Chapter 4
“Do you think you could use a spell to temporarily dye my hair? Just so I could see what it would look like?” Erica asked, hanging upside down across Benny’s Bed while he sat at his desk finishing up some homework.
“You’d trust me to do magic on you? Near your face?” Benny countered, spinning around to face her. “Who are you?”
“Good point,” she agreed, huffing out a sigh while swinging herself up to a seated position. He guessed, theoretically she could hang like that forever if she wanted to, though. “Do you know photoshop, then?”
“Ethan does,” Benny remarked, unable to keep the bitter tone out of his voice at the mention of the other boy.
Things were still weird with them. Frankly, things were weird, period, from where Benny was standing. For the past couple months, he and Erica had spent almost every day together; half out of convineince and half because they genuinley liked spending time together occasionally. Sometimes Rory would join the mix, if he wasn’t off visiting Jesse or hanging out with Sarah and Ethan. Benny had made a comment once that Rory was kind of like the child of divorced parents when it came to sharing his time between him and Erica and Ethan and Sarah. Sarah and Erica being the not so evil stepmothers. Rory hadn’t thought it was very funny.
There were a few Friday evenings that all five of them hung out while Sarah was watching Jane, but it was never very enjoyable for Benny. There was all this pressure for him and Erica to act like a couple; holding hands, pseudo-flirting, and even the occasional kiss on the cheek. It wasn’t that it was gross or something, he couldn’t really say he hated it, he mostly just felt nothing. And Erica was super hard to read and never really wanted to talk about her feelings so he couldn’t be sure how it made her feel either, so they just kept doing it for the benefit of their charade.
“Have you ever kissed a girl?” Erica asked suddenly, twirling a piece of her blonde hair around her finger while staring at it puzzled, as if she was still pondering what color she might like to dye it. It was almost like she could read his mind. He wasn’t sure if that was a real thing she could do, and at this point he was too afraid to ask.
“Yeah, tons,” He joked sarcastically, moving to sit next to her on his bed. “Why do you ask?”
She shrugged her shoulders, abandoning the piece of hair between her fingers. “Just wondering. You’ve just never tried to kiss me.”
“I never thought you wanted to,” he explained, puzzleded. It seemed like they had always been on the same page about their arrangement. What they had was out of convenience, necessity, not out of genuine romantic attraction. It was both a real relationship, given the sheer amount of time they spent together alone, and a pretend one, since they mostly played it up in front of their friends because they truly believed it would make things easier for everyone involved if they were a couple.
Erica shrugged again. “I don’t know, maybe I do,” she confessed. “I mean, we don’t know how long we’re going to have to keep this up, right?”
“Right,” Benny agreed, furrowing his eyebrows, confused as to where she could be going with her tangent.
“I mean, don’t you think it’s a little bit of a waste of time that we’re not hooking up at all?”
Benny chokes on nothing.
“I don’t mean like that,” She assured him, rolling her eyes. “I’m just bored, and I haven’t been kissed in a really long time. Forget I said anything, if you want, I don’t care.”
Benny though about it for a second. He still hadn’t quite been able to fully wrap his head around why he doesn’t really feel attracted to Erica, so maybe kissing her would jump start his feelings back to a convenient enough place to ignore the feelings he might possibly have for Ethan. And Erica was right, there was no real end in sight, and they both enjoyed the other’s company enough to keep things going this long, so why not cross the line? What else did they have to lose?
“Okay,” Benny whispered with a nod. “Okay, yeah, you’re right. We can kiss. If that’s what you want.”
“We don’t have to-- I mean, if you don’t like it we can stop,” she reassured him, turning to face him fully.
“Are you... nervous? Or something?” He asked.
“No!” She shot back, almost defensively. “I just...don’t want to make you uncomfortable, or whatever.”
Before all this started, he never would have expected Erica to care one way or another if he was comfortable or not, but over the past couple months he’d gotten the chance to get to know the softer side of Erica jones, and he had to admit he was really glad they’d gotten the chance to get closer, despite the circumstance.
“Okay,” he affirmed, mentally preparing himself. He couldn’t argue that he wasn’t scared. This had the potential to change everything, and he didn’t think he wanted it to. He already felt pressured to make things seem real with Erica when they were around their other friends, he didn’t want it to be like that when they were alone, too. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it wouldn’t make him ache so badly, wishing she were someone else, making his insides erode with guilt for feeling things that seemed unfair and for not being honest with himself or others about those feelings.
He’d seen people kiss before, in movies and on TV, obviously, but it never seemed so mechanical as this had. The two of them just sort of sat there for a while with their lips touching, not moving an inch. The all consuming nothingness Benny felt didn’t make him feel any better or worse. It didn’t make him feel anything at all.
