Always, Ben

Chapter 1

Chapter 1It was almost ten P.M. when Ben Haggerty stepped out of the elevator. He had to lean against the wall, needing a minute to dredge up the energy it would take to complete the final steps to his home. He’d been on the job since seven in the morning. Twelve hour days were becoming the norm, but those extra three hours had wiped him out. The emergency call from one of the company’s most important clients had taken up the afternoon and a large part of the evening, and the job still wasn’t finished. He’d need to be back at work first thing tomorrow morning,

Twenty feet to the door to the apartment he shared with his boyfriend; he could do this.

He drew in a breath and blew it out before pushing off from the wall. He moved down the corridor in more of a shuffle than a walk. Even if Rick, his boyfriend of seven years, had something heating in the Crock-Pot, Ben didn’t think he’d be able to eat a bite. Worse than that, if Rick wanted a blowjob, Ben’d be lucky if he didn’t fall asleep in the middle of it.

He and Rick had lived together here in Greenedale for the past three years, although they’d been boyfriends since just before high school graduation…

* * * *

“We can’t tell anyone.” Rick had been unbending in that one thing, slightly deflating the euphoria of Ben’s orgasmic high.

“Okay.” He didn’t like keeping secrets from his folks, but he could understand his boyfriend wanting to keep the fact they were lovers on the down low. He’d met the aunt and uncle who’d become Rick’s guardians after his parents had been killed in a car accident when he was ten. They might not be religious, but they seemed to have a stick up their butts about gay people. Well, that was the reason behind them moving to DeKalb. Rick had told him about it one Saturday night when they’d taken Ben’s Jeep—it was really the family’s Patriot, but Dad let Ben have it so he could get around town—a bottle of Double H, the cheap whiskey Rick had pinched from the back of his uncle’s liquor cabinet, and driven to the local lover’s lane. Ben took a blanket from the cargo area of the Jeep and laid it out at the base of a spreading chestnut tree, and they’d made themselves comfortable.

* * * *

Ben had drunk beer, so it wasn’t as if he was a teetotaler; he just didn’t like the taste of this whiskey. To keep his boyfriend from discovering that, he pretended to take a sip every time Rick did, and when Rick wasn’t looking, Ben would spill it into the grass. Rick, however—he didn’t seem to have much of a head for the whiskey, and he was soon slurring his words, hiccoughing, and peering at Ben owlishly.

That could have been why he began telling Ben the reason behind his family’s relocation to DeKalb.

“That stupid f**k!” Rick spat. Even after all this time, Ben could see he was still seriously pissed. “Liam wasn’t my first boyfriend, but I’d been his, and he was all excited about it.”

“Did you like him a lot?” Ben didn’t really want to hear about the boy Rick had dated before he moved here, but he should be supportive, shouldn’t he?

“I liked him well enough,” Rick hunched a shoulder. “He was a good lay.”

Hearing Rick describe someone he was supposed to care about in such casual terms shook Ben. When Rick passed him the bottle, this time he took a slug, and he swallowed. Oh God, he shouldn’t have. It burned all the way down. He gave the bottle back to Rick and tried to conceal the fact he’d almost tossed his cookies.

“I could have understood if Liam posted it on f*******:—everyone constantly updated their status, and it didn’t matter because anyone with half a brain made sure their accounts were password protected and restricted to friends. Besides, none of their parents went on Facebook.”

“Are you sure?” Ben put passwords on all his accounts, not because he thought Ma and Dad would go snooping but just because it was good practice.

“Eh. Uncle Walter never did, and Aunt Clarice was too busy with her lunches and her clubs to pay much attention to what I did online.”

“Okay. So what happened?” Because it was obvious something had.

“Liam could have commented that he was in a relationship, or even that it was complicated.”

“What did he do?”

“The stupid f**k actually put what we’d done on paper! And of course Liam’s parents found his f*****g journal.” Rick brought the bottle of Double H to his lips and took a healthy swallow. Or maybe it wasn’t too healthy, since he started choking. Ben rubbed Rick’s back, hoping to soothe him, but Rick caught his breath and shrugged Ben off.

“What happened?” Ben prompted once more.

Rick’s face took on an expression Ben had never seen before, almost as if he were lost. Did he care more about this Liam than he was admitting? “All I knew was Liam wasn’t there anymore, and then it looked like I wasn’t going to be either. Aunt Clarice kept screeching about me destroying the family and how we’d have to leave town, because no one would hire Uncle Walter, and no one would want to marry me.”

“How old were you when this happened?”

“Seventeen.”

