Butterfly • Book 1/3

2

•••••PLEASE READ THE IMPORTANT AUTHORS NOTE AFTER THE PROLOGUE IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY.•••••

3rd Person POV

Ben shuddered slightly at the feeling of the cool air as he hopped out of bed the next morning. "Stupid air conditioning. It never works properly," he mutters, "what's the point of it anyway?"
He moves his bare feet slowly against the dark hardwood floor of his bedroom towards his closet, where he hopes to find some sort of solace in warmer clothing. He decides on a grey Led Zeppelin sweatshirt and black adidas track pants. Quickly, he throws a random beanie over his messy hair, and puts a random pair of socks on his feet, as well as a pair of toms.
"If I wanted to feel this cold, I would've stayed back in England, for Christ sake." Ben snickers. "It's as almost as cold as my heart in here."
Ben makes a quick call to (in his words) "whoever the hell fixes air conditionings", which leads him to furiously kick the table next to him out of anger. (He seriously doesn't know what's up with him, kicking tables for anger release.) "Two days my ass, I'll be FUCKING froze to death! It feels like 30 degrees in here!" He had screamed, but made an appointment for two days later nonetheless.
He doesn't even bother making himself breakfast before he packs a bag and heads to Danny's house, which is a quick 15 minute drive away. When Ben knocks on Danny's door with bags in hand, he's less than pleased.
"It's fucking 8:30a.m., why are you waking me up at this ungodly hour?!"
"Oh piss off mate, my air conditioner's broken! It's like -40 degrees in my house!"
Danny huffs and let's Ben enter his house. "Why didn't you fix it?"
"Do I look like Mr. Fix it? I'm not John, I can't fix everything! I can't get an appointment for two days!"
"I never said you were John, did I?" Danny sighs. "You can take the spare room until it's fixed."
Ben smiles. "Thanks dude. I'm gonna go back to sleep, I'm fucking knackered still."
"Alright, but when you get up, Elena and I want to talk to you about the invitation."
"Sure, whatever." He says, full of sarcasm. "Doesn't mean I'm going to decide now."
"I didn't say you had to."
Ben stalks off to Danny's spare room; slamming the door lightly, and flopping down face first on the soft, queen sized bed.
"I swear if he tries to force me to go, i'm gonna kill him." He mutters, but it sounded more like "I swomp fries mo gun peel em," due to him being face down on the bed.
A few hours later, Ben wakes up to cold water being poured all over his body. "Bloody hell, you wanker! What the fuck do you think you're doing?!"
Danny doubles over in laughter, clutching his stomach. "Sorry mate! It's 1p.m., time to wake up!" He runs away before Ben, who is currently chasing him, can catch him.
Elena is sitting on the couch, twirling her long, dark hair around her fingers, laughing at the two grown men. "Y'all are childish as always." She giggles, her southern accent showing through immensely.
Ben playfully glares at her. "Neener neener neener!" He sticks his tongue out. "It's your oaf's fault!"
"Oaf!?" Danny snickers. "That's a compliment! She likes my oaf-y ness"
"Sweetheart, that isn't a word." Now it was Danny's turn to glare at Elena. "You are an oaf, however."
"Is everyone in this house against me?!"
Ben high-five's Elena. "Seems like we are!"
"Great," Danny runs a calloused hand over his shaggy beard, a habit he hast developed over the years. "What great people you are." He pauses to look at Ben. "Sit down, all of us need to talk."
Ben pouts like a child, takes a seat in the plush recliner, adjacent from the couch that both Danny and Elena are sat on.
"About the invitation," Elena says, intimidating the conversation, "why don't you want to go?"
Ben sighs. "It's kind of redundant for me to repeat myself once again, but I guess I will, but it'll be the short handed version."
"Alana and I were engaged. We began dating in 2010, said I love you in 2011, and got engaged in early 2013. In 2014, Asking Alexandria's popularity was picking up rapidly , so our then record label, headquartered here in Texas, wanted us to be closer to them. Stupid idea if I do say so myself, which I do. I told her, and she said she couldn't move with me, even after I offered to pay her college transfer fees and tuition. She also had an ailing grandmother that she was taking care of. " Ben pauses, but Elena gestures for him to continue. "She told me that we should call off the wedding, take a break, and she'd fly out on holiday and we'd see where the relationship was at that point in time. I was stupid to agree. She gave me the engagement ring back, which I still have hidden actually. But it's safe to say she never flew out and the "small break" turned into an infinite break. She had told me she found someone else, and I haven't heard from her since. Three years later, I get an invitation to her wedding to some dude named Andrey." The name of his ex's fiancé rolls off his tongue with such bitterness, it surprises both himself and Elena.
"So it was a mutual break up?"
Ben nods. "Basically. What else could it have been?"
"Nothing, really. It just doesn't make sense to me."
Danny butts into the conversation. "It didn't to me either. We were doing perfectly fine in England, why uproot us to Texas?"
Elena nods her head in agreement. "It is kinda stupid." She turns to Ben. "But why don't you want to go? Couldn't you consider it as closure? A free vacation? Your family is going, wouldn't you be excited to see them? I'm going as Danny's +1"
"Danny told me the exact same thing yesterday. I'm just not so sure I need closure, I feel like I already have it."
Elena shakes her head in disagreement. "Closure happens right after you accept that letting go and moving on is more important than protecting a fantasy of how the relationship could've or should've been." She says. "And that, Mr. Bruce, is something you haven't done."