Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren

ELEVEN

HAZEL

I wouldn’t exactly say we were scraping the bottom of the barrel by date seven, but Josh did feel the need to fake diarrhea, and I readily rushed him out to the car, apologizing profusely to our confused dates over my shoulder.

I’d set him up with a girl I met in line at the grocery store. A word to the wise: that’s a bad idea, okay? She seemed so cool when we were talking about our shared love for the store’s juice bar, but it turned out that juicing was pretty much the only thing Elsa wanted to talk about other than her private asides to Josh about how willing she was to suck his dick in the bathroom.

Josh set me up with a partner at the Fidelity branch that manages his money. (The fact that Josh has enough money to “manage” still boggles my mind. I’m thrilled when I have enough left over at the end of the month to order a pizza.) This partner, Tony, wasn’t terrible to look at, but he spent the first twenty minutes talking about what he could and couldn’t eat from the menu, and the next twenty minutes mansplaining the rules of football to me and Elsa. Elsa didn’t seem to notice; according to Josh, she was reaching for his crotch under the table every few seconds. He said it was like batting away piranhas in the Amazon.

I probably would have suffered through it because my chicken parm was delicious, but Josh couldn’t take it and ran to the men’s room, with Elsa in close pursuit. Only his cry of “My stomach! I need a toilet!” kept her from following him in.

He texted me from the bathroom, a manic SOS, and five minutes later we’re in his car with the music cranked and the bliss of sheer, unadulterated relief coursing through our bloodstreams.

“That was the worst so far,” he tells me, turning right onto Alder. “I still feel her fist around my balls.”

“I’d apologize and wish that never happened, but then I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of hearing you use the phrase ‘fist around my balls.’ ”

He glares at me briefly.

“Don’t even say it’s not funny, Josh. It’s incredibly funny.”

I see him check the time on the dashboard, and follow his attention. It’s barely eight on a Friday night. I don’t feel like going back to my apartment, and I know that if Josh goes back to his he’ll just get in his sweats and watch TV. According to Emily, there has been a dramatic resurgence in Josh’s sweatpants-wearing since I moved out.

“I’m still hungry,” I tell him. Getting him to stay out won’t be easy, and if theatrics are what it takes, I’m game. I rub at my stomach and do my best to look emaciated. “I left my delicious dinner to help protect your virtue.”

It begins to drizzle outside, and Josh surprises me by turning down the music. I know him well enough to anticipate that this next part is a peace offering. For some crazy reason Josh will bend over backward to make me happy. “We could stay out for a bit.”

I smile in the dark car. “You’re reading my mind, Jiminnie.”

He glances at me, and then flicks his turn indicator. “You up for some drinks with your food?”

“When am I not?”

..........

I’ve only seen Josh tipsy on one occasion, at Emily’s house over a couple bottles of soju. He got pink and giggly and just a little bit loud (well, loud for Josh) before falling asleep against my shoulder and waking up like nothing ever happened. Outside of that he isn’t much of a drinker, and when he does drink, he’s adorably slow. He nurses a single gin and tonic while I manage to quaff down three, an entire hamburger, and a basket of chips and salsa.

He holds his glass, long fingers brushing away the drops of condensation. “Why are we so bad at this?”

“Speak for yourself.” I hold up my empty glass. “I’m awesome.”

“I mean the dating thing.” He runs his hand through the front of his hair. “People either have zero interest or want to bang in the restaurant.”

The bartender takes the empty basket and replaces it with a new one full of fresh chips. I tell myself I really don’t need any more, but who am I kidding. I reach for a handful, saying, “That sounds pretty normal to me. It’s nothing, or sex.”

He shakes his head, sipping from the drink that must be mostly melted ice by now. “I swear your dating experience is the oddest.”

I look over at him. He’s so ridiculously hot, it amazes me that all women don’t react to him the way Elsa did. But he’s also so innocent in some ways. “No, Josh, listen. Haven’t you ever just wanted to rip someone’s clothes off?”

“Of course.”

“So you agree, don’t you, that you’ve had an instant attraction to every person you ended up sleeping with?”

“Well, sure,” he concedes, “but most of the time I’m not trying to finger her under the table the first time we go to dinner.”

Heat flashes across my face and I clear my throat. The image that just burned a trail of fire through my brain—Josh reaching over, pressing his open mouth to my neck and sliding his hand down my pants—was … unexpected. “Maybe you’re just hard to resist.”

