Parks fic: Take Me out of My Envelope Chapter 5, first half
Title: Take Me out of My Envelope (5/?)
Pairing: Ben/Leslie
Word count: 12,500 (this chapter)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Shop Around the Corner/You’ve Got Mail AU, in which Nerd Boy and Pawnee Lover fall for each other online while Ben and Leslie fight about budgets and vegetables and stuff in real life. The timeline so far happens during the government shutdown following season 2, although some references to season 3 and beyond are mixed in. This chapter picks up the morning following the café scene/date-plus-two-other-people thing from the end of chapter 4 and deals with all the aftermath of that.
Author’s Note: Sorry for the delay seems completely inadequate at this point, but thanks to everyone who hasn’t forgotten this fic in the past 18-plus months. And especially to saucydiva for reading so many drafts and keeping me from accidentally turning side characters into stalker/serial killers, etc. And also to stillscape, princess_george, and anyone else I’m forgetting who read drafts or helped me brainstorm at various points.
Previous chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4
I’m sorry.
Ben stared at the words on his computer screen, contemplating hitting send.
The tiny sentence seemed woefully inadequate to cover the circumstances. But what else was there to say? If he offered some sort of explanation for apparently standing her up-my car broke down, my grandfather died, I caught food poisoning from eating a rancid rutabaga-Pawnee Lover would just insist on rescheduling. He’d be right back where he started, sitting across from a woman who definitely didn’t want to be sitting across from him.
Unless …
Ben hit backspace, punching the button ten times in rapid succession with his index finger, and impulsively replaced the words with:
It’s a long story. I’ll explain later.
It was a long story, and he would have a lot of explaining to do, if he ever had the chance. But it was also identical to the message he’d sent to his sister last night, the one that Leslie had seen on his phone, and she might recognize the phrasing. She might make the connection, figuring out that the guy she couldn’t stand and the guy who she seemed to sort of like were one and the same.
If he was going to give himself away, though, why hadn’t he done it last night? It would have been so easy, any number of times-when she asked him to prove he had read Eleanor Roosevelt’s biography, for example. What if he had looked her in the eye and recited from memory one of the quotes that had come to mean so much to them in their online repartee?
What if, for that matter, he had just come out and told her the truth?
When he closed his eyes, he could see her face before she stormed out of the bar, chin quivering with fury and blue eyes bigger and brighter than he’d ever seen them. She had wanted to meet Nerd Boy last night, but she definitely did not want to find out that Nerd Boy was him. It was clear that such a revelation would kill their pen pal relationship, whatever it was or might have been.
Maybe it would be kinder, ultimately, not to leave her wondering, but-
He couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. Not yet.
For variety, this time he placed the cursor at the beginning of the line and held down the delete key, watching the letters get sucked into a depressing nothingness.
“Good morning, Ben!”
Chris burst into the office promptly at 8:30, startling Ben out of his funk.
“Morning,” Ben answered without looking up, feeling like he needed at least two more cups of coffee and a pair of dark sunglasses before facing the relentless cheerfulness of Chris Traeger today.
“I had simply a fantastic time last night, didn’t you?” Ben glanced up disbelievingly at him, but Chris didn’t seem to notice. “Ann Perkins is truly delightful. I ran two extra miles this morning just thinking of her. Do you think she likes me?”
“Do I think she likes you?” Ben narrowed his eyes incredulously. He really wasn’t in the mood to talk about the romantic success that Chris had had last night, considering how his own evening had turned out. “Really couldn’t say. We’re not exactly close.”
“She left so quickly after Leslie did, I didn’t have a chance to ask her out for a second date. I’ll give her another call soon. She hasn’t picked up yet this morning. I’m so pumped this is working out! Remember what I told you? If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, and-”
Ben winced. “Please don’t.” Then, feeling bad for how he was treating the guy who was now, apparently, his only friend in Pawnee, he mustered a weak smile. “Sorry, I just have a bit of a headache … from the music last night. I’m sure she’ll call back.”
Turning away from his partner, he refreshed his gmail inbox for the umpteenth time that morning, hoping for who knows what sort of message from Pawnee Lover.
Leslie.
A new message appeared, and his heart leapt into his throat for a fraction of a second until he realized it was just from his sister, Kate.
Why on earth would you tell your boss that it was my birthday? Three months early? You have a lot of explaining to do, nerd. Call me later.
Ben stared at the short message-or more accurately, stared at a particular word in the message that was suddenly striking him as suspicious.
Kate called him nerd. She called him that all the time, come to think of it-with the slightly annoying but mostly affectionate quality that an older sister can get away with. And she knew things, things that would-
No. She wouldn’t.
Would she?
--
“I’m sorry.”
Leslie barely got the pair of words out, she was panting so hard by the time she got to Ann’s doorstep.
Ann was giving her that look, that who is this insane person and why did I ever let her into my life look. Or possibly she was just hungover? It was hard to tell.
“Leslie. What’s going on? Why are you out of breath?”
“I.” Gasp. “Ran over.” Pant. “Here on my lunch break.”
Ann raised her eyebrows and stepped aside, ushering Leslie into the house.
“Go sit down in the living room. I’ll bring you some water,” Ann commanded in that friendly-but-stern nurse voice she did so well.
The water was cold and eased the pounding in her head a bit. Leslie realized she must still be dehydrated from all those pink cocktails at The Bulge last night, and running all the way over here probably hadn’t helped.
“Where is your car?” Ann asked after giving Leslie a minute to recover. “I tried to go after you last night, but you were already gone.”
“At the bar, I think, maybe? Or did I leave it at JJ’s? It wasn’t in my driveway this morning, and it just seemed easier to walk to work than to go find it immediately. Maybe I should go find it. You know what, that’s a good idea, Ann, I should go find my car now. Thanks for the water!”
“Hold it.” Ann blocked her exit. “You just got here, and you clearly ran the entire way, so there must be a reason. What’s going on?”
Leslie sat back down, taking a deep breath. “Okay, you’re right. Just. Ann. Before I say anything … can you tell me, on a scale of one to one thousand, how angry you are at me?”
“What do you mean, how angry I am at you?”
“Just, approximately. So I know how much groveling I need to do. And how many I’m-so-sorry cookies I need to bake. And how much of a chance I have of ever making it up to you and deserving your friendship again.”
Ann sat down next to her on the couch, looking more concerned than anything, so Leslie guessed that meant … six dozen cookies? No, better make it twelve dozen just to be safe.
“Make what up to me? Leslie, I don’t know what’s going on. Why would I be mad at you?”
“Didn’t you get any of my messages?”
Ann shook her head, bewildered.
“Texts? I sent you like 27 texts today.”
Ann smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Leslie. I turned the ringer off after it woke me up at 6:30 this morning, and I guess I forgot to turn it back on.”
Leslie blinked. She had been bracing herself for an onslaught of indignation and fury and a lot of yelling and possibly some name calling. Having Ann sitting next to her, gently prodding her to tell her what was wrong, suddenly that seemed so much less plausible.
And somehow that made her feel worse.
“Ann, you beautiful trusting tamarin monkey. What happened is that I was almost a terrible friend to you last night. I was upset that my date didn’t show up, and I was trying to salvage the night, and you know how I’ve been trying so hard to get money for my department all summer.”
Ann nodded, so Leslie plunged full-speed ahead. “I thought that maybe, since it seemed like Chris liked you so much, that I might be able to take advantage of the fact that he obviously wanted to have sex with you. And you know, that he might even have been willing to increase your best friend’s department’s budget if he thought it would increase the chances that he’d get to have sex with you.”
She said it all really fast, on the off chance that Ann might miss some of the words, specifically the ones referring to what an awful friend she’d been.
