Page 151 of The Friend Scheme
“I owe you big-time,” I say, keeping my voice down so I know nobody can hear me. “Seriously, thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”
She waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it. Like I said, what are friends for?” She leans forward. “Now, tell me about this guy you’re seeing! You must be serious, if you went on a trip with him! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
Again, I wish Jason were just an ordinary guy.
That way I could talk to her about him.
I shrug. “He’s just a guy.”
“How’d you meet?”
“Grindr.”
She snorts. “How romantic.”
“Right?”
“Come on, dude, don’t be coy. Tell me about him! If you met on Grindr, does that mean you’re, like, hooking up?”
“Um.”
I feel my cheeks warm.
“Oh my God, you are! What was it like?”
“It wassogood. Have you ever done something and then, like, then after you do it, it becomes the only thing youeverwant to do? It was very that.”
I hope she doesn’t ask me which position I was. I feel like that’d be really invasive. Not that I’m ashamed, but like, I’d never ask her which position she was in if I found out she’d had sex. I can’t see why for gay dudes some people think asking is okay. We started out doing lighter things, and when that stopped being enough for us, I went into the bathroom and got ready. Then I came back out, and after we both decided we were sure we wanted to, we went all the way.
“I haven’t, no,” she says. “But I’m so glad you’ve found that.”
“I mean, yeah.”
“Tell me about him.”
“He’s, like… so sweet. And nice, too. And he just sort of knows exactly what to say to make me feel good about myself. I don’t know how he does it. And he’s really weird, but in this, like, cool way. Plus he really likes video games, too, which is cool. I dunno, we just click, it’s hard to explain.”
And I’m never going to see him again.
“It doesn’t matter, though,” I say. “Things actually ended between us.”
“What, why?” She watches me for a moment. “Dude. I feel like you should have cartoon hearts above your head right now. You’d be a total fool to let someone like that go. And you, my friend, have never struck me as a fool.”
She has a point. I can’t even talk about him without turning into a gushing mess.
“We just don’t see eye to eye,” I say. “On, like, anything.”
“I think that’s normal, sometimes. How long have you been seeing him?”
“A couple of months. But it’s been so difficult. To be honest it’s never been easy, so maybe this is a good thing.”
“Easy issooverrated. I don’t know why people are so scared of things that are hard. It means you care, and the end result is going to be better than something easy.”
I feel like that might be a slightly problematic viewpoint, and I’m not sure I agree with it.
“I just don’t think you should give up,” she says. “You clearly like him a lot.”
“Yeah. But I feel like I shouldn’t.”
