mamma mia | jeremy jordan

32. it's a joke

Ana finally saw Ben exactly a week later.

She showed up on the doorstep of his apartment with an overnight bag strapped over her shoulder. A slightly forced grin was sitting on her face.

It wasn't too entirely difficult to act like she was absolutely in love with Ben. Before they had dated, they were becoming really great friends. This extended into their relationship and now they were really great friends, but he just wanted to add on the kissing and holding hands and sleeping in bed together.

When he opened the door, his face was furrowed brows and worry lines enhanced by his tires eyes. They were covered with a pair of black framed glasses, an unfamiliar but not completely new sight to Ana.

A smile broke out on his face when he saw her. She reached out to hug him and, for a moment, while he held her in his arms, her stomach felt fuzzy. When the blurry edges were blended out, the feeling slipped out of her fingers like sand.

Ben grabbed Ana's bag from her and ushered her into his apartment. She slipped out of her moccasins and led the way into the living room, where he hadn't been. No, he had been in his guest bedroom, practicing the music he was putting together for the show that Newsies was putting on at 54 Below next month.

"Can I hear some of it?" Ana day criss-cross on his couch, pulling him down beside her by intertwining their fingers.

He scoffed in a humble mode, "It's not ready yet."

"Well," Ana huffed, "I wanna hear something!"

[like if this reminds u of that scene in stranger things with dustybuns and suzie poo]

"What? Why?"

Ana's eyes glanced around Ben's face and they caught on to a piece of hair sticking up near his left ear. Ana reached up to fix it while replying, "You're such a great singer and I love listening to you sing."

Ben kisses her wrist as her hand passed over his cheek, "Maybe next time. I need to rest my voice."

She pouted her bottom lip, a playful sad look in her realistically praiseful eyes. "Alright. So what do you wanna do?"

"Play scrabble?" Ben awfully suggested. 

Ana giggled obnoxiously while her mind registered that it was the proper moment to use the words, "I love you."

Ben laughed and Ana felt her lips go bone dry.

When he fully registered what had left the cemetery residing below her nose mere seconds ago, his eyes went extremely wide.

"Ha," Ana attempted to play cool, though her throat was stiff, "ha, ha, ha. Haha! I love you! It's a joke! I'm a comedian, let's all laugh! Hahahaha!"

Ben fumbled with their hands, a tangled mess of pulling his fingers from hers, twirling her other arm away from his face, properly cradling both of them in his lap.

"Ana," he was very obviously sweating, "Ana, you don't mean that."

She burst into tears.

Ben quickly began to coo her, spreading his legs to tug her forward into his arms, sweeping his hand down the side of her hair. "Sh, Ana, it's okay. It's okay, there's no reason to be upset."

"I'm so sorry," Ana sobbed into his shoulder, her fingers gripping at his forearms in an attempt to ground herself, "I'm so, so sorry that I am such a terrible person!"

"You're not!"

"I am, Ben, I am! I have tried so hard to just be a normal person in a normal relationship with the most sophisticatedly wonderful boy I've ever met and I suck at it! You have no idea how much I want to love you as my boyfriend. I want to feel the butterflies I feel when I'm with-"

"When you're with him," Ben finished for her as silence settled on Ana's cheekbones.

She moved around to face him, her face vulnerable and heartbroken, "I'm so sorry."

"I don't care, Ana, I'm okay, I'll be okay," Ben reassured her, twisting hair behind her ear with two fingers, "I'm just glad that I will still have you in my life."

"I do love you, Ben," She replied.

"I know you do," he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and squeezed real tight, "I love you, too. Now let's play some scrabble."