“Oh.” Ann’s eyes widened and she shrank away from Leslie, slumping back into a couch cushion. “You were going to tell Chris that I would sleep with him, if he gave you money for your budget?”
Leslie cringed. That sounded so crass! “Not in those exact words, Ann. I was going to be very sneaky. And it’s not like I was going to force you to have sex with him. You probably would have wanted to anyway, right? Because you’re both so good looking, I assumed, so I thought I would just ...” Yikes. It really had been that awful of an idea. “But the point is, I didn’t, and I’m glad I didn’t, and I’m sorry I ever thought of it, and I just hope you can forgive me.”
Strangely, Ann looked more bemused than anything. “Leslie, if I got mad at you every time you had some crazy half-baked idea … at any rate, you didn’t do anything, so you made the right choice, right?”
Leslie tilted her head from side to side, one corner of her mouth turned up guiltily, as she debated whether to admit to Ann that it hadn’t exactly been her idea to abort the mission. Before she got there, recognition flashed across Ann’s beautiful face as she put the pieces of the evening together on her own. “That’s what you were fighting with Ben about?”
“Um … sort of.” Leslie had vague memories of yelling at Ben, accompanied by more vivid recollections of his face while she was yelling at him. “He did butt in where he wasn’t wanted and ruined yet another one of my plans.”
“A plan that you were just apologizing to me for even thinking about,” Ann pointed out.
“He shouldn’t have even been there. And he was being Ben. And I was upset about Nerd Boy not showing up, which I guess wasn’t his fault, but Ben was there. And I had to sit next to him.”
Ann frowned doubtfully at Leslie, so she added quickly, “And he misquoted Eleanor Roosevelt! Really … completely … butchered it. Twisted her whole meaning into something … very unlike Eleanor. It was appalling.”
Not to mention he had blocked her every attempt at saving her department this summer, and done so without a trace of empathy or humanity. And he had yelled at her about vegetables!
He had deserved the yelling, right? Her anger at him was so mixed up with her disappointment and frustration over everything that was going wrong this summer, she didn’t even know anymore.
“Anyway. That’s not important. What’s important is that I’m sorry. Friends are more important than work, or boys, or waffles even, usually, sometimes, waffles are very important actually. But friendship is too, and I shouldn’t have forgotten that. I’m sorry I forgot that.”
“It’s okay, Leslie.” Ann turned toward her again. “Of course I’m glad you didn’t do that. But I know you were upset last night, and you know, I probably shouldn’t have expected you to come out with us in the first place after what happened.”
Leslie exhaled dramatically in relief. “Really? You’re not upset? You are the best, Ann. I love you so much, and I will never try to use your beauty for personal gain again. Pinkie swear, I promise.”
Ann laughed and offered up her pinkie. “Okay. Sounds good. And in return, I will never make you double date with me and Chris and Ben again.”
Leslie ignored the mention of Ben’s name, which made her weirdly uncomfortable. “So what is the scoop with Chris? It seemed like you really hit it off.”
Ann shifted uncomfortably. “Ah … well … we did, I guess. The problem is, he seems to think we really hit it off.”
“What do you mean?”
“Last night, after you left, he got all serious, saying things about how I was the most amazing woman he had ever met, and how it was the best first date he’d been on in his life … and you had just said that thing about how we’d have beautiful children…”
“I said what?”
“Yeah, you seemed a little buzzed, I know you didn’t mean anything. But I just freaked out after that, and I left. He seems like he wants something really serious already, and we’ve just been out once. It wasn’t even supposed to be a date.”
Leslie was suddenly really glad she hadn’t pushed anything last night.
“Have you heard from him?”
“He’s the one who called at 6:30. Who calls that early?”
“I call that early,” Leslie admitted sheepishly.
“Yeah, exactly. Close friends. A boyfriend maybe, if he knows you’re going to be up. Not some guy you hung out with once … and made out with accidentally a few months ago.”
“Are you going to call him back?
Ann sighed. “I don’t know yet. He is really hot, and I liked him. A lot, maybe. And god, is he hot. I just don’t want to toy with his feelings when I’m not sure, you know? I need to think it through first.”
Leslie patted Ann on the knee. She was a really good person, trying to do the right thing in the face of that kind of hotness. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“Thanks. But what about you, did you hear anything from your mystery date?”
“No. Not a word yet. I don’t know. Maybe he’s still … detained, wherever he was detained. Will you check for him at the hospital?”
Ann narrowed her eyes skeptically. “Check for … a guy named Nerd Boy?”
“No. You’re right. That would be silly. Of course not. Um … yeah, anyway, he’ll probably write soon. I’m sure he will. I should go! Have to get back to the office. Crap, I didn’t eat anything. Ann, do you have any fruit?” Leslie wandered into Ann’s kitchen. “I’m just going to take this apple for the road, if that’s okay.”
Ann followed her in and grabbed her car keys. “You can have the apple if you let me drive you. We’re going to go find your car.”
--
The moment Ben was inside his motel room that evening, he dialed his sister’s number. Kate picked up on the first ring.
“Hey, Ben, I was just sending you an email. Nathan built you this block tower, and I took a picture. He’s really proud of it. Wanted to show his Uncle Ben right away.”
“Great.” Ordinarily that would be the sort of thing Ben would have taken an interest in, and he would have asked her to put Nathan on the phone while he looked at the picture. But he had something kind of urgent he wanted to ask her about first. “Should we talk about the fact that you made a fake online dating profile for me?”
The line went silent for a moment, confirming what Ben had finally guessed.
“Oh, um … I don’t know. Should we?”
“Kate.”
“Wow. I kind of totally forgot about that. That’s still out there, huh?”
“Seriously, Kate? Yes, it’s still out there.”
“I’m sorry. I am, I really am.” She sounded sincere, at least. “I had the best intentions, I swear. I just thought it would be good for you to meet someone, and I know Chris tries, but somehow I just don’t see him being very good at picking out women for you. I was trying to help.”
Ben let out a slow sigh, some of the anger and frustration starting to drain out of him. It was hard to stay mad at her. And yet-
“Nerd Boy, Kate? You thought a lot of women were going to be interested in someone with the user name Nerd Boy?”
“… oh.” He could practically hear her wince, and her normally forceful voice turned small. “Well, the book club ladies were here. We were drinking wine, a lot of wine I guess, and … Cindy asked about you.”
“Cindy Eckhart?” Oh god. This just kept getting worse and worse.
“Yeah, well, it’s Cindy Nelson now, but you know we still hang out. She and some of the girls were looking at the pictures of you playing with Nathan from last Christmas, and wondering why no one had snatched you up yet. Everyone seemed pretty unanimous that you were a catch.”
“What?” Seriously, now Cindy thought he was a catch?
“Oh, yeah. Good head of hair, good with kids, that equals ‘catch’ around here. You know, Cindy’s husband is bald and works long hours. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy but-”
“Hold it, hold it. Let me get this straight. You and your book club friends got drunk and decided to meddle in my personal life. Shouldn’t you have been, I don’t know, discussing a book?”
“Yeah, right, Ben, because that’s what book clubs do. Anyway, no, nobody else had anything to do with the dating profile. It just got me thinking, and after they left-I don’t know, maybe I had too much wine that night. Hence the Nerd Boy thing, I guess. But I had the best intentions, really. It’s been a while since you’ve dated anyone, hasn’t it?”
“Right,” Ben said quietly. He stopped pacing around the room and sank down on the edge of the motel bed, pulling absently at some loose threads on the hideous coverlet.
“Wait,” Kate said after a moment. “How did you even find out? You didn’t get a response, did you?”
Ben didn’t say anything, but apparently that was enough of a confirmation.
“Oh my god. Someone responded! Someone has the hots for Nerd Boy. Ben, you have to marry this woman!”