He gives a skeptical look down at his glass. I watch him carefully use his straw to take another sip. When he doesn’t reply I ask, “How many women have you been with?”

He pauses, staring at the ceiling as he counts. I watch as the bartender pours seven drinks in the time it takes Josh to finish tallying. I may have to readjust my mental image of his sex life. Go Josh.

After another moment of silence he turns to me and says, “Five.”

I drop my chip. “It took you four minutes to count to five? They must not have been very memorable.”

“I was just messing with you.” He picks up my chip and grins at me, showing me all of his perfect white teeth. “They were all pretty long term, though. You may have noticed I’m not great at the casual thing.” He takes another gulp, a bigger one this time, draining it with a long swallow. “Your turn.”

“Me?” I honestly have no idea how many guys I’ve been with, so I pull a lowball number out of the air. “Maybe twenty.”

His eyes go wide and he coughs as he swallows. “Twenty?”

“Actually probably more? Let’s say thirty.”

Josh shakes his head and laughs. “Wow, okay.”

This response is not an improvement.

“Don’t do that.” I point a finger at him. “Don’t act like I’ve crossed some magical threshold of appropriate numbers for a woman. If I was a dude and said that, you’d reply, ‘In high school, right?’ and then high-five me and call me brah.”

I drain my drink, too, and he watches, looking both amused and chastened.

“Fair enough.” He stares at me, eyes moving over my features as if gauging them somehow. “Sorry.” Lifting his hand, he offers a conciliatory high five. “Right on, brah.”

I laugh, smacking his hand, and he reaches for his glass, swirling the liquid inside. “What’s your longest relationship?”

Humming, I think back. “Six months, I guess?”

“Seriously?”

I turn and stare at him. “You need to stop being a judgmental ass. I already told you relationships are hard for me. I think most guys are sort of boring, and every guy I like ends up deciding I’m too wild or weird after a couple weeks. I can only keep what’s hidden below the tip of this crazy iceberg for so long.”

Something softens in his expression then, like he’s flipping a flash card from shocked to tender. “For the record, I’ve seen what’s below the tip and it’s pretty great. Odd, but great.” He narrows his eyes at my delighted expression. “I know there’s a ‘just the tip’ joke in there but I need another drink first.” He lifts his hand, waving the bartender over to bring us another round.

But this time, instead of ordering a gin and tonic for himself, he orders a Talisker, neat. And this drink he finishes in less than fifteen minutes, soon ordering another.

As we drink, and talk, and drink some more, Josh’s face grows flushed and warm, and eventually his words come more easily: His first love was a girl named Claire, in high school. She was Korean American, just like Josh, and their families knew each other. They went to the same church, and lost their virginity to each other after dating for a year. She immediately told her parents, who told his parents, who were furious and made them break up.

“And?”

“And they grounded me for the rest of the year.”

“That seems a little harsh. I probably would have thrown a fit and eventually snuck out to meet her.”

“Your mom is great, so I don’t mean this as disrespectful to her, but it’s different in Korean families. I’m the oldest son and that’s a big responsibility.”

“So that was the end of it?”

“We don’t disobey our parents.”

“Ever?”

He shakes his head, sipping.

I lean forward on my elbow, my three … four? gin and tonics making me feel all fond and warm. “Did you love her?”

Josh is amused by this, and leans on the table, mimicking my position. “I loved her in the way we love in high school, sort of intensely, idealistically, and without knowing each other all that well.”

In some ways it seems crazy that we’ve been hanging out all this time—even living together for a while—and I don’t know any of this about him.

I sigh. “My first love was a guy named Tyler. Freshman year in college.”

“Let me guess, he was a fratty white dude.”

This makes me giggle because Tyler was pretty fratty. Backwards Yankees cap, square superhero jaw, baseball player, insisted he drank PBR because of some subtle flavor that most people missed. “Yeah, but there was depth there, too.”

Josh snorts into his glass.

“There was! He was nice on the inside. He was my six months,” I say, wistful. “I thought we’d be this wacky combination couple of eccentric woman and jock dude, but then he told me one night I was embarrassing him and I was like, fuck you, I’m out.”

“Good for you.”

“Will you think I’m lame if I say that I still liked him?”

He looks at me over the top of his glass. “You’re looking at the guy whose girlfriend was banging someone else for over a year.”

