Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating(46)

Despite my mood, this makes me laugh. “Em. Anyone who’s spent more than five minutes with her knows that.” I’m hit with a mental image of Hazel’s purple palm while she was cooking me pancakes. I wonder whether I’ll ever learn where the stain came from.

And as if she’s said something unkind, Emily adds in a whisper, “But she’s the best. Hazel has the biggest heart.”

A beast inside me has tightened a fist around my own heart when she says this. Hazel is without a doubt the best person I’ve ever known.

“I thought you wanted to set us up, Em. After the barbecue?”

“I did,” she says. “But you’re so close now. It worries me.”

“Me too.”

“You can’t hurt her.”

I meet my sister’s eyes and see the heat there. It’s a moment before I can speak past the emotion clogging my throat. “I wouldn’t—I won’t.”

“I’m serious.” She points her fork at me. “You have to be sure. You have to be positive. Hazel’s like this rogue star that just sort of floats around. She has a lot of friends—because how can you not love her?—but only a few she’s close to. You’re really important to her. She would honestly break if she lost you, Josh.”

I look up at her, skeptical. Hazel is made of brick and fire and iron. “Come on, Em.”

“You don’t think I’m serious?”

“Hazel isn’t fragile. She’s a brute.”

“Where you’re concerned she is. She idolizes you.” She pulls her cheek up in a sarcastic smile. “God knows why.”

I sigh, blinking down at the swirling white in the brown coffee.

“But if you changed your mind about something like that,” Emily says, “I think that’s the one thing that could dim her light. We both know Hazel is a butterfly. I think you have the power to take the dust from her wings.”





SIXTEEN


HAZEL


A month of normal hang-out time is what Josh and I seem to need in order to stop having to make a joke about the Drunk Sex all the time to show how OKAY WITH IT we are. Every weekend for the subsequent four weeks, we do very friend-appropriate things, like catch a couple of plays, peruse local art galleries, have dinner with Emily and Dave where we assure them we haven’t slept together again, and avoid bars and drinking (and nudity) whenever possible. Josh even starts bringing me lunch every Wednesday at school so we can Just Hang Out.

In the end, maybe it’s good that I have intimate knowledge of his penis so that I can confidently recommend him to my friends for the dating?

We are definitely—very vocally—Totally Ready to Try the Double-Dating Thing Again, so I pick up his date, Sasha, at the yoga studio where she teaches, because she says it will be easier for her to shower and get ready there than go all the way home on the bus. Things I have learned about Sasha since asking her to come on this blind double date:

1. She has never owned a car, nor does she ever plan to.

2. Her clothes are all made from hemp, vegan leather, or recycled soda bottles.

3. She hasn’t cut her hair in four years because she doesn’t feel it’s given her permission.



Although she seems like a conscientious and lovely person, I’m no longer feeling very confident that she’s a good match for Josh, per se. To be perfectly honest, it might be time to admit I’m not a very good matchmaker—we’ve had a lot of duds.

We’re having dinner at one of John Gorham’s restaurants, Tasty n Sons. Toro Bravo is probably my favorite restaurant in all of Portland, but I’ve never been to this one of his, and I have purposefully not eaten anything since breakfast so that I can stuff my gob and require Josh to roll me home in a wheelbarrow, date or no date.

When I pick her up, Sasha looks fantastic. She’s wearing black jeans and a cute red T-shirt that shows off great boobs. Good job, hemp! Her hair is up in some sort of Rapunzel braid that looks like it weighs about seventy pounds. When we walk into the crowded restaurant, heads turn. I’m pretty sure if Josh and the guy he’s bringing—someone named Jones—didn’t show up, Sasha and I could have a pretty hot ladies’ night out.

But a hand goes up in the back and waves us over; of course Josh is already here.

“Oh my God, is that him?” Sasha leans to the side, staring toward the table where Josh has now stood. I start to agree that yes, I am the most generous yoga student in her class and she should totally give me a discount, but then the person beside him stands, too, and oh.

My head goes blank for

one,

two,

three,

four breaths.



I already know “Jones.”

He isn’t Jones Something. He’s Tyler Jones.

I rarely have moments that throw me, but this one is a doozy. Tyler was my six months. Six months together followed by years of him studiously manipulating me into thinking we might happen again someday so that I’d sleep with him again, and again.

Josh knows about Tyler, but not the extent of the head games he played, and without a doubt Josh has no idea that my ex Tyler is the gym buddy he calls Jones.

And damn it, Ty looks good. He’s still got that soft floppy blond skater hair that falls over his left eye. His knee-buckling smile hasn’t changed with time, the scar on his chin is still the best way to make a great face better, and he’s still insanely tall for no good reason. Tonight he has on a well-worn flannel and some perfectly beat-up button-fly jeans that cover up what I know to be a magical dong. I bet under the table I’d see his requisite black Chuck Taylors and in his back pocket he’s tucked his Yankees cap. It’s like walking backward into my life from six years ago.