Page 3 of Planning on Happily Ever After

CHAPTER TWO

Ben

Ben squinted as hesped along the Main Street sidewalk, the blazing sun glaring into his eyes. He loathed having to leave his apartment, especially when he was supposed to be working and he’d awoke with a strong desire to avoid interacting with anyone. Ben was most comfortable when he was alone in front of his computer with nothing but scrolling lines of code in front of him. He was decidedlyuncomfortablewith having to interact with other people, especially anyone who didn’t understand his gruff nature and general lack of pleasantness, which was pretty much anyone other than his mom. In fact, anytime he had to go into the office in Hartford, his coworkers would get offended that he didn’t want to join in for group lunches, happy hour, or any of the other myriad of team building activities that everyone else seemed to enjoy.

Ben was a loner and he liked it that way.Mostly. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy the company of other people, they just never seemed to really enjoy his. Ben was always a bit anxious in groups and even one-on-one, never knowing what to say or how to act, and always inadvertently annoying the people around him with the fact that he would barely talk at all. The judgement that followed his actions or lack thereof was the reason he shied away from other people. He knew they saw him as a stoic, sometimes surly individual, and he didn’t bother to try and exceed their expectations. Keeping to himself saved him the trouble, though it did make for a lonely existence.

Ben huffed as he walked, the unseasonably warm weather making sweat trickle down his neck. The dapple of moisture at his collar was just another irritation on top of his having to run out of the house for something as silly as grabbing a washer for his leaking sink. The damned thing was messing with his concentration and if he had listened to the drip, drip, dripping for another minute, he would have gone crazy. A new washer necessitated a visit to the closest hardware store, which meant a drive to downtown Sunset Cove and dealing with the general population. Thinking about the inevitable chit-chat that he would have to participate in at the customer service counter as he made his purchase caused his palms to sweat and his skin to feel three sizes too small.

The good people of Callahan Hardware were always so polite and seemed to actually enjoy engaging in conversation with their customers. Ben shuddered at the thought. He wasn’t the most cheerful person on a good day, and having to make small talk made his already sour mood worsen. The grumpy persona that defined Ben hadn’t always been there, but after his father passed away when he was almost three years old, he became a little quieter, a little sadder, and a lot less willing to get close to others.

His father’s death had been sudden and unexpected. After serving with the Albany Police Department without incident for almost fifteen years, Frank Williams was caught in a shootout with the perpetrator of a home invasion. Ben didn’t remember much of his father beyond the odd sense that he looked up to the man, but he did have plenty of memories of hearing his mother crying nearly every night after he passed.

That didn’t last forever, though. In fact, his mother started dating again while Ben was in kindergarten. Ben’s mother always spoke fondly of her marriage to his father, even going so far as to call him the love of her life. A snort of incredulity escaped him as he thought about that. If his dad was the love of her life, why did his mom have a long line of failed relationships that dated back to when he was five years old? His mother always talked about love like it was the most amazing thing in the world, something so completely life-changing that you should pursue it before anything else. She loved love, so maybe all those other relationships were her attempt to recapture what she’d had with his dad.

Ben didn’t want to think too much about it, not sharing her opinion in the slightest. Eventually, every one of her boyfriends had left and his mom simply moved on to the next one like they were as interchangeable as light bulbs or car batteries. To his mom, they might have been unmemorable or even disposable, but to Ben they had been a lifeline, someone he could understand and relate to on a different level than he could with her. However, after the fourth or fifth boyfriend exited his life, Ben stopped trying to get close to any of them, shutting himself off and turning to his computers for company.

As if he had summoned her with his thoughts, Ben felt his phone buzz, his mom’s name flashing across his screen. While he contemplated sending it to voicemail so he could get the stupid washer and get back to work, his desire to make sure she was alright outweighed his desire to be productive. She had always been there for him, so at the very least, Ben could take her call.

Pushing his way through a group of women bustling into the coffee shop, Ben stepped away from the sidewalk and into a small alley to escape the noise. “Hey, mom. What’s up?”

“Benny!” his mother called out excitedly. Ben wasn’t a huge fan of his childhood nickname, but she always said it with such love and affection that he couldn’t bring himself to tell her to stop using it. “I have such great news. Are you sitting down?”

Ben’s eyes rolled to the sky as he gathered the shredded remains of his patience. “No, I’m standing, but go ahead and tell me anyway.” His mom’sgreat newswas never anything he would consider that exciting or life altering, and even though he may be a mostly silent grump to just about everyone else, he tried to never act that way with his mom.