I suck in a breath through my teeth. “Right. I mean … Tyler would come around when he was drunk and lonely and I’d let him in, wondering whether I made the right decision, and we’d have sex again. Then at the next party, he’d be like”—I put on my stoner voice—“ ‘Dude. Hazel, you’re so weird.’ ”

“I had one of those.” He finishes his second scotch. His cheeks are so adorably pink and I give them a mental pinch. “The ex who comes over when they’re lonely. Mine was Sarah. Except we were together for a year and a half and she cried when we broke up, telling me she wanted to marry me someday, just not yet. She wanted to see other people to be sure.”

I groan. “Gross.” Though in the interest of full transparency, I’ll admit it comes out a little more like Grossssthss.

“She would come over drunk and seduce me, and the next day I’d hate myself.”

“It’s hard to say no when there’s a naked woman in your bed.”

His face flushes redder. “Very true.”

“Did it bother your parents that Tabby wasn’t Korean?”

Josh takes his third scotch from the bartender with two hands, thanking her quietly. “I think it bothered them more that she never took the time to get to know them, and she never tried to connect with Em, either. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, my parents are pretty mellow. They aren’t going to push themselves on anyone, but it matters to them that they know what’s going on and that the person I’m with becomes a part of our family. Tabby was never interested in that. It’s funny that I’m only now realizing why they never pushed for us to get married. It was awkward, a little, when Emily told us Dave proposed, and I wasn’t even with anyone. I think we all assumed I would get married first simply because I’m older. But they knew she wasn’t right for me, even if I didn’t yet.”

I think of my mom, and how she knows almost every detail of my life. I can’t really imagine it any other way. “That makes sense.”

He swallows and nods at me. His eyes are growing a little unfocused. “Yeah, you get it. Tabby never did.”

“Well, I think we can agree Tabby is an asshole. Which is why she never got her own personalized fried rice.”

Josh clinks my glass.

“The first time your mom came over and you were still at work,” I say, “she spent fifteen minutes cutting paper napkins in half. She told me they were too expensive to use only once.” I remember the matter-of-fact way she explained what she was doing and it made me look back on every paper napkin I’ve wasted in my life. “I mean, if I did that, you’d chalk it up to me being odd, but she does it and it totally makes sense, right?”

“She’s pretty great at finding ways to save and reuse.”

The room is a little swishy around the edges and I lean against his shoulder, starting to feel sleepy. Against the side of my head, he’s so solid, but above that sensation is the vibrant heat of him. “You’re a furnace.”

Josh nods, and I feel the side of his face brush against my hair. “I run pretty hot.”

“You sure do.”

He laughs, shaking a little against me. His voice comes out slurred: “You ready to head out?”

We turn to the window, and only now do we realize the rain is coming down in thick sheets, and neither of us is in a state to get behind the wheel.

“Cab?” Josh asks.

“My place is two blocks from here. We can run it. You can sleep on the couch with Winnie.”

..........

We’re soaked, freezing, and hammered, sprinting up the five flights to my apartment in a drunken attempt to get warm. Josh stops just inside the door, dripping on the small rug there, cupping his shoulders and shivering. He still takes the time to slip off his shoes.

Winnie gives him a courtesy sniff before deciding it is too late for this nonsense and walking away again. I’m sure she assumes he’ll just follow her into bed.

“Give me your clothes.” I motion him forward. “Come on.” I am breathless from the run, and high from my cocktails. The floor undulates beneath my feet.

He giggles. “If I give you my clothes, then I’ll have no clothes on.”

He seems to have grown even drunker on the run home. Drunk Josh is my favorite.

“Okay.” I put my fingertip to my nose. “I have an idea. Go to the bathroom. Get undressed and get in the shower. I’ll sneak in, take your clothes without peeking, put them in the dryer, and bring you a blanket. Boom.”

He tiptoes down the hall, laughing when his shoulder collides with the doorway to the bathroom, offering it a quiet “Sorry.”

The door closes and the shower starts, and I’m suddenly distracted by the wet slap of Josh’s clothes on the floor and stark awareness that he’s naked in there. With a clarity I’m surprised my booze-soaked brain can muster, my thoughts bend to the memory of him talking about fingering someone under the table.

Settle down, Drunk Hazel. Josh has been naked in places near you before. I used to live at his house and he was naked all the time. Josh naked isn’t interesting, right?

STOP SAYINGNAKED.

I shake my head, and it makes the world tilt and then slowly right itself. Winnie appears again and licks my hand. I reach to pet her, missing her head the first time.

