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

FOURTEEN

HAZEL

I haven’t seen Josh in three days, but we’ve been texting on and off like before, about nothing in particular. Today, I told him how Winnie barked and it sounded like she said “Gimme!” He replied that his chicken salad sandwich had too much mayo. I told him I found a perfect new bikini to wear on our Diarrhea Cruise next spring. He told me not to mention diarrhea after he just ate too much mayo.

All in all, I’d say things are as close to normal as they’re going to get.

The question is whether we’re still doing the whole double-dating thing after we did the whole drunk-sex thing. For obvious reasons, it’s different now, but I tell myself it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Neither of us is really in it for a love connection, but doing the dating game together has been super fun and a good distraction from work, and bills, and having to be a grown-up all the time. I don’t always trust my judgment when it comes to dudes, but Josh would never intentionally set me up with trash (dates six and seven shall be struck from the record). I also like being around him, and when the dates are lame, we have each other.

Apparently I’m not the only one who needs a status check. When we meet at Emily and Dave’s for dinner, the first thing they ask is how the dating game is going. Josh’s immediate reaction is to look at me to answer because, ha! That’s a great question!

“Well,” I say, taking a deep breath and floundering a little. I try to stall for time by slipping off my shoes and placing them with laser-like precision next to Josh’s by the door, but in my head, the image of him moving purposefully over me seems to block out any hope of coherent thought. I intend to tell them only that most of the dates have been flops and see what they suggest about moving on, but in true Hazel form, my mouth decides to take over and what comes out is “Josh and I ended up having sex with each other after we bolted from date seven.”

Silence fills the small entryway like fog and I turn to Josh to save me. His eyes are wide, like he’s watching a plane go down and is silently praying it will pull back up at the last minute. We both know it won’t.

“So, that happened!” I do a spastic little dance. “It was really fun.”

I squeeze my eyes closed because Oh, God, why did I say that?

Josh clears his throat.

“We agreed it’s just a one-time thing. We agreed,” I repeat, holding up my hand in a gesture that’s meant to invoke understanding, or something.

Josh doesn’t come to my rescue, so I’m left free to make this more awkward for everyone. Which I do. “But I mean, for two people where one has been inside of the other, we’re good, right? We’re fine. I think we’re ready to dive back into making plans for the next date?”

I nod, looking for consensus around me. Emily stares at us, wide-eyed. “You guys … what?”

Sometime during my breathless ramble Dave has bent at the waist, unable to contain his laughter.

Emily turns to stare at her brother, some sort of silent sibling communication happening. As always, Josh is mildly expressionless, and with a tiny swallow he seems to refocus, and nods at me with a slow-growing smile. “Yeah, we’re good. Nothing’s changed, thank God.”

Emily says something to Josh in Korean and he replies to her, quietly. This is not the moment to be thinking of how hot he sounds.

I meet Dave’s eyes, because neither of us has a clue what they’ve just said but we can’t pretend to think it isn’t about the sex his brother-in-law had with his wife’s best friend.

Awkward!

Dave claps his hands, and the moment snaps loose. Josh puts his hand to my lower back, silently telling me to lead the way into the dining room, where Dave has put his latest culinary masterpiece out on the table.

Josh takes the seat to my left, and Emily and Dave sit across from us. I watch as Dave pours wine into his wife’s glass, and my eyes widen as he fills it nearly to the brim. Josh and I stare on as she lifts it and takes down half before breathing again.

I glance at Josh, who glances at me at the same time. We share a This is going well! look, and his transitions into a Well, what did you expect? look. I can’t argue.

Dave hands me the bread. Josh takes some chicken onto his plate.

The silence is homicidal.

Emily finishes her wine and Dave pours her more. For such a small thing, Emily can really pack it away.

“Winnie has worms,” I tell the table, and spread some butter on my bread. “Took her to the vet earlier. I was so worried I was going to have to treat it with some ointment in her butt, but—nope—just a pill.”

I take a sip of wine and grin at them. Josh puts his fork down and cups his forehead. But in a few beats they all break into laughter, and Emily looks over at me with my favorite kind of fondness.

“She doesn’t really have worms. I was just kidding.”

I am nothing if not a decent icebreaker.

After this, conversation eventually flows. Dave vents about the rain gutters he has to clean again this weekend. Emily tells us about a kid in her class who didn’t make it to the bathroom in time and pooped his pants, and how that poor kid is going to be known as Pooper Peter until he’s eighty. I talk about the project we’re working on where students choose various careers to write a small report about, and how one of my boys informed the class that his dad (a plastic surgeon) touched boobs for a living. Josh tells us about his new patient, a seventy-year-old woman seeing him pre–hip replacement who has propositioned him no fewer than ten times in the past week.

Even given how the evening started, dinner is fine, mostly.

And as soon as I have the thought—in the car, as Josh drives me home—I turn to him and say it: “Dinner was mostly fine. Mostly.”

If he gets the Aliens joke, I can’t tell. He stares straight forward and gives me a tiny half smile aimed at the windshield.

I sigh, and poke my finger into the dimple in his right cheek. “Do we need to talk about it?”

He swallows, tightening his hands on the steering wheel. “Talk about what?”

I nod, dropping my hand and saying a quiet “Okay” out the passenger-side window. I can play that game, too. Sex? What sex?

“You mean about us having sex?” he says. “Or the fact that you told my sister and brother-in-law, aka your best friend and your boss?”

Ugh. Stomach flip-flops. Angst. I peek at him again. “It just came out, I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t actually care that they know.”

