Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating(43)

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?”