I’m not even sure how to absorb these superlatives, so I just give him a tight smile and sit down across from Josh, who’s staring at me with such singular intensity I worry he’s burning a red dot into my forehead.
The delivery of our drinks, and the time Tyler takes to order one for himself, gives me a few seconds of oxygen, and head space.
1. Tyler looks fantastic.
2. He seems genuinely apologetic, if not a little over the top.
3. My brain is goo. This is the Tyler Jones Effect. He’s charming, and beautiful, and has always been my kryptonite.
So much for growth.
I remember the first time he broke up with me, how it felt to hear him say that I was fun, but not long-term material.
I remember the first time he left my bed after coming over for sex, and told me it was always so good that way between us, and thanks for a fun night.
We probably had sex twenty more times after that, and every time I felt like shit afterward. It got to the point where it wasn’t even that I wanted Tyler Jones so much as I just wanted to not have this weak spot in my heart. Every time I thought, This time, I’m going to say no! This time, I’m going to ask him to get out after I’ve come but before he has!
This time, this time, this time.
I reenter the conversation as Tyler is telling the story of the time we went skiing and I made it down the mountain alive after somehow losing my poles and careening face-first over a thick sheet of ice. It’s not a story I particularly relish him starting off with, but at least it’s one where my undergarments are intact and my skirt isn’t over my head.
Yet.
“Yeah, Hazel has a pretty hard skull,” Josh jokes quietly, and I’m the only one to burst out in a nervous, too-loud cackle. He looks at me, grinning at my awkward hysteria too close to the surface. Josh reaches across the table and brushes his fingertips across the back of my hand in what is either an I’m right here, you’re okay gesture or a Be cool one.
Tyler is full of Hazel Bradford is the wildest ever! stories, and regales a riveted Sasha and Josh with The Time I Looked into Adopting a Tiger, The Time Senior Hazel Went Streaking Through Freshman Orientation, and most mortifyingly, The Time We Decided We Should Have Sex in the Bathrooms at Every Major Museum in Portland.
Josh gives me a pruney face because we were just at the Portland Art Museum two days ago. “Gross,” he whispers, and wipes his hands on the thighs of his jeans.
I admit Tyler’s a good storyteller, and I come off sounding like the Olivia Pope of Fun in most of them. I can tell Sasha and Josh are genuinely entertained. But as he goes on and on with all this shared history, I’m weighed down by the drooping awareness that I gave Tyler so much of my heart and my time, and received so little in return.
It is astonishing to me that, in all the time we were together and the years we’ve been apart, this is what he remembers. If I had to share my Tyler Jones stories, there would be a couple of great ones, including The Night He First Brandished the Magic Dong™ and The Time He Showed Me Why Women Love Oral Sex, but otherwise, they’d mostly be That Time Tyler Said He Loved Me to Get in My Pants, and That Other Time Tyler Said He Loved Me to Get in My Mouth.
A glance at Josh tells me that, as his gym buddy rambles on and on about our escapades and sexcapades, the bloom is coming off the rose. I understand immediately; if you asked me which is the more meaningful relationship in my life, I’d say Josh without hesitation. But for sure Josh can see as clearly as I can the imprint that Tyler has left on me. I’d have a spoiled-milk expression, too, if Tabby were here talking about all the shenanigans she and Josh shared.
His jaw ticks, and when Tyler stops to actually breathe, Josh cuts in to engage Sasha on her interests, her job, her life.
Tyler takes this opportunity to turn, and reach for my hand again, bringing it to his mouth. “Hazel?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
Something squeezes my lungs until the air is all gone. “For what?”
He nods, eyes closed, and his lips move up and down my knuckles with the movement. Over Tyler’s bowed head, Josh catches my eye and we both quickly look away.
“I’m sorry for ending things, and making you feel that you weren’t worth my time long term.” So Tyler does remember. “I’m sorry I couldn’t let you move on afterward. I’m sorry I used you as an escape whenever things got hard in other areas of my life. And I’m sorry I disappeared without a word.”