“I have to … what?”
“Who else is going to have the hots for Nerd Boy?” she teased. “Be honest with yourself. You know it’s true.”
“Thank you. That’s very helpful. Jesus, Katie.”
“Seriously, though, you are a great catch, and not just because of your hair, obviously. You deserve someone nice. You deserve to be happy.”
“Well … thanks,” he managed with slightly less sarcasm.
“So … what is she like? Tell me everything. Please?”
“Um … well, she’s …” Ben toyed with the idea of blowing his sister off, because he was still pretty annoyed with her, but he was so flustered and confused over the whole situation, he kind of wanted her opinion. “The thing is, it turns out we know each other already. We work together. She really likes … Nerd Boy, or at least I think she did … but she really hates Ben Wyatt.”
“Um. You know you’re the same person, right?”
Ben glared ineffectually in the vague direction of Minnesota. “She doesn’t know that, though. We haven’t met in person yet. I mean, except for that we have.”
Kate started giggling. “Your life sounds like some kind of bad romantic comedy.”
Ben couldn’t help but laugh too, mirthlessly recognizing the absurdity of the situation. “Doesn’t it? God. It’s just … that’s not how it works in real life. People who don’t get along don’t just magically change their minds and live happily after. That doesn’t happen.”
“Maybe it could,” Kate mused.
For a moment, Ben imagined a world in which Leslie was anxiously waiting for her date at a café and was happy to see him come through the door. It was absurd.
“I don’t know, Kate.” He sighed, trying to think of a simple way to explain the predicament he’d gotten himself into. “Look. We were supposed to meet last night, and she thinks I stood her up, even though I was there, she didn’t know it was me, and now I’m trying to figure out how to explain that. She’s going to want to reschedule, but I can’t do that, because she’s furious at me for something I did last night. In the meantime, she’s waiting for Nerd Boy to write to her, and-”
“What? No, never mind, stop,” Kate cut him off mid-sentence. And he couldn’t blame her, he knew how ridiculous it all sounded. “Okay, you know what, I have an idea. Forget the whole hokey thing where you’re Ashton Kutcher and she’s Kate Hudson and you’re trapped in this weird she loves me but she hates me but she doesn’t know I’m the same person as myself plot. Because that shit’s ridiculous.”
“Okay …” Ben said tentatively, blanching at her casting choices for his life.
“Because it’s a lot simpler than that, right?”
“No, actually, I’m pretty sure it’s that fucked up, no matter how you look at it.”
“I get that, believe me. But tell me this. You have feelings for a woman-a real flesh and blood woman who you’ve spent time with, in person, not some kind of, I don’t know, avatar?”
“People don’t have feelings for avatars, Kate. An avatar is just a graphical representation of a-”
“Answer the question, nerd.”
“I don’t know. I never really, I mean, I think, if the situation were, if she weren’t so … and if I could just … ” Ben trailed off, considering that he might have actual feelings for Leslie, not just in the sense that she was Pawnee Lover, but Leslie, the yellow-haired parks director who stomped around and made trouble and wrinkled her nose at him and … never stopped trying.
And that the reason he hadn’t admitted this before was, one, because he had feelings for another woman, or at least for someone he had thought was another woman, and two … “It doesn’t matter. She’s clearly not interested.”
He could practically hear Kate rolling her eyes. “And why do you think that is?”
“Oh, I don’t know! Because I shut her government down. Because I slashed her department’s budget. You know, little things, like that.”
“I find it hard to believe you’d fall for someone who wasn’t smart enough to see you were just doing your job,” she pointed out.
Ben had to admit she had a point. It was one of the most frustrating things about Leslie-she was clearly smart enough to understand the numbers on the spreadsheets. So why did she still hold him so responsible?
“Does she hate Chris too?” Kate pressed.
“Of course not. Chris is Chris.”
“So she loves Chris?”
“No. God, that’s just … no. She’s just polite to him. What are you saying-I need to be more like Chris?” Nothing would ever get done if he did that.
“You just want her to be polite to you?” Kate asked skeptically. “Look, just be yourself, Ben, get off your computer and be Nerd Boy or whoever in real life. Talk to her. You now, try something.”
Like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“You sound just like Chris.”
“Yeah, well, Chris isn’t all bad. The flowers he sent me for my fake birthday are gorgeous. Look, I’m sorry I created the dumb profile. No, you know what, I’m not sorry. Because if this works out … you know I just want you to be happy.”
“Thanks, Kate. I mean, thanks a lot,” he mustered as much sarcasm as possible for those three syllables, because this stunt deserved it, but then let his voice drop back to quiet sincerity. “But thanks.”
After they hung up, Ben set his laptop to chime if he got a message and collapsed back onto his bed, staring at the ceiling. Maybe his sister had been right that he needed to think about how to deal with Leslie in person. It reminded him of something Leslie had said last night when she caught him typing away on his phone-something about people who hide in their electronics. Is that what he was doing?
He laid back and squeezed his eyes shut, his mind a blur of yellow curls, color-coded idea binders, and multi-media presentations set to Hollywood soundtracks. He let his mind drift indulgently to a handful of times when Leslie hadn’t looked at him like he was armed with an actual machete-when he had taken her out for a beer his second day in town and thought they were on the same page, before everything went inexplicably wrong again. That one morning when she’d been waiting for him on the steps outside City Hall ready to show him the extra funds she thought she’d found. A few stray moments last night at the bar when he thought he was getting somewhere with her finally, before she’d turned on him again.
The thing was, whenever he talked to Leslie in person, it was as the guy who had shut down her government and cut her budget down to the bare bones. It hadn’t been his choice, but for whatever reason, he was the one she seemed to blame.
And he wasn’t sure how they were ever going to get past that.
--
After her morning shower, Leslie shuffled into the kitchen, started a pot of coffee, and grabbed a banana for breakfast. Then she frowned at the vase in the middle of her kitchen table.
An unidentified leafy green vegetable protruded from it, its leaves brown and droopy, a remnant of her run-in with Ben at the grocery store a few weeks ago. She hadn’t known what to do with it, and it’s not like she was going to eat it-yech-but whatever it was had thick curly leaves that looked kind of pretty, so sticking it there had seemed like a valid choice at the time.
It seemed like more of a stinky choice now. Wrinkling her nose, Leslie picked up the vase and dumped it out her back door.
Two down, one to go, since the artichoke had gone south last week. For a little while, it had made a pretty cute hedgehog, with raisins for eyes and a cherry stem mouth.
Now all that was left was the beets, which she’d thrown in her crisper drawer because they were too ugly to do anything else with. She opened her refrigerator and poked around cautiously at the dirty bulbous-looking things, considering throwing those out too-it’s not like she was going to cook them, or pickle them, or whatever disgusting thing it is one does with beets.
But getting rid of them felt too much like admitting defeat. Too much like admitting that Ben had been right about her that day she’d impulsively thrown them into her cart after he’d yelled at her about being irresponsible.
The Emergency Budgetary Task Force was no longer in session, and it was only two weeks until the City Council would meet to vote on the auditors’ recommendations, but this was not over. Not by a long shot.
Since the task force wasn’t meeting, Leslie wasn’t required to be at City Hall, but since she had her essential badge she technically wasn’t barred either, so she dressed in some jeans and a smart, lightweight blazer and drove to work.
After a few hours of fruitless brainstorming in her office, she felt like she needed a change of scenery. Grabbing a fresh notepad and one of her idea binders, she set off for the bench by the wildflower mural on the second floor. Sitting there always seemed to make her feel better-who wouldn’t be inspired sitting in front of all that thriving beauty?
She took the stairs two at time, in a hurry to be inspired, and turned the corner, only to stop short.
Ben Wyatt was in her spot.
