybe caring about Ben almost as much as she does.
What she winds up saying is.
“Ben should get a champion.”
---
Despite her best intentions, when they all finish the hole and she gets back in the cart, it takes Ben all of three seconds to read how shaken she is and put two and two together.
“Leslie- You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Well, I mean I just did a four-putt on this hole, so obviously that kind of sucked. But other than that I am hunky-dory.”
It’s probably the unfortunate use of ‘hunky-dory’ as a viable descriptor of her emotional state that clinches it.
Ben’s face goes flat, and he tightens his hands on the steering wheel, the muscles on his forearms tensing with the strain, as his gaze swings over to the other cart where Diane is putting up her clubs and pointedly not looking at them.
“She said something to you, didn’t she?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
But the protest doesn’t ring true even to her own ears. Ben leans forward, rests his forehead against his fists, and sighs. “Yeah. Okay.”
Only a split second later he seems to decide it’s not okay at all because he’s up out of the cart, and Leslie has to lean over the seat to grab his hand to stop him. “Don’t. Please.”
That makes him pause, and he looks down at her, his expression softening into something she can’t quite read. God, she wishes he would take those sunglasses off so she could see his eyes, know what he’s thinking.
After a brief second of decision, he gives her hand a tiny squeeze of reassurance and sits back down with a sigh, motioning to Paul to go on without them when the other man hesitates.
Finally, he takes off his sunglasses and rubs a hand over his eyes, muttering, “Diane needs to learn to mind her own business.”
“She was just trying to look out for you. Really it’s okay.”
And it is actually. Okay, she’s probably not going to be adding the other woman to her speed dial any time soon, but well- It came from a good place, and Leslie gets the impulse, and frankly somehow Ben’s reaction on her behalf, knowing that whatever he might feel, however he might want to punish her, he doesn’t want anyone else to do it? It makes it all kind of worth it.
But Ben’s not so easily reassured.
“Leslie, whatever she said to you. Just-” he sighs, “Just ignore it all right. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about and it’s not her place to-”
“To worry about you?”
“I was going to say meddle.” He shakes his head in exasperation. “I have two sisters and a mother, and Diane can’t look after a houseplant. You’d think she’d leave it to the professionals.”
They exchange a brief companionable smile at that, then look away and fall silent again.
Leslie looks down at her hands and debates what she’s about to say, turns it over and over in her head, looking for an out. Because she doesn’t want to say it, really she just- She wants this. Or at least what it feels like this could be, what it could grow into. She’s not stupid. She knows better than to wish for what they used to have. As much as she misses it, misses him, she has enough distance now to know it was unstable. It was electric and all-consuming and wonderful and she’d never give a single second of it back. But it was a firework, never meant to last beyond that brief, brilliant, breath-taking instant.
But there’s still something left, she can feel it. A cinder, a spark, an ember in the ashes. It’s small and might be all too easily extinguished, but it’s there and she thinks given time and space and breathing room it could grow, could be something strong and warm and steady. And maybe it will never be a roaring fire, maybe it will always just be that small glowing ember to hold in her hands and take the edge of the chill. But she thinks she’d like that all same. Maybe even more. After all, the ember is less likely to burn.
Still she can’t get that hitch in Diane’s voice, that break in her composure and all that it implied, out of her head.
“Maybe she’s right to worry. Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” It comes out surprisingly calm, certainly far steadier and less needy than she feels, and Leslie hates herself just a little for how rational she sounds about the whole thing when Ben’s head snaps up in surprise and disbelief.
For a moment he just stares at her and there are dozen emotions running across his face-shock, frustration, anger. Even a tiny flicker of relief that dances through his eyes and makes her heart sink. But it’s quickly followed by something else, something writ large and strong, that settles in and takes up residence-disappointment.
“Is that- I mean, is that what you think?” he ventures, trying to cover it. Slipping into that attempt at professional detachment they both tend to fall back on when they’re trying not to let their emotions get the best of them and are about three seconds away from failing miserably.
And even though the sight makes her heart want to do a celebratory jig, she forces it to sit down and shut up. This is too important to gloss over simply because it would make her happy.
“I don’t know. I mean I know what I want. That hasn’t changed since last night. But-” she trails off.
“But?” Ben prompts.
“Diane said some things about, um,” she stumbles a little, forces herself to regroup, “about how you were after you left Pawnee.”
