My fingers moved in patterns. A pattern of notes on the fretboard and a picking pattern along the strings at the hollow opening of my acoustic guitar. I was sitting at the foot of the bed in Ben’s room, practicing the song that would be the very last acoustic cover I’d be playing with Rich for the little video series we were doing. It was a hectic final week recording at Prairie Barn Studios. My band and I wanted to milk our money’s worth for our time with Grant. It was go, go, go in the studio and our most stressful week in Edmonton.

We were completely focused on our upcoming album during our recording hours as we got down to the wire. I hadn’t rehearsed the final cover song with Rich or even at all, really, so I took the opportunity when I got it, knowing that I’d have an empty apartment to myself while I waited for Ben to get home. I’d made the trip over from the band’s final gig in Edmonton, an early evening in-store performance at one of the local record stores in Old Strathcona. When I arrived, I changed, turned the lamp on, and got right to work. The keys Ben told me to keep had come in handy after all.

I didn’t have to make many adjustments to the borrowed song. It was mid-tempo and short. I would have the lead vocal role, but there was a cool call and response part in the chorus—a vocal technique Rich and I had become very fond of—for us to sing together. Best of all, Rich would get to play the piano and I would get to play the acoustic guitar. Those were the instruments we each preferred to play for acoustic songs but it was rare to find songs that were exactly that, even songs that we ourselves had written, because acoustic songs weren’t guaranteed to sound pleasant when played the exact same way as they were electric. We usually used a combination of two acoustic guitars or just the piano or just one guitar and some minimal percussion. The song we’d chosen was perfect for the grand finale of our cover series.

By the time I heard the lock turn in the front door, I knew what to do and would pick up practice again with Rich at the next opportune time. I’d moved on to a song that was completely unrelated, but had inspired me back in the writing phase of the album, back in Vancouver. The story of bandmates who dated and broke up was far from unique to my band. I was strumming and singing the end of a song by Fleetwood Mac (maybe the best example that writing about love lost between band members was invaluable) when Ben entered the room.

He sat down to my right, away from the fretboard of my guitar, holding Roscoe in his arms. The beard that had adorned his face so perfectly the day before was gone. He waited until I was done playing before he spoke to me. “Hey, baby.”

“Hey.”

Before, I would have felt uncomfortable if Ben had called me ‘baby’ outside of time engaged in sex. And I definitely didn’t call him that. But we were on the second day of our seven days of real. It wasn’t awkward and it sounded natural rolling off his tongue.

“That reminds me of riding in my mom’s minivan when she would drive me and my brother to hockey practice when we were kids,” Ben told me, referring to the old song I’d just played. “She used to listen to a station that played all the oldies hits. Actually, she probably still does.”

The corners of my mouth turned up into a smile. I knew exactly what he was talking about. The song I’d just played, “Dreams” had been a huge hit for Fleetwood Mac at the end of the 70s—their only #1 on the charts. It was one of the songs on heavy rotation on those Yesterday’s Hits radio stations and rightfully so, because it was timeless. As an acoustic song, it wasn’t difficult to play, just strummed chords. The reason Rich and I hadn’t chosen to do it as a cover for our acoustic series was because it was so driven by the drum beat and the bass line. Without them, the sound and the words felt a little hollow.

All the Fleetwood Mac I listened to in the wake of my failed relationship wasn’t a wash, though. The song right after “Dreams” on their album Rumours was driven by one of Lindsay Buckingham’s guitar picking patterns. The instrumental concept of one of the songs I’d written for Loveless featured a 5-string bass and, more significantly, the guitar was based on a small part of the picking pattern from the verse of Buckingham’s song, “Never Going Back Again”.

As I set my guitar and pick down on the bed, I asked Ben, “How’s Cam?”

“Injured,” he shrugged. “Annoyed. He’s out for at least two months.”

The reason that I arrived downtown before Ben was because he’d gone over to Cam and Kelsey’s for dinner. He wanted to check on Cam, his closest friend on the team and road roommate. Cam had just gotten back from a shoulder injury while on their road trip. He got to play in all of one and a half games before hurting his ankle. I found out that he’d flown home a day early and Ben had their hotel room all to himself for the last night of the trip. So that was why he’d had all that time to think about me.

