“Seriously?” Parker’s eyebrows were raised in disbelief.

“He’s a growing boy,” I sighed. “He needs to eat three or four times a day.”

It was a Sunday evening, the very last of The Automatic Flowers’ allowance off days. We had two more weeks of recording in the studio before our final wrap-up week. Parker and I were spending our last night off at Ben’s. We were going to do our laundry, make dinner, and watch a John Hughes movie. And then we were going to have a sleepover.

We’d barely just walked through the front door and I was already peeling back the lid on an easy-open can of cat food for Roscoe. It was the routine I’d gotten into for the last few days since Ben had been gone. I followed what I remembered seeing him do in the mornings and filled in the blanks for the rest of the day. I fed Roscoe wet kitten food in the morning and at night, when I was there to set it out for him. I let the timed dispensers ration his dry food and water in the middle of the day when he had the apartment to himself.

“Do you have to clean out his litter box, too?” Parker’s expression was sour at the thought and at the smell of Roscoe’s dinner hitting the air.

I chuckled as I dumped the protein-rich food into Roscoe’s dedicated wet food bowl. “Nope. Ben managed to get him trained on the self-cleaning litter box even though he’s still pretty young. Because Roscoe is a bad-ass.”

My sock-clad feet padded against the smooth floor of the apartment to Roscoe’s feeding spot, at the intersection of the kitchen and living room and just the right distance from the hall closet, where I set the bowl down. He would come out of whatever hiding place he was in when he was ready. It had only taken a few minutes in the past few days.

“Wow.” Parker went ahead and took a seat at the island counter. “Ben really loves this cat.”

“I never met a grown man with a kitten before Ben. They’re like best friends,” I told Parker while I washed my hands in the kitchen sink. “You should see what it’s like when they’re hanging out, playing together. This little guy gets so much exercise and so much cuddle time. It’s adorable.”

“Oh, stop. Imagining your handsome fuck buddy being all cute with a kitten makes me want to puke rainbows,” Parker said.

I took a seat on the barstool beside him. “Nice. So, do you want to get a load in the washer before we start dinner? The neighbours will probably appreciate it if we’re done with the dryer by 10.”

The closet that the washer and dryer were in had always been open whenever I was over, so that Roscoe could move freely to the scratching post and litter box as needed. I didn’t know if Ben closed that area off when he did laundry. I did know that the dryer had a hum to it. I’d heard the hum of the downstairs neighbour’s dryer before and it wasn’t exactly the most pleasant faint sound to hear for 40 minutes.

“Really, you’re worried about the neighbours?” Parker teased, “Like you and Ben don’t keep them up anyway.”

My friend had a point. Ben lived with a prime view of Edmonton’s downtown core—which in itself was pretty modest—but he didn’t live in luxury just because it was a high-rise building. The floors definitely weren’t made of marble and the walls weren’t even completely soundproof.

“Hey, we didn’t have sex that night that you stayed here,” I pointed out. “You have no idea how we treat the neighbours.”

Parker laughed. “I bet I have a good idea how you treat each other. You’ve probably had sex in every room of this apartment, haven’t you? Is there even a surface I can use to fold my clean laundry later and not assume that you guys did it there?”

I chewed my lip before giving an honest answer. “Guest bathroom. I’ve never even been in there.”

The guest bathroom—a half bath, as homebuilders called them—was directly opposite of the closet upon entry into the apartment. It was so discreet that I didn’t even know it existed through the entire month of October. I’d had my back pressed against its door a few times when Ben kissed me; I’d thought it was just another closet. We always used the master bath. I guess that was what happened when you spent the majority of your time in the bedroom.

My friend put his palms to his face and groaned at my revelation. I wasn’t ashamed about any of the fun I’d had with Ben. I could cop to anything to Parker and he would surely surrender first every time. He didn’t always like it when I dished back his teasing.

“Hey, there is a kitten that lives here. There’s a standard set in place for cleanliness. Look at this place,” I gestured around the apartment. “Ben knows how to tidy up. You’re not going to find bodily fluids in places they shouldn’t be.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of black fur. I turned my head to see that Roscoe was just short of the living room. He stood still on all fours, white paws a stark contrast to the chocolate colour of the floor. His head was cocked to the side, adorable as he looked at the humans in his home. I realized he might be a little unsure of Parker. They’d never formally met and Parker’s voice was new to Roscoe. Parker was closer to the dinner bowl than I was. The kitten just needed to know that Parker wouldn’t be a hindrance.