“Kind of young to be thinking about getting married, isn’t it?” As Ben hoped, that got a sputtered laugh out of his boyfriend.

“Yeah, but there was no reasoning with Aunt Clarice. Anyway, a couple of days later she announced we couldn’t stay there. I…I begged her to change her mind. I’d have to leave my friends. I’d be graduating in a year and would miss Homecoming and Prom. She said I should have thought of that before I debauched the son of one of the town’s most prominent families.”

“Debauched?”

“She wouldn’t dream of saying I’d f****d his lilywhite ass.” He raised the bottle to take another slug of Double H, but Ben gently removed it from his grasp. Rick looked a little befuddled, but then he hunched a shoulder. “So she made us pack up, sell the house I’d lived in all my life, and move to DeKalb.”

It sucked that Rick had to leave his high school and his friends, and Ben was sorry about that, but…he also wasn’t. “But we met, and…and I’ll marry you.” Same-s*x marriage might not be legal, but one day…He held his breath and waited to see how Rick would react to his proposal.

A soft snore was all that greeted him.

It took an act of God and a lot of good luck for Ben to get his boyfriend home without being spotted by Rick’s aunt and uncle. And when he called Sunday after church, Rick’s aunt told him in a snippy tone that Rick wasn’t feeling well enough to go to the mall.

When they met up on Monday to collect their caps and gowns, Rick said, “Wow, I was drunk as a skunk Saturday night. I can’t remember a f*****g thing. I’m laying off Double H for the rest of my life.”

Ben’s sigh of relief was too soon.

“Jack Daniels goes down much smoother.”

“If you say so, buddy.” And he decided he’d never bring up what Rick had told him.

* * * *

He did want to know when they could come out to their friends and family, though. “When can we tell them?”

“Just a few more months. I’ve already turned eighteen, so I get my trust fund after I graduate. Then we can spit in their eyes and do whatever the hell we want.” Which meant moving to New York so Rick could go to Cornell University.

“Okay,” Ben said again. He would pretty much agree to anything his boyfriend wanted—Rick was so smart, Ben let him make all the decisions. They’d kept their relationship a secret.

Even though their hometown of DeKalb was so small everyone knew everyone’s business, it hadn’t been too difficult. People were used to Rick and Ben hanging out, although Ben knew from the looks and the whispers they didn’t understand how such a smart guy like Rick could hang out with someone like Ben, who wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. After all, Rick had been taking college courses even before his family moved to DeKalb, and he was guaranteed to get his doctorate before he turned twenty-three. Including the time it took to get his master’s, that would be a good ten years before most people were awarded them.

And then Rick learned his aunt and uncle, who’d also been his trustees, had mismanaged the money left to him, and most of the funds were gone. Oh, there was enough for an associate’s degree at DeKalb Community College, but Cornell…? All hopes of his going there were out the window.

“f**k them.” Rick was so angry Ben was afraid he’d burst a blood vessel. “f**k them to goddamn hell.”

“You can get a Pell Grant,” Ben suggested. “And a scholarship.” He had a cousin who’d done that, and it had paid for most of her courses.

Rick scowled at him. “Do you think I didn’t check out all that?”

Ben flushed. Of course his brilliant boyfriend would have looked into all the options. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Grants are out of the question, because Uncle Walter makes too much money. As for scholarships, it’s too f*****g late in the year to apply for any of them.”

Ben didn’t say there was next year—Rick didn’t have the patience to wait. “I’ll help with your tuition,” he said instead. Right after graduation, he’d be starting the apprenticeship program the local electrical union offered. “An apprentice doesn’t make as much as a journeyman, but I already know a lot from my dad and my uncles.” With a little luck and a lot of hard work, he’d become a journeyman in three years.

“You’d do that for me, buddy?”

“Sure I would. And if I live at home, I’ll be able to save a chunk of change. I know my folks won’t ask for a lot, just my share for groceries and utilities, so I can help you with whatever you need.” Ben was happy in their little town, and unlike Rick, he loved his mom and dad and didn’t mind living with them.

“You’re a sweetheart.” Rick glanced around to make sure no one was nearby, then brushed a kiss over Ben’s lips. Before Ben could deepen the kiss, Rick stepped back and frowned. “I’ll have to stay with the crooks—”

“Who?”

“Aunt Clarice and Uncle Walter.”

“Got it.” Ben could understand Rick’s resentment—he’d talked of attending Cornell University in New York from the time his aunt and uncle had moved the family to DeKalb and Rick had enrolled in Eli Whitney High—and he hated like hell the fact he couldn’t go there now. “But you can transfer your credits once you graduate from the community college. My cousin went there to save money, and that’s what she did.”

