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Call It Off

Yellowhead Trail

There was no hangover the next morning. There was daylight coming in from behind the undrawn curtains. There was me, naked in an unfamiliar bed. I was wrapped up in a sheet and pinned to the mattress by the guy from the night before. Ben. He looked awfully cozy considering we were just two strangers that had decided to hook up. He lay lower down on the bed than me: head on the edge of the pillow and tucked to my chest, arm draped over my middle. I smiled momentarily. It was almost sweet.

There was something oddly sweet about Ben. Maybe sweet wasn’t the right word. Considerate. He was considerate. We’d made out some before we made it inside his apartment the night before. I remembered it all because I hadn’t gotten drunk. Ben had made sure of it. We’d been on the couch half naked and grinding against each other when he stopped to give me his own version of a sobriety test: he covered my wrist with two of his fingers. When I’d asked him what he was doing, he told me he was checking to see if my pulse was racing as an indicator of intoxication. I’m a lot of things, he’d said, but a guy who takes advantage of a drunk girl is not one of them.

He hadn’t wanted to get behind the wheel after an hour or so at the bar, but I wondered if he might actually be stone cold sober once I had him naked. There was just so much of him. I was short and petite—perpetuated more by being on the road so much than the inconsistent eating habits my band and I had on the road—but I was no lightweight. Like any respectable Canadian girl, I could hold my liquor. Well, Ben looked like he probably outweighed me by a hundred pounds. Not in the sick steroid bodybuilder way, and not with six-pack abs, but he was completely solid. Thick legs, ripped back and shoulders, a chest that you could light a match off of. And his arms were unreal.

I hung out with skinny musicians who maybe did yoga occasionally. In my own band, the five of us were committed to running a 5K four days a week and taking our multivitamins every day, no matter where we were. But that was because being sick on tour was miserable, so we did what we could to keep our health, not because we were very concerned with our physiques. I’d never even seen a man like Ben before. Maybe that was why we fucked twice the night before.

The first time had been on the couch. Me on his lap, his palms guiding my hips as we thrust against each other selfishly, until the ripples of pleasure broke. We’d moved to the bedroom and did it slower. More touching and heavy breathing, but fucking just the same. I was well spent after he’d sent me to a second orgasm and I knew I’d drifted off soon after that. I might have been in the same spot I was now. There was a good chance I hadn’t moved all night if Ben had fallen asleep against me.

I wiped away the sleep from my eyes and the sheet rustled. I moved my foot gently and my toes met my bedmate’s shin bone. He stirred in his sleep and I held my breath. He didn’t wake up. Instead, his head moved a couple of inches away from my chest. I breathed a sigh of relief. Ben’s stirring was actually beneficial to me, allowing me to move onto my back under the weight of his arm. I winced. I was right; I had been in the same spot all night. The muscles along my side felt numb.

Ben stirred again. This time one of his legs moved forward and slid over one of mine. His breathing changed and his eyes opened. I bit the inside of my lip, stopping myself from gasping. Those eyes hadn’t looked this beautiful in the dark. They were like a crystallized gradient—light in the center around the iris, then transitioning through shades of blues into an outer ring of darker blue that was thicker than any other I’d seen before. I wondered if many other women had woken up next to him and thought what I thought. He was now the most physically perfect human I’d ever met—his body, his dick, and now his eyes.

My mind quickly wandered to a different place as he adjusted to being awake. I wondered what the hell his damage was. Attractive men with athletic builds, who lived alone in downtown buildings, who also drank alone in bars on weekdays had to have some form of emotional damage, right? Maybe he was a workaholic corporate slave? Or a writer?

Maybe you should stop speculating.

“Hi, Delia,” he spoke, finally.

Well, if he remembered my name, he definitely hadn’t even gotten close to inebriated the night before. I offered a half-smile. “Hi, Ben.”

He cleared his throat. “Did you sleep okay?”

I nodded against the pillow my head was rested on.

“If I fall asleep on my back I snore really badly,” he went on, apparently unsatisfied with my answer. “I’ve been told it sounds like I’m cutting down trees.”

“I slept fine,” I reaffirmed. “You didn’t snore.”

Anyway, I slept like undisturbed oil at low temperature. I suspected he’d been on his side facing me all night, but if he did snore, I didn’t hear it.

