FF: Snapshots Left on the Negative 4e (2nd half)
Start of 4e
Ben draws her a bath and leaves her to relax and clean up (because it’s only nine-thirty in the morning and she went for her walk before taking a shower, and she really doesn’t want to think about what she smells like right now). She thinks it’s also to give himself the opportunity for a little space, because he makes a self-deprecating comment about going outside to stand in the cold and think about baseball stats and there’s a thread of truth behind the joke that makes her heart ache.
Leslie reaches for his soap instead of her body wash and lathers it up in her hands, trying to make her skin smell like him the way it usually would after sex, but of course it doesn’t work. There are complexities missing, intangible base-notes of sweat and release, light top notes like the coffee he drinks and the herbs he cooks with that always seem to linger on the tips of his fingers (it had taken her months to identify that one, and maybe it’s a little obsessive that she worked so long to find it, but she likes knowing).
She wishes he didn’t feel the need to hold those last few piece of himself back like that. It’s not that she doesn’t understand, because she does. Without either one of them wanting it, they’ve somehow replicated almost the same situation as before. He’s put himself out there, given her the power, the choice and all he can do is wait. But last time he gave everything, exposed the soft-underbelly of his feelings and stupidly trusted she wouldn’t hurt him.
And she turned around and gutted him, slit him open and left him bleeding.
And it doesn’t matter that she cried as she did it; you remain skittish of the thing that hurt you long after you’ve healed.
So if he needs to maintain this separation, to hold on to this one point of control, this one choice he has left to keep himself from being that vulnerable again, she can’t begrudge it, not if it might keep him safe. Because more than anything, maybe even more than she wants Ben to love her, she wants to protect him, stop him from being hurt. She just hates that it still has to be from her.
And of course none of that stops the selfish parts of her from wishing she could touch him anyway. She almost aches with how much she wants to touch him, wants to fit her fingers along his ribcage, run her mouth down the line of his spine. It’s a desire that is simultaneously blisteringly sexual and not sexual at all. In some ways it’s oddly chaste. She wants to stretch him out on her bed and line up their bodies point by point (fingertips, elbows, chests, hipbones, knees) and show him just how perfectly they fit, wants to curl up around him like a shield and press her lips to the nape of his neck and listen to his breathing as he falls asleep in her arms rather than the other way around. She wants him to be safe with her.
It strikes her that she’s been imagining him in her bed at home in Pawnee, complete with its sunshine yellow sheets and Amish quilts, and half read reports she sometimes leaves on the foot of the left side because if she put them on the floor they’ll just fade into all the other unread reports never to be heard from again. And she supposes that makes sense because she still doesn’t know what his bedroom looks like, couldn’t conjure the color of his sheets or the angle of sunlight. But it’s more than that she thinks, in some ways Leslie thinks she just likes the idea of him in her bed.
Which is actually a little odd for her. Because she’s never been a huge fan of bringing lovers home. Mostly because she used to worry about cleaning up for them, but even later in life as she’s adopted an attitude that goes something like ‘screw it, it’s my house,’ there’s always that initial moment when she can feel them reassessing their opinion of her.
Even with Brent who spent more than his share of weekends there it had never been a truly comfortable thing. Brent liked clean lines and big open spaces and muted colors, and there was always that feeling when he sat at her kitchen table and drank his coffee out of a chipped souvenir mug from the Snow Globe museum rather than one from his set of hand-thrown stoneware, that he was a stranger in a strange land, observing the local customs because it was the polite thing to do but anxious to get back to the familiarity of his native home.
And it’s not as though she’s met a kindred pack-rat in Ben. Because god knows she hasn’t. If anything, his home (other than his kitchen) is almost spare, like he lived so long on the road he forgets that he can keep things now. But there’s something about it, something in the way the furniture doesn’t quite match, and the chairs at his dining room table have been acquired piecemeal and then painted the same color to try to create the illusion of unity. Something in the way the photographs on his walls are all full color rather than the black and white that’s so popular and there’s an old C-3PO action figure sitting on the corner of the desk in the spare bedroom. It’s a little haphazard, a little uncoordinated, and she thinks while all his coffee mugs might match (they do, she’s checked), it’s more likely a product of expediency then aesthetic choice.
Leslie tries to remember if Ben had a moment on Election Day when he stood in her foyer and stared at the clutter, but can’t. And she’s not entirely sure that means there wasn’t one (because god knows there was enough going on to keep her distracted), but if it happened it didn’t linger long.
And then she realizes what she’s doing, unconsciously assessing the compatibility of their everyday lives, how they’d fit each other on a regular basis, and nearly has a panic attack. Sits straight up in the rapidly cooling water, goosebumps crawling up her skin, and hugs her knees to her chest, suddenly feeling strangely vulnerable and exposed.
God what is she doing? This is crazy. She’s never lived with someone. Okay yes, there were obviously roommates in college and a truly disastrous apartment situation for the first two years of her professional career, but the moment she could afford to have her own place, she did and never looked back. And however you parse it, a lover is not a roommate. Living with someone like that is intimate, exposing; you twine your stuff, your habits, your lives together until they become nearly impossible to separate. Until no matter what happens, when it ends, if it ends (she’s got to learn to stop thinking of relationships as intrinsically finite things), what you’re left with in the after is fundamentally different from what you had before.
She thinks about her mother’s handwriting on that envelope of clippings, and her father sitting at their kitchen table the night of her graduation. Thinks about the passage in Robert Knopes’ will leaving Marlene his copies of Shakespeare and a small lump sum for “the trip to London I never gave you” and realizes sometimes you twine your lives together so tightly they simply can’t be entirely separated ever again.
The idea of knotting herself up with Ben like that is simultaneously the most terrifying and wonderful thing in the world. Because for the past week she’s had a taste, a sampling, and she loves it. Loves the feel of him beside her at night and the sight of his toiletries perfectly lined up on the other side of the sink away from her chaos. Loves coming back from her morning walk to the sight of him dressed and freshly showered, and the random things you laugh about that would never be funny in the retelling, but are hysterical when experienced together.
But she also knows it’s artificial because this isn’t her house or his and they’re both in a strange way still acting like guests on their best behavior. And she doesn’t even have a point of reference to know where the pitfalls and problems and spots of friction would be.
She needs more practice, more training, needs a trial run. She’s a novice at this, an amateur. You don’t do things this way. Really who does things this way? This is no way to conduct a life, just wake up one morning and realize you’re desperately in love with someone and from here on out at least a portion of your self-worth might hinge on being able to make them happy and say ‘it’s okay, I have absolutely no discernable skills in this area, I’ll just pick it up as I go.’
If this was a job and Ben was reading her resume for it, he'd never even give her the interview (and it doesn’t matter that Leslie herself would probably argue for passion and commitment over experience, it’s Ben’s happiness at issue here). And yet he’s already offered her the position, and he talks about ‘two-years from now’ like he’s ready to put her under contract, and she can’t help feeling like she’s tricked him somehow.