“That’s such a bummer.” I stood and went to put the guitar in its case that was on the ground.

Once the snaps were sealed shut to keep out the dust, I picked up the guitar in case and leaned it against the wall, out of the way. When I turned back to Ben, he was staring at me and the words out of his mouth had nothing to with his friend. “Nice shirt.”

The flannel shirt I was wearing belonged to him. It was huge on me. It went almost to my knees and I’d had to fold the sleeves over a few times as to not impede with my guitar playing.

“It was cold enough for me to see my breath in here earlier,” I said, reasoning why I’d gone with a camping look. “I needed a way to stay warm without hiding under the covers in bed or wearing my jacket indoors.”

Ben chuckled with a sly grin on his face. “You say that but I can’t help wondering if you’re wearing anything else underneath it.”

His sightline was zeroed in on my chest. I smirked. My nipples weren’t hard and protruding an outline against the shirt. But he was on to me.

I put my hands on his shoulders and pressed my lips to his earlobe before I whispered, “How badly do you want to find out?”

Rather than answer me when I reclaimed my spot beside him, he stood and took Roscoe out to the living room. I heard Ben talking to the kitten, who had grown almost the size of an adult housecat, telling his furry friend that they would hang out again the next day. When he returned to the room, he shut the door behind him and walked up to me with darkened bedroom eyes.

He knelt in front of me and ran his hands up my thighs, pulling my legs apart. My unclothed lady bits were exposed to him and to the cool air of the bedroom. What I had on, or rather, didn’t have on, was better than skimpy lingerie. Under the flannel shirt was nothing but my bare skin.

Ben looked up from my lap with a triumphant smile. “I knew it.”

I melted into a fit of giggles and fell back against the bed as he practically tackled me. He moved us both up the bed so that we were in the center of it. He kissed me softly at first and then deeply, his tongue teasing my tongue, as he began unbuttoning my borrowed shirt.

We hadn’t slept together since the night of my birthday but he didn’t rush anything. I followed his lead as he took the foreplay slowly. There was a lot of kissing. Touching. Licking. Now that we were real, at least for the time being, we explored each other like never before. I was nearly in a trance when it came time for him to push inside me. My entire body was buzzing for him to take me. My folds were wet with my desire.

We ended up with me on top, straddling him. His erection was pointed right at the ‘v’ of my pelvis until I was in a position that was comfortable for me, legs parallel on either side of him and weight centered on his hands that were cupping my ass. I moved forward and guided him to my opening, until his cock was right under my entrance.

His hands moved up to the small of my back as his tip slipped past my folds and I rolled my hips down to take him deeper. I sighed and then bit my lip as my body took in his length. I leaned forward, placed my hands gently on his chest, and rocked my body against his, hoping to speed up our movements. Ben cupped my breasts and flicked my nipples with his thumbs a few times. He pulled me down over him and licked at my right nipple with his tongue, causing me to moan, the new position driving him deeper inside me.

Ben stilled my hips with his hands once he released my breast from his mouth. He stared up at me with those breathtaking blue eyes and took control. He took care of the push and pull of my hips. He pushed me upward until just the head of his cock was surrounded by my hot core and then pulled me all the way down over the base as far as I could take him. He did it over and over again, slowly, ensuring that we both enjoyed the feeling of his girth sliding against my walls.

I could only imagine that the pleasure was written all over my face and he could read me. “Baby,” he whispered while I looked into his eyes, “you feel like silk.”

My hair covered both of our faces like a curtain when I leaned down and fused my lips with his. It was reactionary and necessary. Kissing kept me from moaning and cursing, at least temporarily. Ben was always a good lay but he was a little something extra this time, too, and my body was fully responsive.

He let go of my hips to smooth down my hair, giving me leverage. My intention was to slide back and forth on his dick but in my fury I forgot how far out he was going each time and he slipped out of me. Ben growled against my lips when his tip rubbed against my opening and missed. When I opened my eyes, before I could move to make an adjustment, Ben had me locked in an embrace.

