Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating(8)

The teenager looks at me like I’m completely lacking any marbles. “I mean—”

“Lick it good.”

He stares at me and it takes me a beat to realize it’s my phone that’s just blasted these three words from Khia’s “My Neck, My Back (Lick It).”

I burst into motion, scrambling for my purse. “Oh, God!”

“Suck this pussy just like you should, right now.”

“Oh my God, oh my God.” I fumble inside my bag, pulling the phone out.

“Lick it good.”

“Oh—I’m so sorry—”

“Suck this pussy just like you should, my neck, my back …”

I drop my phone and have to push Winnie’s excited, exploring nose away from it before I can grab it—“Lick my pussy and my crack”—and silence it with the swipe of a finger.

“Emily!” I sing-yell to cover my abject horror, and apologize to the elderly pug owner looking at leashes. I may have just given her a stroke. Her dog is now barking maniacally, setting off Winnie, who sets off three other dogs in line to check out at the registers. One squats to poop from all the stress.

“Good God, Hazel, where are you?”

“PetSmart.” I wince. “Getting … something?”

The line falls dead for several seconds and I look at the screen to see if I’ve lost the call. “Hello?”

“You think what your apartment needs is another animal?” she asks.

“I’m not getting a Great Dane, we’re talking rodent or fish.” I look up at the PetSmart employee—Brian, he’s apparently named—and excuse myself with a tiny humiliated wave. “By the by, old friend,” I say to Emily, “did you perchance change my ringtone again?”

“I couldn’t stand that Tommy Boy line one more time—I’m not even kidding.”

I imagine sending a flock of dragons to her house to feast on her. At the very least a hungry swarm of mosquitoes. “So Khia is better? Sweet Jesus, you could have just made it ring.”

She laughs. “I was sending a message. Stop using all these weird ringtones, or turn your phone on silent.”

“You are so bossy.”

As anticipated, she ignores this. “Look, is it cool if I give Josh your number?”

“Not if he’s going to call me before I have a chance to change the ringtone.”

“We’re out shopping,” she tells me. “He’s such a sad sack now that Tabitha is in L.A., and I know you guys had fun at the party. I just want him to get out more.”

I hear Josh’s sullen growl in the background: “I’m not a sad sack.”

The idea of hanging out with Josh Im makes me oddly giddy. The idea of hanging out with a sad sack Josh Im sounds like a challenge. “Ask him if he wants to come over for lunch tomorrow!”

Emily turns, repeating the request presumably to Josh, and then there’s silence.

A lot of silence.

Awkward.

I imagine a host of sibling glares being fired back and forth like bullets:

Way to put me on the spot, jerk!

You’d better say yes or you’re going to make her feel bad!

I hate you so much right now, Emily!

She’s not as crazy as she seems, Josh!

Finally, she comes back. “He says he’d love to.”

“Great.” I bend down, making fish kisses at the beautiful teal betta I think I’m going to adopt. “Tell him to bring takeout from Poco India when he comes.”

“Hazel!”

I burst out laughing. “I’m kidding, oh my God. I’ll make lunch. Tell him to come over anytime after eleven.” I end the call and pick up the fish in the tiny plastic cup. “You are going to love your new family.”

..........

Winnie and I head out with fish in hand to meet Mom for lunch. My mom moved to Portland from Eugene a few years ago, when I finished college and it became apparent that I was unlikely to move back home anytime soon. I’m far more my mother’s daughter than my father’s, personality-wise, but I look exactly like my dad: dark hair, dark eyes, dimple in the left cheek, wiry and not as tall as I’d like to be. Mom, on the other hand, is tall, blond, and curvy in all the best snuggly-mom ways.

My dad was a decent parent, I suppose, but the predominant emotion I got from him throughout my life was disappointment that I wasn’t sporty. A son would have been ideal, but a tomboy would have sufficed. He wanted someone to jog in the park with, and throw around a football with for a couple of hours. He wanted weekend-long sportsball tournaments, with shouting and maybe some unfriendly opposing-team fatherly shoving. Instead, he got a goofy chatterbox daughter who wanted to raise chickens, sang Captain and Tennille in the shower, and worked at the pumpkin patch every fall since she was ten because she liked dressing up as a scarecrow. If I wasn’t entirely bewildering to him, then I was surely more work than he’d signed up for.

My parents divorced when I was twenty and happily established with a life and friends in Portland. I’ll be honest: I wasn’t the least bit surprised. My response reveals me to be the monster I am because primarily I was irritated that I would have to make two separate stops when I went home, and when I visited Dad, Mom wouldn’t be the buffer of joy anymore.