Because what if she gets it wrong? Messes it up. What if she says yes and commits and throws herself into it, but can’t get the details right? What if she repeats her mother’s mistakes or makes new ones or decides three years from now they weren’t mistakes at all? What if for all her passion and enthusiasm her execution is sloppy?
She wishes she had a blueprint or an instruction manual. Wishes this was something she could read up on, could outline and color-code and organize, because she knows how to do that. She’s good at that.
But how do you even start making a checklist on the right way to love someone?
---
Ben isn’t surprised or upset when she starts talking about going back to Pawnee over a late breakfast of pastries he ran down to the local coffee shop for (the walk in thirty-five degree weather was apparently his version of a cold shower). Just nods in agreement like he thinks it’s a good idea, and tells her he’s put copies of the financial spreadsheets on a thumb drive for her in a way that says this was entirely expected.
Which when she thinks about it, it probably was. She’s already pushing the boundaries of how long she can disconnect from her other obligations without things starting to slip through the cracks. Madison’s been calling her more and more frequently with each passing day, and Ben told her from the beginning that he needed to be in Indy for meetings this coming week, and she supposes there was a kind of tacit understanding in the fact they took both cars back to Terra-Haute that she wouldn’t be returning with him tonight.
That makes her pause, and briefly she wonders if he would have kissed her like he did if she’d stolen his glasses on Saturday instead, if he hadn’t known they’d be going their separate ways at the end of the day. When he leans over her to walk her briefly through her father’s financial picture and the steps she’ll have to take to start transferring assets, there’s a frission of something electric between them that hasn’t been there since the night of her election, and Ben seems a little apologetic for it (like it’s inappropriate for him to want her right now), and she thinks ‘no’ he probably wouldn’t have kissed her on Saturday after all.
Still when he helps her pack her car with a few boxes of her father’s things, and lock up the house (she’ll have to come back in the next few weeks to have it appraised), he does it with a smile. Kisses her on the forehead before she gets in the car and tells her to drive safely.
“The weather sites say there might be snow tonight. Call me when you get in, okay?”
She nods. Smiling a little at this ritual they’ve developed, the way it says ‘I have a right to know you’re safe,’ and if she thinks about it, she wonders if that’s when this thing between them really started again. With his watch on her wrist, and his tired midnight phone call to her cell. Tiny tacit acceptances of the other’s claim.
That night she calls him from her house when she gets in, and chats about nothing as she cleans out spoiled milk and moldy takeout from her refrigerator. Mentions she’s going to have to go out and pick something up from JJ’s because there’s no food in her kitchen, and Ben tells her to get eggs instead of waffles so she’s at least had some protein today.
“Yes, because with all that cholesterol it’s a much healthier option.”
“Did you have anything for lunch?” he asks in a way that says he already knows the answer to this question.
She looks down at the counter top, like it’s going to save her. “No.”
“Well I happen to know you had two blueberry muffins and a hot chocolate this morning and nothing else. An all carbohydrate diet is not a viable option, you’ll crash. If I thought you were actually worried about cholesterol, I’d tell you to get an egg-white omelet but honestly they’re awful. At least this way there’s a fifty-fifty chance you might actually do it.”
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
Ben just laughs, signs off with, “Get the eggs. And some fruit.”
“Now you’re definitely pushing your luck.”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
She can and she will.
Leslie still gets the waffles. But she winds up feeling really guilty about it, and after five minutes of not being able to enjoy them the way she normally would, she orders a plate of scrambled eggs and a cup of fruit. Curses Ben the entire time.
And she wonders if this is what being with someone in the long-term entails, letting them have a right to you in a hundred little ways, letting them mess up your life and your habits with their opinions, and loving them for caring even as you wish they would shut up.
She pops a section of apple in her mouth, savoring the crisp bite that tells her she’s gotten one from the late harvest (she always forgets how good fresh fruit tastes when it’s in season), and thinks maybe she could learn to live with fewer waffles and more fruit.
It’s not much, but it feels like a step in the right direction.
---
It is of course not as simple as waffles versus fruit (if it was she’d be on his doorstep tomorrow), and being back in Pawnee reminds her of that in a way that’s almost visceral.
This place is her home.
It’s always been her home.
Even now when she’s packing up her office, and exchanging emails with Diane about potential sublets up in Indy (between students and visiting professors her resources for temporary housing are amazing), there’s something comforting about knowing she’ll still list the same address on her tax forms and return frequently for town-hall meetings. To know that when the Assembly is out of session she’s going to come back to this house, and put food in her bird-feeders, and do program development for five different summer camps and three professional retreats from her kitchen table to help make ends meet (One of these days her state is going to realize it can’t keep paying its representatives like they’re all still part-time officials with family farms and single person law practices and expect good government, but it hasn’t yet).
She’s made her life here, become the person she is here. She walks down the streets and knows people’s names, knows their stories, can map her own history in everything from the field where she broke her arm playing field hockey, to the classroom at the Rec Center where she learned to French kiss, to the site where the Harvest Festival still goes up every fall.
She can even stand in the stairwell where she fell in love with Ben if she wants to. It’s only a fifteen minute drive and the hotel manager knows her by sight.
In some ways she feels like she is Pawnee. Like she’s seeped into its corners and its cracks and had a hand in making it what it is, and maybe that’s a little self-aggrandizing, except Pawnee seeped right back, twined itself around her heart and leaked into her veins, until she thinks if you cut her she’d bleed corn-syrup and chaos.
And it’s not that she thinks Ben would demand she move. It’s that she knows sooner or later somewhere down the road, one of them will have to in order to have the relationship they want, and she can remember the look in his eyes when she pointed out he wasn’t asking her to come to South Bend with him, that certainty that if he made her choose between Pawnee and him, he’d lose. Remembers hating herself for the fact he was right.
And she’s still not sure what a “Loving Ben Wyatt” checklist should look like, but she thinks step one is probably being ready to put her life on the table.
For the first time she can remember, Leslie wishes she didn’t love Pawnee quite so much.
---
The first week and a half she’s back everyone is careful with her, almost too careful, like they’re afraid of breaking her.
She hates it. It makes her feel oddly guilty for not being weaker, more fragile, for feeling like she’s ready to get her hands dirty when everyone else seems to keep expecting her to burst into tears. Like somehow she isn’t doing this right, isn’t sad enough or hurt enough or broken enough. Like she’s dishonoring her father’s memory by being determined not to let his loss cripple her.
Even Ann, wonderful Ann, seems to be getting on her nerves, bringing her breakfast every morning and pointedly not asking about Ben (when they both know she desperately wants to ask about Ben), until Leslie’s almost maintaining radio-silence on the issue out of sheer childish-stubbornness. Like a pout or a sulk, not saying anything because ‘she started it’. Like they’re ten and giving each other the silent treatment on the playground. Except that’s a horrible analogy because Ann is patient and forgiving and not giving her the silent treatment at all. And somehow, pettily, Leslie manages to find that irritating, too, because any other time of her life Ann would have called her on her bullshit by now.