When he looks at me, I give him a little smile. It’s nice to hear all this. I can’t pretend it isn’t. But I’m obviously still in shock because I don’t really have words in response, even all the wrong ones.
The waiter deposits a Diet Coke in front of him and with that, things click into place.
“You’re in recovery,” I blurt.
He nods. “Yeah. Yeah. I am. I’m so much happier.” He lets go of my hand to lift his glass and take a sip. “I wish I could do a lot of things over again.”
I’m thrilled for him, because it’s obviously a good decision, but I’m so windblown by Tyler’s appearance that I can’t even enjoy the food. One sip in and my drink tastes rotten. My meal is overflavored and feels like a fluorescent bulb in my mouth.
Tyler and Sasha—and to a lesser extent Josh—seem to do just fine with minimal input from me, but I can’t pretend I’m not relieved when the check comes, and the two dudes whip out their wallets. I don’t even put up a fight.
“Haze,” Josh says quietly, “you want to box that up and take it home?”
I look at my plate. I’ve had maybe two bites. “Okay. Sure.”
Josh grabs my bag of food as we stand, and puts a brotherly arm around my shoulders before Tyler can pull me aside. “That was a fun night,” Josh says quietly, looking down at me.
“It was great.” I can hear the question in my words, like Wait, was it fun? I was on Planet Freak-Out for most of it and didn’t notice.
“Let me give you my number.” Tyler slips my phone from where it’s loosely held in my hand, and opens a new text box, texting himself This is Hazel’s number, followed by a little smiley face.
I want to snatch his phone and see how many of those texts he has with different girls’ names. But then I feel like an asshole for thinking it, because he bends down and puts a chaste kiss on my cheek.
“You’re a bigger person than I am,” Tyler says, and it’s awkward because Josh still has his arm around my shoulders so Tyler’s practically kissing Josh’s hand, but Tyler doesn’t seem to mind baring his soul in public anymore. “It was really good to see you.”
Josh walks Sasha out; he says he’s going to drive her home, and something in my chest forms a fist and punches both of them for that. Tyler hops in a Jeep Cherokee, and waves as he drives off. My car starts on the second try, and I drive home in a haze, pulling up outside my building without paying attention to anything along the way.
Because Josh is at Sasha’s.
The thought sticks in my head like a tack in a corkboard: Pay attention to this. Josh is at Sasha’s. Obsess about this later. Just . . . not yet.
I pull off my clothes and drop them on the floor right next to the laundry hamper in an act of rebellion that, most likely, Josh won’t even see. I scrub off my minimal makeup and throw the wipe in the trash with a violence that Tyler doesn’t get to appreciate. I get into my bed in my BAD BITCH T-shirt and DRAGON PUSSY underwear, and turn on the TV on my dresser with every intention of watching Steel Magnolias.
Five minutes in, I burst into tears.
“Hey. Hey.”
I gasp, clutching my boob as if it’s my heart, and look up at my bedroom doorway.
Josh is there.
Josh is here? I didn’t even hear him come in, and he’s moving over and sitting on the side of my bed while I melt down at the sight of Sally Field running around the house in curlers.
“I used the key you gave me. I hope that’s okay?”
I can only nod.
&nbs
p; “Hey,” he says gently. “What’s wrong? What happened after I left?”
“Nothing.” I wipe away the evidence on my cheeks. “I just feel emotional.” I stretch across him to my bedside drawer, where not only are there several vibrators but there is chocolate. He watches me push past a messy pile of sex toys for sugar without saying a single thing, and also doesn’t say anything when I shove an entire Twix into my mouth, then start talking around it. “Seeing Tyler was a lot. I thought you were going home with Sasha and I wanted to talk to you.”
I bury my face in his shirt and inhale like I’m huffing him. He smells like Tide and the echoing tang of vinegar from his parents’ house, and I imagine opening my mouth and eating his shirt, swallowing it with the chocolate bar.
Then I realize that the blanket has slid off my body and he can see the back of my Dragon Pussy underpants. He pulls his attention to my face, eyes wide and unfocused.
