Ben took the book she handed him without hesitation, even though he hadn't really been looking for anything to read. He certainly wasn't about to spend his evenings with Les Miserables, that was for certain, even if it had come into his possession under slightly more auspicious circumstances. The book she'd handed him had an interesting title, though; it was the sort of thing he might have read if he'd been out traveling and had no one else around for company. That was probably what she'd had in mind for herself when she picked it up.

Merlin, how much different would his life have been if he'd ended up married to someone like her? Someone down to earth, someone who traveled like he had, someone who had some things in common with him. Of course, he wouldn't have ended up married to anyone like her — that was sort of the whole point of this ongoing argument he kept having with Melody. Sometimes Ben felt like the person that he was deep down was incompatible with being a husband, no matter who was on the other side of it. He certainly seemed to keep making everything worse, no matter what he did.

Ben laughed quietly, which seemed to release at least half the tension in his shoulders. "Yeah, maybe I'll do that," he agreed. He didn't seriously think flowers would fix anything that was wrong with him and Melody, but at the very least Angie had managed to talk him down from buying an ill-considered book as a way to argue by proxy. "Thanks."

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