She calls Ben up to complain about it on Friday afternoon when Madison backs down for the third time in as many days on something they both know she should have fought.
Ben answers the phone with a clipped ‘I can’t talk now. I’ll call you back.’ and hangs up on her.
It’s the rudest someone’s been to her all week, and she kind of loves him for it.
When he calls her back an hour later and starts to apologize for being so abrupt, she cuts him off.
“No, it’s okay. You were working. Honestly it was kind of nice.”
“Being hung up on?”
“Being treated like a rational adult.”
“Ah.”
And that’s all she needs for the whole thing to come spilling out in a disconnected jumble of frustration and anger and tears because ‘I do miss him. I do. But I hate crying like this. I want to get through one damn day without crying like this. Why can’t I do that? What’s wrong with that? You were okay with me being okay. Why can’t they be?’
Ben’s quiet for a moment when she finishes, then softly says, “They want you to be okay, Leslie.”
He doesn’t mean it as a chastisement, but she’s suddenly contrite, because of course he’s right, and it’s horrible of her to think any other way. She sighs, swipes at her tears (god, when this is over she’s going to investigate having her tear ducts surgically removed). “I know. I just- I wish they wouldn’t treat me like I was broken. It makes me feel like I should be. Like there’s something wrong with me because I’m not. Why is it you’re the only one who can treat me like I’m okay?”
“Because you weren’t for awhile and I was the only one who was there while you got better.”
That makes her sit down on the bottom of the steps. “Oh.”
“Yeah. I’d love to tell you that I just know you that well, and I’d treat you this way no matter what, but honestly, if the positions were reversed I’d probably be following you around with a box of tissues and getting you pissed at me. So, you know, cut them some slack for caring.”
“How much slack?”
“A lot of slack. Cut them a lot of slack.”
She groans. “I don’t know how long I can take this.”
“Have you talked about it?”
“Not really.”
“Can I ask why?”
“I’m tired of thinking about it so much. It feels like it’s all I think about sometimes. I just want to do normal things, talk about happy things. Did you know Abigail said my name the other day? Well kind of, it was more like Leffie, but I’m counting it.”
Ben does not take the bait. “I think you should talk about it with Ann. Ask her to come up with you when you go to sign the probate paperwork next Wednesday. I think it will help if she can be a part of it with you and see firsthand how you’re handling it.”
Leslie turns the idea over in her mind and realizes he’s probably right. Realizes even moreso that she’d really like Ann to be there. Wants to show her best friend the house she spent parts of her teenage summers in, and tell her about finding the college t-shirts her dad’s graduating seniors gave him as gifts. Nods silently in agreement, not thinking about the fact Ben can’t see her.
“Got any suggestions for Madison?”
He laughs. “You could always pick a fight.”
---
She actually winds up doing both.
On Monday she purposely gets into a twelve round battle with Madison about whether or not her legislative agenda is ambitious enough, and somewhere around round five she can see the other woman get riled enough to forget to be careful, and somewhere around round eight, she can see it sink in with Madison that she’s not fracturing under the pressure (The remaining four rounds are just because half-way through Leslie convinces herself there’s some merit to her position that they aren’t being bold enough, even though she hadn’t meant it when she started.)
Ann takes a little more convincing of her emotional stability (probably because she was there at Leslie’s least stable).
On Wednesday they make the three hour drive back to Terra-Haute together, after Ann leaves Abigail with Ron and Tambarlee. (Ann is not sure about this at all, but it was either them or Andy and April who still barely manage to take care of themselves. And it’s only until Greg’s school lets out and Tamberlee promises to lock Ron out of the house if he tries to teach Abigail to drink or whittle. And she’d do it too, so everything is fine. Probably. Maybe. Leslie really really hopes so. Ann just calls to check in a lot.) And on the drive up even though Leslie keeps determinedly talking about her father in cheerful positive tones, and Ann makes all the appropriate responses, she can feel her friend watching her like she’s a bomb about to go off.
Which is really unfair, because Leslie thinks she’s handling everything perfectly. Signs all the probate paperwork with a steady hand and makes rational inquiries about the expected timeline for the courts to put it through given the simplicity of her father’s bequests. And greets the real-estate agent who’s come to appraise the house with a warm handshake and a welcoming smile.
And then kicks her out fifteen minutes later when the woman calls the dark wood paneling in the den ‘dated,’ and the wall of built-in bookshelves ‘problematic’ and starts to talk about replacing the linoleum in the kitchen if they have a hope of selling it for a reasonable price.
For some reason this is the thing that makes Ann decide she’s a real person again, and when Leslie turns back from almost forcibly shoving the woman out the door it’s to find her best-friend staring up at her from the couch with wide ‘can you believe that just happened’ eyes.
“Ugh, Bitch.”
Leslie exhales in relief. “Oh thank god. I thought it was just me.”
“No. Definite bitch.”
Coming over she flops down on the couch next to Ann, and looks over at the wall of empty bookshelves, “I like the built-ins.”
“I think the paneling makes it feel cozy.”
“And the linoleum is-” Leslie can’t think of a word other than ‘worn-out’ and ‘tragic’, just shakes her head instead.
“Like I said, bitch.”
“Definitely.”
After a long, comfortable silence, where Leslie just slouches against Ann the way they used [to] after all night brainstorming sessions about Lot 48, she announces without really knowing why. “I don’t think I’m going to sell the house. It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no demand right now, and the neighborhood is starting to go downhill and no one who buys it will love it enough.”
She is aware that these are not really legitimate reasons for holding on to her father’s house when there’s still five years on the mortgage and she has no reason to ever need to live in Terra-Haute. But Ann nods like she’s just made an extremely compelling argument. “I think that’s a good idea. In fact I think it’s such a good idea we should celebrate.”
Leslie lifts her head hopefully, “Like with cake?”
“Like with alcohol.”
Yeah okay, her way is better.
They drive over to the grocery store and get several pints of ice-cream and three bottles of wine (they don’t drink it all but they do seem to feel the need to sample all three for quality control). And there was probably a time when this wouldn’t result in both them getting blitzed, but between pregnancy and breast-feeding Ann hasn’t had anything more to drink than a few sips of beer in over a year, and Leslie has been exceedingly careful with her public intake ever since the primaries and has never been a private drinker.
Long story short. They get pretty trashed.
Ann has to call Greg to tell him she can’t come home tonight because ‘the real-estate agent was a bitch,’ which is kind of true, but the fact she can’t actually pronounce ‘real-estate agent’ and winds up calling her ‘house-lady’ probably clues her husband in on the finer nuances of the situation. Luckily Greg isn’t one of those dads who freaks out about the prospect of being left alone with his child for an extended period of time, so Ann seems to get away with it once she’s promised to make it up to him with ‘dirty things’ (she actually talks about the dirty things for awhile but Leslie covers her ears and sings ‘Camp WamaPawnee We Love You’ at the top of her lungs because she just doesn’t need to know some things about the father of her god-daughter.)