“This night could be better,” I tell him, tucking my shirt over my butt.
“I had no idea Jones and Tyler were the same guy.” He runs an apologetic hand through my crazy hair. “I would never have set you guys up.” A pause. “I mean, obviously.”
“I know.” I watch him read my Bad Bitch T-shirt a couple of times before he laughs.
“Strangely enough,” he says quietly, “I adore you in this mood.”
I ignore the silvery, giddy monster that wiggles through me when he says this. “It threw me because he was being so nice, and I swear that for like two years all I wanted to hear were the things he was saying tonight.” I start crying again. Holy bejeezus I am a mess. “Tyler was the guy who broke my heart and has made me so wary of getting emotionally involved again and then he was there. He looked the same, but remembered all the ways he was shitty and apologized for them.” I let out a wail and use Josh’s shirt as a handkerchief. “And then you went home with Sasha and I wanted to talk to you.”
“You said that already, Haze.”
“Well, I really, really mean it.”
He holds me for a few minutes. Who knows, maybe it’s an hour. I lose track of time and space; if someone decided to invent a comfort machine, it should be shaped just like Josh Im. His right hand rubs slow circles on my back, and his left hand is anchored in the hair at the back of my head, and he’s saying quiet things like
I’m sorry.
I could tell how shocked you were.
Shh, I know. Come here, Haze. It’s okay.
Finally, I pull back and apologize in a sob-thick voice for covering his shirt in my melodramatic tears and snot. “You should totally go home and watch some TV and forget this ever happened. I don’t know why I’m such a mess.”
“I don’t know . . . I feel like I should stay.” He cups my face the same way Tyler did earlier, but instead of feeling mildly intimidating, it feels wonderful, even though he’s close enough to stare straight into my pores and I know I’m not a pretty crier. “I don’t like leaving when you’re sad.” His brows pinch together. “Actually, I’ve never seen you sad.”
“I’m okay.”
“I can stay.”
I go for lighthearted—for playful—but unfortunately my singsong words come out like bricks: “You can stay, but, I mean, I’m not going to have sex with you again.”
Insert record-screech sound here.
Josh rolls his eyes and lets go of my face. “Yup. Okay. I’m headed home.”
“Wait.” I swallow down the desperate edge to my voice. “I was kidding.” I try to salvage the joke: “I would totally have sex with you again.”
His expression goes dark and he slumps slightly in exasperation. His voice is rough and quiet. “Come on, Haze. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m a mess.” I wipe my face and try to look as collected as possible. “I really would love the company.”
He’s already kicked off his shoes at the front door, so all he has to do is step out of his jeans and he’s only in boxers and his T-shirt. His boxers have little jalapeño peppers all over them, and he draws my eyes away from the shape of his cock—Friend cock! Not for you!—by pulling back my sheets and climbing into bed beside me.
“Scoot over.” He takes the remote, and I rest my head on his broad shoulder, knowing as soon as I get a whiff of the warm tangy spice of him that I’m probably ten minutes away from sleep.
“But none of this Steel Magnolias junk,” he whispers. “Let’s watch the first Alien movie.”
SEVENTEEN
* * *
JOSH
I wake up on the brink of orgasm. I’m still dressed but my chest is sweaty, my blood rushing hot and frantic, and as soon as I come into awareness, I can feel the electric storm building at the base of my spine.
What roused me was the sound of Hazel crying out in my ear. An ancient part of me must have understood the pitch of her noises and heeded it before I was even fully awake, because I’m still rocking my hips when I register that (1) I’m awake and (2) she’s gone limp beside me.
Everything falls still as we pant, breathless. Her leg is around my hip, her hands are fists in my hair, and her mouth is only inches from mine.
“Whoa.” I swallow, lifting my head to glance over my shoulder at her dark bedroom around us. The only light comes from the television. The Apple TV is cycling through the screensavers—a revolving series of flowers and wildlife. The clock on her nightstand tells me it’s 3:21 a.m.; the movie must have ended hours ago. I’m only barely oriented, and I look down at her, mouth soft and lips parted, her eyes open now and lit in the dark.