The details of his face were blurry so up close. I could still see the blue gradient of his eyes and the creases in his lips. He leaned his head back further into the mattress so that he had enough room to touch the tip of his nose to mine. I smiled, knowing that he did it because he liked my nose, and recalling the night that we first met. Immediately, he moved his head from side to side and our noses rubbed just a little bit, Eskimo kisses, making me laugh. It was crazy how he could make me feel sexy and then adorable in consecutive moments.

He’d encircled me in his arms to flip us over, so that I was under him. Except once I was on my back he rolled right off me. And he went on my side of the bed. When I gave him a questioning look, he took me up in his arms so that we were spooning. He kissed the sensitive spot behind my ear.

I felt his erection pressed against my backside. Ben ran his large palms down the length of my chest and stopped just below my belly button. It was as hot as it was sensual and I wouldn’t mind him doing it again. He moved a hand down and pressed his thumb to my clit. I drew in a sharp breath and squirmed against the delicious pressure.

His other hand combed over my entire side that was closest to him, from shoulder to waist to hip to thigh. When he got to the back of my knee, he pulled my leg so that it was bent resting on top of his, effectively spreading my legs. He let go of my hot button and felt for my entrance, making me purr.

Ben was a good multitasker in bed. He buried his face in my neck at the same time that he shifted so that his cock was poised in the perfect spot. Then there was the hand between my legs, setting my skin on fire just by running a finger in a straight line up and down along my pussy.

“Please, Ben,” my voice was desperate.

He nudged his length inside me slowly and the whole world changed. Ben was all over me in the best way. I felt him everywhere. He stroked into me slowly and stroked all over my skin with his palm. I twisted my neck in place awkwardly so I could look back at him and there he was ready to engage me in a kiss. He moved his hand up and held my chin, supporting my head as we locked lips slowly, until I drew back for air. His forehead was pressed to mine and he stared at me with smoldering eyes.

I moved my head back into comfortable position, rested against the pillow and facing forward away from Ben. He held me tight against his body and I clutched at his forearm, trying to get closer still. The way he was taking me, sideways and from behind, gave me heightened sensation in places I didn’t even know I had senses. I wanted him to speed up our pace and give me release but at the same time I wanted to continue in our current state forever because the feeling in my stomach was euphoria and I didn’t want it to stop.

In two months, Ben and I had had a lot of sex. Couch sex, shower sex, countertop sex, morning sex. But this time was different. Every movement was gentle and careful yet completely intense. We always slept with each other out of desire. This felt purer. This felt like need. A new feeling arose in the pit of my stomach that I’d never felt before, but I immediately knew what it was. With Ben wrapped around me and inside me, it was there. Wholeness.

For a while the whole world faded away and nothing else mattered except for that feeling. I’d never felt more beautiful, more wanted, more satisfied, more joy in my entire life. It was mind-blowing.

I opened my eyes to reality and sighed in surrender to the sexual pleasure being granted to me. I was thankful when Ben bent my knee up towards my chest and hissed under his breath. It meant that he was close, like I was, and if I fell apart in his arms soon it wouldn’t take long for him to follow. The base of his cock brushed up against my clit with each thrust. I whimpered with delight.

“Oh, Mins,” he grunted the nickname he had created for me.

Ben stayed steady. He stroked into me at the same pace and I went through the full climb of my climax. He just let it happen naturally, without speeding up or slowing down. He hit my sweet spot and my clit almost simultaneously with his angle. He waited and I lost control, like a teapot whistling when the steam came out the spout. I came around his cock, murmuring his name and gasping, clutching at his arm that held my body. My orgasm coursed through me so hard I was shaking.

He responded to the squeeze of my inner walls tightening around him. He stopped pumping and gripped at my skin with his fingertips as he nestled himself inside me. Ben drew in a sharp breath and then released into my body. His stream flowed in time with his breaths, which tickled hot against my ear. The weight of his body against mine was heavier when he was finished. We stayed like that, linked and spooning, for a long time.