“Hey, buddy. Hi.” I sat on the floor where Roscoe was and spoke to him. “You must be hungry.”

I scratched at the white tuft of fur at his neck and his green eyes instantly became half-slits. I extended my reach, stroking his shiny black coat at his shoulders and then scratching behind his ears. He purred and sat down on his hind legs to enjoy it some more.

“Come on.” I laughed and picked him up, setting him in front of his food. “Dinner time. You’re going to grow up to be a big strong kitty.”

Roscoe looked from his food to Parker and back. He sniffed the food before he finally began to lick at it.

“Look at you feeding the cat and knowing your way around like you own the place,” Parker smiled briefly and shook his head. “Are you really going to be able to leave here unscathed?”

“I’ll be fine,” I answered confidently. “Ben will be gone again when we leave. I haven’t spoken to him since he’s been gone. Not a big deal.”

We weren’t in a relationship. We didn’t have to call and check in with each other. Actually, given our lack of a relationship, it might be inappropriate to call each other while he was gone. Ben was on a 10-day road trip now, and he’d be out of town again when my band and I went back to Vancouver. There was limited time, once Ben got back from his current road trip, for us to hang out. Our arrangement would end and I was okay with that. That had always been the plan. That’s why it was called an arrangement and nothing more.

“Too bad. You and Ben would be a cute couple,” Parker suggested.

“What would we even talk about?” I practically snorted at the thought. “We have nothing in common and Ben hardly talks enough as it is.”

My arrangement with Ben worked, I thought, because we operated under the premise that it was temporary. I took in the most that I could with the time that I had. Ben and I shared things from our lives with each other, but we didn’t know each other, not really. I didn’t feel close to him in the way that I would with a boyfriend. And that was of my own conscious doing. Whenever I felt like my feelings were getting in the way of my fun with Ben, I set them as far aside as I could.

“You know what the most important part of a relationship is, Delia?” Parker asked.

I nodded and said simply, “Trust.”

“Sex,” he corrected me. “And you said the sex is amazing.”

“Parker—”

“People are lying when they say that sex is secondary. You and Ben already have the sex part completely figured out.” Parker crossed his arms over his chest. “Everything else follows. The two of you could be good together if you wanted to be.”

Parker’s theory was a nice idea to buy into. Did I like Ben? Of course. It was more than just sex between us because we’d established a friendship. I liked passing the time with Ben. He was kind to me and he respected me. Having the time to think about him without being with him every night was making me see that I liked him a lot.

But having feelings for Ben didn’t change the fact that I was a 23-year-old musician who couldn’t wait to see more of the world. I didn’t have the same aspirations as Ben. Not yet anyway.

“I’m not the right girl for Ben,” I told my friend. “He wants to be in love and have kids and the whole deal. He’s never insinuated that he wants whatever we’re doing to lead to that. He knows that I’m leaving and we’re not going to see each other.”

“So you don’t want those things?” Parker wondered.

“I don’t know. Maybe. But I don’t want them now,” I explained. “Ben is ready for those things now. You know that I want to make records and go on tour freely, without reservations. If it means I have to be single to do it, I accept that. I’ve got plenty of time before I start to feel lonely.”

“No offense but…he’s a little dumb, right? Getting involved with you like this. Taking you out for your birthday. Letting you stay at his place. I don’t think those are things you do just to pass the time, just for sex. What if he thinks you are the right girl?” Parker was playing devil’s advocate. “What if he would wait for you to catch up, until you were ready?”

That thought hadn’t crossed my mind. Ben was a romantic but I could never imagine him waiting for me, so to speak. He wasn’t my type, even if I did like him. He didn’t play music. He wasn’t passionate about his favorite bands. He couldn’t care about the things I loved so dearly in my community because he wasn’t part of my community.

