"Good," Ben declared immediately, neither noticing nor caring that she wasn't returning the informality of his greeting. To be honest, he'd already forgotten that he'd used her first name at all — it hadn't been a conscious choice so much as an instinct. "That's good. I'm glad you're here. I didn't know when I'd see you again, after the last time," he explained. More accurately, he hadn't been sure if the two of them would ever talk again, given how brusque their last conversation had been — and if he'd been more sober tonight they might not have done so for a good long while. Maybe they never would have had another conversation at all.

"I didn't like how our last talk went," he said openly. He paused long enough to take a quick sip of his drink, perhaps steeling his courage before pressing on. "I didn't mean to say those things. I just got frustrated, with — with how you were talking to me, and all the things we weren't saying, and the whole — the whole thing, I guess. I wish we could talk like we used to. When we first met."