Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating(6)

Quickly swallowing a sip of water, I protest, “I’m afraid you’re going to try.”

She seems to ignore this. “I think you think I’m fun.”

“Fun in the way that clowns are fun.”

Hazel looks up at me, eyes on fire with excitement. “I seriously thought I was the only person alive who loves clowns!”

I can’t hold in my laugh. “I’m kidding. Clowns are terrifying. I won’t even walk too close to the storm drain in front of my house.”

“Well.” She threads her arm through mine, leading me closer to the heart of the party. When she leans in to whisper, my stomach drops somewhere around my navel, the way it does at the first lurch of a roller coaster. “We have nowhere to go but up.”

..........

Hazel sidles us up to a pair of guys standing near the built-in grill—John and Yuri, two of my sister’s (and now Hazel’s) colleagues. Their conversation halts as we approach, and Hazel holds out a firm hand.

“I’m Hazel. This is Josh.”

The three of us regard her with faint amusement. I’ve known them both for years.

“We go way back,” John says, tilting his head to me, but he shakes her hand, and I watch her methodically take in his shoulder-length dreads, mustache, beret, and T-shirt that reads SCIENCE DOESN’T CARE WHAT YOU BELIEVE. I hold my breath, wondering what Hazel is going to do with him because, as a white dude with dreadlocks, John has made it pretty easy for her, but she just turns to Yuri, smiling and shaking his hand.

“John and Yuri work with Em,” I tell her. I use my bottle to point to John. “As you may have guessed, he teaches science to the upper grades. Yuri is music and theater. Hazel is the new third grade teacher.”

They offer congratulations and Hazel curtsies. “Do third graders get music?” she asks Yuri.

He nods. “Kindergarten through second is vocal only. In third they begin a string instrument. Violin, viola, or cello.”

“Can I learn, too?” Her eyebrows slowly rise. “Like, sit in on the class?”

John and Yuri smile at Hazel in the bemused way that says, Is she fucking serious? I imagine most elementary school teachers nap, eat, or cry when they have a free period.

Hazel does a little dance and mimes playing a cello. “I’ve always wanted to be the next Yo-Yo Ma.”

“I … guess so?” Yuri says, disarmed by the power of Hazel Bradford’s cartoon giggle and bewitching honesty. I turn and look at her, worrying about what Yuri has just gotten himself into. But when he checks out her chest, he doesn’t seem worried at all.

“Yo-Yo Ma began performing when he was four and a half,” I tell her.

“I’d better get cracking, then. Don’t let me down, Yuri.”

He laughs and asks her where she’s from. Half listening to her answer—only child, born in Eugene, raised by an artist mother and engineer father, Lewis & Clark for college—I pull out my phone and check the latest texts from Tabby, each of them sent about five minutes apart. I hate that I get a tiny bit of pleasure knowing that she kept checking her phone.





I blow out a controlled breath, and type,



..........

“She said you were going to be best friends?” My sister frowns at a shirt and drops it back on the pile at Nordstrom Rack. “I’m her best friend.”

“It’s what she said.” A laugh rises in my chest but doesn’t make its way out when I remember Hazel accepting her fourth margarita from Dave and asking me to staple her shirt to her waistband. “She’s a trip.”

“She’s made me weird,” Em says. “It’ll happen to you, too.”

I think I know exactly what Em means, but seeing the effect Hazel has had on my sister—making her more fun-loving, giving her social confidence that only now, in hindsight, can I really attribute to Hazel—I don’t consider this oddness a bad thing. And Hazel is so unlike Tabby and Zach—so unlike everyone, really, but maybe the polar opposite of my girlfriend and best friend, who both tend to be quiet and observant—that I think it might be fun to have her around. Like keeping interesting beer in the fridge that you’re always surprised and pleased to find there.

Is that a terrible metaphor? I glance at my sister and mentally calculate the amount of physical damage she could inflict with the hanger she’s holding.

“She’s half ‘hot exasperating mess’ and half ‘color in a monotone landscape.’ ” Em pulls the shirt from the hanger and hands it to me. I fold it over my arm, letting her—as usual—pick my clothes. “I can’t believe Tabby isn’t here, again.”

I don’t bite. It’s the third time she’s tried to bait me into a conversation about my girlfriend.

“Doesn’t she know that relationships take work?”

Sliding my gaze over to her, I remind her, “She has a deadline, Em.”

“Does she really, though?” Her voice is high and tight and she takes out her frustration on a pair of shorts she throws back down on the stack in front of her. “Doesn’t this evasion of hers feel like … like …”

I prepare for this with a deep breath, hoping my sister doesn’t go there.

“Like she’s cheating?” she asks.