Of course he was. He was the last person she wanted to see, and he was everywhere she went lately, like this barrier that someone kept picking up and sticking in front of anything she wanted.
He looked up from whatever he was writing in his padfolio, and his eyes widened slightly at her. He appeared to stop breathing.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted, her hand unconsciously drifting up to her arm, where he’d held onto her two nights ago. She felt herself flushing slightly at the memory.
“Do you think, maybe, we could come up with a new way to greet each other?”
“Sorry.” She bit back the urge to apologize to him for more, because she hadn’t made up her mind yet about that, but tried to lower her voice to a slightly more civil level. “I like this spot. You’re in my spot. I really need this spot today. Why are you here anyway?”
He nodded slightly toward the other end of the hall. “The auditors’ office is over there, remember? Chris is in there … being Chris, you know. Sometimes I just need to get away for a few minutes. And I like the mural right here.”
Leslie looked disbelievingly at the wall of beautiful yellow wildflowers and back at Ben, who was still in her spot.
“Um …” He scooted over to one side. “It’s a big enough bench. Do you want to sit down?”
She opened her mouth and closed it again. No, she didn’t want to sit next to him. He was distracting, with his rolled-up sleeves and his ugly shirt and his inflexible views on government spending. And she didn’t need to be distracted right now.
But he looked warily hopeful in that way he had over waffles and drinks, when he’d seemed almost like a human being, and she did feel bad for yelling at him that night. Of all the things that were Ben’s fault this summer, the fact that her date hadn’t shown up was not one of them. And he had saved her from doing something she would have regretted, even if she’d never admit that to him.
Perching herself on the far opposite end, Leslie opened her binder and tried to ignore that he was there, but she could feel him glancing at her every few seconds. Was he trying to unnerve her so that she would leave? Well, fat chance that was happening. This was her bench.
“Working?” he asked finally.
“Yes, I’m working on a dozen super-awesome ideas that are going to blow you away just as soon as I finalize some of the details,” she snapped at him. “Better keep some time open next week, because you and I are going to have some marathon meetings in which I convince you to throw out your recommendations and put these into action.” She tapped her binder for emphasis.
He raised his eyebrows at her, and she couldn’t tell if he believed her bluff. She would have a dozen super-awesome ideas by then; she just didn’t know what they were yet.
Trying to keep up appearances, she started to doodle some important-looking idea words on her notebook but could feel him watching her.
“What?”
“Um … nothing. Just, can I ask you something?”
He looked weirdly nervous, and it was making her feel weirdly nervous. “Sure. Yep. Whatever. Ask away. What is it?”
He looked away from her for a moment, furrowing his brow and resting his forehead on his fist. His sleeves were rolled up, and she noticed the way his forearm tensed attractively, and then wanted to smack herself for noticing something like that.
“Did you know that Chris outranks me?” he asked, finally turning back to her.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting him to ask, but it wasn’t that.
“Yeah, sure, I guess, I think I knew that. Or I assumed. So?”
“I don’t know. It’s just … you’ve spent a lot of time this summer trying to convince me to funnel more funds to your department. The meetings, the emails, that presentation, which I felt like was directed at me.”
“I care about my department. Of course I’m going to put up a fight.”
“But Chris outranks me. He technically can overrule me. I haven’t seen you try to convince him. And now these meetings you want to schedule, I was just wondering … why meet with me, specifically? It’s almost like … I don’t know, like you care about … or, that you’re maybe trying to …”
“Hold it,” Leslie interrupted him. “You might recall, I did try to talk to Chris about the parks budget, at The Bulge. And you wouldn’t let me!”
Ben rolled his eyes. “That was different, that wasn’t a business meeting-that was, that was a date. Your friend was on a date with him. Anyway, I was just curious-”
“Oh come on,” Leslie interrupted him. “It’s not like I was going to sell her into sex slavery to fertilize the soccer fields!”
He laughed a little at that, then cleared his throat self-consciously, and she glared at him. “I’m not a bad person, Ben! I was upset. It was a really crappy night, and it’s been a really crappy summer, and I wasn’t myself. I’m not always like this.”
“I … I know,” he said quietly, looking a little taken aback by her outburst. “That's what I thought.”
Leslie closed her mouth, biting back a retort she had ready to fire back at him. She hadn’t expected not to need it, and she didn’t know what to do with that. She didn’t even know why she was trying to explain herself to him-what did it matter what he thought of her?
He should be explaining himself, anyway. If Ben and Chris hadn’t crashed, she and Ann could have had a girls’ night, and none of the rest of it would have happened.
“Why were you there anyway?” she asked him, realizing that had never really been adequately answered.
“What?” Ben looked more alarmed than she would have expected by this line of questioning, and she pressed forward.
“You and Chris, you just happened to be at JJ’s to see me get stood up. Why were you there?”
Ben swallowed audibly. “Um, well … Chris was just jogging past, and he saw Ann, out on the sidewalk … and I … was, ah, I was there because …”
Leslie practically gasped, as this vague thought that had been niggling at the edges of her mind pushed to the surface. “Chris just happened to show up? You didn’t have plans to meet him there?”
“No, I didn’t know he was going to be there, I was just, um …”
Crap on a crudité. Chris had just happened to be at the restaurant that night, at the same time Nerd Boy was supposed to meet her. He traveled for business. And he’d been detained … by a beautiful brunette who he happened to run into just outside the restaurant! And now he was falling in love with Ann, as men tended to do with Ann.
And that was why Leslie hadn’t heard from him!
“Maybe I will go talk to Chris! Chris and I have a lot of things to say to each other, I think!”
“Wait, what are you doing? That’s not what I-”
Leslie didn’t hear the rest of what Ben was saying because she was already speedwalking down the hallway. Furious, she burst into the auditors’ office.
“Leslie Knope! What a pleasant surprise!” Chris greeted her cheerfully, as if they were nothing more than temporary coworkers.
“Is it now?” Chris looked at her strangely, and Leslie tried to keep her voice calm, because she didn’t know for sure yet if she was right. “Chris. Do you happen to know any Eleanor Roosevelt quotes?”
“Of course. I know many Eleanor Roosevelt quotes. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. Should I go on?”
Leslie’s mouth went dry and her stomach turned over. She took a step backward. “What biographies have you read?”
Chris looked increasingly confused. “Biographies?” Then he pulled a tome off his bookshelf: Quote Junkie: Inspirational Quotes Mega Edition.
Oh.
She let out a breath and started to relax.
“No. Never mind. I was thinking of something else. Carry on. I have to go.”
What had she been thinking? Of course Chris Traeger couldn’t be Nerd Boy. Everything about that was wrong.
And it was ridiculous to think that someone she met online could possibly be someone that she already knew in real life. What would be chances of that happening?
“Leslie,” Chris called after her as she was almost through the door, and she ducked her head back into the office. “I had a wonderful time the other night with your friend, the exquisite and delightful Ann Perkins. Do you think she would be interested in going out with me again? I haven’t heard from her since then.”
Leslie was about to tell him some of what Ann had shared with her, but she bit her tongue. She had learned her lesson about meddling with Ann’s love life.
“No idea. We haven’t talked about it. She hasn’t mentioned you.”
“Not at all?”
Chris looked crestfallen, but Leslie continued to shake her head, feigning ignorance on the matter. “Nope. Not a word. Sorry.”
“Okay. Thanks anyway.”
Leslie spun through the door and almost ran straight into Ben, who was once again in her way. When she stopped short and threw up her hands, they collided with his chest, and he put a steadying hand on her elbow. For a split second, their eyes met, and she thought she recognized him-or rather, recognized him as someone other than him, which made no sense.
“Watch where you’re going,” she mumbled, as she jerked away and zagged around him to hurry away down the hall.