The shower curtain screeches open and then closed again as he climbs in, and his low groan of happiness reaches me all the way out in the living room.

The sound does weird things to me. Weird, warm, slithery things, making me suddenly very aware of the bits of my body below my waist that have been ignored for so very long.

But as soon as I’m aware of those bits, the bladder pushes its way front and center, practically punching me from the inside. LOTS OF LIQUID, it screams. I AM FULL OF GIN AND TONIC. I squeeze my legs closed, hopping around a little and cursing that I only have one bathroom and didn’t think to go before we left the restaurant. I need to get his wet clothes anyway … Maybe I can just sneak in and pee really quick and he’d never know I was doing anything other than taking his stuff for the dryer?

I also curse my lack of home maintenance as the doorknob creaks under my hand, and I hear the drunken slur of my voice when I warn him: “Josh, I’m coming in for your clothes.”

“Okay!” He is the happiest drunk I’ve ever known. It smells like my body wash in here, and he must notice, too, because he laughs again. “I’m going to smell like cake!”

With as much ninja stealth as I can muster, I unzip my jeans, pull them down with my underwear, and sit on the toilet, but the relief is so amazing that I let out a groan of my own before I can slap a hand over my mouth. I look in horror over at the shower curtain when it quietly squeaks open. Josh stares back at me, his jaw slack.

I yell the obvious: “I’m on the toilet!”

He laughs, his dark eyes shining with inebriation and the joy of a hot shower after a cold run through the rain. “What are you doing there?”

I frantically start shooing him back behind the curtain. “I’m peeing! Go away!”

He looks down the length of my body to my feet and back up again before diving back behind the curtain. His laugh echoes off the tiles.

I want to flush myself down this toilet. “I can’t believe you saw me peeing!”

“I saw your butt.” Clearly he wants to torture me.

“You did not!”

“And your thighs.” He speaks all garbled, as if he’s got water running over his face. “You have nice thighs, though, Hazie.”

I stand with a growl, flush with mild vengeance, wash my hands, and kick off my wet jeans, nearly falling over in the process. Bending, I pick up his wet clothing with mine and leave the bathroom to put everything in the dryer.

The faucet squeaks as Josh turns off the shower, and just as I’m leaving my bedroom in my dalmatian pajama shorts and tank, he emerges with a towel around his waist. “You said you were going to bring me a blanket.”

I pull up short, and my brain becomes a cup overturned: his words spill out onto the floor.

Josh’s bare torso is a study in lines and shadow. “I … what?” Even I can feel the depth of my drunken leer as my eyes find his happy trail.

“Blanket,” he prompts.

It’s relatively dark in the hall, which you’d think would be helpful. Somehow it’s just making it better. Or worse. I don’t even know anymore. “Yeah,” I mumble, “I … blankets.”

Silence falls over us for a few breaths. “You’re staring, Haze.”

I look up and honestly, with his jaw and sensual dark eyes and smooth, straight nose, his face is just as appealing as his bare chest. Everything about him is perfect. “Can’t you be flawed in some way?”

“Huh?”

“It feels really unfair that I get to see wildlife framed in its natural element”—I gesture to his body—“and you saw me on the toilet.”

I think he’s smiling at me but I continue to stare at his chest.

“I just. Your”—I motion to his chest and the man nipples I like a lot—“and the”—I wave vaguely to his stomach and the soft line of dark hair there. “It’s nice.” I’m mortified all over again imagining myself curled furtively over the porcelain, groaning in relief. “Toilet. So unfair, Josh.”

I don’t anticipate what he’s doing when his hand comes up to the place where the towel is tucked in around his waist until he tugs it. The blue cotton falls soundlessly to the floor, and my heart vaults up into my throat.

Josh

is

naked.

In front of me it seems like Josh has miles and miles of golden skin. I don’t even remember how to blink; he has muscles TA Josh once taught me the names of but now I just know as the Tight Curve of His Bicep, That Appealing Ridge Below His Collarbone, the Edible Eight Pack, and That Lickable Shadow Above His Hipbone.

I also notice he isn’t making any move to cover himself. Instead, he’s watching me with a cocky half smile, like he knows he’s been hiding this bit of artwork under clothes all this time and agrees I’m pretty lucky to be seeing it bare. Drunk giggly Josh is my favorite, but drunk confident Josh is my new religion.

My gaze drops lower and I realize I’ve half expected him to bend down and pick up the towel and ask for a blanket again. But in the time since I first peeked and then did a leisurely perusal of his torso, Josh has gotten … hard.

