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

EIGHTEEN

HAZEL

I realize it’s melodramatic, but when Josh leaves that morning, I stare at the closed door for a full fifteen minutes.

I used to wonder what it felt like to stand in the middle of a cyclone, a tornado, at the epicenter of an earthquake. Once or twice, when Tyler had bruised my feelings without any awareness of it, I would think, These emotions are tiny. Imagine standing right there when the entire Earth rumbles. I wonder whether what’s happening inside me is simply a smaller version of a tropical storm: everything is being blown around and upended.

Being near Josh feels like landing after a yearlong flight—arms flapping, energy depleted. The feelings I have for him have become so enormous, they’re nearly debilitating. They terrify me, and make it clear that whatever I felt for Tyler six years ago was like a drop in a bucket; last night with Josh was a tidal wave.

But I honestly don’t know if I want a tidal wave. Mom says she wishes she had one; I’m not so sure we’re tidal wave kind of women.

Tyler wants another chance, and Josh thinks I should give it to him. That seems to be what everyone else would do—what normal people would do. My gut isn’t totally on board, but without any experience in this degree of emotional combustion, my internal barometer feels unbalanced. I just don’t know what the right answer is.

So I straighten my shoulders, kiss Winnie for good luck, pray to Daniel Craig for wisdom, and reply to Tyler’s text.

 

..........

Tyler shows up at my doorstep holding a piece of paper and two bottles of red wine. It would be easier for all involved if we went out to dinner, but if he really wants to redeem himself, he can eat my cooking and endure the car wreck that takes place while I do it. If that doesn’t test a person’s constitution, nothing will.

As soon as he steps into my apartment, he seems to crowd everything out of the space, looking around, nodding as if it’s what he expected before turning to me with a smile and the offered gifts.

I stare at the bottles of wine he’s put in my hands, admittedly confused. “Is this all for me?”

“We can share it.”

Pausing, I’m not sure if my question qualifies as Horrible Things That Slip Out of Hazel’s Mouth, but I go for it. “So, you’re not in recovery?”

With an easy laugh, he nods. “I don’t drink in bars anymore. I just drink at home. It’s cool.”

“… Oh.”

“Nice place, wow.” Tyler nods, impressed, and I have to follow his attention around the space to figure out what he’s seeing. Although I cleaned, my apartment just isn’t that much to look at, not really.

But he is being nice. There’s something to be said for that, after all.

A tiny voice reminds me that Josh didn’t bother to blow smoke up my butt and tell me what a lovely place I had. He never lies, or fakes enthusiasm. He just accepts me.

Why am I comparing Tyler to Josh Im right now?

Probably the same reason I’ve been thinking about Josh Im for the past week.

Winnie comes up, gives Tyler a cursory sniff, and proceeds to look at me like I’m a trollop and a traitor. Unimpressed, she returns to where she was curled up by the window. Vodka squawks once and then tucks his head under a wing. The fish doesn’t even spare him a glance. The only thing I get from my animal family is a resounding meh, and although Tyler looks awesome in black jeans, his Chucks, and a tight black T-shirt, I can’t help but think my animals are comparing him to Josh Im, too.

With a deep breath, I push all that aside. I’ve decided I’ll give him another chance, and comparing him to the blueprint for Perfect isn’t any way to do that.

So, here we are.

I’ve attempted lasagna for our dinner, but when Tyler follows me into the kitchen to open the wine, I see the room through his eyes: it looks like a massacre happened in here.

“Wow. What’re we having?”

“Road kill?” I say, grinning.

He laughs, and surprises me by bending to kiss my forehead. “Should I get you some wine?”

My stomach does a weird tilt. I don’t feel like drinking with Tyler; I don’t want to get loose and comfortable and fall back into old patterns. But I don’t want to be rude, either. “Sure.”

The cork squeaks in the bottle as he opens it. “The entire way over,” he says, “I was remembering that time we went to see The Crying Game at the old dollar theater and you got into a shoving match with the dude behind us who used the word faggot.”