They eventually found some semblance of a rhythm, and Erica clearly seemed to know what she was doing. Benny almost felt bad it wasn’t doing anything for him. It wasn’t that it was bad, really, it just wasn’t special, it didn’t give him butterflies or make him wish it would never end, it just plain and simply was.
Erica seemed to get bored with it after a while, and Benny was grateful, as his jaw was starting to get sore. She unceremoniously separated their mouths and flopped backwards onto Benny’s bed again with a half-contented sigh. He followed shortly after, staring at the ceiling.
“So?” She asked after a while, glancing over at him with an unreadable expression.
“It was certainly a kiss,” he responded to the ceiling. It was all he could think to say.
“I’ve never kissed a boy,” Erica confessed, also to the ceiling. Benny was shocked, but didn’t express it. “Nobody noticed me before I turned. Sarah was literally the only person I ever talked to. All the dates I’ve been on since then have been strictly for dietary purposes. I’ve never kissed a single one, I wasn’t even interested in it. I’m sorry for lying about it before, I don’t know, this whole thing is just fucked up and weird.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Benny offered, taking her hand. “Dating is pretty overrated, I think.”
“It’s a good thing we’re not dating, then,” she sniffled. He hadn’t realized she’d been crying.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “We’re not so bad at this not dating thing. Y’know, for two people that, for all intents and purposes, are most definitely dating.”
“Yeah,” she deadpanned, swallowing down whatever tears she hadn’t let escape yet. He didn’t want to push her on it. It seemed like she may have needed this, and he didn’t want to fuck that up for her. “I don’t mind that so much, I don’t suppose. I don’t hate not feeling so fucking lonely.”
Despite the all consuming nothing he felt lingering between them every time they did something that bordered on intimacy, he was content enough with Erica. He could be with her, if she wanted that; if she needed that. She was his friend, and he wanted her to be happy, for her not to feel as abandoned and alone as he felt. They needed each other, if only just to help each other pretend that even though the world after Ethan and Sarah was unrecognizable, they could still be okay.
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“Dude, did you not get my texts?” Ethan greeted him at his locker the following morning after he’d walked Erica to her first period.
"No, sorry, I was hanging out with Erica last night,” he explained, his focus more on grabbing his books out of his locker than whatever it was Ethan was so jittery over. He was mostly jittery over Sarah these days, which Benny didn’t really care to hear about. And if he wasn’t jittery over Sarah, he was asking about how things were with Erica. It was an endless fucking loop and Benny was getting motion sickness from trying to keep up with it instead of just letting himself be annoyed. He really missed when they had more to talk about than their girlfriends. He missed how things were before they were expected to have girlfriends. “Did you see the trailer for that new RPG? It looks sick,” he began, hoping to spark a conversation that was about anything they hadn’t been talking about for the past few months.
“Sarah and I slept together.”
He had said it so quickly, Benny could almost pretend he hadn’t heard it, but he had. It hung in the air between them for quite some time without either of them making any effort to push it out of the way or acknowledge that it was even there. It was almost like Ethan knew the news would make Benny sick to his stomach to hear.
Benny started walking without a word.
“I wanted to call you about it last night, but you were busy. It was kind of awkward, I guess, but I guess it was nice too. It felt pathetically cheesy, but, nice, I guess. Like I said. I just wanted to tell you,” Ethan finally continued and broke the silence, walking alongside Benny after he had tried to make an escape. "You're really important to me, I wanted you to know."
“Yeah,” Benny answered with an empty nod. “Thats...” he trailed off, staring at the ugly tiled floors against his scuffed up shoes. “That’s really cool, for you guys.”
He kept walking without saying anything else, hoping Ethan might get the hint that he had no interest in hearing about his awesome sexual awakening with his girlfriend when Benny couldn't even enjoy kissing his own. Which he of course hadn’t told him about. But that was besides the point.
He couldn’t be completely sure if he was only jealous of the principle of the enjoying an intimate experience or if it was jelousy of something that would hurt even worse if he let himself accept it. He didn’t want to think about it. He just kept walking.
“Hey, are you okay? Are you and Erica okay?” Ethan pushed, almost sprinting to keep up with the taller boy’s strides.
“Jesus! We’re fine!” Benny exploded. All his pent up resentment towards his friend and his new relationship finally bubbling to the surface. He felt a guilty pang in his gut at the look on Ethan’s face following his sudden outburst, but he was too overwhelmed and upset himself to try and console him. “Just-- not everything is about my stupid relationship! I don’t spend every waking moment thinking about the next moment I’ll get to spend with her! And it’s not a fucking crime to be a person outside of the person I am when I’m with her! But I’m happy for you though, I am, really, E. I just fucking miss how things were before you got bitten by the God damned love bug. I fucking miss my best friend.”
“Benny--” Ethan choked out, reaching out to grab his friend by the shoulder and just missing as he picked up the pace.
“I’m sorry,” Benny sighed, dejeted. “Just forget it. Fuck, I’m sorry.”