Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating(42)

Regret me.

“The thing is,” he begins, “we didn’t use a condom.”

Well, that explains why I’m so sticky. My stomach tilts. “Oh. No, it’s okay. I’m covered.”

“You’re on the pill?”

This feels so weird. This isn’t exactly how I imagined this conversation going. Then again, when did I actually imagine having this conversation with Josh? “Yeah. The pill.”

“So, I guess I also need to ask whether you’ve been tested recently?”

Oh.

“I don’t mean—” he starts, and I can practically hear him wincing.

“Yeah,” I cut in, “no, it makes sense. I haven’t been with anyone else in over a year. But I’ve been tested since then.” Defensiveness crawls hotly up my neck. “What about you? I mean, after the whole Tabby and Darby thing …”

“Sorry,” he says immediately. “Of course. I should have said that first. I’m good.”

A hush falls over the line and I feel oddly melancholy. I’m not sure why. Josh and I are going to be fine. We’re bulletproof. Last night was fun, and look—he’s calling me at 7:17 the morning after. He didn’t avoid me for days following our drunken hookup. Everything is fine.

“Haze,” he says quietly, “I’m sorry I left.”

“No, I totally get it. I’m sure it was weird to wake up naked and on top of me in the hall.”

“I didn’t actually fall asleep. I carried you to bed.”

And now I have the image of me, a bag of drunken bones, snoring asleep immediately after sex and needing to be hauled naked and sweaty and sticky into bed. Awesome. “Well, I’m sure that was a great reminder of my undatability.”

He doesn’t say anything to this.

In fact, his silence feels brutal.

For once I’m able to stop myself from saying the words I shouldn’t, words that appear at the front of my mind as if projected across a screen: Am I delusional or did it feel a little like making love? Even I can tell that would tip us into the weird(er) zone, and who am I to know what making love feels like anyway? The longest relationship I’ve had was six stupid months.

Finally, he speaks. “My ass is pretty sore.”

An unexpected cackle tears out of me. “I think I remember grabbing it a lot. Your ass is pretty great. You probably have claw marks in your cheeks.”

“Your boobs are pretty great, too.”

“Emily told you that ages ago. See, you should listen to your sister.”

He pauses, and I suspect we’re both thinking of how Emily would react to this information. It could go either way, and adds more turbulence to my uneasy stomach.

“It’s probably a good thing I don’t remember every detail,” he says quietly.

This is undoubtedly the better opinion to have, but I’m actually wishing it all eventually comes back to me. It will likely never happen again, and I want to be able to remember it forever.

“Yeah, probably,” I say.





THIRTEEN


JOSH


My head is a mess.

I slide my phone onto my nightstand and collapse back on the bed. Hazel sounds fine today. Which is good.

I should be glad that she’s the same Hazel she was when she woke up yesterday.

But I’m not the same Josh.





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.”