“Ah.” He leaves it there for a beat, and while he doesn’t turn away, his eyes shift a little so he can stare past her over her shoulder. Then he shrugs in offhand dismissal, “Well, I’m not going to tell you it was fun. But here I am. I survived, and I’m fine.”
“Ben-”
“Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t really want to do a play by play of that time with you. At least-” he breaks off and runs a hand over his face. Looks back over at her, something resigned and tired in his eyes, and sighs, “I just- I was having a good time today. With you.”
“So was I.”
“Yeah?”
She gives him a small smile. “Yeah. Absolutely.”
“Could we maybe just do that, then? Could we maybe just take everything else off the table for a little while and do that?”
“I just don’t want you to feel obligated or-”
Ben shakes his head and laughs under his breath. “God, you’re as bad as Diane. You know, despite all apparent female opinions to the contrary, I’m a pretty well-adjusted guy, fully capable of taking care of myself. So just let me do that, okay? Let me figure out my end and trust me when I tell you what that is. That’s what I want right now. Can you give me that?”
Leslie nods, bites down a smile. “Yes. Yes, I can give you that.”
“Okay then.” He turns back to face forward as if to close the book on the subject. Taps his thumbs on the steering wheel. “So we should probably go try to catch up with Paul and Diane.”
“Probably.”
Neither one of them sounds particularly thrilled about the prospect.
Ben doesn’t release the brake. Taps his thumbs a little more, thinking.
“Oooor,” he drags the word out, and tilts his head over towards her, “We could just skip ahead to the burgers and beers at the clubhouse and wait for them there.”
“Wouldn’t that kind of undermine Paul’s birthday retribution?”
Frowning like the thought had never occurred to him, he nods slowly, “You know, it probably would.”
“So we probably shouldn’t do that then.”
He shifts the cart into drive and grins. “Probably not.”
They wave at Paul and Diane when they pass by and get a table out on the deck, taking advantage of a rare sunny April day and the pleasant, mild spring breeze.
It takes them a little while to get their footing again, but they finally find solid, comfortable ground in the trials and tribulations of playing god-parents to children of first-time mothers. Ann and Greg (the high-school principal Ann never really wanted Leslie to date after all) have become the ecstatic, sleep-deprived parents of a gorgeous five-month old baby-girl named Abigail, who Leslie can already tell is going to be brilliant Supreme Court Justice (it’s all in the eyes, they’re very wise). Greg is of course convinced his daughter is going to follow in her mother’s footsteps and go into medicine. Ann keeps saying she just wants Abigail to sleep through the night.
Ben’s younger sister, Lauren, an apparently fairly high-strung attorney up in Chicago (and there’s a quiet kind of guilt in his eyes when he describes her, that makes Leslie wonder if he takes some of the blame for that, if he thinks Lauren would have turned out differently if she hadn’t grown up in Partridge with the last name Wyatt), had a son two years ago. And Leslie can tell from the way Ben talks about him that as much as he loves his work and Indianapolis and milder winters, he still misses being close to his nephew.
There’s a brief moment when she has the impulse to ask him if he’s ever wanted children, but as soon as the though occurs to her, the memory of what she’d said in the hotel room (“We’ve never talked about whether you believe in marriage or if you want kids”) comes with it and she shuts it down.
Just this for a little while. That’s what he asked for. She can give him that.
---
By the time the other couple joins them, they’ve fallen into an easy rhythm that reminds her how good at this they used to be. The burgers are delicious and the beers are cold and Ben keeps urging her to try his sweet potato fries, and it feels nice, feels uncomplicated and natural.
Feels like something stable. Something that could endure.
When they come over, Paul wastes no time slumping down in the chair beside Ben with groan, signaling to the waitress to bring another round of beers over to the table as he does so. But Diane hesitates, catching Leslie’s eye as if seeking permission. It’s a small thing, and maybe you could argue it was empty (they both know she’s not going to say no), but it doesn’t feel that way, and Leslie appreciates the gesture.
She points over to Ben’s plate. “You should try one of those fries. He keeps telling me how good they are, but I’m waiting on a second opinion.”
It’s all the invitation Diane needs. Smiling she reaches over her husband to grab one of the fries, chewing thoughtfully as she sits down.
“Oh no,” she shakes her head even as she’s pulling the plate towards her. “You don’t want any of these. They’re terrible.”
She pops another on in her mouth.