Once Ann gets off the phone Leslie realizes she needs to call Ben. Because this is their thing, right? She needs to let him know she’s still in Terra-Haute so he doesn’t worry. Cause he would worry. He’d be cute and worry a lot and there would probably be little frown lines right between his eyes from worrying, and he’d make phone calls to the neighbors and the police about her, and maybe he’d drive down in the middle of the night to check she was okay. And that would actually be really hot, except she’d be in Terra-Haute and wouldn’t get to enjoy the hotness, and yeah, okay she needs to call him.
Ann watches her fumble with the numbers on her phone with suspicious drunk eyes, “Why are you calling Ben?”
“I have to tell him where I am.”
“Whhhhhhyyyyyyyyyy?”
“Cause I love him.”
This seems to satisfy Ann for the moment.
Finally she gets the phone to start ringing, and then Ben picks up with a cheerful, “Hey, how’d it go?”
Leslie bends over and yells at her phone where it sits on the coffee table, so she’s sure he’ll hear her. “I’m in Terra-Haute with Ann. And we’re really drunk because the house-lady was a bitch, so I can’t drive back to Pawnee. Ann’s making it up to Greg with dirty things. I want to make it up to you with dirty things but you won’t let me. When are you going to let me?”
Ben doesn’t get a chance to respond because Ann covers her phone with a pillow and sits on it.
She looks up, “Why did you do that? He’s going to worry.”
Ann just stares at her for a second and then pokes her in the breast. Leslie feels like this violates some kind of rule of female solidarity, but she can’t actually remember any of the rules of female solidarity right now. But she does know it hurts. A lot.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“You’re not telling me things! You-” Ann waggles her finger, loses her train of thought and then comes back to it, “You promised to tell me things! All Ben related things. Calling to tell him where you are and that you want to do dirty things to him are definitely Ben related things.”
“You forgot that I love him.” Leslie adds automatically, because that should probably be at the top of the list of anything Ben related, before remembering the list is what stopped her from finding out when Ben is going to let her do dirty things to him, so really the list sucks.
Ann goes to poke her again but her coordination is off so this time it’s on Leslie’s arm. It’s still pretty annoying.
“Stop doing that!”
“Stop not telling me stuff!”
“I’m telling you stuff. I told you I love him.”
For some reason that makes Ann flail so much she almost loses her balance. “You can’t say that!”
“Why not?”
That question stymies Ann for the moment.
This is of course the point when Leslie’s phone rings. It’s Ben’s ringtone, and for a second they just stare at each other. Then the phone goes off again, and like it’s a starter pistol they move simultaneously to grab it off the coffee table, except Ann’s cheating by being closer and still sitting on it, so she gets there first, holds it up and stumbles drunkenly to the middle of the room as she hits the answer key.
Immediately Ben’s voice comes back over the speaker. “Is everything all-right over there?”
“Ann stole my phone,” Leslie yells out, trying to do her best to warn him.
But she doesn’t know if he actually hears, because Ann is already putting the phone to her ear and demanding, “What did you do to Leslie?!”
She can’t hear Ben’s response, but Ann is obviously less than pleased with it, because she’s shaking her head violently. “No. No. No. You did something. I can tell because she had speeches. Big speeches about you just wanting to be friends and how she was happy and wanted to kiss you and stuff. And now she’s all ‘I love him,’ and- and glowy. What did you do? Did you sex her?” This would of course be the moment she chooses to look over at Leslie’s face, and whatever’s there makes her suck in an indignant breath. “Oh! You sexed her, didn’t you?”
After a moment she lowers the phone from her ear and looks down at it in puzzlement. “He hung up. Rude.”
“You’re rude.” Leslie shoots back, crossing her arms in a pout.
“Nuh uh.” Ann shakes her head, “I’m the best-friend, he’s just the guy who sexed you. Doesn’t count.”
It’s really hard to argue with the logic of that.
Stumbling back over to the couch Ann flops down on the other end and nudges at Leslie with her toes, mouth curving in a little girl grin. “Was it good sex?”
Leslie can feel herself starting to flush hot at the memory, takes a healthy swig of her wine and nods.
“Does he have a nice penis?”
She almost chokes. “Ann Perkins! You’re a mom!”
“I’m a drunk mom.” Ann corrects her, like this excuses everything, nudges her again. “So does he?”
“I don’t know. I mean he did.”
Ann sits up straight, wide-eyed and alarmed, “Did something happen to it?”
It takes Leslie a moment to catch up. “Wha-? Oh God! No! Ew, no.”
“Then why don’t you know?”
“Because he didn’t- um, you know-” Leslie trails off, makes vague gestures. Of what she’s not entirely sure, but Ann seems to get the message, tilts her head in puzzlement and skepticism.
“I thought you said he sexed you good?”
That makes her sit up, a little indignant on Ben’s behalf, determined to defend his prowess on this point. “He did. He sexed me very well. Really well.” She points over the back of the couch, “In that bathroom. With his hands. He has nice hands.”
Ann eyes go wide and she gets up on her knees to look at the door of the bathroom like she’s never seen it before. Then because this apparently does not provide enough information, she stands and walks over to it.
Leslie follows. Don’t ask her why.
When they’re both standing inside and Leslie is pointedly looking anywhere but the bathroom counter, Ann asks. “He didn’t do it on the toilet, did he?”
“Counter.”
“Oh good. I have to pee.”
Leslie goes back outside and closes the door.
Strangely this also closes out the Ben portion of their conversation for the evening. Looking back, Leslie’s not entirely sure why, but it makes sense to both of them at the time.
They trip through a lot of half-thoughts after that. Including an incredible diatribe about Greg’s inability to change diapers correctly, with an ode to his tongue close on its heels (god Leslie is not going to be able to look him in the eye for weeks).
Somewhere around midnight, the conversation slows, and without either of them noticing it slips its way into that quiet place where aided with the clarity of inebriation, you’re able to hold painful truths up to the light and look at them for awhile.
Leslie drops her head back against the arm of the couch, glances around the den and sighs, “The paneling really is awful isn’t it?”
Ann looks up at her from her spot on the floor and grimaces. “It makes the room feel dark and small.”
“It is dark and small.”
“It makes it worse.”
“Yeah.”
She sits with that for a little while, then adds, “I’m going to have to sell the house, aren’t I?”
Ann nods. “Eventually.”
“But not right now, right?”
“Nope.”
“Good.”
Later, Leslie curls up on her side and glares at the kitchen floor illuminated in the single strip of moonlight. “I hate that linoleum.”
“How old is it?”
“I think it’s older than me. I also think it might be a health code violation.”
“Greg’ll come up for a weekend and help you put in something inexpensive from the hardware store.”
“He’d do that?”
Ann snorts. “If he wants sex ever again he will.”
-
“Ann?”
“Yeah?”
“The house-lady was still a bitch, right?”
“Definitely. Uber-bitch.”
