Lanie: You did not!!
Me: Lame, right?
Lanie: You couldn’t eat a cookie and walk?
Me: Power cord.
Lanie: No!!
Me: I know. I’m doomed. I’ll call you later so you can laugh at me but I’m in the middle of homework.
Lanie: I need details. So many details.
Nolan sits down near my foot. “Sorry. That was Lanie.”
“No. Don’t apologize.”
“Can I ask you a random question?”
He nods, but his expression turns guarded. Nervous.
“Do guys find it needy or clingy when girls text them?”
He stares at me for several long seconds. “You’re asking me for dating advice?” He sounds almost baffled.
“Hannah didn’t want to text Ethan today because she was worried he’d think she would look needy.”
He releases a heavy sigh and crosses one foot over a knee and leans back, taking up too much space, though he’s not taking up quite enough because he’s not touching me. “I don’t date. I don’t do girlfriend/boyfriend, so I wouldn’t really know.”
“Never?”
He shakes his head.
“So what, you look for friends with benefits? Hookups?” I shake my head, so far out of my level of familiarity while trying my damndest not to sound naïve.
Nolan’s smile grows slightly predatory. “It’s casual. If we like each other’s company, we hang out until we don’t.”
“What about sex?”
He tips his chin up a fraction. “What about sex?”
“Are your casual relationships exclusively sexual?”
“That would be a hookup. Casual dating is about having a good time and enjoying each other, not about a commitment.”
“So if a guy calls you clingy they’re looking for a casual relationship?”
Nolan shakes his head. “I can only speak for myself.”
Terrible ideas and worse proposals are being pieced together in my thoughts, where the contracts and cost analysis have already been drafted.
“How do you find someone to casually date?”
“When I find someone I’m interested in, I ask them if they want to hang out and then tell them I’m interested and make sure they want the same thing, and then…” He lifts a hand from the back of the couch, encouraging me to fill in the blanks.
“How do you end things? Is it awkward?”
He shakes his head. “No one gets attached enough that things get weird. Expectations don’t apply in casual dating. There are no rules.”