“Hey!” Ben protests.
Leslie laughs, “See that’s what I thought.”
All in all, it winds up being a very good day.
---
It’s not perfect of course.
They’re not perfect.
There’s still something tentative and fragile about them. They stumble into the occasional uncomfortable silence, make a misstep into memories they’re not ready to dissect.
She invites him to come with her to the pancake dinner in Eagleton that evening on impulse and knows immediately from his face she’s reached for too much too soon.
He stutters about Paul’s birthday, and she fumbles to reassure him it was just an idea and their goodbyes end on a more awkward note than she would have liked.
But there’s a text-message from him on her phone that night, saying he had a great time and reiterating his offer to buy her lunch if she’s ever up in Indy.
And he sounds genuinely pleased when she calls a few days later to say ‘thank you’ for the golf-outing.
And it doesn’t necessarily feel like the beginning of a passionate affair or a grand romance or even a lifelong friendship.
But it does feel like a beginning all the same.
---
Still that might have been it. They might have been nothing more than Christmas cards and the occasional email and lunch once a year when the other’s in town. Friendly and companionable, but distant, removed.
Might have been all, were it not for Diane.
Diane calls in early May and announces without introduction or preamble, “Before you hang up on me, just know that my intentions are honorable. There are brilliant you minds at stake here.”
It takes her a moment to put the whiskey-smoke voice and Indianapolis area-code together and by the time she does Diane’s halfway through her pitch for Leslie to come fill a slot on the capstone panel for her leadership course in two days. “I wouldn’t do this, really I wouldn’t, but the flaky bastard cancelled last minute, and I asked Ben, but you know how he is with crowds, so he told me to call you, and I am seriously two seconds away from begging here.”
She really wishes she’d caught up earlier. It would have been easier to refuse. Still she gives it her best shot. “I’m sure there are people your students would be more interested in hearing from.”
“It’s not about the resume. It’s about perseverance. These kids are the best the university has. They’ve been at the top of their classes the past four years, and they’re about to go out into a world where success isn’t instant or guaranteed no matter how smart or talented they are. I want to give them panelists who’ve kept at it. And I want to give them panelists who will take their calls six months from now.” In a wheedling tone she adds, “I’ll set up interviews beforehand with two hardworking freshman from your district who are willing to volunteer for credit.”
Leslie sighs, sensing impending defeat. “You really don’t take no for an answer, do you?”
“Oh, like you do.”
Fine, she has a point.
---
The panel actually turns out to be a lot of fun. Diane’s put together an incredibly eclectic group of speakers, and true to her statements on the phone, Leslie can immediately see it’s not about the resume at all. There are no judges, no surgeons, no whizkid entrepreneurs. Instead it’s people with stories that are, in their own ways, similar to hers-a successful female restaurateur who first business failed, a marketing executive who went back to school at fifty to become a math teacher, a thirty-two year old summa-cum-laude graduate who deferred law school when his mother was diagnosed with bone-cancer and wound up directing a not-for-profit instead-passionate, ordinary people who simply endured.
Leslie’s always enjoyed an audience, and the students are for the most part surprisingly attentive, and she’s a little giddy by the time it’s over. High on the number of students who come up to talk to her afterwards, on the realization that they actually found her story inspirational, might even view her as a role-model. And when Diane offers to take her out to lunch in thanks she agrees readily.
“Sure, is there some place good around campus?”
“Eh, there’s a few, but it’s such a nice day I thought we might go down and eat on the Canal Walk. Ben’s office is only a couple blocks away, we could kidnap him, force him to see sunlight? I owe him for suggesting I give you a call, but-” she shrugs, “your choice.”
Leslie hesitates for a moment, but only a moment. They’ve spoken a couples times on the phone the past few weeks, at his initiation as well as hers, but there’s a persistent question mark that continues to hang over her every time she thinks about calling, that lingering need for an excuse. And here an excuse is, readymade.
“The Canal Walk sounds great, if you don’t think Ben will mind.”
---
Ben turns out not to mind at all. Either that or like Leslie he’s learned the futility of trying to say no to Diane. When she knocks on his open office-door with a sharp rat-tat-tat and announces, “Grab your wallet, you’re taking us out to lunch,” Ben doesn’t even look up from his computer, just holds up a finger as he finishes reviewing something on the screen.
The photo triptych of the Harvest Festival hangs on the wall across from his desk, and the sight makes Leslie smile. Without thinking she says, “You kept it.”