It takes me a few seconds to remember this one, but then it comes back with startling clarity. The redneck who ruined the end for those of us who hadn’t seen it years earlier.

“Oh. Yeah, he was lame.”

“God, those were good old days.”

I nod, disagreeing internally as I watch him pour two enormous glasses of Shiraz. He hands me the hulking dose and raises his glass in a toast. “To old loves and new beginnings.”

I let out a deflated “Cheers,” lifting my glass and letting the liquid touch my lips. The toast feels so cheesy and overbaked, I half wish Josh were here to give me a knowing eye roll over the rim of his own wineglass. Josh is a wonder when he’s serving his parents a drink; I love to watch the way he pours with both hands, the way he reverently accepts a drink in return just the same way.

The wine tastes a little off to me, so I put it down under the guise of needing to check the lasagna, and start the salad.

Dinner comes out pretty well. The cheese is bubbly and nicely browned, the salad came from a bag so it was impossible to mess it up, and the garlic bread required nothing more than to be pulled out of the freezer and dropped in the oven for twenty minutes. The Barefoot Contessa I am not, but I didn’t burn anything and for that I am giving myself a mighty mental high five.

My brain whirs continually while Tyler talks about his job, his apartment, and the friends he’s still in touch with from college. Am I really doing this? Having a date, at my apartment, with Tyler Douchebag Jones? Is this what it’s come to?

I have honestly never spent as much time thinking about my love life as I have in the past few days. I’m not an idiot. I know that my feelings for Josh Im go beyond the friend zone—hello, we had orbit-bending sex only one week ago—but whenever I imagine trying to date him, I get this panicky feeling in my chest and have to stick my head out the window or unbutton my shirt. The thought of dating him and having him ever say that I’m weird or embarrassing makes everything inside me duck for cover. Sex I can do. But baring my emotional soul to Josh and watching his proverbial lip curl in distaste? Gah.

I think about Mom, and the way she reacted to Dad when he said those four words to her—you’re so fucking embarrassing—and how it didn’t seem to faze her at all. I used to think it was because she was so strong and was able to hide her pain, but now I know that it’s because his opinion didn’t matter. She didn’t love him.

And whether I love Josh as a friend or more, I do love him. Deeply.

“… so I took it to another shop,” Tyler is saying loudly, as if he knows I’ve spaced out and is turning up the volume to get my attention back where he wants it, “and the guy there agreed with me. Fucking timing belt. Who misdiagnoses a timing belt?”

“Right?” I say, giving what I hope is the appropriate degree of disbelief on his behalf. I add an indignant scowl at my plate, pushing the lasagna around a little. It looked so good coming out of the oven, but right now nothing has ever seemed so unappetizing. I wonder whether it’d be cool with Tyler if I just busted out some Cap’n Crunch for my dinner instead.

“So anyway,” he says, “that’s why I had no flowers.”

I look up. “Huh?”

“To bring you,” he says, leaning in and cupping a hand around my forearm. “I gave you a drawing of flowers? At the door?”

He did? “Right, right. It was so pretty, though.”

He ducks, smiles humbly. “Well, I wanted to bring actual flowers, and wine. Do the romantic thing.”

The romantic thing. To Tyler, that used to be a six-pack of PBR and the promise of some good ol’ fuckin’ later. I wonder if it’s still true, and he’s just upped his seduction tangibles a little. I push back from the table and out of his reach. “That’s so nice. You know I’ve never needed flowers.”

“No one needs flowers.” Grabbing his plate, he follows me into the kitchen, rolling up his sleeves like he intends to do the dishes. “But everyone likes them.”

Apparently, I’m right. Tyler turns on the water, filling the sink. I notice that he doesn’t get the water particularly hot before plugging the drain and filling it, and I mentally cover Josh’s eyes so he doesn’t have to watch such blatant disregard for proper cleaning technique.

