Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating - Christina Lauren Page 0,69

“Seriously? We should totally all go.”

Josh stills with his bottle of water against his lips. “What’s Harvest Fest?”

“An all-day concert at Tom McCall Park,” Sasha says and adds more slowly, as if this hasn’t yet been enough to clear it up for Josh, “A music festival.”

Tyler looks at each of us, surprised that he doesn’t have immediate consensus. “Dude. Metallica will be there.”

Sasha gives a smug nod. “Yup. We could totally all go together.”

I mentally stab a fork through my eye.

Tyler wipes an incredulous hand over his mouth before exhaling a reverent “Limp Bizkit, dude.”

Across the room, Josh lets out a tiny whimper of pain.

I scratch an eyebrow. “Are we going to be the youngest people there?”

Josh guffaws at this, but I give him a skeptical eye roll. He doesn’t get to play cool kid here. This is a man whose car radio seems glued to KQAC, All Classical Portland.

“Oh, there’s way more than that,” Sasha says from the kitchen, raising her voice against the glug-glug-glug of the wine bottle. Her words and the glugging are followed by the cacophonous crash of the empty bottle into the recycling bin. Two glasses. She took down a bottle of wine in two glasses. I can’t decide if this is impressive or concerning. “Three Days Grace, Simple Plan . . .”

Josh and I exchange pained looks again.

“My Chemical Romance,” Tyler says, having looked it up on his phone. “Three Days Grace—”

Sasha waves a hand, swallowing a sip of wine. “I said that one already.”

“I’m just reading the list.” Tyler turns back to his phone. “Um, oh! Julian Casablancas will be there. And Jack White.” He looks up at me and I admit, the last two have fluffed my interest somewhat. “Outdoors. Lots of happy people.” He pauses, and smirks at me. “Hippies everywhere, dancing with their eyes closed.”

My interest is officially piqued. From across the room, I can see Josh’s shoulders slump in resignation.

“We’re in,” I tell them.

NINETEEN

* * *

JOSH

Dave has the exact response I expect when I mention that we’re headed to Harvest Fest on Sunday: “What’s Harvest Fest?”

“See?” I slap my hand down on the table and look at Hazel, who seems primarily interested in arranging the long grains of her wild rice into even rows. “Even Dave doesn’t know what this is, and he knows music stuff.” I look over at him, explaining, “It’s some all-day concert with a bunch of bands from the nineties and early two thousands.”

“Oh, okay.” He takes a bite of his dinner, chews, and swallows. “Actually, now that you mention it, I did know about it. I just didn’t . . . care.”

I smirk at Hazel, whose response is to turn and try to engage me in a staring contest. I cup my hand over her eyes and look away.

“Who’s going?” Dave asks.

“Hazel, me, Sasha, and Tyler.”

“Tyler again, huh?” Emily asks, and her tone makes me go limp all over. I drop my hand from Hazel’s face.

She blinks across the table at my sister. “Yeah. He’s probably more excited about it than any of us.”

A strand of her hair catches on her lip, and I reach to free it, but she beats me to it. I find myself pulling my hand back, awkwardly and abruptly. Emily catches my eye across the table, and I offer her a little whatever shrug before looking away and reaching for the enormous platter of meat Dave has grilled for us.

My pulse is like gunfire. Quite frankly, I don’t think Hazel is all that into Tyler, but the fact that she’s giving him this much of a chance makes me think she’s not all that into me, either. I just hope we’ve put an end to this friends-who-sleep-together thing early enough that I won’t be the guy pining after her for the rest of our lives.

“Tyler and Sasha, episode three.” Dave looks directly at me. “So, it sounds like you guys are done with the blind date experiment for a while?”

With effort, I avoid looking over at Hazel. “Oh, for sure we are,” I say.

In my peripheral vision, I can see her poking at her plate. She’s not eating a ton, and hasn’t touched the margarita in front of her. Aside from basically anything my mom makes her, Dave’s carne asada is her favorite food in the world. Usually she eats it as though she’s restraining herself from shoving it into her mouth by the fistful. “You feeling okay?”

Startling a little, she looks up. “Yeah. I’m good. I was just