At the sound of her voice, Ben knocks over his pen cup.
Leslie kneels down on the floor with him to help clean up. Diane goes to steal chocolate from his assistant.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you.”
“Yeah, no, you didn’t- I mean you did, but it’s not- You’re not-” He drops his head, blows out a breath, and looks back up at her over his glasses (she’s never going to get used to that) with a rueful smile. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“So I’m taking you two out to lunch, huh?”
“Apparently.”
---
Despite her proclamations to the contrary, Diane actually does pay for lunch. Unfortunately she does it halfway through the meal by throwing down a few twenties on the table when she gets a phone-call from her graduate assistant. “Darby- No, Darby listen to me, we can get the visa issues worked out. Call international admissions and have them pull the file. I’ll be back in thirty minutes and we can talk with the vice-provost. Darby, calm down.”
Covering her phone with her hand, she looks over at Leslie in apology and whispers, “I’m sorry about this. If you want to get a box for that, I can drop you off at your car on the way back.”
Ben speaks up before she gets a chance to respond. “You go ahead. I’ll take her back.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I mean unless Leslie needs to get going.”
They both look over at her in askance. She shakes her head, “Umm, no, no I don’t have to get back.”
Diane sighs in relief, “Wonderful. Leslie, you were a lifesaver, thank you. Ben, next Saturday when Paul gets in. Brisket, right?”
He nods and makes ‘shooing’ motions with his hands, mouthing ‘Go,’ until Diane finally takes direction and hurries off, phone glued to her ear. “Darby, just tell them . . .”
Leslie looks after her and asks, “What was that all about?”
Ben shakes his head. “Not the slightest clue.”
“Thanks for offering to take me back.”
“Well, you’re only halfway through your lunch. It seemed silly to cut things short just because of that.” He leans back in his chair and looks up at the sky, “Besides it’s a really nice day, and I don’t have anything all that pressing on my desk for once. There’s every possibility I’m using you as an excuse to play hooky for a little while.”
She laughs and spears another bite of her pasta, “Then I’m happy to help.”
“Good, and stop picking the asparagus out it’s the best part.”
Just for that she starts putting the asparagus on his plate instead.
He actually eats it.
Sometimes she really worries about him.
---
As if by some mutual, unspoken agreement they don’t go back to his office immediately after lunch. Instead they amble down the Canal Walk, stopping for iced coffee at a café obviously geared more towards the medical students than the government workers. There’s a rubber-duck race happening in the Canal (for what she doesn’t know) and they sit on one of the benches, watching the mass of bath toys floating by, debating the appropriate nomenclature (Leslie disputes the word hoard as too aggressive, but Ben thinks flock is an inadequate description), and rooting for ducks of their choosing in made up mini-races.
It is also possible that Leslie sings ‘Rubber Ducky You’re the One’ more than once, but of course that’s ridiculous, she’s running for the State Assembly and is far too mature for such nonsense. (Plus Ben swears not to tell).
They’re having a such a good time, that Leslie actually looks twice at the clock on her phone before she believes it’s as late as it is. “Wow, I’m sorry. You probably need to get back.”
Ben pulls out his phone, checking it. “Well, I don’t have any messages, and from my email it doesn’t look like anyone’s trying to burn the place down.” He slips it back into his pocket. “Unless you want to get back to Pawnee before dark, I’m good.”
“You’re committed to this hooky concept, aren’t you?”
“What can I say? You’re a bad influence,” he teases.
“Ben Wyatt! You take that back. I have never been a bad influence in my life.”
That makes him raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Never?”
Leslie crosses her arms and puts on her most superior face. “Not once.”
Ben starts to protest, then stops and shakes his head. “You know what? I actually believe that.”
He’s looking at her as he says it, elbow propped on the bench, head in his hand, and there’s something in his face, something wistful and dangerously fond that reaches in and tugs at the strings tied around the box of emotions she’s put in the back corner and labeled ‘off-limits.’ She drops her gaze, fighting back the flush she can feel creeping up her neck.
As if suddenly aware of the inadvertent turn, Ben shifts in his seat and clears his throat self-consciously. “I, um, I need to tell you something. I mean maybe I don’t need to tell you, maybe it doesn’t matter. I hope it doesn’t matter, but I don’t want to um-”
Because he might go on like this for another minute if she doesn’t do anything, Leslie reaches out and briefly touches his arm to stop him, pull him back. “What?”