--
( continue to second half here)
Pairing: Ben/Leslie
Word count: 12,500 (this chapter)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Shop Around the Corner/You’ve Got Mail AU, in which Nerd Boy and Pawnee Lover fall for each other online while Ben and Leslie fight about budgets and vegetables and stuff in real life. The timeline so far happens during the government shutdown following season 2, although some references to season 3 and beyond are mixed in. This chapter picks up the morning following the café scene/date-plus-two-other-people thing from the end of chapter 4 and deals with all the aftermath of that.
Author’s Note: Sorry for the delay seems completely inadequate at this point, but thanks to everyone who hasn’t forgotten this fic in the past 18-plus months. And especially to saucydiva for reading so many drafts and keeping me from accidentally turning side characters into stalker/serial killers, etc. And also to stillscape, princess_george, and anyone else I’m forgetting who read drafts or helped me brainstorm at various points.
Previous chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4
I’m sorry.
Ben stared at the words on his computer screen, contemplating hitting send.
The tiny sentence seemed woefully inadequate to cover the circumstances. But what else was there to say? If he offered some sort of explanation for apparently standing her up-my car broke down, my grandfather died, I caught food poisoning from eating a rancid rutabaga-Pawnee Lover would just insist on rescheduling. He’d be right back where he started, sitting across from a woman who definitely didn’t want to be sitting across from him.
Unless …
Ben hit backspace, punching the button ten times in rapid succession with his index finger, and impulsively replaced the words with:
It’s a long story. I’ll explain later.
It was a long story, and he would have a lot of explaining to do, if he ever had the chance. But it was also identical to the message he’d sent to his sister last night, the one that Leslie had seen on his phone, and she might recognize the phrasing. She might make the connection, figuring out that the guy she couldn’t stand and the guy who she seemed to sort of like were one and the same.
If he was going to give himself away, though, why hadn’t he done it last night? It would have been so easy, any number of times-when she asked him to prove he had read Eleanor Roosevelt’s biography, for example. What if he had looked her in the eye and recited from memory one of the quotes that had come to mean so much to them in their online repartee?
What if, for that matter, he had just come out and told her the truth?
When he closed his eyes, he could see her face before she stormed out of the bar, chin quivering with fury and blue eyes bigger and brighter than he’d ever seen them. She had wanted to meet Nerd Boy last night, but she definitely did not want to find out that Nerd Boy was him. It was clear that such a revelation would kill their pen pal relationship, whatever it was or might have been.
Maybe it would be kinder, ultimately, not to leave her wondering, but-
He couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. Not yet.
For variety, this time he placed the cursor at the beginning of the line and held down the delete key, watching the letters get sucked into a depressing nothingness.
“Good morning, Ben!”
Chris burst into the office promptly at 8:30, startling Ben out of his funk.
“Morning,” Ben answered without looking up, feeling like he needed at least two more cups of coffee and a pair of dark sunglasses before facing the relentless cheerfulness of Chris Traeger today.
“I had simply a fantastic time last night, didn’t you?” Ben glanced up disbelievingly at him, but Chris didn’t seem to notice. “Ann Perkins is truly delightful. I ran two extra miles this morning just thinking of her. Do you think she likes me?”
“Do I think she likes you?” Ben narrowed his eyes incredulously. He really wasn’t in the mood to talk about the romantic success that Chris had had last night, considering how his own evening had turned out. “Really couldn’t say. We’re not exactly close.”
“She left so quickly after Leslie did, I didn’t have a chance to ask her out for a second date. I’ll give her another call soon. She hasn’t picked up yet this morning. I’m so pumped this is working out! Remember what I told you? If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, and-”
Ben winced. “Please don’t.” Then, feeling bad for how he was treating the guy who was now, apparently, his only friend in Pawnee, he mustered a weak smile. “Sorry, I just have a bit of a headache … from the music last night. I’m sure she’ll call back.”
Turning away from his partner, he refreshed his gmail inbox for the umpteenth time that morning, hoping for who knows what sort of message from Pawnee Lover.
Leslie.
A new message appeared, and his heart leapt into his throat for a fraction of a second until he realized it was just from his sister, Kate.
Why on earth would you tell your boss that it was my birthday? Three months early? You have a lot of explaining to do, nerd. Call me later.
Ben stared at the short message-or more accurately, stared at a particular word in the message that was suddenly striking him as suspicious.
Kate called him nerd. She called him that all the time, come to think of it-with the slightly annoying but mostly affectionate quality that an older sister can get away with. And she knew things, things that would-
No. She wouldn’t.
Would she?
--
“I’m sorry.”
Leslie barely got the pair of words out, she was panting so hard by the time she got to Ann’s doorstep.
Ann was giving her that look, that who is this insane person and why did I ever let her into my life look. Or possibly she was just hungover? It was hard to tell.
“Leslie. What’s going on? Why are you out of breath?”
“I.” Gasp. “Ran over.” Pant. “Here on my lunch break.”
Ann raised her eyebrows and stepped aside, ushering Leslie into the house.
“Go sit down in the living room. I’ll bring you some water,” Ann commanded in that friendly-but-stern nurse voice she did so well.
The water was cold and eased the pounding in her head a bit. Leslie realized she must still be dehydrated from all those pink cocktails at The Bulge last night, and running all the way over here probably hadn’t helped.
“Where is your car?” Ann asked after giving Leslie a minute to recover. “I tried to go after you last night, but you were already gone.”
“At the bar, I think, maybe? Or did I leave it at JJ’s? It wasn’t in my driveway this morning, and it just seemed easier to walk to work than to go find it immediately. Maybe I should go find it. You know what, that’s a good idea, Ann, I should go find my car now. Thanks for the water!”
“Hold it.” Ann blocked her exit. “You just got here, and you clearly ran the entire way, so there must be a reason. What’s going on?”
Leslie sat back down, taking a deep breath. “Okay, you’re right. Just. Ann. Before I say anything … can you tell me, on a scale of one to one thousand, how angry you are at me?”
“What do you mean, how angry I am at you?”
“Just, approximately. So I know how much groveling I need to do. And how many I’m-so-sorry cookies I need to bake. And how much of a chance I have of ever making it up to you and deserving your friendship again.”
Ann sat down next to her on the couch, looking more concerned than anything, so Leslie guessed that meant … six dozen cookies? No, better make it twelve dozen just to be safe.
“Make what up to me? Leslie, I don’t know what’s going on. Why would I be mad at you?”
“Didn’t you get any of my messages?”
Ann shook her head, bewildered.
“Texts? I sent you like 27 texts today.”
Ann smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Leslie. I turned the ringer off after it woke me up at 6:30 this morning, and I guess I forgot to turn it back on.”
Leslie blinked. She had been bracing herself for an onslaught of indignation and fury and a lot of yelling and possibly some name calling. Having Ann sitting next to her, gently prodding her to tell her what was wrong, suddenly that seemed so much less plausible.
And somehow that made her feel worse.
“Ann, you beautiful trusting tamarin monkey. What happened is that I was almost a terrible friend to you last night. I was upset that my date didn’t show up, and I was trying to salvage the night, and you know how I’ve been trying so hard to get money for my department all summer.”
Ann nodded, so Leslie plunged full-speed ahead. “I thought that maybe, since it seemed like Chris liked you so much, that I might be able to take advantage of the fact that he obviously wanted to have sex with you. And you know, that he might even have been willing to increase your best friend’s department’s budget if he thought it would increase the chances that he’d get to have sex with you.”
She said it all really fast, on the off chance that Ann might miss some of the words, specifically the ones referring to what an awful friend she’d been.