---
( Final Part - First Half)
Ben draws her a bath and leaves her to relax and clean up (because it’s only nine-thirty in the morning and she went for her walk before taking a shower, and she really doesn’t want to think about what she smells like right now). She thinks it’s also to give himself the opportunity for a little space, because he makes a self-deprecating comment about going outside to stand in the cold and think about baseball stats and there’s a thread of truth behind the joke that makes her heart ache.
Leslie reaches for his soap instead of her body wash and lathers it up in her hands, trying to make her skin smell like him the way it usually would after sex, but of course it doesn’t work. There are complexities missing, intangible base-notes of sweat and release, light top notes like the coffee he drinks and the herbs he cooks with that always seem to linger on the tips of his fingers (it had taken her months to identify that one, and maybe it’s a little obsessive that she worked so long to find it, but she likes knowing).
She wishes he didn’t feel the need to hold those last few piece of himself back like that. It’s not that she doesn’t understand, because she does. Without either one of them wanting it, they’ve somehow replicated almost the same situation as before. He’s put himself out there, given her the power, the choice and all he can do is wait. But last time he gave everything, exposed the soft-underbelly of his feelings and stupidly trusted she wouldn’t hurt him.
And she turned around and gutted him, slit him open and left him bleeding.
And it doesn’t matter that she cried as she did it; you remain skittish of the thing that hurt you long after you’ve healed.
So if he needs to maintain this separation, to hold on to this one point of control, this one choice he has left to keep himself from being that vulnerable again, she can’t begrudge it, not if it might keep him safe. Because more than anything, maybe even more than she wants Ben to love her, she wants to protect him, stop him from being hurt. She just hates that it still has to be from her.
And of course none of that stops the selfish parts of her from wishing she could touch him anyway. She almost aches with how much she wants to touch him, wants to fit her fingers along his ribcage, run her mouth down the line of his spine. It’s a desire that is simultaneously blisteringly sexual and not sexual at all. In some ways it’s oddly chaste. She wants to stretch him out on her bed and line up their bodies point by point (fingertips, elbows, chests, hipbones, knees) and show him just how perfectly they fit, wants to curl up around him like a shield and press her lips to the nape of his neck and listen to his breathing as he falls asleep in her arms rather than the other way around. She wants him to be safe with her.
It strikes her that she’s been imagining him in her bed at home in Pawnee, complete with its sunshine yellow sheets and Amish quilts, and half read reports she sometimes leaves on the foot of the left side because if she put them on the floor they’ll just fade into all the other unread reports never to be heard from again. And she supposes that makes sense because she still doesn’t know what his bedroom looks like, couldn’t conjure the color of his sheets or the angle of sunlight. But it’s more than that she thinks, in some ways Leslie thinks she just likes the idea of him in her bed.
Which is actually a little odd for her. Because she’s never been a huge fan of bringing lovers home. Mostly because she used to worry about cleaning up for them, but even later in life as she’s adopted an attitude that goes something like ‘screw it, it’s my house,’ there’s always that initial moment when she can feel them reassessing their opinion of her.
Even with Brent who spent more than his share of weekends there it had never been a truly comfortable thing. Brent liked clean lines and big open spaces and muted colors, and there was always that feeling when he sat at her kitchen table and drank his coffee out of a chipped souvenir mug from the Snow Globe museum rather than one from his set of hand-thrown stoneware, that he was a stranger in a strange land, observing the local customs because it was the polite thing to do but anxious to get back to the familiarity of his native home.
And it’s not as though she’s met a kindred pack-rat in Ben. Because god knows she hasn’t. If anything, his home (other than his kitchen) is almost spare, like he lived so long on the road he forgets that he can keep things now. But there’s something about it, something in the way the furniture doesn’t quite match, and the chairs at his dining room table have been acquired piecemeal and then painted the same color to try to create the illusion of unity. Something in the way the photographs on his walls are all full color rather than the black and white that’s so popular and there’s an old C-3PO action figure sitting on the corner of the desk in the spare bedroom. It’s a little haphazard, a little uncoordinated, and she thinks while all his coffee mugs might match (they do, she’s checked), it’s more likely a product of expediency then aesthetic choice.
Leslie tries to remember if Ben had a moment on Election Day when he stood in her foyer and stared at the clutter, but can’t. And she’s not entirely sure that means there wasn’t one (because god knows there was enough going on to keep her distracted), but if it happened it didn’t linger long.
And then she realizes what she’s doing, unconsciously assessing the compatibility of their everyday lives, how they’d fit each other on a regular basis, and nearly has a panic attack. Sits straight up in the rapidly cooling water, goosebumps crawling up her skin, and hugs her knees to her chest, suddenly feeling strangely vulnerable and exposed.
God what is she doing? This is crazy. She’s never lived with someone. Okay yes, there were obviously roommates in college and a truly disastrous apartment situation for the first two years of her professional career, but the moment she could afford to have her own place, she did and never looked back. And however you parse it, a lover is not a roommate. Living with someone like that is intimate, exposing; you twine your stuff, your habits, your lives together until they become nearly impossible to separate. Until no matter what happens, when it ends, if it ends (she’s got to learn to stop thinking of relationships as intrinsically finite things), what you’re left with in the after is fundamentally different from what you had before.
She thinks about her mother’s handwriting on that envelope of clippings, and her father sitting at their kitchen table the night of her graduation. Thinks about the passage in Robert Knopes’ will leaving Marlene his copies of Shakespeare and a small lump sum for “the trip to London I never gave you” and realizes sometimes you twine your lives together so tightly they simply can’t be entirely separated ever again.
The idea of knotting herself up with Ben like that is simultaneously the most terrifying and wonderful thing in the world. Because for the past week she’s had a taste, a sampling, and she loves it. Loves the feel of him beside her at night and the sight of his toiletries perfectly lined up on the other side of the sink away from her chaos. Loves coming back from her morning walk to the sight of him dressed and freshly showered, and the random things you laugh about that would never be funny in the retelling, but are hysterical when experienced together.
But she also knows it’s artificial because this isn’t her house or his and they’re both in a strange way still acting like guests on their best behavior. And she doesn’t even have a point of reference to know where the pitfalls and problems and spots of friction would be.
She needs more practice, more training, needs a trial run. She’s a novice at this, an amateur. You don’t do things this way. Really who does things this way? This is no way to conduct a life, just wake up one morning and realize you’re desperately in love with someone and from here on out at least a portion of your self-worth might hinge on being able to make them happy and say ‘it’s okay, I have absolutely no discernable skills in this area, I’ll just pick it up as I go.’
If this was a job and Ben was reading her resume for it, he'd never even give her the interview (and it doesn’t matter that Leslie herself would probably argue for passion and commitment over experience, it’s Ben’s happiness at issue here). And yet he’s already offered her the position, and he talks about ‘two-years from now’ like he’s ready to put her under contract, and she can’t help feeling like she’s tricked him somehow.
