What if I were Romeo in black jeans?

What if I was Heathcliff?

It's no myth.

Maybe she's just looking for someone to dance with.


Rey really wanted to care about the drunk guy in the back of her Uber. Really, she did. He seemed nice enough. But in all of her six weeks of driving drunk kids in her beat-up Honda around her small college town, she'd learned two things:

One: never get invested in or attached to the customers.
Two: drunk guys never tip.

She had a difficult time caring about anyone who didn't tip. But at least this guy—Finn, his name was, according to the driver's app—would entertain her for the rest of their ride.

"And do you know the worst part?" He slurred, collapsing across the backseat as she made a right turn, his body as limp as a drunken, steamed asparagus.

"No," She humored him, keeping a weary eye on his wavering form just in case he smashed his head into the window or unloaded the contents of his surely rioting stomach all over her car. "What's the worst part?"

"He's just so beautiful. He's so beautiful and so wonderful and I think he could really love me. We could be like that movie."

With all her heart, she wanted to believe him. And he looked sincere enough, all wide eyes and passion. She wanted to believe a love like that was real. But she'd seen too many Saturday night drunken break-ups. She'd seen her own parents run away from each other before running away from her. With all of that life experience, she couldn't possibly believe in a love the likes of which shone in Finn's eyes, no matter how much she wanted to.

"Which one movie is that?"

"The one, you know the one." He snapped, trying to yank the name from his drunken brain. "That movie with the British lady."

"Pride and Prejudice."

"No, the other one."

"Love Actually."

"No."

"Bridget Jones?"

Dear God, please remember it soon because my knowledge of British rom-coms is absolutely about to run out.

"No…" Leaning all of his weight into the right corner of the backseat, he smashed his palm against his forehead before an epiphany struck. "The one with the wands."

Rey turned down the radio and furrowed her brow. Surely, she hadn't heard him right. Last time she checked, J.K. Rowling hadn't written any romance novels and the movies weren't any better in that regard.

"Harry Potter?"

"Yeah. Harry Proper. The one where the British lady and that redhead are just waving goodbye—goodbye—" He sniffled. For the sake of his dignity, she didn't check to see if he was crying over this. "Goodbye to their little babies."

"So…" Dragging out the 'o' sound, she gave him a moment to recover. "You think this man could be your Ron Weasley."

"Exactly."

"So, what's the problem?"

"Poe's mom is the dean of the university."

"Oh." She paused and tried to understand the logic, to no avail. "No, I still don't see the problem."

"His mom's the dean of the university and his brother… Pfft. His brother is just… Wow. The worst, you know?"

When she realized the you know wasn't a vocal tick, but an actual question, she had to shake her head. She knew about Dean Leia Organa-Solo. As a figure in town, she loomed high over not only the university she ruled, but also everything else. Everyone knew of her. But Rey didn't know anything about her other than the name and a few pictures. She certainly didn't know anything about her sons. Beyond the fact that maybe one of them had been adopted. She seemed to recall reading that somewhere, but couldn't remember if it was true. She shrugged and turned on her blinker for another turn. "Still lost, I'm afraid."

An annoyed grunt told her that Finn did not like this answer, but he pressed onward, rolling his eyes more often than was perhaps necessary, communicating his annoyance with every syllable he slurred. "His mother has this rule that Poe can't date anyone until Ben's got somebody. Ben's lonely, she says, and if Poe's busy falling in love, there'll be no one to hang out with Ben. Not that Ben ever wants to hang out. He's miserable. Even when he does hang out, he's totally checked out and doesn't want to be with us..."

Ah. That all made more sense. One of the funny things about drunk people was that they often forgot that not everyone lived inside of their heads. But with this new context, she got the gist, at least, of Finn's dilemma.

"I see the problem now. You just need this Ben guy to fall for someone and then you and your Poe are home free."

"Yes! You get it," he whooped at the realization he'd found an understanding ally, though the joy only lasted a second. Immediately, he slumped back down, a deep frown dominating his features. "But also, you don't get it because…"

The navigation system barked at her to re-route due to some late-night construction and she struggled to oblige. Only when they were back on the route towards Finn's house did she realize he'd not finished his sentence. She glanced in the rearview, only to find him tangled in a mess of seatbelt and oversized leather jacket.

"You alright back there?"

"Yeah, just almost threw up." Oh, the drunk. They could at least be relied upon for honesty. He waved his hand as if waving off the feeling. "It's fine. Fine, fine…Fine. But no, you don't get it because Ben's just not the falling for someone type. She'd need to be really, you know, tough and lovable."

"Tough and lovable's a tall order."

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then, Finn snapped his fingers. Apparently, a revelation was going on the backseat.

"Hey."

"Yeah?"

"You're pretty poor, right?"

Every muscle in Rey's body stiffened. In a flash, she considered about a hundred ways to pull over, kick him out of her car and show him a piece of her mind. She'd taken enough self-defense courses in preparation for this job to teach a drunk jerk like him a lesson.

"Excuse me?" She shrieked.

"I mean, you're driving an Uber. I just figured. I'm sorry. You know, I'm poor too."

