“Are we going to be ready in time for the launch party?”
“Definitely.” Summer tapped at something on her phone, replying to a message. “Honestly, Ben, we were ninety percent done with it before we got back to London. Barring the two new songs, obviously. It won’t take long for us to put the rest of it together.”
“What about the track listing?”
“You’re worrying like an old lady,” Summer teased him. “It’s going to be so good. I promise you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Ben stole the last piece of toast and didn’t apologise for it.
The listening party was mostly a press thing—they’d done the fan service with the gig at Buck Shot. Melissa wanted to build on the buzz from the gig and start getting the industry as excited for the album as the fans were.
Ben was strangely not nervous for this one. At previous launch parties, he’d been so anxious he’d thrown up backstage before it started. Not now, though. He wasn’t sure if Stan’s influence was keeping him calm, or his conviction for the music on this album. It told a story far more concisely than anything they’d released before, and he was sure no one would disagree that this story was about how they’d gone from a band on the brink of collapse, to having healthy relationships again.
He was proud of that story, and of his hand in it.
With Stan’s help, Ben had arranged to borrow the pink suit from Nadia to wear to the party. She’d even tailored it to fit him and found a perfect, translucent white shirt to wear underneath it. The whole thing was totally outrageous, and Ben loved it. He wanted people to notice him for the right reasons tonight—because their band was fucking amazing, and he was in a good place. Rather than all the bullshit that had been written about him over the past year.
Stan had used his connection with Olivia to borrow a Gorges Hobeika, silvery white gown that was embellished with thousands of crystals on top of an intricately patterned fabric. With his pale skin and blond hair, he looked ethereal in it.
Or he would, if he stopped messing with his eyelashes and got ready to leave.
“Babe, is my wallet in there?” Ben called. He’d left his jeans in a pile when he’d had a shower. Oops.
He’d still been asleep, napping in Stan’s bed, when Stan started getting ready.
“Yeah. You want it?”
“Yeah. Is there any cash in it? We might need it later if we want food.”
Ben finished lacing his shoes and stretched his legs out, shaking his whole body like he did when he was getting ready for a gig. This felt like a performance, just a different kind.
Stan walked out of the bathroom looking more incredible than Ben had ever seen him before. Despite the beautiful dress, he’d gone for a fairly masculine look with hard eyebrows and strong cheekbones. Stan would mess with people’s minds tonight, those who fell anywhere on the sexuality spectrum. Ben loved it when he did that.
Stan paused in his digging through Ben’s battered wallet.
“What’s this?”
He pulled out a little baggie, one that had probably had coke in it at one point. There wasn’t coke in it anymore.
Oh.
Ben stepped up close so he could pluck it from Stan’s fingers. The ring he’d given Stan a long time ago was inside.
“It’s your ring,” he said softly.
“You kept it.”
“Of course I did.”
Ben carefully took it out of the bag and rubbed it between his fingers. Stan hadn’t left anything else behind when he’d cleared his stuff out of the room they shared at the house. Just the ring. It had taken Ben a while to find it, on Stan’s bedside table, just left there.
“Why?”
Well, that was a loaded question. Ben decided to answer it honestly. “To remind me of everything I’d lost. Of everything that mattered to me.”
He thought about asking Stan if he wanted it back. Then he had a better idea, and leaned forward to kiss Stan softly on the lips, mindful of his makeup.
Then he sank to one knee. “Will you marry me?”
Stan’s jaw dropped. And he hesitated. Ben knew he’d carry that hesitation with him for the rest of his life.
“Yes.”
Ben barely managed to stand up again before Stan was throwing himself into Ben’s arms.
“Don’t cry, baby,” Ben murmured, kissing Stan’s brow, his cheek, his lips as he wrapped Stan up close. “Don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying, you asshole.”
That made Ben laugh. “Come on, let me put it on you. I know I promised you diamonds, once upon a time. I’ll have to go and buy you something better.”
“Don’t you dare.” Stan’s hand was trembling as he held it out. “This is ours.”
“Yeah. It is.”
He’d seen the ring resting on Stan’s finger hundreds, thousands of times before, but it was different now. Back then it had been a symbol of their relationship, of trust and honesty and love. Now it was all that and more.
Stan cupped Ben’s cheeks in his hands. “I love you. So much.”
“I love you too. I promise I won’t let you down.”
Stan kissed him hard, and Ben reached around to grab Stan’s ass.
“No. If you start that now, we’ll never get out of here.”
“We could just not go.”
“Ben, it took me almost three hours to get ready. We’re fucking going.”
Ben laughed again and took Stan’s hand, rubbing his thumb over Stan’s knuckles. And his ring. Which was back where it was supposed to be; on his hand, in their bedroom, in their forever home.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“Come on, then.”
They were late getting to the party, of course, but late was part of Ben’s MO, so Melissa wasn’t even surprised. The driver she sent to pick them up wasn’t surprised either, and didn’t say anything about Stan crawling onto Ben’s lap and refusing to move for the journey over to a very chic venue in SoHo.
Melissa was waiting for them outside, clearly a little stressed.
“Hello, darling,” Stan said as he walked over to her. “You look lovely.”
Ben glanced over. She was wearing a black leather dress. He looked back at Stan.
“One day, just one day, you’ll do something that doesn’t cause me to have a nervous breakdown,” she said, poking Ben in the chest.
“I asked Stan to marry me.”
“I said yes,” Stan added.
Melissa looked like she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Congratulations?”
“Thank you,” Stan said brightly. “Should we go inside?”
The event was already buzzy enough that no one really noticed that they were late. The last launch event had been a very chill, low-key affair in a back room in some dingy LA bar, where everyone wore jeans and tried to be cool. Summer had been the one to suggest they make this one a black-tie event. Something a bit more grown-up, for once.
There was a pretty obvious juxtaposition between the back-room gig they’d done for the fans, and the fancy party that was for the journalists. Ben thought they were subtly telling the industry what they really thought of them, though who knew whether that would come across.