Page 29 of Friends with Benefits

‘I’ll trade you mango for a rambutan?’

I looked up to see a young man, perhaps eighteen. He sat next to me on the wall and we traded fruit.

‘Have you been to the giving ceremony?’ I asked.

He nodded, sucking on his new food. ‘These are good,’ he said.

‘They’re my favorite.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘The ceremony?’ I asked. He nodded again, seemingly not a boy of too many words. ‘Yes, I liked it very much.’

His eyes narrowed and he seemed to study me. ‘What did you like about it?’

I couldn’t tell him that I liked being among people, having something in common with those around me. So I shrugged. ‘I like learning new things.’

He nodded again and looked out to the water, where the sun was now midway through the sky. ‘You know, Buddhists believe in karma. It’s one of their key beliefs.’

‘Karma? You mean like what goes around comes around?’

‘Sort of. It’s more than that. Have you heard of The Four Noble Truths?’

I shook my head.

He spat the pip of his rambutan into the river, making my nose scrunch with distaste. ‘In Buddhism, people believe that we cling to impermanent things. Because of that, we enter the cycle of painful death and rebirth and being unsatisfied between those two things. They call that state, being unable to satisfy oneself, dukkha.’

Dukkha. I repeated the word a number of times in my mind. ‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘See, we are constantly trying to find happiness in impermanent things, therefore, we can never be truly happy.’

I would come to understand those words one day when he spoke them to me again. But it would not be that day. I was uncomfortable with my lack of knowledge. I knew on some level, those words were speaking to me, speaking to my soul, and that somehow, they were words I was supposed to hear in that moment.

So, I changed the subject. ‘What are you? Some kind of eighty-year-old prophet trapped in a teenager’s body with bright-green eyes?’

He smiled. It was a cute smile. It made him look younger but still a few years older than me.

‘You’re pretty,’ he said. ‘And I’m Daniel, or Danny.’ I felt my cheeks blush red. I couldn’t think of a time a boy had paid me a compliment.

I looked out to the river as I said, ‘Well, Daniel or Danny, I’m Jess.’

We walked back to the market without talking much. I couldn’t resist running my fingertips across all the fabrics – silk, cotton, satin, lace – in bright, bold colors. That would be the day that started my obsession with fashion designing, and it would be the start of my self-made hippie wardrobe, as Jake would call it. But it has more relevance now because it is part of the reason that Jake and I could never be together.

9

JAKE

I watch Jess as she rolls her hair into a bun and sticks it into place with two fancy-looking chopsticks. She turns to me, her hands held out from her sides. ‘Well?’

She’s wearing the Asian-style wrap top she made a couple of weeks ago, teamed with black, low-rise pants and her own bold print wedges. She looks unique, fantastic, and her all at once.

‘Four. Sorry, babe, I’m not in an Asian mood.’

She rolls her eyes as she adds gold-leaf earrings. ‘That’s because you have your sights on all the French food Edmond and Amelie brought with them.’

When she turns her back on me, I notice one of her chopsticks isn’t pushed quite far enough into her hair. I get off the bed and move behind her. She watches our reflection in the mirror as I slide the chopstick farther into her bun. ‘Better.’

Reaching back and raising her hand to my jaw, she smiles softly. She squeals when I take her by surprise, biting her hand.

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