Because what if she gets it wrong? Messes it up. What if she says yes and commits and throws herself into it, but can’t get the details right? What if she repeats her mother’s mistakes or makes new ones or decides three years from now they weren’t mistakes at all? What if for all her passion and enthusiasm her execution is sloppy?
She wishes she had a blueprint or an instruction manual. Wishes this was something she could read up on, could outline and color-code and organize, because she knows how to do that. She’s good at that.
But how do you even start making a checklist on the right way to love someone?
---
Ben isn’t surprised or upset when she starts talking about going back to Pawnee over a late breakfast of pastries he ran down to the local coffee shop for (the walk in thirty-five degree weather was apparently his version of a cold shower). Just nods in agreement like he thinks it’s a good idea, and tells her he’s put copies of the financial spreadsheets on a thumb drive for her in a way that says this was entirely expected.
Which when she thinks about it, it probably was. She’s already pushing the boundaries of how long she can disconnect from her other obligations without things starting to slip through the cracks. Madison’s been calling her more and more frequently with each passing day, and Ben told her from the beginning that he needed to be in Indy for meetings this coming week, and she supposes there was a kind of tacit understanding in the fact they took both cars back to Terra-Haute that she wouldn’t be returning with him tonight.
That makes her pause, and briefly she wonders if he would have kissed her like he did if she’d stolen his glasses on Saturday instead, if he hadn’t known they’d be going their separate ways at the end of the day. When he leans over her to walk her briefly through her father’s financial picture and the steps she’ll have to take to start transferring assets, there’s a frission of something electric between them that hasn’t been there since the night of her election, and Ben seems a little apologetic for it (like it’s inappropriate for him to want her right now), and she thinks ‘no’ he probably wouldn’t have kissed her on Saturday after all.
Still when he helps her pack her car with a few boxes of her father’s things, and lock up the house (she’ll have to come back in the next few weeks to have it appraised), he does it with a smile. Kisses her on the forehead before she gets in the car and tells her to drive safely.
“The weather sites say there might be snow tonight. Call me when you get in, okay?”
She nods. Smiling a little at this ritual they’ve developed, the way it says ‘I have a right to know you’re safe,’ and if she thinks about it, she wonders if that’s when this thing between them really started again. With his watch on her wrist, and his tired midnight phone call to her cell. Tiny tacit acceptances of the other’s claim.
That night she calls him from her house when she gets in, and chats about nothing as she cleans out spoiled milk and moldy takeout from her refrigerator. Mentions she’s going to have to go out and pick something up from JJ’s because there’s no food in her kitchen, and Ben tells her to get eggs instead of waffles so she’s at least had some protein today.
“Yes, because with all that cholesterol it’s a much healthier option.”
“Did you have anything for lunch?” he asks in a way that says he already knows the answer to this question.
She looks down at the counter top, like it’s going to save her. “No.”
“Well I happen to know you had two blueberry muffins and a hot chocolate this morning and nothing else. An all carbohydrate diet is not a viable option, you’ll crash. If I thought you were actually worried about cholesterol, I’d tell you to get an egg-white omelet but honestly they’re awful. At least this way there’s a fifty-fifty chance you might actually do it.”
“I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
Ben just laughs, signs off with, “Get the eggs. And some fruit.”
“Now you’re definitely pushing your luck.”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
She can and she will.
Leslie still gets the waffles. But she winds up feeling really guilty about it, and after five minutes of not being able to enjoy them the way she normally would, she orders a plate of scrambled eggs and a cup of fruit. Curses Ben the entire time.
And she wonders if this is what being with someone in the long-term entails, letting them have a right to you in a hundred little ways, letting them mess up your life and your habits with their opinions, and loving them for caring even as you wish they would shut up.
She pops a section of apple in her mouth, savoring the crisp bite that tells her she’s gotten one from the late harvest (she always forgets how good fresh fruit tastes when it’s in season), and thinks maybe she could learn to live with fewer waffles and more fruit.
It’s not much, but it feels like a step in the right direction.
---
It is of course not as simple as waffles versus fruit (if it was she’d be on his doorstep tomorrow), and being back in Pawnee reminds her of that in a way that’s almost visceral.
This place is her home.
It’s always been her home.
Even now when she’s packing up her office, and exchanging emails with Diane about potential sublets up in Indy (between students and visiting professors her resources for temporary housing are amazing), there’s something comforting about knowing she’ll still list the same address on her tax forms and return frequently for town-hall meetings. To know that when the Assembly is out of session she’s going to come back to this house, and put food in her bird-feeders, and do program development for five different summer camps and three professional retreats from her kitchen table to help make ends meet (One of these days her state is going to realize it can’t keep paying its representatives like they’re all still part-time officials with family farms and single person law practices and expect good government, but it hasn’t yet).
She’s made her life here, become the person she is here. She walks down the streets and knows people’s names, knows their stories, can map her own history in everything from the field where she broke her arm playing field hockey, to the classroom at the Rec Center where she learned to French kiss, to the site where the Harvest Festival still goes up every fall.
She can even stand in the stairwell where she fell in love with Ben if she wants to. It’s only a fifteen minute drive and the hotel manager knows her by sight.
In some ways she feels like she is Pawnee. Like she’s seeped into its corners and its cracks and had a hand in making it what it is, and maybe that’s a little self-aggrandizing, except Pawnee seeped right back, twined itself around her heart and leaked into her veins, until she thinks if you cut her she’d bleed corn-syrup and chaos.
And it’s not that she thinks Ben would demand she move. It’s that she knows sooner or later somewhere down the road, one of them will have to in order to have the relationship they want, and she can remember the look in his eyes when she pointed out he wasn’t asking her to come to South Bend with him, that certainty that if he made her choose between Pawnee and him, he’d lose. Remembers hating herself for the fact he was right.
And she’s still not sure what a “Loving Ben Wyatt” checklist should look like, but she thinks step one is probably being ready to put her life on the table.
For the first time she can remember, Leslie wishes she didn’t love Pawnee quite so much.
---
The first week and a half she’s back everyone is careful with her, almost too careful, like they’re afraid of breaking her.
She hates it. It makes her feel oddly guilty for not being weaker, more fragile, for feeling like she’s ready to get her hands dirty when everyone else seems to keep expecting her to burst into tears. Like somehow she isn’t doing this right, isn’t sad enough or hurt enough or broken enough. Like she’s dishonoring her father’s memory by being determined not to let his loss cripple her.
Even Ann, wonderful Ann, seems to be getting on her nerves, bringing her breakfast every morning and pointedly not asking about Ben (when they both know she desperately wants to ask about Ben), until Leslie’s almost maintaining radio-silence on the issue out of sheer childish-stubbornness. Like a pout or a sulk, not saying anything because ‘she started it’. Like they’re ten and giving each other the silent treatment on the playground. Except that’s a horrible analogy because Ann is patient and forgiving and not giving her the silent treatment at all. And somehow, pettily, Leslie manages to find that irritating, too, because any other time of her life Ann would have called her on her bullshit by now.
