Ben had been ready to keep right on arguing at her admonition —lower your voice— but before he could even find the words to start, she was leaving. His head spun for a second, conflicting feelings flying. On the one hand, even drunk as he was he knew that there wasn't anything productive coming from this conversation, and he certainly didn't need to stick around to fight with her — but this wasn't supposed to end like that. He'd approached her because he wanted to make things better, and somehow he'd still ended up making them worse. Maybe that was just the way they worked. Maybe there was no way to make things better.

"Fine," he said loudly, at least a second after she'd already left, a poor attempt to frame the end of the conversation as a victory for himself, when really it had left him feeling like shit.