“Oh.” Ann’s eyes widened and she shrank away from Leslie, slumping back into a couch cushion. “You were going to tell Chris that I would sleep with him, if he gave you money for your budget?”
Leslie cringed. That sounded so crass! “Not in those exact words, Ann. I was going to be very sneaky. And it’s not like I was going to force you to have sex with him. You probably would have wanted to anyway, right? Because you’re both so good looking, I assumed, so I thought I would just ...” Yikes. It really had been that awful of an idea. “But the point is, I didn’t, and I’m glad I didn’t, and I’m sorry I ever thought of it, and I just hope you can forgive me.”
Strangely, Ann looked more bemused than anything. “Leslie, if I got mad at you every time you had some crazy half-baked idea … at any rate, you didn’t do anything, so you made the right choice, right?”
Leslie tilted her head from side to side, one corner of her mouth turned up guiltily, as she debated whether to admit to Ann that it hadn’t exactly been her idea to abort the mission. Before she got there, recognition flashed across Ann’s beautiful face as she put the pieces of the evening together on her own. “That’s what you were fighting with Ben about?”
“Um … sort of.” Leslie had vague memories of yelling at Ben, accompanied by more vivid recollections of his face while she was yelling at him. “He did butt in where he wasn’t wanted and ruined yet another one of my plans.”
“A plan that you were just apologizing to me for even thinking about,” Ann pointed out.
“He shouldn’t have even been there. And he was being Ben. And I was upset about Nerd Boy not showing up, which I guess wasn’t his fault, but Ben was there. And I had to sit next to him.”
Ann frowned doubtfully at Leslie, so she added quickly, “And he misquoted Eleanor Roosevelt! Really … completely … butchered it. Twisted her whole meaning into something … very unlike Eleanor. It was appalling.”
Not to mention he had blocked her every attempt at saving her department this summer, and done so without a trace of empathy or humanity. And he had yelled at her about vegetables!
He had deserved the yelling, right? Her anger at him was so mixed up with her disappointment and frustration over everything that was going wrong this summer, she didn’t even know anymore.
“Anyway. That’s not important. What’s important is that I’m sorry. Friends are more important than work, or boys, or waffles even, usually, sometimes, waffles are very important actually. But friendship is too, and I shouldn’t have forgotten that. I’m sorry I forgot that.”
“It’s okay, Leslie.” Ann turned toward her again. “Of course I’m glad you didn’t do that. But I know you were upset last night, and you know, I probably shouldn’t have expected you to come out with us in the first place after what happened.”
Leslie exhaled dramatically in relief. “Really? You’re not upset? You are the best, Ann. I love you so much, and I will never try to use your beauty for personal gain again. Pinkie swear, I promise.”
Ann laughed and offered up her pinkie. “Okay. Sounds good. And in return, I will never make you double date with me and Chris and Ben again.”
Leslie ignored the mention of Ben’s name, which made her weirdly uncomfortable. “So what is the scoop with Chris? It seemed like you really hit it off.”
Ann shifted uncomfortably. “Ah … well … we did, I guess. The problem is, he seems to think we really hit it off.”
“What do you mean?”
“Last night, after you left, he got all serious, saying things about how I was the most amazing woman he had ever met, and how it was the best first date he’d been on in his life … and you had just said that thing about how we’d have beautiful children…”
“I said what?”
“Yeah, you seemed a little buzzed, I know you didn’t mean anything. But I just freaked out after that, and I left. He seems like he wants something really serious already, and we’ve just been out once. It wasn’t even supposed to be a date.”
Leslie was suddenly really glad she hadn’t pushed anything last night.
“Have you heard from him?”
“He’s the one who called at 6:30. Who calls that early?”
“I call that early,” Leslie admitted sheepishly.
“Yeah, exactly. Close friends. A boyfriend maybe, if he knows you’re going to be up. Not some guy you hung out with once … and made out with accidentally a few months ago.”
“Are you going to call him back?
Ann sighed. “I don’t know yet. He is really hot, and I liked him. A lot, maybe. And god, is he hot. I just don’t want to toy with his feelings when I’m not sure, you know? I need to think it through first.”
Leslie patted Ann on the knee. She was a really good person, trying to do the right thing in the face of that kind of hotness. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
“Thanks. But what about you, did you hear anything from your mystery date?”
“No. Not a word yet. I don’t know. Maybe he’s still … detained, wherever he was detained. Will you check for him at the hospital?”
Ann narrowed her eyes skeptically. “Check for … a guy named Nerd Boy?”
“No. You’re right. That would be silly. Of course not. Um … yeah, anyway, he’ll probably write soon. I’m sure he will. I should go! Have to get back to the office. Crap, I didn’t eat anything. Ann, do you have any fruit?” Leslie wandered into Ann’s kitchen. “I’m just going to take this apple for the road, if that’s okay.”
Ann followed her in and grabbed her car keys. “You can have the apple if you let me drive you. We’re going to go find your car.”
--
The moment Ben was inside his motel room that evening, he dialed his sister’s number. Kate picked up on the first ring.
“Hey, Ben, I was just sending you an email. Nathan built you this block tower, and I took a picture. He’s really proud of it. Wanted to show his Uncle Ben right away.”
“Great.” Ordinarily that would be the sort of thing Ben would have taken an interest in, and he would have asked her to put Nathan on the phone while he looked at the picture. But he had something kind of urgent he wanted to ask her about first. “Should we talk about the fact that you made a fake online dating profile for me?”
The line went silent for a moment, confirming what Ben had finally guessed.
“Oh, um … I don’t know. Should we?”
“Kate.”
“Wow. I kind of totally forgot about that. That’s still out there, huh?”
“Seriously, Kate? Yes, it’s still out there.”
“I’m sorry. I am, I really am.” She sounded sincere, at least. “I had the best intentions, I swear. I just thought it would be good for you to meet someone, and I know Chris tries, but somehow I just don’t see him being very good at picking out women for you. I was trying to help.”
Ben let out a slow sigh, some of the anger and frustration starting to drain out of him. It was hard to stay mad at her. And yet-
“Nerd Boy, Kate? You thought a lot of women were going to be interested in someone with the user name Nerd Boy?”
“… oh.” He could practically hear her wince, and her normally forceful voice turned small. “Well, the book club ladies were here. We were drinking wine, a lot of wine I guess, and … Cindy asked about you.”
“Cindy Eckhart?” Oh god. This just kept getting worse and worse.
“Yeah, well, it’s Cindy Nelson now, but you know we still hang out. She and some of the girls were looking at the pictures of you playing with Nathan from last Christmas, and wondering why no one had snatched you up yet. Everyone seemed pretty unanimous that you were a catch.”
“What?” Seriously, now Cindy thought he was a catch?
“Oh, yeah. Good head of hair, good with kids, that equals ‘catch’ around here. You know, Cindy’s husband is bald and works long hours. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy but-”
“Hold it, hold it. Let me get this straight. You and your book club friends got drunk and decided to meddle in my personal life. Shouldn’t you have been, I don’t know, discussing a book?”
“Yeah, right, Ben, because that’s what book clubs do. Anyway, no, nobody else had anything to do with the dating profile. It just got me thinking, and after they left-I don’t know, maybe I had too much wine that night. Hence the Nerd Boy thing, I guess. But I had the best intentions, really. It’s been a while since you’ve dated anyone, hasn’t it?”
“Right,” Ben said quietly. He stopped pacing around the room and sank down on the edge of the motel bed, pulling absently at some loose threads on the hideous coverlet.
“Wait,” Kate said after a moment. “How did you even find out? You didn’t get a response, did you?”
Ben didn’t say anything, but apparently that was enough of a confirmation.
“Oh my god. Someone responded! Someone has the hots for Nerd Boy. Ben, you have to marry this woman!”
“I have to … what?”
