“You were supposed to bring booze.”
Josh shoved past me into the apartment. “Yeah, as if you don’t drink too much already.”
I rolled my eyes and followed Josh into the kitchen. With him he’d brought a bag full of different flavored chips and a six pack of soda cans. It wasn’t the most creative movie night smorgasbord, but I couldn’t complain. I was always broke, so I turned to Josh to buy food. Josh didn’t had much money either, even if his job as an EMT was far more difficult and important than mine. Sometimes I sounded like my mother when I pressured him to go to school and get a fucking nursing degree already. Sven managed, and Sven had been baked eighty percent of the time in college. And Josh sounded like me when he said he didn’t have the time or the resources. Unlike me, though, Josh was not an idiot. He was smart, and he was actually really good at taking care of people. Whenever I did something stupid and ended up scraping the shit out of my elbows or knees, it was Nurse Josh to the rescue.
“Where’s your sister?” Josh asked, already digging into the chips. He held the bag out to me, but I waved it away.
“Probably doing important college things, I guess. I don’t know. She’s usually out with friends.”
“Zoe has friends?”
I snorted and pulled apart the cardboard box to get to the soda inside. “She claims to.”
“Your sister and my sister are practically the same age. Why don’t they get along like we do?”
“Because your sister is cool and mine thinks I’m a waste of life.”
“You think my sister likes me? Psh.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes again. Josh had a great relationship with his younger sister and older brother, and he was so good with his nephew that every grandmother and auntie in the vicinity told him how he’d make such a good dad one day. Meanwhile, I frightened children. Last year when I handed out candy at Halloween, my very appearance made a toddler in a princess dress cry. I hadn’t even been in costume.
“Take these away from me,” Josh said, handing me the bag of chips.
“You brought them.”
“For you, not me.”
“What are you going to eat? Carrots?” I lifted my eyebrows. “Please tell me you aren’t on another diet.”
“Fuck diets. They don’t work.” Josh went over to the fridge and tossed it open. On my side was beer and take-out. On Zoe’s, yogurt and fresh produce.
“How the hell do you stay so skinny?” Josh asked as he grabbed an apple and bit into it.
“Genetics.”
“Genetics. I hate them. My whole family is fat. What am I supposed to do about it?”
“Come to terms with it.”
“Easy for a skinny person to say. Guys want to have sex with you.”
I stepped out of the kitchen and into the dining room on my way to the living room couch. Josh followed, crunching his way through his apple. “There are plenty of dudes who like bigger guys.”
“Yeah, if they’re hairy and muscly, too. I’m just fat.” Josh threw himself down on the couch, wiping away a streak of apple juice that trickled down his chin. I went to our collection of DVDs and sought out Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Josh and I had agreed to a Star Wars marathon, though mostly it was my pushing it and Josh relenting. Most of my nerdy ways had been buried beneath cocaine and parties in high school, but sometimes a seedling would push up through the dirt, reminding me that I could dork out with the best of them. I’d grown up rewatching the Star Wars trilogy over and over again, and I still had some action figures from childhood that I refused to throw out. When the latest movie came out, I had considered dressing up until my common sense talked me down. I would look ridiculous, and I still felt shame over some of the nerdy stuff I liked. These days Star Wars was pretty mainstream, but I still remembered an old boyfriend laughing when I told him I liked those old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. Those movies were so dumb, he told me, and while he might not have meant for it to sound critical, it had seemed that way in my mind at the time. I took everything as criticism back then, back when I wanted to be accepted more than anything.
“At least you pass as straight. Guys like that,” I said, fiddling with the remote.
Josh snorted. “Yeah, okay. I blast Britney Spears on my way to work.”
“Let me know when you get called a faggot in public and then we’ll talk.”
“Damnit Justin, can’t I just complain about being fat without it being a contest over who’s got it worse?”