“I just blurted it. I’m broken.”

“They’d probably see it on our faces anyway,” he reassures me. And although we talked about it over the phone, it’s so good to talk about it here, too. Face-to-face. Nothing between us. Hazel and Josh.

“Sometimes your lack of filter kills me,” he says. “It’s not even like you lack a filter; you lack a funnel.”

“But seriously.” I turn in my seat to face him, pulling my leg under me. “I understand what it was, and there’s no reason it has to change anything. In some ways, it makes sense. You’re my best friend, and attractive. Of course I drunkenly mauled you.”

His smile slips a little. “Is that how you remember it?”

“I mean, you participated,” I concede, “but I practically begged you to show me your goods.”

This makes him laugh and I can tell he fought it for a few seconds. “Because I saw you peeing. You’re unreal.”

I sink down into my seat. “I’ll never get over that.”

“You vomited hot dog on television,” he says, sparing me a tiny glance at a red light, “but me seeing you pee is the mortification that’s going to stick with you forever?”

“I’m also still mortified about the hot dog thing.” I shudder at the visceral memory that winds through me. “I’m thrilled you remember that.”

He reaches over, taking my hand. “We’re good, Haze. I promise.”

With a little squeeze, he lets go, and my hand feels oddly cold.

..........

Mom reaches down, not even trying to be subtle when she fishes a tiny brown cookie out of her apron pocket and hands it to Winnie. Lord, the woman doesn’t even have a dog of her own and she’s stashing dog treats in her gardening apron. “Okay, kid.” She rests her hands on her hips. “Out with it.”

I stand up, brushing dirt off my butt and adjusting my gloves. “Out with what?”

Her eyes narrow and she cups my chin, leaving a smudge of dirt there as she tilts my face to the sun. “You’re off today.”

I hold my breath, feeling my face begin to heat in her hand. Her eyes relax, expression softening. “Out with it, honey.”

“The other night, Josh and I …” I shrug.

She bites her lips before saying, “I knew it.”

“Oh, come on. You did not know it. I didn’t even know it.”

“Mother’s intuition.”

“I think that’s a myth.”

She cackles like I’m a moron. “Was it at least fun?”

“I think so? It was mostly drunk, but what I remember was pretty great, yeah.”

Mom hums, and pulls a small weed up where she sees it by her shoe.

I groan. I thought telling her would make me feel better, but I still feel all twisty inside. “And things are already different. We decided they wouldn’t be, but—”

“You ‘decided’? Oh, kids.” She laughs as she picks up the small spade and a pack of cabbage starts, and tilts her chin for me to follow her to the next flower bed. “Honey, that’s not something you can decide. Sex changes things.”

We squat by the freshly turned dirt, and I ease a cluster of roots from the package, handing it to her once she’s dug a small hole. “But I don’t want things to change,” I say.

Mom rests a dirty hand on her knee where she’s squatted and turns to look at me. “Really? You want it to be like this between you and Josh forever? Setting each other up on bad dates? Coming home to just Winnie?”

“And Vodka, Janis, and Daniel Craig.”

She ignores my humor defense mechanism and digs another hole, holding out her hand for another cube of dirt and airy roots.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” I add quietly, handing it over.

“Try.”

“Josh has always been this person who I admired. I mean, he’s beautiful, we all know that. But he also has that impossible kind of smart, and poise, and is emotionally-controlled. I’ve never been able to manage that type of calm, but he comes by it so naturally.” I stab the ground with the point of a small shovel. “And as a friend? He’s just … lovely. Loyal, and aware, and kind, and thoughtful. I sort of worship him.” Mom laughs, and I hand her another clump of roots. “I know I’m like Pig-Pen in Charlie Brown, and I have chaos around me, but it’s like he doesn’t even care. He doesn’t need me to change or pretend to be someone else. He’s my person. He’s my best friend.”

Mom straightens, surveying her work. “I don’t know, honey, that seems sort of wonderful to me.”

A dark streak of anxiety spirals through me. “It is. It was. But then we had sex. The thing is, I know on some instinctive level that I’m not right for Josh. I’m messy and silly and flighty. I forget to pay bills and sing made-up songs to my dog in public before realizing what I’m doing. I spent an entire summer arguing with the city council about not being able to have chickens in my apartment, and remember that time I bought all those balloons because they were a nickel each and then I couldn’t even fit into my car? I know without a doubt that that isn’t the kind of woman he needs.”

A little bit of fire flickers through her eyes. “How can you say that?”

I shrug. “I know him. He loves me as a friend. Maybe like a sister.”

“He had sex with you,” Mom reminds me, and I feel the memory like a pulse in my chest. “In most places, that’s not a sisterly thing. Hazel, honey, are you in love with him?”

Her question slams into me and I have no idea why. We’ve been headed there this entire conversation. I press my hands to my stomach, taking stock of what’s there and trying to translate the ache into words. “I’m not, you know, because I think there’s a fail-safe somewhere inside here. I don’t think I’d come back from that.”

Mom nods, her eyes softening. “Is it strange that I’ve never had one of those? I’ve never really had a love that could consume me. I want to know that kind of fire.”

“I’m not even sure I want that. If I set my heart on someone and they move on, I think it would wreck me.”

Mom reaches up, running a muddy thumb along my jaw. “I get it, honey. I just want you to have the world. And if your world is Josh, then I want you to be brave and go after it.”

“Because you’re my mama.”

She nods. “Someday you’ll understand.”