The olive branch of common suffering didn't soothe the entire damage to her pride, but she put a definite hold on her plans to beat him up.

"…Not that it's any of your business, but yes. I'm saving money for school, if you must know."

"Well, I'm just saying…" He'd stopped snapping and hitting himself and now took to hitting the back of her chair like a gambler cheering on his favorite racing stallion in a betting parlor. "Wait. Do you have a boyfriend? A cute boyfriend?"

"Again, not that it's any of your business—"

"You're right. Stupid question. You're driving an Uber on a Saturday night. You don't have a boyfriend." Before she could open her mouth to protest, he ran over her objections with a query. By now, he was fully out of his seatbelt, leaning in between the two front seats to get a better level on the conversation. "What if I told you I had an idea?"

"I'd ask if it was the tequila talking. And you have to buckle up."

"No, but you're really pretty. And you're tough. And I like you. And you're tough."

"You said tough twice. Buckle up."

"Yeah," He scoffed, leaning back and snapping himself into the safety belt with a self-satisfied huff. "I said tough twice because you're going to need to be tough to date Ben Solo."

"I'm not going to date Ben Solo."

She didn't even know Ben Solo. Or even of Ben Solo. Apparently, he was related to some guy named Poe and the Dean, but other than that, she couldn't have picked him out of a line-up if her life depended on it.

"Would you do it for five hundred dollars?"

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Five hundred dollars? She could use that money to buy her first course at school. Five hundred dollars meant the start of her new life. With her rent and, you know, needing to eat every once in awhile, it would take her forever to save that kind of money.

But as soon as hope lifted in her chest, she stabbed it back. This was the word of a drunk idiot, and as she knew, drunk idiots always talked big game and never tipped. $500 on top of her driving fee would absolutely qualify as a tip.

"You're drunk. And you just told me you're broke."

"No. I mean, yes. I am drunk, and mostly broke, but just… Just wait." Contorting his body to lift his hips despite the seatbelt, he fished out his phone and started dialing, holding the machine up to his ear. "Let me get my boyfriend on the phone. He's the one with the money. Well, he's not my boyfriend yet, but—" Then, he wasn't talking to her any longer. "Poe! I've got great news. Great, great news. Listen, I've just met Rey … My Uber Driver… Yeah, and she's going to date your brother so we can finally… I know, right? Genius! But you've got to send her some money. Mm-hm. Mm-hm." He held the phone away from his face and inclined his chin in her direction. "What's your venmo?"

She almost choked. One minute, this guy was crying about his lost love and the next, they were ready to send her a check for dating some loser. Besides, she couldn't talk finance when she was driving a vehicle. Surely there was a safety law against that. "Are you serious right now?"

"Here. You just talk to him." Off of Rey's deadly look when he tried to pass her the phone, he pressed a button and held the screen up beside her head. "I'll put you on speaker."

A crackling—but surprisingly sober—voice came to life on the other end of the phone.

"Hi, is this Rey?"

"Speaking."

"Sorry about my boyfriend. He's just a little…" She didn't know this person, but she could practically hear the eye roll from his end of the phone. "We've never gotten to go out in public. Too worried about my mom catching us. She's not against it or anything. It's just my brother—"

"Finn briefed me."

"Great. Well, anyway, what's your venmo? I'll send you half now and half after your first date. Does that sound alright?"

Yes. No. What is going on here and how did I get swept up in all of this? She'd never run a scheme like this before. Coming from poverty, the thought tempted her a handful of times, but she was determined to earn her life honestly. So, she tried being honest with this Poe guy.

"I don't know anything about Ben Solo or how to date someone."

"Don't worry. If Finn trusts you, then so do I. And we'll tell you everything you need to know about my brother." A few beeps and boops on his end later and her phone dinged. "I'm sending you a pin. You can drop Finn off at my place and I'll give you all the information you'd ever want."

True to his word, the new address directed her towards one of the nicest apartment buildings in town, where a drunken Finn still managed to punch in the correct access code to let them into the building. She followed, and upon her arrival upstairs, she was introduced to the mysterious Poe figure, who told her everything she needed to know. He liked calligraphy. And sword play. And flying. And history. And black coffee. She learned everything and committed it to memory, her wallet now two hundred and fifty dollars heavier and her bank account two hundred and fifty dollars closer to affording her first college class.

And that's how she ended up here, standing at the end of the library on the campus of New Republic University, carrying a student ID card that couldn't have been more fake, scanning the crowd for the face she'd seen in the photos given to her by Poe while Finn was too busy throwing up.

"There he is," she whispered to herself.

And there he was. There was no missing the man from the photographs, who now sat alone at a table in the darkest part of the library. The second week of classes apparently scared enough people into studying that every table was full and some even tucked themselves on the floor between book stacks or on steps of staircases, yet somehow, no one thought to take one of the three chairs near Ben Solo.

She approached, then stopped short. Her chest clenched. He poured over several heavy, open tomes, open highlighter in one hand and stack of sticky notes in the other.

Oh, no. He's as handsome as he was in the pictures. No, more handsome. Can I do this?

Yes. She had to. Steeling her courage, she finished her pursuit and stood behind the open chair across from him. And in her strongest voice, she asked the million dollar question.


