Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating - Christina Lauren Page 0,57

loud enough to break every window in the establishment.

“We were together for two and a half years, man,” Tyler says, and as I start to challenge this calculation, he sees Sasha and apologizes for being rude (Tyler? Apologizing for social snubs?), reaching to shake her hand with the one that isn’t still wrapped around mine. “Sorry, sorry. I’m Tyler.”

“Sasha,” she says, dazed, like we are as fascinating as early-days reality television.

“I’m totally freaking out right now.” Tyler looks back at me and wipes his free hand across his forehead as if he’s sweating from the shock of it all. “Josh and I work out together sometimes. I had no idea he was fixing me up with my ex. I’ve been thinking about this woman every day for the past four years.”

I’m not even sure how to absorb these superlatives, so I just give him a tight smile and sit down across from Josh, who’s staring at me with such singular intensity I worry he’s burning a red dot into my forehead.

The delivery of our drinks, and the time Tyler takes to order one for himself, gives me a few seconds of oxygen, and head space.

1. Tyler looks fantastic.

2. He seems genuinely apologetic, if not a little over the top.

3. My brain is goo. This is the Tyler Jones Effect. He’s charming, and beautiful, and has always been my kryptonite.

So much for growth.

I remember the first time he broke up with me, how it felt to hear him say that I was fun, but not long-term material.

I remember the first time he left my bed after coming over for sex, and told me it was always so good that way between us, and thanks for a fun night.

We probably had sex twenty more times after that, and every time I felt like shit afterward. It got to the point where it wasn’t even that I wanted Tyler Jones so much as I just wanted to not have this weak spot in my heart. Every time I thought, This time, I’m going to say no! This time, I’m going to ask him to get out after I’ve come but before he has!

This time, this time, this time.

I reenter the conversation as Tyler is telling the story of the time we went skiing and I made it down the mountain alive after somehow losing my poles and careening face-first over a thick sheet of ice. It’s not a story I particularly relish him starting off with, but at least it’s one where my undergarments are intact and my skirt isn’t over my head.

Yet.

“Yeah, Hazel has a pretty hard skull,” Josh jokes quietly, and I’m the only one to burst out in a nervous, too-loud cackle. He looks at me, grinning at my awkward hysteria too close to the surface. Josh reaches across the table and brushes his fingertips across the back of my hand in what is either an I’m right here, you’re okay gesture or a Be cool one.

Tyler is full of Hazel Bradford is the wildest ever! stories, and regales a riveted Sasha and Josh with The Time I Looked into Adopting a Tiger, The Time Senior Hazel Went Streaking Through Freshman Orientation, and most mortifyingly, The Time We Decided We Should Have Sex in the Bathrooms at Every Major Museum in Portland.

Josh gives me a pruney face because we were just at the Portland Art Museum two days ago. “Gross,” he whispers, and wipes his hands on the thighs of his jeans.

I admit Tyler’s a good storyteller, and I come off sounding like the Olivia Pope of Fun in most of them. I can tell Sasha and Josh are genuinely entertained. But as he goes on and on with all this shared history, I’m weighed down by the drooping awareness that I gave Tyler so much of my heart and my time, and received so little in return.

It is astonishing to me that, in all the time we were together and the years we’ve been apart, this is what he remembers. If I had to share my Tyler Jones stories, there would be a couple of great ones, including The Night He First Brandished the Magic Dong™ and The Time He Showed Me Why Women Love Oral Sex, but otherwise, they’d mostly be That Time Tyler Said He Loved Me to Get in My Pants, and That Other Time Tyler Said He Loved Me to Get in My Mouth.

A glance at Josh tells me that, as his gym buddy rambles