She calls Ben up to complain about it on Friday afternoon when Madison backs down for the third time in as many days on something they both know she should have fought.
Ben answers the phone with a clipped ‘I can’t talk now. I’ll call you back.’ and hangs up on her.
It’s the rudest someone’s been to her all week, and she kind of loves him for it.
When he calls her back an hour later and starts to apologize for being so abrupt, she cuts him off.
“No, it’s okay. You were working. Honestly it was kind of nice.”
“Being hung up on?”
“Being treated like a rational adult.”
“Ah.”
And that’s all she needs for the whole thing to come spilling out in a disconnected jumble of frustration and anger and tears because ‘I do miss him. I do. But I hate crying like this. I want to get through one damn day without crying like this. Why can’t I do that? What’s wrong with that? You were okay with me being okay. Why can’t they be?’
Ben’s quiet for a moment when she finishes, then softly says, “They want you to be okay, Leslie.”
He doesn’t mean it as a chastisement, but she’s suddenly contrite, because of course he’s right, and it’s horrible of her to think any other way. She sighs, swipes at her tears (god, when this is over she’s going to investigate having her tear ducts surgically removed). “I know. I just- I wish they wouldn’t treat me like I was broken. It makes me feel like I should be. Like there’s something wrong with me because I’m not. Why is it you’re the only one who can treat me like I’m okay?”
“Because you weren’t for awhile and I was the only one who was there while you got better.”
That makes her sit down on the bottom of the steps. “Oh.”
“Yeah. I’d love to tell you that I just know you that well, and I’d treat you this way no matter what, but honestly, if the positions were reversed I’d probably be following you around with a box of tissues and getting you pissed at me. So, you know, cut them some slack for caring.”
“How much slack?”
“A lot of slack. Cut them a lot of slack.”
She groans. “I don’t know how long I can take this.”
“Have you talked about it?”
“Not really.”
“Can I ask why?”
“I’m tired of thinking about it so much. It feels like it’s all I think about sometimes. I just want to do normal things, talk about happy things. Did you know Abigail said my name the other day? Well kind of, it was more like Leffie, but I’m counting it.”
Ben does not take the bait. “I think you should talk about it with Ann. Ask her to come up with you when you go to sign the probate paperwork next Wednesday. I think it will help if she can be a part of it with you and see firsthand how you’re handling it.”
Leslie turns the idea over in her mind and realizes he’s probably right. Realizes even moreso that she’d really like Ann to be there. Wants to show her best friend the house she spent parts of her teenage summers in, and tell her about finding the college t-shirts her dad’s graduating seniors gave him as gifts. Nods silently in agreement, not thinking about the fact Ben can’t see her.
“Got any suggestions for Madison?”
He laughs. “You could always pick a fight.”
---
She actually winds up doing both.
On Monday she purposely gets into a twelve round battle with Madison about whether or not her legislative agenda is ambitious enough, and somewhere around round five she can see the other woman get riled enough to forget to be careful, and somewhere around round eight, she can see it sink in with Madison that she’s not fracturing under the pressure (The remaining four rounds are just because half-way through Leslie convinces herself there’s some merit to her position that they aren’t being bold enough, even though she hadn’t meant it when she started.)
Ann takes a little more convincing of her emotional stability (probably because she was there at Leslie’s least stable).
On Wednesday they make the three hour drive back to Terra-Haute together, after Ann leaves Abigail with Ron and Tambarlee. (Ann is not sure about this at all, but it was either them or Andy and April who still barely manage to take care of themselves. And it’s only until Greg’s school lets out and Tamberlee promises to lock Ron out of the house if he tries to teach Abigail to drink or whittle. And she’d do it too, so everything is fine. Probably. Maybe. Leslie really really hopes so. Ann just calls to check in a lot.) And on the drive up even though Leslie keeps determinedly talking about her father in cheerful positive tones, and Ann makes all the appropriate responses, she can feel her friend watching her like she’s a bomb about to go off.
Which is really unfair, because Leslie thinks she’s handling everything perfectly. Signs all the probate paperwork with a steady hand and makes rational inquiries about the expected timeline for the courts to put it through given the simplicity of her father’s bequests. And greets the real-estate agent who’s come to appraise the house with a warm handshake and a welcoming smile.
And then kicks her out fifteen minutes later when the woman calls the dark wood paneling in the den ‘dated,’ and the wall of built-in bookshelves ‘problematic’ and starts to talk about replacing the linoleum in the kitchen if they have a hope of selling it for a reasonable price.
For some reason this is the thing that makes Ann decide she’s a real person again, and when Leslie turns back from almost forcibly shoving the woman out the door it’s to find her best-friend staring up at her from the couch with wide ‘can you believe that just happened’ eyes.
“Ugh, Bitch.”
Leslie exhales in relief. “Oh thank god. I thought it was just me.”
“No. Definite bitch.”
Coming over she flops down on the couch next to Ann, and looks over at the wall of empty bookshelves, “I like the built-ins.”
“I think the paneling makes it feel cozy.”
“And the linoleum is-” Leslie can’t think of a word other than ‘worn-out’ and ‘tragic’, just shakes her head instead.
“Like I said, bitch.”
“Definitely.”
After a long, comfortable silence, where Leslie just slouches against Ann the way they used [to] after all night brainstorming sessions about Lot 48, she announces without really knowing why. “I don’t think I’m going to sell the house. It doesn’t make any sense. There’s no demand right now, and the neighborhood is starting to go downhill and no one who buys it will love it enough.”
She is aware that these are not really legitimate reasons for holding on to her father’s house when there’s still five years on the mortgage and she has no reason to ever need to live in Terra-Haute. But Ann nods like she’s just made an extremely compelling argument. “I think that’s a good idea. In fact I think it’s such a good idea we should celebrate.”
Leslie lifts her head hopefully, “Like with cake?”
“Like with alcohol.”
Yeah okay, her way is better.
They drive over to the grocery store and get several pints of ice-cream and three bottles of wine (they don’t drink it all but they do seem to feel the need to sample all three for quality control). And there was probably a time when this wouldn’t result in both them getting blitzed, but between pregnancy and breast-feeding Ann hasn’t had anything more to drink than a few sips of beer in over a year, and Leslie has been exceedingly careful with her public intake ever since the primaries and has never been a private drinker.
Long story short. They get pretty trashed.
Ann has to call Greg to tell him she can’t come home tonight because ‘the real-estate agent was a bitch,’ which is kind of true, but the fact she can’t actually pronounce ‘real-estate agent’ and winds up calling her ‘house-lady’ probably clues her husband in on the finer nuances of the situation. Luckily Greg isn’t one of those dads who freaks out about the prospect of being left alone with his child for an extended period of time, so Ann seems to get away with it once she’s promised to make it up to him with ‘dirty things’ (she actually talks about the dirty things for awhile but Leslie covers her ears and sings ‘Camp WamaPawnee We Love You’ at the top of her lungs because she just doesn’t need to know some things about the father of her god-daughter.)