So here we are: somehow, in our sleep, we started to move together through our clothes, and I think Hazel just . . .
“Oh my God.” She swallows. “I thought I was dreaming.”
“Me too.”
“I woke up as I was coming.”
So she did come. Holy shit. My stomach tenses with need. “That’s about when I woke up.”
“I’m sorry, Josh. I didn’t mean—”
“No, stop, it was both of us.”
She must be able to feel the hard line of me, pressed against the heat of her, because she whispers, “Are you okay?”
Every muscle in my body is flexed. Hazel’s hands are still in my hair and she scratches her nails gently against my scalp, shifting her hips up just slightly, rocking into me as if she needs to clarify her meaning.
I’m rigid; I can feel the ache, the pulsing tension in my navel that will slowly morph into a leaden, throbbing discomfort. Tomorrow I’ll worry about the fallout. For now, “I . . . need to come.”
With a whispered, “Yeah?” she lifts her head just enough to press her mouth to mine. It’s soft and warm, and her hips rise from the bed, urging, circling up into me.
“I don’t mind . . . doing it myself,” I stammer between kisses, “if that’s better . . .”
“That’s a nice image, but . . .” Hazel hooks her thumb in my boxers and slides them down over my ass, to my thighs.
Before I climb over her, I have a moment of pause—What are we doing, and what does this mean?—but it evaporates like steam in cold air. We have to untangle slightly to get her underwear off, and I want to feel her, skin to skin. I pull off her shirt, and then mine.
The relief of it—of her bare skin against me, of her legs sliding up and around my hips—is nearly obliterating. I can sense how close my orgasm is, just beneath the surface.
She reaches down, holding me, playing with me against her, and I have to pull my mind somewhere else—I imagine running, scrubbing the shower, chopping carrots—so I don’t come from the heat and friction of her against the head of my cock.
“I know I shouldn’t talk because I’ll ruin it but holy shit, Josh. This feels so good.”
I grit my teeth, tighten the muscles of my abdomen, and force my hips to stay exactly where they are: far enough away that she’s in control, but close enough that she can do whatever she wants.
“I think I could come again.
Like this.”
Holy shit.
“Like . . .” Her voice unravels into a gravelly little sigh and she arches her neck, the words becoming harder to find. “How does something so simple—” She slides the tip of me along her wet skin, back and forth, up and down, in between. I have no idea how I’m even still breathing. “How does this”—a little gasp—“feel so good?”
I’m shaking my head because I have no idea—or maybe my brain is just trying to convince the rest of me to slow down—but I’m distracted by the feel of Hazel’s knees sliding up to rest against my ribs.
She kisses my lips, pulling the bottom one into her mouth. “Do you think it feels good?”
I suck in a breath, light-headed. “I think you feel better than anything.”
“Did you know there are, like, seven thousand nerves in the head of the penis?” she gasps. “More than any other part of your body?”
My arms shake with the effort of holding back. “That seems about right.”
She laughs but the sound breaks apart and floats away as she moves underneath me, hips tilted up as she positions me just where she wants. Everything stops and her eyes meet mine in the odd light emanating from the TV. “Is this okay?”
I let out a single breath, a short laugh at the absurdity of this, kissing her chin. “Are you kidding?”
“We’ll just do it twice, then.”
I’d normally smile at this except my brain can’t process anything but the unbelievable heat of her, the knowledge that I’m about to get exactly what I want. My open mouth rests on hers as I push in, and it means I feel the way her breath shakes.
“Josh.”
She’s right, holy shit it’s so good. “I know.”
“Is this the worst idea ever?”
“I don’t know. Right now it feels like the best idea ever.” I cup her backside, lifting her hips to me, working myself in and out of her, deeper on each pass.
I feel a flash of guilt, like this sex should be for the sake of taking care of business only—an accident that happened in our sleep—and I shouldn’t be enjoying it so much. But how can I not? Hazel is gorgeous beneath me: her hair is a tumble of curls on the pillow, her mouth is full and wet, her breasts move with me every time I push deep into her.