“So tell me something about yourself,” Tyler says, reaching for my plate. He frowns at it before scraping the entirety of my lasagna helping into the trash. “Something that’s happened in the past few years.” He’s been here over an hour and this is the first question that’s been directed to me.

I lean against the counter, watching him.

He might be somewhat clueless, but he sure is pretty from behind. And from the front, too.

And he’s here, trying. Washing dishes, making conversation. My stomach feels like a houseboat on a rolling river and if I could just calm the hell down, I might actually enjoy his company.

“Well, you know I’m a teacher.”

“Yup. Fourth grade?”

“Third.” I reach for my wine, sniff it, and decide against it again. “This is my first year at Riverview. Let’s see … what else. My mom lives in Portland now.”

“Moved from Eugene, right?”

Okay. Maybe not so clueless after all. “Yeah.” A tiny flicker of light ignites in my chest. He remembers things about me. Things completely unrelated to my cup size or erogenous zones. “My closest friend here is a woman named Emily—”

“Josh’s sister? I think he mentioned her at dinner.”

I allow myself a mental knee-slapping laugh. Josh probably mentioned a lot of things that I missed entirely during my mental meltdown. “Yeah, good memory. And she’s married to our principal, this sequoia of a man named Dave, who—I swear to you—makes the best barbecue this side of the Mississippi.”

“That sounds awesome.”

“I mean, I’ll admit that I’ve never been east of the Mississippi, nor have I sampled barbecue at all that many places, but Dave makes good food.”

Tyler laughs at this. “Maybe we can have dinner over there sometime.”

And just like that, just when I’d been starting to relax, something tenses inside me again. The idea of sitting next to Tyler at Emily and Dave’s dinner table feels dirty. I imagine Josh across from us, sitting beside Sasha, and then I imagine throwing a sauce-slathered rib at him. In my head, it lands with a dark splat on his pristine work shirt and he glares at me.

I mumble a belated “Sure” before making a cabinet dive for the Cap’n Crunch.

Shoving a hand into the box, I continue, “You know, I’ve got animal family in town as well. You’ve met Winnie the Poodle, Vodka, Janis Hoplin, and Daniel Craig.”

Tyler looks at me over his shoulder and I answer the question in his eyes, “Sorry. My fish. Daniel Craig.” Another question lingers there, and I answer that one, too: “Daniel Craig is a fitting homage. My fish has got a great tail.”

I catch the amused smirk just before he turns back to the sink.

Maybe it is different this time. Maybe Tyler really has grown up, and maybe that makes it okay that I never will.

..........

When the doorbell rings, Tyler is halfway through the second bottle of wine. The single glass he poured me earlier sits mostly untouched on the kitchen counter.

He turns toward the sound. “Did you call me a cab?” he jokes, voice low and slow. “I thought I’d stay here tonight.”

The awkward laugh that comes out of me sounds like a cyborg malfunctioning, and I stand to answer. Up until now, we’ve been having a genuinely good time—I mean, not I’m gonna get some good time, but it’s been nice. Yes, there’s a lot of Glory Days reminiscing on his part, but I’m surprised to find that Tyler remembers things pretty accurately, and with not a lot of reimagined glossing.

I’m also surprised to find Josh and Sasha standing at the door. She’s got all her hair in a bun that looks like it could house a family of eagles, and is holding another bottle of wine. In Josh’s fist there’s a small bouquet of sunflowers.

“Hey!” Sasha smooches my cheek before pushing past me into the apartment. She sees Tyler there. “What a coincidence! Double date, take two!”

I look up at Josh, who is busy studying Tyler’s long frame sprawled familiarly on one end of my couch. Although we text almost constantly, I haven’t seen him all week, not since he left my apartment after we …

My chest seems to fill with helium.

“Hey,” I say. Josh blinks, refocusing his attention on me. “What’s going on, date crasher?”

He gives a little shrug. “Guess I forgot he was coming over tonight.”

Winnie barrels down the hall at the sound of his voice, running to the door.