“Do you have to be at the studio by a certain time?” he wondered as he shifted his legs away from mine and withdrew his arm from my body. “I’m good to drive you now.”

“I should be there before noon,” I answered, then added, “but if you have to get to work, it’s okay. I can take the bus.”

Now that it was morning, Strathcona County Transit was in service. I could get to Sherwood Park by bus from downtown Edmonton in about thirty minutes. From the central station hub, it was only one more bus and five minutes to the ranch.

“I have—” Ben stopped abruptly, paused, then corrected himself. “I don’t have to be anywhere until 10. It’s not even 8 o’clock yet.”

The morning after the casual sex and he was still being considerate. No walk of shame for me. Not even an awkward confrontation. I figured I ought to give him an easy out and free reign to kick me out of his bed. People who led normal lives, who weren’t musicians writing records, did still have to work on Thursday mornings, right?

“Only if you’re sure…” I said.

“Last night, I told you that I was going to make sure you got home safely,” he reminded me. “Let me keep my word.”

I wanted to smirk. He remembered our first words to each other selectively. He’d also said that he wasn’t going to drink with me or take me home, but he’d done both those things anyway.

“So,” Ben posed another question, “do you want the shower first or second?”

Damn. Another surprise. I didn’t even know that was going to be an option on the menu. I thought he would want me out of his place as soon as possible. Man, he was really bad at this casual sex thing. Maybe that was his damage—he slept with a lot of girls, didn’t lead them to believe it was going to be anything more, but was also way too nice to them after.

“Um,” I paused, trying to quickly decide what the better option for me was.

All of the things I had with me weren’t with me. They were in Ben’s living room. I thought about where articles of my clothes might be. My bra was probably on the ground at the foot of the couch, next to the used condom wrapper. I’d easily made it naked from the couch to the bed several hours before. Now, I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to parade my body in front of Ben out to the living room, even if he’d already seen me naked. For fuck’s sake, he’d fucked me. Still, the confidence I had the night before—the trace amount of liquid courage—wasn’t the same confidence I had now. Besides, I didn’t have to pee that badly.

“I’ll go second,” I finally answered.

His next gesture was a combination of a shrug and a single nod. He pulled back the part of the sheet that covered himself and stepped out of bed onto the wooden floor of his room. I was awarded with the full frontal view of Ben in the nude as he sauntered around the foot of the bed and into the attached bathroom. Yep, he was still just as hot as I thought he was the night before, full mooned and well hung. He didn’t seem at all fazed by his own nudity.

Only when the sound of the water running had been going for a minute did I move into a sitting position. I stayed sitting for just a moment before I decided to hightail it to the living room. I started picking up my clothes. I stopped at the shirt Ben had worn the night before, a black polo. It went over my head easily, the sleeves reaching my elbows and the bottom running mid-thigh on me. I hoped he wouldn’t mind, and I suspected he wouldn’t, since he’d proven to be nothing but considerate in the last nine or so hours. I was fine with putting on the same dress that I’d walked in wearing, but I would rather not put it on for the next ten minutes, take it off when I showered, then put it on again after.

After I made a pile of my clothes, the next step was grabbing my backpack. It was in the middle of the little entryway of the apartment. I’d tossed it pretty early and haphazardly in the midst of kissing Ben when we’d come up from the bar. Now I put it on the couch and sat down before checking for my cellphone. I hit the home button and my new notifications flashed on the lock screen. Miraculously, the battery had made it through the night and was at 8%.

Unlocked, there was one email and nine text messages. All of the texts were from my bandmates. Most of them were from Parker, but two were from Rich. The last one was from him: Where you? Call. Worried.

I sighed. An incomplete sentence followed by single-word sentences meant he’d had too much to drink and was having trouble typing. But the fact that he was texting me at 1 in the morning, worried, after we’d had a fight, it proved that our friendship couldn’t ever be lost no matter what we were to each other. Now I owed him an apology. My failure to make it back to the ranch wouldn’t have bothered any of the guys if we were back home. But we weren’t home and I didn’t make it back to our ‘home away from home’. That wasn’t how friends and bandmates were supposed to be when they were all on the road together, not without communication.

Be there soon. I’ll explain later. I sent an identical message to both of my friends and felt bad about it.

I’d been selfish. I hadn’t been thinking of anything but my own satisfaction while I was being fucked the night before.