That seemed to perk Rick up. “Where’d she transfer to?”

“Penn State.”

Rick deflated. “I had my heart set on an Ivy League university…”

Ben felt bad about that, so he did the only thing he could think of that would cheer his boyfriend.

He gave Rick the best blowjob in the whole of Pennsylvania.

* * * *

Ben worked hard and became an extremely capable apprentice. His dad was proud of him, and his boss had already given him a couple of raises. He had another year to go in the program, but Rick was scheduled to graduate from DeKalb Community College six months early.

“Will you be going to Cornell now?” Ben asked. He wanted the best for Rick and was just sorry he’d be tied up in DeKalb for another year.

“I can’t.”

“What?”

“Cornell won’t accept a single one of my credits.”

DeKalb was a good college—just not good enough.

“s**t. I’m so sorry.” Ben knew it had been Rick’s dream to be one of the youngest students to defend his dissertation, but it looked like that wasn’t going to happen…not now. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ve heard decent things about Howe University in Greenedale.”

“Will Howe accept your credits?”

“Yeah. All of them.”

“Then you’ll be moving to Greenedale?” It was a larger town than DeKalb, and it was a four hour drive away.

“As soon as I can,” he told Ben.

“I have to finish the apprenticeship program before I can come with you.” He’d been working plenty of overtime, but he still needed about three thousand more hours under a master electrician before he could take the journeyman exam.

“You always come with me.” Rick leered at him. “But that’ll work out okay. I’ll be staying in a dorm for the next couple of semesters and we won’t be able to stay together. Once I graduate from Howe, I’ll look for an apartment for us. And…uh…could you send me some money, buddy? Things are more expensive in Greenedale.”

“Sure thing, Rick.” Ben was more than willing to help his boyfriend pay for whatever incidentals he needed. He didn’t begrudge it—you did things like that for the one you loved.

“And…you’ll come to visit me?”

Ben gave him a broad smile. “You bet I will!”

* * * *

Those next two years went by fast, although often at the end of the month he was strapped for cash, and Mom and Dad couldn’t understand it. They’d been afraid he had a gambling habit, but his swearing on the family Bible he didn’t so much as set foot in a Bingo hall reassured them. Because they loved him and believed him.

He didn’t get to see Rick as often as he liked—he was working overtime in order to get the needed hours—but they did talk on their cell phones quite a bit, even though it mostly wound up with Rick talking dirty, something Ben had never been comfortable with.

And then Ben’s folks had learned about him and Rick in the worst possible way. The battery of Ben’s cell phone was down to about two percent and his charger had done a disappearing act—he couldn’t find it anywhere.

“I’m using the landline,” he told Rick. “Please don’t—”

“Oh, but I have to.” Because that was Rick, and asking him not to do something was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. “I’m taking my shorts off, baby. Do you see how hard I am for you? Lick the precome off my d**k. You do it so well, and you know you want to—”

Before Ben could respond to the salacious image Rick’s words painted, a gasp warned him his worst nightmare was about to come to pass. His mother cried, “Benjamin Haggerty, what are you doing? Who are you talking to?”

Fortunately—if such a situation could be considered to have anything fortunate about it—Ben was prepared to spin a yarn that would hopefully get him out of this jam.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have the opportunity to get a word out. Rick said, “Oh, hello, Mrs. Haggerty. It’s Richard Preston. May I finish my conversation with Ben?”

There had been no way to lie his way out of it after that. Not that he’d wanted to. Rick was his boyfriend, and he was proud of that fact.

Ben knew his parents loved him, but afterward, Dad shouted at him, “No son of mine—”

“Will be gay?”

Dad’s lips tightened. “You’ll give up that…that…Richard Preston, or—”

“I can get out? I won’t stop seeing Rick.”

“What?” Dad’s expression became even grimmer. “If you persist in this nonsense, you’ll do it without the Jeep, Benjamin.”

“I understand, Dad.” He never thought his folks would give him an ultimatum like this, and he had to stiffen his lip to keep from crying. “I’m sorry, but I—” He turned on his heel, went up to his bedroom, and packed his suitcase. He grabbed up his cell phone which buzzed from an incoming text—“Oh great. Now you work,” he snarled at it. A quick glance told him it was from Rick.

Call me, it said, followed by a bunch of smiley faces. And with that, the battery died a final death.

