She’s right, but it still irks me that my best friend couldn’t even put me before someone he doesn’t know or care about. “It pisses me off that he had to pick last night of all nights to scratch his freaking itch. And you know what else pisses me off?” I don’t wait for them to respond. “That I had a date last night who I could have gone home with if I’d wanted to.”
“Yeah, but he had the personality of a bag of hair,” London reminds me.
“Why can’t I look at the surface and not care about what’s inside?”
“Is that a serious question or just you rambling because you’re frustrated?” Harley asks.
“I don’t know. Both, maybe? It would be a heck of a lot easier if conversation skills weren’t important. I wish I could be one of those people who doesn’t need to connect emotionally with someone to sleep with them.”
“I’m sure it would be a lot more convenient for the sake of meaningless sex, but I don’t think it would make you very happy to sleep with randoms. I’m also not sure it makes Declan happy either,” Harley says.
“He didn’t sound very unhappy this morning when he was boning his sleepover friend,” I snap. I haven’t had sex in like … I don’t even know how long. The reality is I don’t do casual relationships. I need to be comfortable with my partners and that takes time and connection. Which is another thing I have a hard time with. The rain slows a little, so I adjust my wiper speed from hyperdrive to moderately frantic.
“Maybe you need to be a little less discerning if you want the pleasure of a random hookup,” London says. “Although, I’m not sure Brock would’ve been the right choice for that, no matter what. He seemed like the kind of guy who would kiss his own bicep while pose-thrusting and then tell you there’s something wrong with you if you weren’t able to have an orgasm from looking at his awesome body.”
I laugh, because that’s honestly what I pictured in my head when he invited me back to his place. I also felt like I would walk into a frat-style house, complete with a home gym set up in his living room and a lot of mirrors in his bedroom. “Going home with him would’ve definitely been a bad and very regrettable choice.”
“Can I ask you something?” Harley’s voice takes on her quiet pensiveness that sometimes makes me nervous.
“Sure.”
She chuckles, probably because my tone belies my uncertainty. “Apart from Brock the Rock being athletic and hot, what made you want to go out with him?”
“Uh…” I tap the steering wheel. “I don’t know. The attractiveness and sports were the selling feature, I guess.”
“So you based it solely on athleticism and attractiveness?”
“That makes me sound vain and shallow.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to say; we know you’re neither of those things. But don’t you have to put your interests in your profile? Didn’t you chat online before you went out?” Harley presses.
“Well, yeah, of course we chatted, but it was mostly about the things we have in common.” Which was sports. I can see where she’s going with this. “Maybe I am shallow, because obviously I was blinded by the pretty.”
“Or maybe you’re intentionally choosing people who you aren’t going to get attached to,” Harley says softly.
“You haven’t really been in a serious relationship since things ended with Sam,” London adds.
“One bad date doesn’t mean I’m still hung up on Sam.” Awesome, and now I’m defensive about it. Sam and I were together from the middle of my sophomore year all the way through to the start of my senior year. It was the longest relationship I’ve ever had.
“That’s not what either of us is saying, Avery. But you two were together for a long time, and since then, any relationship you have been in hasn’t had much depth or lasted more than a few months.”
“I haven’t found anyone I click with.” It’s partly true. But I know what she isn’t saying: that I’m purposely avoiding getting attached to someone else because I’m too afraid to put my heart on the line.
“We know how tough that breakup was for you,” Harley replies. “I’m sorry, now probably isn’t the best time to bring that up with you heading to Boulder.”
“It’s okay. Maybe I’m not in the right headspace to date.”
To say I was devastated when Sam and I broke up would be an understatement. I was so in love with Sam. I thought he was going to be my forever. After college, he moved to Aspen to work for the parks and recreation program. Things fell apart after that. He had a career, I was still in college. I wanted it to work, and we’d tried the long-distance thing for a while. The whole thing imploded during midterms my senior year when I found out he’d been cheating on me for months. And he would have kept doing it if Declan hadn’t told me.