Still not looking her, he clamps his mouth shut, his other hand moving absently to cover the spot on his forearm where her fingers just were. Finally after an excruciating few seconds, he speaks.
“I have a date this Saturday.”
There’s a moment right after he says it, where she thinks she might have hallucinated it, where her mind actually rejects the concept. But Ben’s still talking and she can feel at least part of her, a rational centered part of her, absorbing the words, acknowledging the reality.
“As I said, I’m hoping it doesn’t matter, and I’m probably making an ass of myself by even thinking it might. But I don’t- I want to be upfront about this. We said friends, but I didn’t want you thinking that maybe I was playing games or being coy. God, I actually just used the word coy, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
He sighs and rubs a hand over his face, “Just- just stop me, please.”
Leslie doesn’t say anything immediately, just finishes her coffee and gets up to go throw it away, buying time. This was going to happen. She knew this was going to happen. Somewhere deep down, she knew it. They don’t have any claims on each other. They can’t. Anything else would be messy and unhealthy. Old patterns they shouldn’t fall into. Sooner or later this needed to happen.
It doesn’t make it hurt any less.
But at the same time, she finds herself strangely . . . relieved. It’s an odd sensation. Knowing some part of her still wants him, probably even still loves him, and yet knowing she’s half-terrified of the prospect that he might feel the same way, because she’s not sure she wants the responsibility, the obligation that would come with that. It helps in a way, knowing exactly where she stands, having such clear lines of demarcation, takes the pressure off, gives them room to breathe. It’s like a lancing a wound, unpleasant, even painful, but necessary if you want it to heal.
She turns to find him watching her from the bench, face guarded, but still so easy to read. He wants her to be okay with this, needs it even.
Walking over, she sits back down beside him. “What’s her name?”
He blows out a breath. “Lauren.”
“Is she nice?”
“Well, it’s our first date, so I can’t be certain, but-” he shakes his head “no, I’m pretty sure she’s awful.”
His delivery is so perfectly deadpan, Leslie laughs despite herself. “Come on, I’m trying here.”
Ben smiles. “Yes. I met her at the dog park. She seems nice.”
“Good. You deserve someone nice.”
He looks over at her. “Thank you.”
It’s quiet and grateful and about much more than what she just said about him deserving someone nice. And it feels like they’ve come to some kind of new understanding, moved to new ground.
She smiles at him, then gets up before it can take a wrong turn, adding as she does, “Just a little tip though, do not offer her the free MRI on the first date. It may sound sexy, but trust me it just gets weird.”
He laughs and moves to follow her. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Oh also, don’t show up with another woman. Or light your sleeve on fire. In fact you should try to stay away from fire in general.”
“No other women and no fire. Check.”
“And Ambien. Don’t take Ambien beforehand.”
“I feel like maybe I should be writing this down.”
“Probably.”
“Anything else I should know? I want the full benefit of your experience here.”
“You could try showing up drunk at her house the night before to tell her how awesome the date will be. I’ve had some success with that.”
“Oooh,” he shakes his head, “I don’t know. That sounds like a level of difficulty I might not be ready for.”
“Amateur.”
---
She’d been a little afraid that she’d obsess over Ben’s date, that she’d watch the clock on Saturday night and wonder how things were going. But Saturday comes and she volunteers to babysit for the evening so Ann and Greg can have their first night out in six months, and between Abigail’s new fondness of rolling as her primary mode of transportation and Ann’s check-in phone-calls every hour, she’s pretty much forgotten anyone named Ben exists.
So when her phone rings at nine-thirty less than twenty minutes after Ann’s last check-in, her choice to answer with a slightly irritated, “She’s fine. She’s sleeping. Go back in the movie and give Greg your phone,” is perfectly justified.
“Okay, I don’t know what’s happening here.”
At the sound of Ben’s voice, Leslie sits bolt upright and the board book that had been lying splayed on her stomach goes tumbling to the floor with a clatter. She freezes, holds her breath and prays to whatever gods watch over babysitters-Please don’t wake up. Please don’t wake up.
“Leslie, whats-”
“Shhhh.” she hisses.
“But-”
“Shhhh.”
Getting up from couch, she picks up the baby monitor and tiptoes out to the front porch. “Okay it’s safe now.”
“Are you under-attack?”