When he was ready, Ben pulled out of me, kissing behind my ear and running his hand up and down the side of my body again. At first I took pleasure in it and snuggled back towards him. But I scooted away just far enough that I could roll over to face him, so I could hold him in my arms. Our gazes met and without any words we smiled at each other. We looked at each other dreamily and we closed our eyes.

That was when an old feeling took over in the pit of my stomach. Instead of losing myself to sleep, I thought I was going to start sobbing. I was feverish and bit my lip to keep from dry heaving. I kept my eyes closed and didn’t move until I was sure Ben was asleep.

When his arm went dead weight around my waist and his breathing became consistently heavy, I watched him in his sleep. The lamp on his nightstand was still on; we’d been a little too busy to think about the lighting in the room after sex. Every minute that I looked at him I felt a little worse. Ben was so beautiful. He slept peacefully, even snored a little. He had no idea I was panicking.

I thought back to what Parker said about sex being the most important part of a relationship. Maybe what Parker had really meant to tell me was that the depth of the sex was an indicator of something rare and special between two people. I was up for hours, while Ben slept beside me, reevaluating the validity of what one of my best friends had tried to tell me. It had started as just sex with Ben. Then it was just friends with benefits. I allowed myself to care about him and like him. I’d even appeased him and agreed to bump up our non-relationship to a place where it was like we were dating, for a week, because I didn’t think it could do any harm.

At the start, when we started spending all our free time together, I hadn’t considered that I would want him, really want him, more than physically. We didn’t have more than a few things in common. We weren’t alike in personality or interest. We weren’t even supposed to be happening. But it turned out the physical was a gateway. I was pretty sure that the moment he made me feel something different while we were having sex was the first I’d ever had in my life with anyone. And I was so uneasy because I was pretty sure it was the same moment that I realized I’d already fallen for Ben.

---

The couch felt bigger. It was the only loveseat we’d ever sat on—it was the only one there was—but we’d never sat so close on it before. We only took up one of the cushions. I was practically in Ben’s lap. I could actually feel his side digging into my back. One of his hands rested on my hipbone, his arm wrapped tightly around me. Roscoe was in front of us on the coffee table having one of his many cat naps.

“You want anything?” Ben asked as he took a sip from the green bottle of Moosehead beer in his other hand.

“I’m okay.” I shook my head.

There were roughly six weeks until The Automatic Flowers went on tour again. For the last year of touring, I’d adapted a ritual of living clean for six weeks before any tour that was more than two weeks long—no alcohol, no caffeine, and nothing fried. I, along with my bandmates, found it impossible to eat well on tour. We indulged in whatever we could get our hands on that was a balance between tasting good and cheap because it was tour and tour was supposed to be fun. We’d accumulated a lot of memorable long nights spent drinking with friends in different cities. But the unhealthy road lifestyle on top of the travel was a culprit in getting me sick.

Being sick while on tour was the complete opposite of fun. So, when I heard from friends in another band that I could ‘prepare’ for tour by being healthy leading up to it, I started my ritual. I was only a day into my cleanse for the upcoming tour. It would be a while before my self-imposed ban on alcohol was up.

Ben spoke again, “Roscoe and I wish we could have hung out with you earlier.”

“I wish I could have seen you guys earlier, too,” I replied instantly and teased, “especially Roscoe.”

Tonight was the first time in a long time since we first started sleeping together regularly that I didn’t see Ben as early as I could have. An hour before I was supposed to be at his place I texted him to say that there was just too much going on at the studio for me to leave. I told him that I had to stay. That was a total lie. We had gone long in the studio and the final week recording was stressing me out, but I wasn’t even involved past the afternoon. Really, I’d been more rattled by the night before.

It had been so intense. I’d really felt something for him, which I promised myself I wouldn’t do. For the first time ever I was scared of sex. The sex we’d had wasn’t the kind of sex you were supposed to have at the tail end of a fling. It evoked emotions from me that I hadn’t banked on dealing with. The night before made me want to lie between his sheets and snuggle for hours. I wanted to have long pensive talks with him. I wanted to go on romantic dates. I wanted his Eskimo kisses and to get to know more of his romantic side.