Ben was a great guy but we were too different. A one night stand that turned into an autumn fling wasn’t a good basis for a relationship. There was the fatal flaw of Parker’s theory. The sex was important but the relationship couldn’t be primarily rooted in sex if it was really going to work. Surely Ben couldn’t be dumb enough to think that The One for him was a girl who didn’t even plan on continuing a friendship with him past November.

“I wouldn’t want him to wait,” I responded to Parker’s hypothetical questions. “I do care about him. I hope he has his happily ever after.”

“You should make sure he knows that,” Parker advised me. “He seems like a sweet guy. Don’t go breaking his heart.”

-----

My biggest fear of Alberta had become a reality. The first snow had fallen in Edmonton overnight. It wasn’t very thick, just a light layer that dusted the city in white. I still hated it. The temperature had dropped overnight, which significantly altered my attire and my approach to the day. Gone out the window were my plans for one of my favourite polka dot dresses and a pair of tights. To stay warm, I wore a black crewneck sweater that advertised one of the hardcore bands I liked, along with some stonewash jeans that tucked into my Docs perfectly.

The truth was that I was an overreactive wuss, very un-Canadian, when it came it snow. I had an early Thursday morning, but the most I had to suffer through the cold was a few minutes’ dash from the lobby of Ben’s building to Bay/Enterprise Square LRT Station. Downtown Edmonton was largely connected by a “Pedway” system, a series of indoor, temperature-controlled overhead and underground passageways. Once inside Enterprise Square, I walked all the way to the City Centre Plaza without having to brave any of the elements.

I was up at approximately the same time that I woke up when I usually woke up next to Ben, but this time it was on the account of a band engagement. We’d been invited to the CBC studios in Edmonton to do an acoustic session that would be played on CBC Radio 3, the CBC’s satellite station that played an eclectic mix of up and coming indie artists. It was early and acoustic, and the day ahead at Prairie Barn Studios would be devoted to tracking guitars, so the guys wanted to sleep in. It was the first time in a long time that Rich and I were doing a band thing as just the two of us.

We’d made so much progress moving on and moving forward. I didn’t devote time to spend with Rich but I never avoided him. We were getting back to spending time together even without the rest of our bandmates around. The songs that we’d written only helped. We spoke to each other a lot in the studio. We blended our ideas and we laughed together the same way that we used to. The part of our relationship as a couple was done but we weren’t done. We were bandmates, partners, co-writers, and most of all, friends.

We loved each other differently than we did when we were a couple, but we did love each other—it was just a different kind of love. That was our biggest realization through the album-making process. That was the subject of one of the songs I’d written and when I presented it to Rich I told him that I thought he should take the lead vocals on it. So it wasn’t my song because I’d written it or his because he sang on it. It was our song. And we’d decided it was the song we were naming the album after, Loveless.

The title was an intended misnomer. It was fitting because of the breakup songs that would be on the album. There were certainly songs that carried feelings of contempt. But Rich and I had taken our breakup and turned it into something positive for our band, and it was reflected in our work. The album wasn’t gloom and doom and feeling sorry for ourselves. “Loveless”, the song, could even be misinterpreted as a romantic in-love song when just presented by itself. The hook of the song was its theme and, maybe, an underlying theme of the whole album. It was simple: we knew each other better now, after everything that we went through, so how could we love each other less?

As the title track, the song would be the focal point of the album, and that was why it was the first song we were playing for our session at the CBC. There was an interview segment that followed the four songs that we would be playing, two old and two new, and both of us knew that we could expect to be asked about the subject matter that fueled our upcoming album. While Rich and I began to set up in the broadcast studio, I thought about how ironic it was that the first coverage of us talking formally about our breakup would be for a government-sponsored entity.

“What are you smiling about?” Rich asked me when he looked up from the cables he was untangling. My appreciation of irony must have shown on my face.

While I only had to walk over from Ben’s place, Rich had driven the van from the ranch with the limited gear that we needed for an acoustic performance with only the two of us. We loaded in two acoustic guitars, some microphones and stands, the keyboard, and the xylophone. The thing about acoustic performances, when done for mass broadcast, was that they weren’t really acoustic in the “no wires” sense. For the proper amplification, everything had to be either plugged in or mic’d up.