“Baby-sitting. I just got Abigail to sleep.”
“Ah.”
Then it hits her what time it is. “Wait, aren’t you supposed to be on a date right now? Why are you calling me?”
“Yeah, about that.” Ben gives a low mirthless chuckle and a sigh, “So I have a new one for your list. Don’t order the veal saltimbocca before you find out whether or not your date happens to be a vegan for reasons of conscience.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. And you know, the worst part-”
“You never got the veal.”
“Never got the veal. Ended with the appetizers.”
“Wow.”
“Tell me about it. It’s the dish they were known for, too,” he sighs, “So you’re my bad first date Yoda. What’s the next step here?”
That one’s easy. “Alcohol.”
“Okay. Classics. Good. Now will beer do or do I need something else?”
“I usually go for something pink with an umbrella.”
“Yeah. I’m not doing that.”
“Then beer is probably fine. Oh also, eat something since you haven’t had dinner yet. Or there could be embarrassing text messages in your future.”
“Good call. Anything else?”
She sets the baby-monitor down on the table and sits on one of the chairs, tucking her bare-feet underneath her. “Well you’re probably going to have to find another dog-park for awhile or at least start going at another time.”
Ben groans. “Harrison’s never going to forgive me.”
“You named your dog-” she shakes her head and laughs, “never mind I don’t want to know.”
“It’s a perfectly good name.”
“Have you ever considered that you might be taking your Star Wars obsession a little far?”
“No.”
“Well okay then.”
“So alcohol, no drunk text-messaging and concerted avoidance. Anything else?”
“Other than just trying again? That’s really all I’ve got.”
“Really, you’re really giving me ‘if at first you don’t succeed?’”
“What can I say? It’s a cliché because it’s true. You’re a good guy. Any woman would be lucky to have you. If this Lauren person couldn’t see that, it’s her loss. I’m sure the next one will.”
She says it without thinking. Says it because it’s what you say to a friend when they’ve had a bad date. Says it because it’s true. And it’s only in the after, in the echo that she can see the warning signs, the cliff she’s inadvertently steered them towards. (If he’s such a good guy, if any woman would be lucky, then why not her? If it’s so obvious, why didn’t she see it?) At the moment she’s not sure she has a good answer.
But Ben either doesn’t hear it, or chooses to ignore it because his response remains light and untroubled. “All the same, for the sake of peace in my house, I think I’m declaring the dog park off-limits as a dating-pool.”
Leslie releases a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. “Well, I’m sure Harrison will appreciate the gesture.”
“I don’t know he’s kind of a player.”
She winces on his behalf. “Yeah, don’t use that word again. Ever.”
---
It actually gets better after that. They’re able to stop dancing around the issue, to stop circling each other quite so carefully, and they settle into the business of actually being friends with an unexpected aptitude. She no longer tries to come up with an excuse to call him beyond the fact she wants to talk. He no longer sounds half-surprised, half-on-guard every time he answers the phone.
They don’t talk all the time. They’re both far too busy for that. But there’s a two week period in late June when she gets tied up with the mayhem that always comes with city council’s vote on the budget for the coming fiscal year and Ben actually winds up sending an email to her work account asking if everything’s okay because he hadn’t heard from her in awhile.
She meets him once more for lunch when she goes shopping up in Indy for new suits, and he finds a summer music festival in Brown County that they’ll each only have to drive an hour to get to.
It’s surprisingly nice having him on her speed dial again. Ann’s still her very best-friend and they’d still drop everything if the other needed something, but their lives are doing that thing that happens when you have different priorities. Abigail is Ann’s world right now, and rightfully so, and Leslie really can’t begrudge her the fact that she doesn’t want to spend what might be her only thirty free minutes of the day listening to the ins and outs of a proposed zoning rule. Ben not only listens, but he contributes. Sometimes by offering a perspective she doesn’t particularly want to hear, but contributes all the same. And she realizes it’s been a long time since she’s had a friend who cared about the same things she does and who didn’t work for her (because it does matter, no matter how much she wishes it didn’t).
Not that they just talk about their work. In fact that’s the best part-how much they don’t talk about work. After eight months of self-imposed professionalism and nearly five years of radio silence, they seem to be almost greedy for the opportunity to simply talk about anything and everything. No subject is too ridiculous, no topic too personal (well except for the obvious, but they’ve gotten very good at maneuvering around that particular curve). Ben tells her about getting death threats in the first town he audited, and she tells him about getting turned down for three other jobs before she got hired on to the Parks department.
