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Before we get started, there are a few things you should know about me: I am both broke and lazy—a terrible combination. I am perpetually awkward at parties and in an effort to relax will probably end up drinking until I’m topless. I tend to like animals more than people. I can always be counted on to do or say the worst possible thing in a delicate moment.
Anyone who knew me in college might be horrified to hear that I ended up employed as an elementary school teacher, responsible for educating our wide-eyed, sponge-brained youth, but in truth, I suspect I’m pretty great at it.
when I meet someone I love, I become an octopus and wind my tentacles around their heart, tighter and tighter until they can’t deny they love me just the same.
My nose tells me he’s grilling carne asada, which means that he’s also making margaritas, which means I’ll need to stay focused to keep my shirt on tonight.
And—my personal favorite—Hazel Bradford giving an oral presentation on the anatomy and function of the penis in Human Anatomy.
WHAT?!?!?!?
I learned a very important thing that day: my mom would never try to change for a man, and I wouldn’t, either.
They met when she went in because her feet were killing her, and instead of telling her to stop wearing her cowboy boots, he just gave her some orthopedic inserts for them and then asked her out to dinner. Who says romance is dead?
“Mom,” I whisper, “have you and Glenn…?” I dunk my spoon in and out of my coffee cup a few times. Her eyes widen and she grins. I gasp. “You floozy.”
“He’s a podiatrist!” “That’s exactly my point!” I drop my voice to a hush, joking, “They’re known fetishists.”
Day one, Tabby admitted she’s been sleeping with someone else. I spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach, staring out at the ocean and not feeling surprised, exactly, but working to give genuine thought to her insistence that we could work it out. But on day two, she admitted they started sleeping together before she moved to L.A., that she moved to be closer to him, and that he’d helped her get a job. The cherry on top was when she told me she hoped she could keep seeing us both.
THE FUCK
“I realize that finding the perfect person isn’t going to be easy for me because I’m a lot to take,” she says, “but I’m not going to change just so that I’m more datable.”
“But at the end of the day,” she says, and puts her hand outside the open window, letting the wind pass through her fingers, “being myself is enough. I’m enough.”
“You’re my person,” she says. “Thanks for sticking up for me tonight.” She gives these vulnerable words so freely it makes fondness clench at something in my chest. Taking her hand, I bring it to my mouth and press a quick kiss to the backs of her knuckles. “I like being your person.”
“I loved her in the way we love in high school, sort of intensely, idealistically, and without knowing each other all that well.”
“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.”
Drunk giggly Josh is my favorite, but drunk confident Josh is my new religion.
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 should be glad that she’s the same Hazel she was when she woke up yesterday. But I’m not the same Josh.
I’m definitely not thinking about the quiet way she mumbled she loved me when I carefully lowered her semiconscious naked body onto her bed.
I’ve never had casual sex. I’ve honestly never understood the impulse; sex is so supremely intimate. I give away a nonrefundable piece of myself, every time.
We both know Hazel is a butterfly. I think you have the power to take the dust from her wings.”
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.