And, with my eyes focused on that hard part of him …

he goes the rest of the way.

Just watching me looking at him got him hard. I don’t even know what to do with that information. I’m afraid to blink, afraid all of this will disappear in the split second my lids close. When I look at his face, I see his mouth is open slightly. He has a question in his eyes, but he’s also looking at me in a way I imagine is similar to how I’m looking at him.

I can’t look away.

What is breathing? Why do I need to do it again?

In a rush it feels like all the elements in my body pool low, between my legs. I take a step forward, and—because I have zero impulse control when I’m sober, let alone drunk—slide my hands up and over the warm skin of his chest. His groan is barely audible. It’s not a sound I’ve ever heard him make before, but it fits him—restrained and quiet, an understated gust of relief.

In contrast, I let out a colorful string of expletives when my fingers dip into the hollows of his collarbones. Josh is so smooth and yummy. I want to dust him with sugar and lick him clean.

Apparently I’ve said it out loud, because he whispers, “You could. If you wanted.”

What?

Josh Im is giving me permission. I’m touching the unattainable.

Holy shit, what are we doing?

“This is a bad idea,” I tell him.

He nods, but his hands come up anyway, thumbs sliding beneath the elastic of my shorts, stroking my bare hipbones. He gently works my shorts down until they’re a puddle of dalmatian polka dots at my feet.

I let my fingers go where they want, and apparently they want to slide down the ridges of his stomach and wrap around where he is so warm and hard and perfect. He lets out a little grunt, and his eyes fall closed.

“We’ll only do it once,” I promise him.

His voice comes out tight, and I have to let go of him when he slides my tank up and off, throwing it behind him onto the floor. “Once.”

“We both just need to burn off some steam.”

His hand finds my breast, thumb gliding back and forth over the sensitive peak, before he presses, hard. “Exactly.”

“Because you don’t want to date me,” I remind him in a shaky voice.

“You don’t want to date me, either.” But as soon as he says this, his hands come to my face and his mouth comes over mine and it’s intense, just the way I always dreamed it might be, to kiss someone I love so deeply already and who’s seen me exactly as I am. He still tastes a little like scotch, his mouth is soft and firm, and he kisses me so good, like this is exactly what he needed tonight.

Tilting his head, he comes at me again, and deeper, tasting my sounds.

I can’t get enough. I feel like a worshipper wrapped around a golden god.

Josh’s hands have undressed me with a fantastic combination of impatience and skill, and his tongue slides over mine, his sounds of pleasure and need echoing in my mouth and brain. I’m reminded how not sober we are when we collapse gracelessly onto the floor; it’s clear we’re doing this here, right now, and won’t even bother to move out of the hallway. My last bit of clothing is pulled free and then Josh climbs between my legs, reaching down to feel, eyes closed as he holds his breath and slides in deep.

But I can’t close my eyes. I can’t stop looking at him no matter how much his form swims over me—even in the dark, even drunk, I can see clearly enough: the solid mass of muscle and bone, the perfect angles of his shoulders, his jaw, the way his mouth is open and soft, letting out these quiet, deep grunts with each shift forward, each drag back.

He leans down, sucking a nipple into his mouth and then tugging with his teeth. I pull in a sharp breath at the twist of pleasure and pain, and feel more than see the way he smiles against my skin.

In the morning, I’m sure I’ll try to remember every little bit of it, because it feels frantic and wild here on the floor, with my hands on that perfect ass and my legs wrapped around him, pulling him in, silently telling him, Deeper. I’ll want to confirm internally that I really did have drunk sex with my best friend.

In the morning, I’ll tell myself it’s okay that I scream into his ear when my orgasm hits me with the momentum of a train. I’ll tell myself it’s fine that I bite his shoulder when I surprise us both and melt beneath him again. But right now, I only want to think about how warm he is, how good he feels moving inside me. I want to focus on how his hair slips between my fingers and how he babbles about soft and skin, how the words fucking and wet sound both filthy and reverent in my ear. I focus on how he kisses my neck and grows rigid all over when he tells me he thinks he’s coming.

So hard, Haze. Oh, God, I’m coming so hard.

I know I’m drunk, and I know it’s Josh Im—the blueprint for Perfect, who should never want Hazel Bradford—but when it’s done, and he goes still over me, breathing heavily into my neck, I choose to melt into that sublime blur of pleasure, the way I used to think it might feel to live in a cloud.