Half an hour later, after I’d showered, I was sitting in Ben’s car. He’d typed the address of Prairie Barn Studios into the GPS of his luxury vehicle, BMW in make, so that I wouldn’t have to keep guessing directions. I decided he couldn’t be a writer, not if he could afford a downtown condo and luxury car. Still, I refrained from asking what he did for a living. That wasn’t something you asked someone that was just a one night stand, especially if they appeared to be rich. It was fun to keep guessing anyway. UFC gym owner. Contracting service operations manager. Astronaut.

“Uh…are you okay with the radio?”

Though I didn’t know how Ben made his living, he was well aware of how I made mine. That was why he was asking about the radio, because my whole life was wrapped up in the indie music scene. Though my particular music selections varied from day to day, a good chunk of the music I listened to was independent and most of my friends were people I’d met through music, one way or another. No, mainstream radio would not be my first choice for a drive. But 20 minutes with the radio on in the car, instead of the silent half-hour bus ride, wouldn’t kill me. It wasn’t all bad.

“The radio is alright,” I replied to his question.

“Yesterday, when I got to the bar, you were playing your last song,” Ben kept the conversation going, “what’s your band called?”

“The Automatic Flowers.”

“The Automatic Flowers,” he repeated, as if trying to commit it to memory. “Automatic Flowers…isn’t that a song from Clumsy?”

“Wow,” I breathed out, turning and looking at him. “I’m so impressed you know that.”

His eyes remained fixed on the road. “Good album. Good 90s album.”

“I won’t disagree.” How could I disagree when I was in a band named after a song from it? “But I mean…we were kids.”

I was guessing that Ben was older than me—he looked older, and he seemed to be well put together with some sort of career—but only by a few years. Clumsy was the second album released by Our Lady Peace, a powerhouse Canadian alternative band, in 1997. It was arguably the best work they’d ever put out (in hindsight, choosing one of their songs for a band name was a terrible idea because all of the music they’d put out in the last decade was, well, terrible). To my knowledge, it was their most commercially successful album to date. But it still felt like an indie album to Rich and me—the two of us had the final say on what our band name ended up being—even though it’d been released on a major label.

Clumsy and “Automatic Flowers” had a very band feel to it. There was no overproduction. The singing was urgent, imperfect, and even grating at times. The music was sincere. Everything came together at a balance. I would have been 8 when it was released. When I was 8, the Spice Girls were popular. It wasn’t until a few years later when I started getting into rock music that I would even have a clue as to what alternative music was. In my early teens I had to go back and discover music that I’d been too young to appreciate during its initial release.

Ben cracked a smile. “I think I had a stage, maybe when I was 14 or 15, when I was only into that sound. For a month I swear I only listened to Our Lady Peace and Moist.”

We came to a stop light and Ben glanced at me. I grinned. “That is a lot of whining and angst for 30 days.”

Canadian alternative rock of the 90s was a particular brand of grating. For nostalgia and from a cultural standpoint, there would always be a reason for me to appreciate it. But once I got past that around age 14, once I started listening to even older music that was loud and fast, it turned out that the alternative I’d known was not very good. My taste had improved significantly between 14 and 22, but (maybe unfortunately) the name of the band I was in would always be a call to the formative years of musical influence.

Ben cracked a smile, and gave me more credit than I deserved. “You know better than me, being in a band and all. Is it hard for you, being the only girl in the band?”

“Not really. I’m used to it,” I answered honestly. “By now I think I’m most comfortable when I’m with my boys, away from home.”

My band felt like my family. Anything I’d ever accomplished that meant something was shared with them. I loved that I got to sing and play bass, that I was part of something bigger than myself. We’d done more than make it out of Victoria. We were making just enough money to keep touring and make more music. We had fans. When we played, when Rich and I sang on stage, there were at least a few people singing along. As more time had passed, more people showed up to sing along. We were fortunate to have had enough support to not have to work odd jobs in between the last two tours. Our last tour before recording had been our first headlining tour. The venues may have been small, but they were full, and the kids—our peers—were there to see our band.

“Do you remember the guy in my band who was also singing last night?” I asked Ben. “The one who was playing the keyboard?”

“Sure.”

“He used to be my boyfriend,” I revealed. “We broke up six months ago.”

“Wow,” was Ben’s stunned answer, after a beat lapsed. “That…that’s crazy. How is your band still together?”