“Ah, s**t, Rick.” He stuffed his phone into a pocket and left, although it broke his heart to walk out of his folks’ house.

In spite of how small the town of DeKalb was, it was large enough to have a Y, and Ben planned to spend the night there. He’d never had to share a bathroom, but he’d deal with it.

Once he was settled in, he used the phone down in the lobby to call his boyfriend.

“Rick? It’s—”

“Hey, buddy. Wasn’t that a hoot?”

“I wish you hadn’t—”

“No, this is perfect, don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t see.” Ben squeezed the bridge of his nose in hopes of stemming tears.

“You’ve got the perfect excuse to leave that one-horse town and move to Greenedale with me now.” Rick went on and on about the college town and how much more it had to offer than DeKalb, including nightspots for its gay population. “And I found a small apartment off campus that will suit the two of us down to the ground.”

“But—”

“Of course, if you’d rather stay in DeKalb, I’ll just have to find another roommate to help with the rent.” Rick sounded mournful, and Ben felt his heart twist.

“No!”

“You’ll come then?”

“All right, Rick.” Ben forced a smile into his voice. He didn’t want his boyfriend to think he resented this choice. After all, Rick had been without his parents for the past twelve years. Ben could give up his own parents for Rick. But maybe one day…He pushed the thought from his mind. “I’ll buy a bus ticket to Greendale in the morning.”

“Great—wait, what about the Jeep?”

“Dad won’t let me have it.”

“The old skinflint.”

“Hey!”

“Never mind. You needed better transportation anyhow. We’ll pick something out when you get here. I’ll meet you at the depot. See you soon, baby.” He blew a kiss over the phone line and hung up before Ben could return the kiss.

He’d have to stop at the bank to close his account. He was pretty sure he had enough in it to buy a new car. Well, a new used car.

He went to his shared bathroom, washed his face and brushed his teeth, then returned to his room, took off his clothes, and got in bed, where he buried his head under the pillow and cried himself to sleep.

* * * *

The next afternoon, Ben stepped off the bus, more relieved than he could say to see Rick waiting for him, which was dumb, since Rick had assured Ben he would be there.

“You’ll love the apartment. It’s got two bedrooms.”

“Can we afford something like that?”

“Sure.” Rick led Ben into the men’s room, crowded him against the stall, and nuzzled his neck. “God, I’ve missed this. But remember, the extra bedroom is just to keep the nosy neighbors from suspecting we’re gay. We have to keep that on the down low.”

“But we’ll be sleeping together?”

“Never doubt it.”

“Okay, then, Rick. Whatever you say.” He began to warm to the subject. “We’ll be here for…How long will we be here?”

“Since I’ve already graduated—”

Yes, this past May. Ben had found an eighteen carat gold watch, which he really couldn’t afford, but he’d gone ahead and bought it anyway, because his boyfriend was worth it. And because Rick didn’t believe in PDAs, he’d had I love you engraved on the back in Morse code.

“—it will take me another three years to get my master’s in physiological chemistry here at Howe.” He scowled. “I’d have it sooner in a better college…” This time he shrugged. “Figure three years.”

“You always were the smart one, Rick. Will you get your doctorate here as well?”

“Of course not. It’s never a good idea to do your graduate work in the same university where you get your master’s. I’ll finally get to go up to Cornell. I know of some grants and fellowships I can take advantage of.” He scowled again, and Ben knew how upset Rick still got every time he thought of what happened to the trust fund his dad had left for him.

“We’ll work it out, sweetheart.”

Rick continued as if he hadn’t heard Ben. “I managed to get the Avogadro-Lavoisier scholarship.”

“You did? Oh, Rick, that’s amazing.” Ben had no idea what that was, but he was happy for Rick.

Rick seemed to deflate. “Not really. It only covers part of my tuition. Being Professor Armistead’s TA will pay enough for books and the occasional night out with colleagues, but—”

“Night out? Colleagues?”

“Yeah. Networking is necessary to my career.”

“All right, Rick. If you say so.”

“I knew you’d see the light. You’ll…uh…have to take care of the rent, utilities, and groceries.”

“That’s okay. I’ve got my union card and I’m a journeyman now, so I’ll be able to get a job anywhere.” And as soon as he got his first paycheck with the new company, whichever it was, he’d go out and buy a new phone charger. On the off chance his mom and dad called him and maybe wanted him to come home. His place was with his boyfriend, but if he could go visit them…

“Yes! Now, come on.” Rick waggled his eyebrows. “I want to give you a tour of our place.” He grinned and gave Ben’s d**k a squeeze. “And we can finish this there.”