So I didn’t think I could see him until I’d calmed down. If I’d seen him after dinner and if we’d had plenty of time to have sex like that again, it would have been the worst thing to ever happen to me. I needed the evening on my own to sort myself out. Now that it was past midnight, I was back to the reality that I’d always known. I wasn’t special; I wasn’t the first girl to fall for a guy that she’d been intimate with for two months and I wouldn’t be the last.

My reason for being in Edmonton and my goals for myself hadn’t changed just because I had feelings for Ben. I decided that the way to get over last night was to face it head on. If I acknowledged it, I could move past it. I couldn’t just lose myself and my ambition to someone else.

When I turned my cheek to look at Ben, our eyes met. He set his beer down on the table beside the cat. Then he wrapped his arms around me before he leaned in and kissed me. I sighed in his arms and ran my hands through his short hair when we pulled back. I didn’t think we’d be so close when I started the conversation to make sure everything between us ran its course exactly as we’d planned.

“Last night,” I began, “it was…different.”

“Yeah,” he nodded in agreement. “I haven’t had sex like that in a long time.”

“Me either.” I looked away from him.

There was another lie. I’d never had sex like that before. It was a first on a brand new plane of intensity. I was pretty sure it was like what people meant when they spoke of making love. I always believed it was just a myth, something actors said in soap operas, because I’d never felt that way before. Not with Rich, who I’d loved, not with anyone. Ben was always amazing in bed but two nights ago was the best sex I’d ever had in my life.

“You know,” Ben, out of habit, traced over my umbrella tattoo as he spoke, “just because you’re leaving it doesn’t mean…it doesn’t mean you can’t ever look back here.”

“I think that’s for the best,” I countered.

“We could stay the way we are,” he suggested. “I’d like it if we could still see each other sometimes.”

“I know what you really want. You’ve told me about the life you want to build. The future you’re looking forward to.” I reminded him, “We’ve talked about this. That’s not who I am.”

“Those things I shared with you are only ideals,” Ben said dismissively. “No one gets exactly what they want.”

“No, Ben,” I disagreed. “Those things you want aren’t unreasonable. If anything, all this time we’ve spent together, it’s made me see that one day I might want those things, too.”

“So why can’t we stay in touch and be casual and see what happens?” he wondered. “We don’t have to be exclusive or serious if you don’t want. And if you decide you want to be, I’d be there.”

I shook my head in disbelief. How could he discount himself so easily? That wasn’t fair to him.

“I would never change for anyone,” I told him. “I wouldn’t want you to change for me.”

Ben didn’t back down. “I was serious when I told you a few days ago that I really like you. I’d do us by your terms if it means that this doesn’t have to end.”

“I like being the warm body next to you. I have feelings for you. I really like you,” I confessed. “The other night, it was perfect. And it was perfect because you’re incredible. It’s because I like you so much that I want you to have all those things you want. I don’t want to be selfish just because you’ll let me. I want to be practical. You deserve a real relationship.”

Somehow I’d made him think that I was worth the trouble. And yes, I’d fallen for him. But that didn’t make us different people. Ben was ready to settle down and I wanted to climb the ranks with my band so we could play The Troubadour and Roseland Ballroom and Manchester Academy. Ben and I weren’t going to meet in the middle because we weren’t moving in the same direction.

“So I should be thanking you for leaving.” Ben smiled bitterly.

My heart hurt. I wanted so badly for our time together to end on a good note. It would be hard to salvage the next few days if he already resented me.

“You could tell me that you understand,” I said softly. “All those things you told me before that you like about me…I wouldn’t be me if I don’t go this way.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. He blinked at me. He studied my face and touched my cheek. I got that sinking feeling in my stomach again and I reacted to it. I moved and swung a leg over him so that I was in his lap, straddling him. His arms went around my waist as he pressed his forehead to mine.

“Okay,” he finally answered. “I understand.”

I kissed Ben’s nose and whispered, “I’m sorry I’m leaving.”

Notes

Extended Chapter Notes