“That’s the thing,” I started, “I think we’ve always been more committed to the band than we were to each other. We became a couple a few years after we started the band, not the other way around. We’re on good terms most days of the week. Actually, the album that we’re working on, it’s about our breakup.”

What?” he choked on his question as the GPS chimed and he turned the car onto the last two-lane street before the little road, just a little wider than a bike path, that would lead up to Prairie Barn Studios.

“I know it’s a little bit wackyville,” I admitted. “But the best songs always seem to be about the disarray of relationships.”

Ben clicked his tongue. “I’m still salty on my last failed relationship. The things I have to say about my last ex-girlfriend…I don’t think I should say most of them out loud, much less in a song.”

I chuckled as the car reached the turn-off to the ranch. “We wrote our lyrics separately. Not just about the breakup. The rise and fall of our relationship, and the after. I know that we—Rich and I—we still hurt sometimes. But I don’t think either of us looks back on our time together negatively.”

My friendship with Rich would always be a little complicated because of the last two years. But I was hopeful that complicated didn’t mean it had to be strained for much longer. I wanted us to get to a point where we were even better friends than we’d been when we were best friends before. That was still down the road though. For now it was enough that we were trying, we were on good terms, and we were doing our best.

“Maybe you’re just a better person than I am,” Ben answered.

“Doubtful.”

The ride on the narrow path didn’t last long. The strip of land that the ranch was on was only about an acre, and the distance from the main road to the front door was not bad at all. The bus stop, down the main road at the intersection, was probably within reasonable walking distance as long as it wasn’t a subzero day in winter. My bandmates and I had begun doing our fitness runs around the property line for the duration of our stay in Alberta. Grant’s closest neighbours a kilometre away were actually a bedroom community of brand new homes.

Ben pulled up behind the tour van that belonged to my band. He put his vehicle into park but didn’t turn off the engine. “I can’t believe little places like this exist a 20 minute drive from downtown.”

I quipped, “This is Wild Rose Country, after all.”

He nodded without a word.

Oh, God. To this point, there hadn’t been a single awkward moment between us. But there was about to be. How did one politely say ‘It was great sleeping with you. Thanks for the ride. See you never.’?

“Thank you for making sure I got home in one piece,” I said sincerely.

“No problem,” he answered and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “It was nice meeting you.”

It was nice fucking you.

“Likewise,” I agreed, keeping my thoughts to myself. My fingers went for the door handle and I turned away from him with one more awkward statement. “So…take care.”

My fingers closed around the handle and I was about to open the door. “Delia,” he blurted my name out abruptly, stopping me.

I thought I heard him sigh or curse under his breath to himself. I didn’t think he meant for it to sound like that. The man was hot, but he was not smooth. I looked at him again, waiting for him to speak.

“Can I call you?” Ben asked. “Maybe we can run into each other again.”

There he was being considerate again. He’d accidentally said my name tinged with desperation just so he could be nice and end the night we’d spent together without the awkwardness that I’d been willing to end it on. His eyes were so blue and inviting and I didn’t care which way he meant it. He was already digging in his pocket for his phone so I could input my number. To return the favor—he’d been nothing but kind to me—I actually typed in 10 digits in the correct order that were mine. I knew he wouldn’t be calling me anyway.

Notes

Delia kind of scares me. In simplest terms, she just bluntly says what she's thinking, doesn't she? But I do like that about her, too. Anyway, she's obviously wrong about never talking to Ben again, and in the next chapter she finds out about his occupation. By the way, the band that Delia is in, The Automatic Flowers, is completely non-existent and made up only for this story.

Thank you for reading!

Extended Chapter Notes

Comments

So I know these stories are probably never going to be updated but it really isn't fair to this poor reader to hint at sequels and updates and never get them! I know some people like realism in their stories but I read these stories to escape and sad endings make me sad! Jùst thought I would get this off my chest!

Polarvortex Polarvortex
8/31/20

I'm wishing for another story with Ben <3 or even a sequel..

XxcorinnexX XxcorinnexX
8/12/15

Are you still writing a sequel? Please!!!

Tento2 Tento2
6/13/14

I Finally Uploaded my Own Story!
Here is the link!
http://www.hockeyfanfiction.com/Story/36019/How-To-Perform/

Psquared91 Psquared91
2/18/14
So excited for a sequel!
BostonGirl711 BostonGirl711
10/18/13