Page 32 of Friends with Benefits

Since I have an audience and I’m pretty wasted, I give them my best rendition of ‘A Little Less Conversation’. I try not to be angry about the fact Marty has wormed his way to Jess’s side and takes hold of her hands as they dance.

It’s a party, Jake.

Another couple of tunes and we all settle back around the fire. I explain to Becky that I started playing the guitar when I was seven because I wanted to be in Drew and Brooks’ band when I got to high school.

‘Of course, that’s when I was a foolish kid and I thought they were cool.’

‘Thought we were cool?’ Brooks asks. ‘We were cool, man.’

‘We had groupies,’ Drew adds, as if it makes their point.

‘Groupies? Brittainy Torello and Amber Hasham do not count. They clung to anything with a dick and a set of abs,’ I argue.

‘Buddy, at least we had abs. You were just a skinny seven-year-old who followed us around like a bad smell,’ Brooks states, finishing his point with a swig of beer for emphasis.

‘You were a skinny kid?’ Jess asks, now sitting on a rug opposite me… and next to Marty. ‘I can’t imagine you skinny… not with the… you know…’ I smirk as she waves a hand in the general direction of what are now very prominent abs and biceps.

‘Are you blushing, Jessica Walters?’ I tease.

She scowls in return.

‘Ah, well, the body is thanks to Emily,’ Drew says. ‘See, Emily was responsible for my baby brother’s first busted nose.’

Emily gasps. ‘God, I remember that. Tommy Arnold.’ For some reason, she looks at Jess as she tells the story. ‘Tommy Arnold was a monster. He was a huge kid. He had a supernatural growth spurt or something.’

‘He was also a dick,’ I add.

She leans toward me, clinking her beer bottle against mine. ‘Agreed. Anyway, we were walking home from school one day… Our parents always made Jake walk me home from school. We were running for some reason…’

‘I said I’d race you home,’ I say.

‘That’s right. So, we were running and Tommy Arnold stepped right out in front of me. I ran into him, then he pushed me over. And Jake saw red.’ She stops directing her words at Jess and looks at me. ‘You always had my back, didn’t you?’

Yeah, and it turns out you didn’t have mine.

‘Tommy really wanted to pick a fight with me,’ I say. ‘He just used Emily to do it.’

‘Because he knew it would get to you,’ Jess says.

I shrug. ‘I guess. So, Tommy and I got in a fight. He never came near Emily again and he lost his crowd of followers at school. When I got home, Brooks was there with Drew.’

Brooks nods. ‘I told him, chin up, getting into a fight over a chick…’

‘…is a rite of passage,’ I finish, laughing. ‘Then he started boxing with me, and the fine specimen of a man I am now started that day.’

‘Ah, Mr Modesty made it to the party,’ Jess jokes.

We share a laugh then I turn to Emily. ‘Yeah, you always did have a way of getting me into trouble, Ems.’

I hear an almost wistfulness in my words. I guess I am feeling nostalgic. Life was easy back then. The worst thing about my day was pretending to hate picking Emily up from school.

‘Uh, I don’t think that’s accurate, actually,’ Emily says, her volume and confidence growing with booze. ‘Name one other thing I did to get you in trouble.’

From where I’m leaning back on one elbow on the rug, I point to her. ‘You’re shitting me.’ When she still looks incredulous, I say, ‘Fine, let me see. Okay, what about Mr Hetherington’s dog?’

She sucks in a breath and covers her mouth with both hands as she falls back in her beach chair. ‘Oh my God, I forgot about that.’

‘Yeah, I haven’t.’

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