His mother squealed like a schoolgirl. “Oh, Benny. Something amazing has happened. Marvin proposed!”

“Who’s Marvin?” Ben’s brow pulled into an all too familiar furrow as he filed through his memory banks. “I thought you were dating a guy named Ron.”

Keeping track of his mother’s boyfriends was a full-time job, one that Ben didn’t need or want. After he graduated from NYU and moved to Connecticut, he hadn’t met more than one or two of them. Why bother when they wouldn’t be around long enough for anything serious to happen? Now she was supposedly engaged, so perhaps he should have been paying closer attention to his mom’s romantic life.

Bright laughter cut through his musings. “Oh no, sweetie. I haven’t been with Ron in over a year, but Marvin and I have been dating for a few months now, and he thought it was about time we got serious.” Involuntarily or perhaps out of habit, Ben sighed audibly at this information and his mom picked up on it. “Now, Benny. You know how important it is to have love in your life, and I am really excited about this. Please be happy for me.”

“I am, I promise.” Ben was glad his mom sounded happy, but like all her relationships before this one, it would end and she would be back in the same place she was before—alone. Even though he knew better, Ben would at least try to pretend for her. “So, are you guys doing Vegas, or the courthouse? Something easy like that? Just tell me where to show up and I’ll be there.” Hopefully this Marvin person wanted a small ceremony and not a big to-do where Ben would have to deal with a bunch of strangers, or god forbid, make some kind of speech.

His mom tutted; the sound very reminiscent of when she discovered he’d traded his lunch money for computer games. “Oh no, we aren’t doing either of those things. It’s been so long since I had a wedding, and I really want to do something special and romantic.”

Of course, she did. Ben should have known better than to expect his fanciful mother to do the practical thing. “What does that mean?” He pushed down the sense of dread that had started to bubble up in his chest, hoping by some miracle he had misunderstood her.

“What do you think it means, Benny?” His mother chuckled at his ineptitude, unaware that he was beginning to spiral at the prospect of making idle chit-chat with a group of well-wishers for hours on end. “We’re going to do a nice ceremony with guests and cake and dancing. The whole she-bang!”

He choked on the groan that threatened to escape from his throat, swallowing down the bitter pill of his current reality. “I see,” he ground out between clenched teeth. That sounded like a potentially large social event and Ben grabbed at the collar of his button-down shirt and gave it a tug, suddenly feeling even more overheated than he had before. “So, when can I expect this event to take place?”

Any hope that he would have ample time to prepare himself for what was to come vanished with her next words. “Oh, soon if we can swing it. There is so much to do. I was thinking t it might be a good idea for me to hire a wedding planner to help with all the details. Do you know of any near you?”

Ben almost laughed. He knew exactly one person outside of his coworkers and that was Henry Baker, a man who’d befriended him while playing online, striking up a conversation with Ben while they teamed up to take out a horde of plague-ridden villagers. They had worked well together, and Henry wasn’t overly chatty, an attribute Ben appreciated immensely, and while they mostly interacted online, they occasionally went running or to grab a slice of pizza. Ben didn’t know much about Henry other than he was an accountant, had two sisters, one of which was his twin, and that his family owned a bakery downtown.

Ben shook his head and came back to the question at hand. “No, I don’t know any wedding planners, mom. Why don’t you try to find someone in New Haven?” Ben’s mom had moved to the college town once he had settled in Sunset Cove, wanting to be closer to him.

His mother sighed indulgently. “No, I want to look for someone near you since you’ll be helping me with all of the planning.”

If Ben had been drinking at that moment, he would have done a spit take. “W-what? I don’t know anything about weddings. Won’t Marshall want to help plan his own wedding?”

He couldn’t imagine why his mother wanted his help. Ben was useless when it came to lovey-dovey romantic stuff because he had never been that kind of person. Relationships were an entanglement he wasn’t interested in, sticking to meaningless hook-ups with someone on Tinder on the few occasions he went to Hartford for work, and over the last year even those had become too much trouble for him.

“It’s Marvin, honey, and he’ll be there, too.” Ben felt a prick of guilt at already having forgotten the man’s name and vowed to do better. “Benny, this is really important to me. I think this one really has a chance of working out, and I want you there with me to help make sure I don’t do anything to screw it up.”

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