I figured out the remote and pushed play. I didn’t watch movies on the television much, especially since Zoe and her friends had taken over the living room. Zoe had bought those awful LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE “paintings” from a craft store and hung them over our boring beige walls with zero self-awareness. I was embarrassed to be her sibling.
“Fine, I won’t criticize you for criticizing yourself.”
“I’m not criticizing myself. I’m saying dudes are shallow and it makes dating tough.”
“You are so melodramatic. How often have you tried to hook up with guys? Actively?”
“That’s not the po—”
“Zeeero.” I made a circle with my finger and thumb and leaned toward him, pressing it against his face until he shoved me away. “So until you make an effort, you can’t bitch.”
“I don’t want to just hook up with guys. That’s what you do. I can’t fuck strangers. It’d be too weird.”
“That’s what alcohol is for,” I said, taking a sip from my soda.
“If the only way to have casual sex is to be drunk, I’ll pass.”
“I’m not always drunk. Sometimes I’ve only had one or two shots.” Josh pursed his lips, and I sighed. “It’s fine if it’s not your thing. But you could try dating.”
“Dating is awful.”
“Because you’ve got so much experience.”
“I don’t have to do it to know it’s awful.”
I didn’t get Josh. I was a scrawny, make-up wearing almost-alcoholic with clown hair and I’d found a fair number of boyfriends, even if they often tended to be shitty people. That was more due to my poor taste in men than it was my looks. Josh was such a great guy, the kind you’d want to take home to see your parents. He was funny and generous and he’d stuck with me when it would have been in his best interest to walk away. And in the brief time we’d dated and fucked, he wasn’t a terrible lover either. But he didn’t seem to draw people to him the way I could, which I chalked up to his terrible attitude, but maybe it was something more, something subconscious. I knew how to date, flirt, and fuck around. Josh was clueless about all of that, and maybe people picked up on it somehow.
“It’s not really a big deal,” Josh said, nibbling at his apple. “But I want to be a dad, and I don’t want to do it alone.”
“You’ve got your whole life to be a dad.”
“I’m not going to adopt a child when I’m sixty.”
“You gotta put more effort into finding someone then. Check out Grindr.”
“Yeah, and read through all the profiles that say ‘no fatties’. Do you use it?”
“Sometimes.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s awful, but sometimes a girl gets desperate.”
Josh made a face, but didn’t say anything. He had never approved of my promiscuity, but he never told me to stop because he knew better. It wasn’t like I slept around when we dated. I was a whore of epic proportions, but I wasn’t a cheater, and I was serious about my relationships in a way that my partner usually wasn’t. It wasn’t so much the sex with strangers I craved. It was just the sex, and if that sex came from my partner, I was happy.
“Anyway, we should start the movie,” I said, growing tired of the DVD menu tune and animation. Josh nodded, and we settled in to watch. Josh groaned whenever Jar Jar Binks spoke, and I laughed. Josh was great to watch movies with, at least movies I’d seen twenty times already. He was pretty good at commentary, and considering the bad acting and bad writing, Josh’s jokes were welcome. He also didn’t mind when I curled up next to him and put my head on his shoulder. I was a slut for sex and physical contact, even the platonic kind. Years after we gave up trying to date each other, I still liked to cuddle him a bit when he let me. Despite all the ways we weren’t compatible, I missed what we had sometimes, and what he’d been to me. He’d been the only boyfriend who had genuinely cared about me, who treated me well and didn’t yell obscenities at me when he was pissed. He never cheated on me, another rarity. But we approached relationships in opposite ways. He was never serious about anything. He didn’t care much for romantic gestures, and when I texted him throughout the day and called him at night, he told me I was suffocating him. He didn’t use the word “clingy”, but that was the crux of the issue—he liked his space and privacy, and I just wanted to be with him all the time. He didn’t understand why I was upset about him blowing me off. I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t want to be with me more often.
In the end, we figured out we were better off friends. Still, I missed the good parts, which I couldn’t seem to find in anyone else.
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