“Who else is going to have the hots for Nerd Boy?” she teased. “Be honest with yourself. You know it’s true.”
“Thank you. That’s very helpful. Jesus, Katie.”
“Seriously, though, you are a great catch, and not just because of your hair, obviously. You deserve someone nice. You deserve to be happy.”
“Well … thanks,” he managed with slightly less sarcasm.
“So … what is she like? Tell me everything. Please?”
“Um … well, she’s …” Ben toyed with the idea of blowing his sister off, because he was still pretty annoyed with her, but he was so flustered and confused over the whole situation, he kind of wanted her opinion. “The thing is, it turns out we know each other already. We work together. She really likes … Nerd Boy, or at least I think she did … but she really hates Ben Wyatt.”
“Um. You know you’re the same person, right?”
Ben glared ineffectually in the vague direction of Minnesota. “She doesn’t know that, though. We haven’t met in person yet. I mean, except for that we have.”
Kate started giggling. “Your life sounds like some kind of bad romantic comedy.”
Ben couldn’t help but laugh too, mirthlessly recognizing the absurdity of the situation. “Doesn’t it? God. It’s just … that’s not how it works in real life. People who don’t get along don’t just magically change their minds and live happily after. That doesn’t happen.”
“Maybe it could,” Kate mused.
For a moment, Ben imagined a world in which Leslie was anxiously waiting for her date at a café and was happy to see him come through the door. It was absurd.
“I don’t know, Kate.” He sighed, trying to think of a simple way to explain the predicament he’d gotten himself into. “Look. We were supposed to meet last night, and she thinks I stood her up, even though I was there, she didn’t know it was me, and now I’m trying to figure out how to explain that. She’s going to want to reschedule, but I can’t do that, because she’s furious at me for something I did last night. In the meantime, she’s waiting for Nerd Boy to write to her, and-”
“What? No, never mind, stop,” Kate cut him off mid-sentence. And he couldn’t blame her, he knew how ridiculous it all sounded. “Okay, you know what, I have an idea. Forget the whole hokey thing where you’re Ashton Kutcher and she’s Kate Hudson and you’re trapped in this weird she loves me but she hates me but she doesn’t know I’m the same person as myself plot. Because that shit’s ridiculous.”
“Okay …” Ben said tentatively, blanching at her casting choices for his life.
“Because it’s a lot simpler than that, right?”
“No, actually, I’m pretty sure it’s that fucked up, no matter how you look at it.”
“I get that, believe me. But tell me this. You have feelings for a woman-a real flesh and blood woman who you’ve spent time with, in person, not some kind of, I don’t know, avatar?”
“People don’t have feelings for avatars, Kate. An avatar is just a graphical representation of a-”
“Answer the question, nerd.”
“I don’t know. I never really, I mean, I think, if the situation were, if she weren’t so … and if I could just … ” Ben trailed off, considering that he might have actual feelings for Leslie, not just in the sense that she was Pawnee Lover, but Leslie, the yellow-haired parks director who stomped around and made trouble and wrinkled her nose at him and … never stopped trying.
And that the reason he hadn’t admitted this before was, one, because he had feelings for another woman, or at least for someone he had thought was another woman, and two … “It doesn’t matter. She’s clearly not interested.”
He could practically hear Kate rolling her eyes. “And why do you think that is?”
“Oh, I don’t know! Because I shut her government down. Because I slashed her department’s budget. You know, little things, like that.”
“I find it hard to believe you’d fall for someone who wasn’t smart enough to see you were just doing your job,” she pointed out.
Ben had to admit she had a point. It was one of the most frustrating things about Leslie-she was clearly smart enough to understand the numbers on the spreadsheets. So why did she still hold him so responsible?
“Does she hate Chris too?” Kate pressed.
“Of course not. Chris is Chris.”
“So she loves Chris?”
“No. God, that’s just … no. She’s just polite to him. What are you saying-I need to be more like Chris?” Nothing would ever get done if he did that.
“You just want her to be polite to you?” Kate asked skeptically. “Look, just be yourself, Ben, get off your computer and be Nerd Boy or whoever in real life. Talk to her. You now, try something.”
Like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“You sound just like Chris.”
“Yeah, well, Chris isn’t all bad. The flowers he sent me for my fake birthday are gorgeous. Look, I’m sorry I created the dumb profile. No, you know what, I’m not sorry. Because if this works out … you know I just want you to be happy.”
“Thanks, Kate. I mean, thanks a lot,” he mustered as much sarcasm as possible for those three syllables, because this stunt deserved it, but then let his voice drop back to quiet sincerity. “But thanks.”
After they hung up, Ben set his laptop to chime if he got a message and collapsed back onto his bed, staring at the ceiling. Maybe his sister had been right that he needed to think about how to deal with Leslie in person. It reminded him of something Leslie had said last night when she caught him typing away on his phone-something about people who hide in their electronics. Is that what he was doing?
He laid back and squeezed his eyes shut, his mind a blur of yellow curls, color-coded idea binders, and multi-media presentations set to Hollywood soundtracks. He let his mind drift indulgently to a handful of times when Leslie hadn’t looked at him like he was armed with an actual machete-when he had taken her out for a beer his second day in town and thought they were on the same page, before everything went inexplicably wrong again. That one morning when she’d been waiting for him on the steps outside City Hall ready to show him the extra funds she thought she’d found. A few stray moments last night at the bar when he thought he was getting somewhere with her finally, before she’d turned on him again.
The thing was, whenever he talked to Leslie in person, it was as the guy who had shut down her government and cut her budget down to the bare bones. It hadn’t been his choice, but for whatever reason, he was the one she seemed to blame.
And he wasn’t sure how they were ever going to get past that.
--
After her morning shower, Leslie shuffled into the kitchen, started a pot of coffee, and grabbed a banana for breakfast. Then she frowned at the vase in the middle of her kitchen table.
An unidentified leafy green vegetable protruded from it, its leaves brown and droopy, a remnant of her run-in with Ben at the grocery store a few weeks ago. She hadn’t known what to do with it, and it’s not like she was going to eat it-yech-but whatever it was had thick curly leaves that looked kind of pretty, so sticking it there had seemed like a valid choice at the time.
It seemed like more of a stinky choice now. Wrinkling her nose, Leslie picked up the vase and dumped it out her back door.
Two down, one to go, since the artichoke had gone south last week. For a little while, it had made a pretty cute hedgehog, with raisins for eyes and a cherry stem mouth.
Now all that was left was the beets, which she’d thrown in her crisper drawer because they were too ugly to do anything else with. She opened her refrigerator and poked around cautiously at the dirty bulbous-looking things, considering throwing those out too-it’s not like she was going to cook them, or pickle them, or whatever disgusting thing it is one does with beets.
But getting rid of them felt too much like admitting defeat. Too much like admitting that Ben had been right about her that day she’d impulsively thrown them into her cart after he’d yelled at her about being irresponsible.
The Emergency Budgetary Task Force was no longer in session, and it was only two weeks until the City Council would meet to vote on the auditors’ recommendations, but this was not over. Not by a long shot.
Since the task force wasn’t meeting, Leslie wasn’t required to be at City Hall, but since she had her essential badge she technically wasn’t barred either, so she dressed in some jeans and a smart, lightweight blazer and drove to work.
After a few hours of fruitless brainstorming in her office, she felt like she needed a change of scenery. Grabbing a fresh notepad and one of her idea binders, she set off for the bench by the wildflower mural on the second floor. Sitting there always seemed to make her feel better-who wouldn’t be inspired sitting in front of all that thriving beauty?
She took the stairs two at time, in a hurry to be inspired, and turned the corner, only to stop short.
Ben Wyatt was in her spot.