She calls him the day she sees Jessica with her mother in a grocery store over in Eagleton and can’t think of anything to say. He calls ten minutes before he has to go in to give a report to a Senate subcommittee he knows they aren’t going to want to hear.
One rainy Sunday afternoon in early July, Ben calls for no other reason than he’s bored, and they spend an hour talking about everything from herb-gardens to her efforts to put a community garden in the pit (and the subsequent great-pot-grower stakeout) to his mother’s talent for making jam and her mother’s talent for making political allies and enemies.
“Is that what got you into politics? Your mom?”
“Well a lot of things got me into politics. I mean Pawnee’s such a great city. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?”
“Yeah but when you clear all that away and stop practicing campaign answers for three seconds. Your mom was at least part of it, right?”
Leslie looks over at the framed picture on her mantle of her mother on the phone in her office, face alight, gesturing emphatically. She’d snuck it with her camera phone a few years back, and it’s still one of her favorites. Marlene Griggs-Knope in her element.
“You should have seen her run a school board meeting.”
“I can imagine.”
“I used to go and sit in the back and watch. And there would be all these men. These principals and businessmen and teachers union reps who would come in and they’d be used to getting their way. But my mom could put them in their place with a look. I wanted to be just like her.”
Ben doesn’t respond immediately, and then, “Okay, I’m going to say something and don’t take this the wrong way, but . . . I’m kind of glad you’re not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure your mom is great and everything, but I don’t know I’m having a hard time picturing her as the kind of person who’d come up with something like the Harvest Festival to save her friends’ jobs.”
And even though Leslie’s long ago come to terms with the fact that she and her mother are very different people, that for all she admires her mother and for all she wants her to be proud, she needs to do things her way, it’s still means something to hear someone else tell her that’s okay.
“Thank you for that.”
“Hey, I’m just telling the truth. Given the choice, I’ll take a Leslie Knope every time.”
“Watch out or I’m putting that on a campaign poster.”
---
He goes on at least one more date that she knows of. Leslie tells him to have a great time and is almost eighty-five percent certain she really means it.
She doesn’t date anyone, but that has more to do with her schedule than anything else. The campaign is shifting into another gear completely, and she’s still trying to juggle her city council responsibilities. And now is not the time to be starting a relationship while she’s under at least limited public scrutiny, and there are actually some nights she’s so tired that anything requiring more effort than pulling her pajamas sounds like too much work.
Once the election comes and goes there will be plenty of time to worry about her personal life.
It doesn’t have anything to do with Ben.
She’s almost eighty-five percent certain she really means that.
---
Ben comes down to Snerling in late July for a three-day due-diligence review prior to approving a special construction bond issue, and makes the forty-minute drive over to Pawnee one-night for dinner.
Because it’s first time he’s been back since leaving and Leslie can’t resist, she calls Tom and enlists his help in rounding up people to come to the Snakehole Lounge that evening in a mini-reunion.
And even though she’s generally avoided the club since taking public office, the look on Ben’s face when she drags him inside is completely worth the relatively minor risk of negative publicity.
Later that night he smiles down at her, his expression happy and open and adorably incredulous, “I can’t believe you did this.”
She grins back, “I told you, you’d be missed.”
The bar is loud and warm, and they’re standing closer than usual, yelling in each other’s ears over the music in order to be heard. Someone jostles her from behind, and he brings a hand to her elbow to steady her at the same time she puts a palm on his chest to keep her balance, and for a moment she is sharply, painfully aware of him. The fabric of his shirt under her fingers, the touch of his hand on her upper arm, the way he still smells faintly of coffee and Irish Spring soap and printer ink.
And in that moment, for just that moment, every emotion and sense memory that she’s shoved down and pushed aside comes to the surface in a heady, dizzying rush. Ben looks down at her, expression unreadable in the dim lighting, and all she can think is if he kissed her right now she’d be totally lost.
He lowers his head.
“You okay?”
She blinks and takes a step back. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I, um, I don’t think my tolerance is what it used to be.”
Ben smiles. “Me neither. How about I go get us some ice waters, okay?”
Leslie nods and goes to sit down on one of the couches.
Tells herself she just avoided a mistake rather than missed an opportunity.
---
( Part 4(b))