AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Love you too,” Aaron said with a smug grin, then showed himself out.
Ben rubbed at his eyes, then picked up his phone again for the second time, staring at Chaz’s profile. It was pretty bare-bones, but considering it seemed to be more of a blind dating app the way Grindr was for hookups, that was to be expected.
Chaz was thirty-two, a civil engineer—which was a bit too vague for his liking. He liked dogs and disliked cats, which was a huge red flag in Ben’s book, and he got his degree at NYU. He had the potential to be any Jewish mother’s dream, but part of Ben wanted someone who would rebel against her desires and expectations.
It was probably why he’d given Taylor the time of day in the first place.
It was probably why he ignored all those early signs that things were going to get ugly. But he’d been an overworked, overstressed second-year professor the day Taylor sat beside him at the coffee shop and told him he was too pretty to look so sad.
If he’d known then what he knew now, he would have understood what an ugly attempt at a compliment that had been. But back then, he’d been flattered. It was rare anyone called him good-looking, let alone pretty, and back then, he was so starved for comfort that Taylor seemed like the dream.
He should have known it was all going to go to shit the first weekend away they took together. Taylor spent the whole time criticizing his driving, and his clothes, and how much he was eating. They fucked, and Taylor criticized his hips, and the way he moved, and how he kissed.
When Taylor fell asleep, Ben had faced the wall and spent the night crying until he was too exhausted and out of tears to do anything other than fall unconscious.
Taylor pretended like nothing was wrong the next day, and Ben just…rolled with the punches.
Like a moron.
He fully believed he’d see through that kind of bullshit now—three years full of experience and trauma later. But there was a small piece of him that didn’t trust his heart because his brother was right: he was lonely.
He just wasn’t sure if he hated that or not.
He scrolled through the list of names, then finally forced himself to get back to work. If he didn’t get those final essays graded and the final study guide done, there would be no dates for Chanukah. There would just be last-minute work, and stress, tears, and far too much wine.
And he was tired of ending his semester that way.
He was going to hate being grateful to his brother if this worked out, but also—if he found someone who was willing to love him for who he was—he might be willing to show Aaron a little hint of gratitude.
two
“So, you’ve obviously lost it.”
Ben sighed and gripped his steering wheel so hard his knuckles began to ache. He hadn’t brought one of the only other professors in his department he could call a friend to the bar for her to criticize him. He wanted her to sympathize and maybe make fun of the situation. Not imply that he was starting to crack under the pressure.
“It’s not that nuts.”
“Is going on blind dates for Chanukah some kind of festive thing we Gentiles aren’t taught about?”
Ben flushed lightly and rolled his eyes toward the roof of his car. “No. This is my brother’s misguided way of being nice to me.”
“Or,” Selina said with a small grin, “this is that weird arranged marriage thing that your people do. Maybe he’s just hiding it because he knows you’re an atheist.”
Ben bristled. His parents had been an Orthodox arranged marriage, and while the practice wasn’t for him, he knew her opinion was based on garbage, unresearched TV dramas about shaved heads and teenage brides.
In reality, his mom had been in law school, and his dad was in his first year of working as a pharmacist. They didn’t date because that wasn’t a thing for them, but they got to know each other for years. His mom said she knew his dad was the one when he tripped and fell, breaking his nose, and spent the entire evening in the ER waiting room making up stories with her about how people had gotten hurt.
When his dad told a story about a man who’d been stepped on by circus elephants fleeing captivity, she called her own parents and told them she was ready to say yes.
And she hadn’t regretted it for a moment. Through periods of fertility struggle, two kids, illnesses, lapses in faith, and uprooting their entire life to live on the coast, they’d loved each other through all of it.
All Ben had to show for his romantic life was a shitty ex and an apartment that was still only half-furnished because he had no reason to make his house feel like a home after Taylor took his things and fled.
“Earth to Ben.”
He blinked and realized he’d been sitting outside the bar for too long. “I’m not here to ask for your judgment,” he finally told her. “I’m here because I need you to know where to go if I send an SOS.”
Selina drummed her fingers on the dashboard as she leaned forward to look at the carved wooden sign hanging above the door. “Well, I’m going to be in Ireland with Ciaran, but I can at least call with a fake emergency. Do you want to use a code?”
