Love Graduate (Completed) Season 2 In Ben and Am's Romance

Chapter 20: Apartment



We never get back to "Les Mis". I let Tall regale me with the story that I've heard several times before of how he slipped on black ice in front of his apartment, and the eighteen-year-old Ben walked by, stopped, called the ambulance, and went with him to the hospital.

I've never seen Ben's photos at eighteen. On the walls of the dojang Mike and Ben have been training and now teaching at for years, I've seen a couple of pictures of Ben in his early teens. I imagine the eighteen-year-old Ben with the same baby face as on those, his hair needing a cut and bright blue eyes like those of Tall's Benny.

We talk until I have to go to my first apartment viewing of the day. I have one studio apartment, one one-bedroom (that I know is out of my price range), and a room in a three-bedroom duplex lined up for today.

Tall's hug isn't so gentle. His trembling arms push me towards him, and he ranks in the top five huggers I know. Dad's hugs will remain the best hugs forever, followed by Angie's. Ben's and my half-brother Chris' whom I taught how to hug so that the other person can feel what you feel.

Tall lets go of me when we hear the door opening. We both look at it, expecting an attendant checking in on Tall, but it's Ben who enters the room and rolls a suitcase behind him. He glances between Tall and me and stops in front of the entrance.

"I came straight from the airport," says Ben.

I thought the wedding was today, and there's no way he could've attended it, gotten on a flight, and arrived here by lunchtime unless it was a sunrise ceremony, which didn't seem like something Brenda would be interested in. But who am I to say that? I know nothing about Brenda, and judging someone without a grain of information is something I try to avoid.

"Tall's all yours. I have to continue my apartment hunting."

"You haven't seen it then?"

Tall and I eyeball each other in case the other one withheld some important information.

"You'll have to tell me what you're talking about," I say.

"I'd love to know what's going on as well," Tall follows up.

"Search for Brenda and Linda Baxter. And none of it is true."

I grab my phone and enter the names in the search bar. A series of photos begin with one of a broad-shouldered long-nosed man towering over Brenda and Ben with a tall window behind them, one of Linda and the same man laughing in something looking like a club or a bar, and the last one is of Ben carrying a struggling Linda in his arms into an apartment. The texts underneath confuse the situation further.

'A secret wedding of Brenda Baxter to her sister's ex-husband Phillip, the second in command and sole heir of the Van der Heuvel Medical Device Empire, is canceled over questions of the paternity of Brenda's baby.'

'Learn more about our BB girl Brenda Baxter's latest crush: Ben Leonards, a video channel chef and personality.'

'Ex-husband vs. boyfriend: how Linda Baxter keeps losing men to her younger sister's charm.'

"This is some ridiculous nonsense. Who'd ever believe any of this?" I look at Tall, then at Ben.

"That's what I said," says Ben. "But the Baxters live in a different world, and the fight they had last night was like the fake ones in the show Angie made me watch. The reality TV about wives in various cities in the USA?"

"The Real Housewives?" I look at Tall for support, but he only shrugs his shoulders. Right, no TV.

"The entire trip was a series of unfortunate events. The only good thing is that Lida and I officially broke up."