“And you thought I’d make a swell third wheel to your hot date?”

“I thought you might want company?” he offers instead, reaching down to scratch behind Winnie’s ears.

Even though the idea of this makes me feel all glowy, I wonder if I reject this explanation whether he’ll keep cycling through them until he lands on something that lets him past the doorway.

I give it a whirl. “Try again.”

“We had extra wine and wanted to share.”

“No.”

“I haven’t had dinner, and smelled the delicious lasagna.”

I am a terrible cook and Josh knows it. “That’s the worst one yet, Jimin.”

He shoves the flowers at me. “You like sunflowers.”

My heart beams, and I step back, letting him in. He stops just inside to toe off his shoes, and says under his breath, “Unless you’d prefer to keep things … private tonight.”

Tires screech to a halt in my head when he says this—so tight, almost probing. Does Josh really think I would have sex with him a week ago and then bang Tyler tonight? I mean, I haven’t even changed my sheets yet.

Which I probably shouldn’t tell Josh. He would be horrified.

“We’re having a nice time,” I say, “but I’m happy to see you.” It seems like the best way to wipe the protective worry off his face, and also let him know that it’s pretty awesome that he’s come by because no way am I letting Tyler Jones inside inside tonight.

But a cloud passes over Josh’s face just before half of his mouth smiles. “Well … good.”

I hear a cork pop in the kitchen, and the glug-glug-glug of a hearty glass of wine being poured. “Haze,” Sasha calls, and Josh and I exchange a brief look at her unauthorized use of my nickname, “do you want some wine?”

“I’ve got some on the counter, I’m good.”

“She’s been nursing that same glass for three hours,” Tyler grouses. “You may as well pour her a new one.”

“On a Friday? That doesn’t sound like her.” Josh moves past me to take off his coat and hang it on the wall, with a lovesick labradoodle right on his heels. Even Vodka is sitting up straighter. “Usually by this point in the night, she’s two bottles in and designing a saddle for Winnie out of cereal boxes.”

From the couch, Tyler lets out a bro-y, “Right?”

I pinch Josh’s bicep in bratty retaliation, and then give it an appreciative stroke because he seems extra buff under my hand. To cover the shiver that runs through me, I let out a playful, “Ooh. You’re all flexed and beefy tonight.”

He slaps my hand away. “Pervert.”

“Did you do pre-date push-ups?”

“No.”

“This muscle tone is all just from jerking off, then? Wow.”

He flicks my ear, hard, and our eyes snag for

one

I need to come.

two

I need to come.

three seconds

He gives a dark half smile. “I hit the gym a lot this week.”

Holy shit. The entire duration of our banging flashes through my eyes when he says this, his voice all low and growly.

We were sober last Friday.

We had intentional sex.

Oh my God, I know Josh Im’s sex sounds.

Josh’s eyes go to my neck, my cheeks, and his eyes widen a little so I know the heat I’m feeling beneath my skin is visible to him. “Haze …”

“What are you two talking about?” We startle into awareness as Sasha sashays into the living room with a veritable fishbowl of wine cupped in her hand and takes half of it down in a few long swallows. Both Josh and Tyler watch this with interest.

“Nothing,” Josh and I mumble in unison.

Sasha indelicately wipes the back of her hand across her mouth in a move that earns her about seventy Fun Points and then lets out a long Ahhhhhhhh afterward, earning her another twenty.

“Thirsty?” Tyler asks. His tone surprises me; for the first time tonight, it’s bordering on dickish. I wouldn’t blame him for being a little irked at the date crashers if he thought he stood a shot at getting laid.

But Sasha doesn’t even seem to realize he’s spoken. “Josh took me to the cutest little play earlier.”

Something inside pinches my left lung, and I rub my rib to ease it. “Yeah? Which one?”

“It was an all-female production of King Lear.”

Tyler feigns snoring, but I look over at Josh, trying madly to stifle my genuine hurt. “You saw it without me?”