I worked on tuning the guitars while Rich got the mic for the xylophone set up.

“Nothing,” I shrugged. “Just taking in the fact that we’re at a regional CBC affiliate right now. Pretty surreal.”

It would be a lie for me to say that never in my wildest dreams did I think our band could make it. From the moment we started our band, I hoped and dreamed that we would make it in our own scene. I just had never thought about being on CBC Radio, even if it was the satellite station. I wanted The Automatic Flowers to succeed in the same way as my favourite bands: put out records, go on tour, and be respected in the same music community as them. Anything beyond that was icing on the cake.

“And lucky you,” Rich clicked his tongue, “all you had to do was walk here.”

I felt a pang of guilt in my chest. The day before, before I left the studio to feed Roscoe, I told Rich which of the acoustic guitars he should bring and that I would meet him the next morning because I was staying so close to CBC. I didn’t offer any more information than that and Rich didn’t ask for any. He was used to me spending nights away from the band by now.

“Sorry if I’ve been distant this last week,” I offered as I tightened a guitar string. “I’ve sort of been housesitting and getting into a lot of self-indulgence.”

“Your friend with the Lincoln?” Rich asked. “I noticed you picked up a new ride.”

Ben’s SUV drove a lot like my band’s tour van, just with leather interior and less passenger rows. I’d been driving it to and from the studio every day.

“Tomorrow will be my last day driving it,” I replied.

“It must be getting pretty serious.” Rich’s tone was suggestive. “He must really trust you. Lending you his car.”

He. His. This was the first time Rich and I were acknowledging to each other that my ‘friend’ I spent all my time with was a male.

“No, we’re not…we’re not together or anything,” I corrected Rich. “It isn’t serious.”

“Are you sure?” Rich raised an eyebrow at me. “I never see you past 9 pm, Delia.”

“We’re only hanging out until I leave,” I reiterated. “I’m sorry we haven’t had this conversation before now. I guess I don’t really know how to talk to you about…this stuff…not yet.”

No way in hell was I ready to tell Rich the finer details of who I was hooking up with. No way did I want to talk to my ex-boyfriend about how sexually satisfied I was because of Ben. I didn’t want to talk about how I had feelings for Ben and that I planned on flushing them out of my system by the end of autumn.

“I don’t want you to think that you have to hide the fact that you’re seeing someone new from me,” Rich said, looking me in the eye. “I can deal.”

“This thing with Ben—that’s his name—it isn’t serious. But you’re saying, if it was,” I wondered, “you’d be okay with it?”

Rich hit the mallet for the xylophone against his palm a few times before he responded. “Well, no. I wouldn’t be okay with it. Of course I want to be the one who meets the right person first. I want to be in a new relationship before you are,” he spoke honestly. “But I have no control over who we meet and when we realize that we want to be with them. Like I said, I’ll deal with it. I’d pretend that I was okay with everything until I really was. I do want you to be happy, Delia.”

I had no problem with Rich’s honesty. Actually, I appreciated it. We were so similar. I felt the same way as him. I did want him to find somebody, but not before me. And there was the biggest reason we never worked out as a couple. We were too much alike, right down to the conditions under which we wanted to see each other happy. I smirked at our similarity. We were bitter realistsbut not romantics. Ben was too different than me and Rich was too much like me. I was alone without a guy who was the middle ground, which I was fine with. But I wasn’t without Rich—I hadn’t lost him. We were still those kids that we had been years ago, sitting in the basement of his house, becoming better musicians and better friends.

“What are you smiling about now?” Rich set the mallet on top of the xylophone and crossed his arms over his chest.

“You’re still my best friend, Rich,” I told him as I held out the guitar I’d just finished tuning in his direction. I was on to the next. “I hope I’m still yours.”

Notes

At the beginning, I said that Rich would play a very minimal part in the story because I wanted Delia and Rich to eventually repair their friendship. So here's that. It's probably hard to see now, but both sections of this chapter are important. There are no conversations without purpose.

Sorry for the delay posting this...and for a chapter without any Ben. He was certainly talked about a whole lot though. Remember that just because Delia says something or thinks a certain way, it doesn't mean she is going to be right.

Extended Chapter Notes