Of course he was. He was the last person she wanted to see, and he was everywhere she went lately, like this barrier that someone kept picking up and sticking in front of anything she wanted.
He looked up from whatever he was writing in his padfolio, and his eyes widened slightly at her. He appeared to stop breathing.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted, her hand unconsciously drifting up to her arm, where he’d held onto her two nights ago. She felt herself flushing slightly at the memory.
“Do you think, maybe, we could come up with a new way to greet each other?”
“Sorry.” She bit back the urge to apologize to him for more, because she hadn’t made up her mind yet about that, but tried to lower her voice to a slightly more civil level. “I like this spot. You’re in my spot. I really need this spot today. Why are you here anyway?”
He nodded slightly toward the other end of the hall. “The auditors’ office is over there, remember? Chris is in there … being Chris, you know. Sometimes I just need to get away for a few minutes. And I like the mural right here.”
Leslie looked disbelievingly at the wall of beautiful yellow wildflowers and back at Ben, who was still in her spot.
“Um …” He scooted over to one side. “It’s a big enough bench. Do you want to sit down?”
She opened her mouth and closed it again. No, she didn’t want to sit next to him. He was distracting, with his rolled-up sleeves and his ugly shirt and his inflexible views on government spending. And she didn’t need to be distracted right now.
But he looked warily hopeful in that way he had over waffles and drinks, when he’d seemed almost like a human being, and she did feel bad for yelling at him that night. Of all the things that were Ben’s fault this summer, the fact that her date hadn’t shown up was not one of them. And he had saved her from doing something she would have regretted, even if she’d never admit that to him.
Perching herself on the far opposite end, Leslie opened her binder and tried to ignore that he was there, but she could feel him glancing at her every few seconds. Was he trying to unnerve her so that she would leave? Well, fat chance that was happening. This was her bench.
“Working?” he asked finally.
“Yes, I’m working on a dozen super-awesome ideas that are going to blow you away just as soon as I finalize some of the details,” she snapped at him. “Better keep some time open next week, because you and I are going to have some marathon meetings in which I convince you to throw out your recommendations and put these into action.” She tapped her binder for emphasis.
He raised his eyebrows at her, and she couldn’t tell if he believed her bluff. She would have a dozen super-awesome ideas by then; she just didn’t know what they were yet.
Trying to keep up appearances, she started to doodle some important-looking idea words on her notebook but could feel him watching her.
“What?”
“Um … nothing. Just, can I ask you something?”
He looked weirdly nervous, and it was making her feel weirdly nervous. “Sure. Yep. Whatever. Ask away. What is it?”
He looked away from her for a moment, furrowing his brow and resting his forehead on his fist. His sleeves were rolled up, and she noticed the way his forearm tensed attractively, and then wanted to smack herself for noticing something like that.
“Did you know that Chris outranks me?” he asked, finally turning back to her.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting him to ask, but it wasn’t that.
“Yeah, sure, I guess, I think I knew that. Or I assumed. So?”
“I don’t know. It’s just … you’ve spent a lot of time this summer trying to convince me to funnel more funds to your department. The meetings, the emails, that presentation, which I felt like was directed at me.”
“I care about my department. Of course I’m going to put up a fight.”
“But Chris outranks me. He technically can overrule me. I haven’t seen you try to convince him. And now these meetings you want to schedule, I was just wondering … why meet with me, specifically? It’s almost like … I don’t know, like you care about … or, that you’re maybe trying to …”
“Hold it,” Leslie interrupted him. “You might recall, I did try to talk to Chris about the parks budget, at The Bulge. And you wouldn’t let me!”
Ben rolled his eyes. “That was different, that wasn’t a business meeting-that was, that was a date. Your friend was on a date with him. Anyway, I was just curious-”
“Oh come on,” Leslie interrupted him. “It’s not like I was going to sell her into sex slavery to fertilize the soccer fields!”
He laughed a little at that, then cleared his throat self-consciously, and she glared at him. “I’m not a bad person, Ben! I was upset. It was a really crappy night, and it’s been a really crappy summer, and I wasn’t myself. I’m not always like this.”
“I … I know,” he said quietly, looking a little taken aback by her outburst. “That's what I thought.”
Leslie closed her mouth, biting back a retort she had ready to fire back at him. She hadn’t expected not to need it, and she didn’t know what to do with that. She didn’t even know why she was trying to explain herself to him-what did it matter what he thought of her?
He should be explaining himself, anyway. If Ben and Chris hadn’t crashed, she and Ann could have had a girls’ night, and none of the rest of it would have happened.
“Why were you there anyway?” she asked him, realizing that had never really been adequately answered.
“What?” Ben looked more alarmed than she would have expected by this line of questioning, and she pressed forward.
“You and Chris, you just happened to be at JJ’s to see me get stood up. Why were you there?”
Ben swallowed audibly. “Um, well … Chris was just jogging past, and he saw Ann, out on the sidewalk … and I … was, ah, I was there because …”
Leslie practically gasped, as this vague thought that had been niggling at the edges of her mind pushed to the surface. “Chris just happened to show up? You didn’t have plans to meet him there?”
“No, I didn’t know he was going to be there, I was just, um …”
Crap on a crudité. Chris had just happened to be at the restaurant that night, at the same time Nerd Boy was supposed to meet her. He traveled for business. And he’d been detained … by a beautiful brunette who he happened to run into just outside the restaurant! And now he was falling in love with Ann, as men tended to do with Ann.
And that was why Leslie hadn’t heard from him!
“Maybe I will go talk to Chris! Chris and I have a lot of things to say to each other, I think!”
“Wait, what are you doing? That’s not what I-”
Leslie didn’t hear the rest of what Ben was saying because she was already speedwalking down the hallway. Furious, she burst into the auditors’ office.
“Leslie Knope! What a pleasant surprise!” Chris greeted her cheerfully, as if they were nothing more than temporary coworkers.
“Is it now?” Chris looked at her strangely, and Leslie tried to keep her voice calm, because she didn’t know for sure yet if she was right. “Chris. Do you happen to know any Eleanor Roosevelt quotes?”
“Of course. I know many Eleanor Roosevelt quotes. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. Should I go on?”
Leslie’s mouth went dry and her stomach turned over. She took a step backward. “What biographies have you read?”
Chris looked increasingly confused. “Biographies?” Then he pulled a tome off his bookshelf: Quote Junkie: Inspirational Quotes Mega Edition.
Oh.
She let out a breath and started to relax.
“No. Never mind. I was thinking of something else. Carry on. I have to go.”
What had she been thinking? Of course Chris Traeger couldn’t be Nerd Boy. Everything about that was wrong.
And it was ridiculous to think that someone she met online could possibly be someone that she already knew in real life. What would be chances of that happening?
“Leslie,” Chris called after her as she was almost through the door, and she ducked her head back into the office. “I had a wonderful time the other night with your friend, the exquisite and delightful Ann Perkins. Do you think she would be interested in going out with me again? I haven’t heard from her since then.”
Leslie was about to tell him some of what Ann had shared with her, but she bit her tongue. She had learned her lesson about meddling with Ann’s love life.
“No idea. We haven’t talked about it. She hasn’t mentioned you.”
“Not at all?”
Chris looked crestfallen, but Leslie continued to shake her head, feigning ignorance on the matter. “Nope. Not a word. Sorry.”
“Okay. Thanks anyway.”
Leslie spun through the door and almost ran straight into Ben, who was once again in her way. When she stopped short and threw up her hands, they collided with his chest, and he put a steadying hand on her elbow. For a split second, their eyes met, and she thought she recognized him-or rather, recognized him as someone other than him, which made no sense.
“Watch where you’re going,” she mumbled, as she jerked away and zagged around him to hurry away down the hall.
--
( continue to second half here)