Les Miserables had been staring at him ever since it had first shown up on his desk four days ago. Melody had some fucking timing, because he really didn't want to deal with this right now. He had his own shit to deal with — or he had Art's shit to deal with, which was sort of the same thing. So really, what he wanted to do about Les Miserables was nothing. If Melody couldn't be assed to come and talk about her feelings with him like a fucking adult, why should he go out of his way to try and play her silly game?

He'd been half hoping that when he wrote to Dionisia to ask for advice about it (which was far from ideal, but his other married friends were Art and Greg Turnbull, neither of whom were in the right sort of headspace to be giving him advice about marital spats at the moment) that she would say something like that's childish, just ignore it, but she hadn't. She'd told him to find a book that matched his own emotions. Which was easier said than done, first of all because Ben wasn't the sort of person to have an extensive at-home library, and secondly because he wasn't even sure what his feelings were. He felt frustrated, he felt exhausted, he felt like she really ought to have just said something instead of delivering cagey book messages, but probably there wasn't anything at Wizzhard's that had that as a title.

Ben had shown up five minutes ago and was wandering aimlessly, hoping a title would jump out at him, because he didn't know what else to do. Eventually, he wandered by one called Giving Up that seemed promising. He didn't want her to think he was giving up, though. Was inking in another phrase beforehand acceptable, or did that defeat the whole purpose of doing this through a book (was there a purpose of doing this through a book)? If only it said I feel like you're Giving Up, then it might be suitable. He pulled it out and looked at the cover, and realized that the full title was Giving Up: How I learned to increase my magical potential by putting my insecurities in the past. Which was... affirming, he supposed, but not right at all.

Ben sighed and shoved the book back on the shelf, glowering at the rest of the books and hoping something better would jump out at him.