One of the perks of wearing all black and never smiling and being the Dean's son was that no one ever bothered him. Unlike his foster-brother, who welcomed attention, Ben preferred attention where it belonged: as far away from him as possible. It meant he got much of what he wanted easier. No one sat next to him during lectures. No one stopped him with petitions or flyers on the quad. And no one joined him in the library for studying.

At least, not until today. He'd made it three years at NRU before someone finally had the guts to ask the question:

"Is this seat taken?"

Not bothering to look up from his World Peace and World Order texts, he shook his head. Maybe this was some new transfer or a freshman who didn't yet see him as the Big Bad Wolf, but he'd teach them.

"I'm not up for a study group, thank you," he said, bored.

But to his surprise, the dismissal didn't work. The cold distance in his voice didn't freeze her out. On the contrary, she dropped her heavy texts like a barrel of lead and plopped into the open chair across from him.

"Great. I'm not either."

That's when he looked up, a huge mistake, really. If he hadn't looked up, he wouldn't have seen how beautiful his new table partner was. If he hadn't looked up, he could have lived the rest of his life without knowing this person existed somewhere in the world. If he hadn't looked up, he wouldn't have realized how natural it felt to see her there. Without any pomp or circumstance, she opened her books and retrieved her pencils, as casually as if she lived here. Dammit.

"What are you doing?"

"Studying." She turned to a page in her notebook and checked her old-fashioned wrist-watch for the date before scribbling it in the top corner of a fresh, college-ruled sheet. "It's a library, isn't it?"

"But this is my table."

"Does it have your name on it?"

"No, but the library does."

That got her attention. Her head snapped up from the book and a hand flew to her chest.

"You're Mr. Organa-Solo. The Mr. Organa-Solo? I'm in the presence of the actual Organa-Solo?"

"You've heard of me?"

She'd heard of him and she wasn't afraid of him? She'd heard of him and didn't know better than to stay away? Hope fluttered in his chest, only to be shot down when the joyous look on her face sunk and he realized the entire thing had been sarcastic.

"No."

"Well." He sniffed to cover his embarrassment. "This is my table. It's where I sit and if you're going to sit here, I'll need quiet. I have to focus."

A lie. He didn't need to focus. He just spent all of his time here so no one would bother him to see his mother or his father or his brother. Any time spent here was another minute spent not with his family. Studying was as good an excuse as any.

Most people, he noticed during all his time of observing the crowds that ebbed and flowed in and out of this place, enjoyed a bit of whispered conversation with their studying. He assumed denial of that would be enough to scare her off. He assumed wrong. And he respected her a little more for it.

"Fine. That's fine."

She returned to her books, betraying not even a hint of fluster and their close quarters or the heat of his stare upon her. For a moment, he tried the same until the slow, deliberate move of her hand on the new sheet of paper caught his eye. No one taking notes would do so that carefully. Sure enough, she was reading one of his favorite calligraphy guides, her tongue tucked in between her teeth in concentration. Not wanting to disturb the work, he waited for her to finish whatever letter she was on before asking:

"What's that there?"

"I thought we were focusing."

"But—"

"Sh!" She held her pencil over her lips, but had the audacity to smile at him.

Smile. When was the last time anyone besides his family had smiled at him, or treated him like the human she was treating him as? It caught a light in his dark chest, but he ground his jaw and tried to ignore it. If he thought about it too hard, perhaps he would find he liked the sensation of being smiled at, and that was not something he could abide. Still, he couldn't help but pose the question again, this time at an even lower volume. He leaned it to make sure he could be heard.

"But I was just wondering why you're reading that."

"Calligraphy is interesting." She shrugged. "Don't make fun of it."

"I wasn't going to."

And he really wasn't. In fact, he'd never met another person who enjoyed his love of the craft. It was a stupid hobby, one he got made fun of for all the time and mercilessly. He'd never subject anyone to what others subjected him to. She looked up again, eyes dancing but strangely guarded.

"I'm Rey."

"Ben."

"Organa-Solo," she provided, a teasing tugging at the ends of her lips. He looked away immediately. He didn't want to feel what that smile made him feel. He couldn't feel it, not when it spoke to him so directly, so abruptly.

"Yes."

After awhile, Rey leaned into her book, squinting at the pages. To her credit, she'd picked one of the best calligraphic style guides in existence, but it did have the world's smallest printed instructions.

"It's kind of dark in here, isn't it?"

"It's a library. Does it need to be bright?"

"It's just sort of like a dungeon. Did you get here late?"

"No. I got here at nine in the morning." What an odd question. "Why do you ask?"

She shrugged. "I just figured you'd only pick this table if it was the only one available. It's nice to be able to see the sun once in awhile. That's all."

"I like to focus."

"You can't focus in the sun?"

He didn't answer her or her quiet smile. They studied in silence for the rest of the afternoon, when she departed, promising to see him tomorrow. But the next day, when she arrived, he wasn't sitting at his usual table. Instead, he arrived early and selected one by the window, so by the time she took her seat across from him, the table was flooded with afternoon sun.


First chapter! Let me know what you think so far!