A panicky shine comes into his eyes. “I wasn’t sure you—Zach had two extra—and Sasha was free—”

“It’s fine.” I quickly tuck my little pout away because I can tell from the look on his face that he feels sincerely guilty.

He settles in a chair across from Tyler, mouths Sorry to me again, and gives a covert, wide-eyed glance at Sasha as she rounds the couch, as if to say to me, I didn’t know what else to possibly do with her!

At least, that’s how I’m choosing to interpret it.

“What about you guys?” Sasha plops down next to the mostly prone Tyler, jostling the glass of wine balanced on his chest. He lifts it to avert a spill, and uses the opportunity to pull a few long swigs into his mouth. I take a seat on the arm of the couch.

“Craze made dinner,” he says, and then burps into his fist. Josh and I exchange a brief confused-by-this-nickname glance, and his eyes narrow a fraction of a second before Tyler reaches up and slides his burp hand into the hair at the back of my head, massaging. “Lasagna. We’re just chilling at home, catching up.”

At this, Josh’s left eyebrow arches significantly and I cut in quickly, rolling over Tyler’s awkward use of home with a bursting “I also made garlic bread and a bag of salad!”

Knowing exactly what I’m trying to distract him from, Josh turns his full attention to me. I see it in his face: So this is a thing then, huh? You and Tyler? Hangin’ at ‘home’? Ripping bags of salad open for your man?

I return the glare, trying to convey my thoughts right back to him. Did I misunderstand you the other day? Didn’t you want me to explore this with Tyler? Or was that a way to get me to stop inviting you into my vagina? It’s just dinner, anyway!

Will you be driving him to his AA meeting later, as well?

Maybe!

He’s still staring at me, but his expression has morphed from that perplexing possessiveness into amusement, as if he is enjoying my obvious mental bender. I scowl at him, and he laughs.

“So, hey,” Sasha says, draining her glass and standing, presumably to get another. “I have these tickets to Harvest Fest. Four, actually.”

Tyler bolts up, eyes wide. They are very bloodshot. “Seriously? We should totally all go.”

Josh stills with his bottle of water against his lips. “What’s Harvest Fest?”

“An all-day concert at Tom McCall Park,” Sasha says and adds more slowly, as if this hasn’t yet been enough to clear it up for Josh, “A music festival.”

Tyler looks at each of us, surprised that he doesn’t have immediate consensus. “Dude. Metallica will be there.”

Sasha gives a smug nod. “Yup. We could totally all go together.”

I mentally stab a fork through my eye.

Tyler wipes an incredulous hand over his mouth before exhaling a reverent “Limp Bizkit, dude.”

Across the room, Josh lets out a tiny whimper of pain.

I scratch an eyebrow. “Are we going to be the youngest people there?”

Josh guffaws at this, but I give him a skeptical eye roll. He doesn’t get to play cool kid here. This is a man whose car radio seems glued to KQAC, All Classical Portland.

“Oh, there’s way more than that,” Sasha says from the kitchen, raising her voice against the glug-glug-glug of the wine bottle. Her words and the glugging are followed by the cacophonous crash of the empty bottle into the recycling bin. Two glasses. She took down a bottle of wine in two glasses. I can’t decide if this is impressive or concerning. “Three Days Grace, Simple Plan …”

Josh and I exchange pained looks again.

“My Chemical Romance,” Tyler says, having looked it up on his phone. “Three Days Grace—”

Sasha waves a hand, swallowing a sip of wine. “I said that one already.”

“I’m just reading the list.” Tyler turns back to his phone. “Um, oh! Julian Casablancas will be there. And Jack White.” He looks up at me and I admit, the last two have fluffed my interest somewhat. “Outdoors. Lots of happy people.” He pauses, and smirks at me. “Hippies everywhere, dancing with their eyes closed.”

My interest is officially piqued. From across the room, I can see Josh’s shoulders slump in resignation.

“We’re in,” I tell them.