Once Ann gets off the phone Leslie realizes she needs to call Ben. Because this is their thing, right? She needs to let him know she’s still in Terra-Haute so he doesn’t worry. Cause he would worry. He’d be cute and worry a lot and there would probably be little frown lines right between his eyes from worrying, and he’d make phone calls to the neighbors and the police about her, and maybe he’d drive down in the middle of the night to check she was okay. And that would actually be really hot, except she’d be in Terra-Haute and wouldn’t get to enjoy the hotness, and yeah, okay she needs to call him.
Ann watches her fumble with the numbers on her phone with suspicious drunk eyes, “Why are you calling Ben?”
“I have to tell him where I am.”
“Whhhhhhyyyyyyyyyy?”
“Cause I love him.”
This seems to satisfy Ann for the moment.
Finally she gets the phone to start ringing, and then Ben picks up with a cheerful, “Hey, how’d it go?”
Leslie bends over and yells at her phone where it sits on the coffee table, so she’s sure he’ll hear her. “I’m in Terra-Haute with Ann. And we’re really drunk because the house-lady was a bitch, so I can’t drive back to Pawnee. Ann’s making it up to Greg with dirty things. I want to make it up to you with dirty things but you won’t let me. When are you going to let me?”
Ben doesn’t get a chance to respond because Ann covers her phone with a pillow and sits on it.
She looks up, “Why did you do that? He’s going to worry.”
Ann just stares at her for a second and then pokes her in the breast. Leslie feels like this violates some kind of rule of female solidarity, but she can’t actually remember any of the rules of female solidarity right now. But she does know it hurts. A lot.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“You’re not telling me things! You-” Ann waggles her finger, loses her train of thought and then comes back to it, “You promised to tell me things! All Ben related things. Calling to tell him where you are and that you want to do dirty things to him are definitely Ben related things.”
“You forgot that I love him.” Leslie adds automatically, because that should probably be at the top of the list of anything Ben related, before remembering the list is what stopped her from finding out when Ben is going to let her do dirty things to him, so really the list sucks.
Ann goes to poke her again but her coordination is off so this time it’s on Leslie’s arm. It’s still pretty annoying.
“Stop doing that!”
“Stop not telling me stuff!”
“I’m telling you stuff. I told you I love him.”
For some reason that makes Ann flail so much she almost loses her balance. “You can’t say that!”
“Why not?”
That question stymies Ann for the moment.
This is of course the point when Leslie’s phone rings. It’s Ben’s ringtone, and for a second they just stare at each other. Then the phone goes off again, and like it’s a starter pistol they move simultaneously to grab it off the coffee table, except Ann’s cheating by being closer and still sitting on it, so she gets there first, holds it up and stumbles drunkenly to the middle of the room as she hits the answer key.
Immediately Ben’s voice comes back over the speaker. “Is everything all-right over there?”
“Ann stole my phone,” Leslie yells out, trying to do her best to warn him.
But she doesn’t know if he actually hears, because Ann is already putting the phone to her ear and demanding, “What did you do to Leslie?!”
She can’t hear Ben’s response, but Ann is obviously less than pleased with it, because she’s shaking her head violently. “No. No. No. You did something. I can tell because she had speeches. Big speeches about you just wanting to be friends and how she was happy and wanted to kiss you and stuff. And now she’s all ‘I love him,’ and- and glowy. What did you do? Did you sex her?” This would of course be the moment she chooses to look over at Leslie’s face, and whatever’s there makes her suck in an indignant breath. “Oh! You sexed her, didn’t you?”
After a moment she lowers the phone from her ear and looks down at it in puzzlement. “He hung up. Rude.”
“You’re rude.” Leslie shoots back, crossing her arms in a pout.
“Nuh uh.” Ann shakes her head, “I’m the best-friend, he’s just the guy who sexed you. Doesn’t count.”
It’s really hard to argue with the logic of that.
Stumbling back over to the couch Ann flops down on the other end and nudges at Leslie with her toes, mouth curving in a little girl grin. “Was it good sex?”
Leslie can feel herself starting to flush hot at the memory, takes a healthy swig of her wine and nods.
“Does he have a nice penis?”
She almost chokes. “Ann Perkins! You’re a mom!”
“I’m a drunk mom.” Ann corrects her, like this excuses everything, nudges her again. “So does he?”
“I don’t know. I mean he did.”
Ann sits up straight, wide-eyed and alarmed, “Did something happen to it?”
It takes Leslie a moment to catch up. “Wha-? Oh God! No! Ew, no.”
“Then why don’t you know?”
“Because he didn’t- um, you know-” Leslie trails off, makes vague gestures. Of what she’s not entirely sure, but Ann seems to get the message, tilts her head in puzzlement and skepticism.
“I thought you said he sexed you good?”
That makes her sit up, a little indignant on Ben’s behalf, determined to defend his prowess on this point. “He did. He sexed me very well. Really well.” She points over the back of the couch, “In that bathroom. With his hands. He has nice hands.”
Ann eyes go wide and she gets up on her knees to look at the door of the bathroom like she’s never seen it before. Then because this apparently does not provide enough information, she stands and walks over to it.
Leslie follows. Don’t ask her why.
When they’re both standing inside and Leslie is pointedly looking anywhere but the bathroom counter, Ann asks. “He didn’t do it on the toilet, did he?”
“Counter.”
“Oh good. I have to pee.”
Leslie goes back outside and closes the door.
Strangely this also closes out the Ben portion of their conversation for the evening. Looking back, Leslie’s not entirely sure why, but it makes sense to both of them at the time.
They trip through a lot of half-thoughts after that. Including an incredible diatribe about Greg’s inability to change diapers correctly, with an ode to his tongue close on its heels (god Leslie is not going to be able to look him in the eye for weeks).
Somewhere around midnight, the conversation slows, and without either of them noticing it slips its way into that quiet place where aided with the clarity of inebriation, you’re able to hold painful truths up to the light and look at them for awhile.
Leslie drops her head back against the arm of the couch, glances around the den and sighs, “The paneling really is awful isn’t it?”
Ann looks up at her from her spot on the floor and grimaces. “It makes the room feel dark and small.”
“It is dark and small.”
“It makes it worse.”
“Yeah.”
She sits with that for a little while, then adds, “I’m going to have to sell the house, aren’t I?”
Ann nods. “Eventually.”
“But not right now, right?”
“Nope.”
“Good.”
Later, Leslie curls up on her side and glares at the kitchen floor illuminated in the single strip of moonlight. “I hate that linoleum.”
“How old is it?”
“I think it’s older than me. I also think it might be a health code violation.”
“Greg’ll come up for a weekend and help you put in something inexpensive from the hardware store.”
“He’d do that?”
Ann snorts. “If he wants sex ever again he will.”
-
“Ann?”
“Yeah?”
“The house-lady was still a bitch, right?”
“Definitely. Uber-bitch.”
---
( Final Part - First Half)