Let's Waste Time

Chapter Six

Chris and I had been friends for almost a year when it finally happened. We were comfortable with our lives and the friendship we’d established. I still had never met any of his friends, and he had never met any of mine. It wasn’t entirely personal. We never ran out of movies to watch almost every Tuesday, and we didn’t talk about our private lives much at all.

But Trent’s wife was pregnant again, and this was causing a whole lot of unnecessary heartache. I knew they were married and of course they were going to have s*x, but it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. She still had this apparently epic kidney disease that made her very ill. Even more so when she was pregnant. So I was seeing less of him, and I was miserable because of it.

And lonely.

Though Chris and I never actually talked about personal stuff he seemed perceptive enough to know when I wasn’t feeling like myself. He came over still, but our conversations hovered between pleasantly polite and cold and sterile. I never talked about Trent, and he never talked about Heidi. He went to see her a lot over the summer, and I might have bumped into the both of them out front once or twice. She was taller than me and a brunette with long shiny dark hair. And she was pretty. In that she fit well next to him because they were both so boringly good looking.

I was pretty sure he’d never actually told her that we were hanging out. Chris didn’t bother to introduce us that time we bumped into each other, and she didn’t seem to know who I was. That was okay because I sure as hell didn’t tell Trent about Chris either. And it wasn’t because we were doing anything wrong. Rather that we just didn’t want either of these people to get butthurt over something that was supposed to be so innocent and simple.

So of course we had to give them a reason to be more than butthurt.

It started on a Tuesday night. And no, THAT didn’t begin on a Tuesday. It was just when we decided to open our big mouths and throw us into that clusterfuck I mentioned before. I was pretty sure that if we hadn’t of said anything at all we would have gone about our lives and the things that happened would never have come to pass.

We were watching Ghostbusters and drinking beer. We had just devoured an entire medium pizza and didn’t save enough room for dessert. I leaned forward to take a sip of my beer, which was now legal, and then I set it back down on the coffee table. Earlier that day I had run into Chris and his friend at the coffee shop. I had been casually eating my pastry and working when he stepped in with a big hulking jock dude. Chris came to say hi and talked to me for a minute. He mentioned our movie plans. His friend hung around the outskirts of the conversation, pretending not to pay attention.

“My friend Jim asked if we were dating,” Chris said as he scratched his head and watched the movie.

“Who?” I asked.

“My friend. You met him this morning. He’s on my baseball team. He thought we had a date.” I snorted and scoffed at the same time. Then I leaned back on my couch and crossed my arms.

“Like that would ever happen.” I knew I’d offended him as soon as I said it, but it was entirely misplaced.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked with a laugh.

“I just mean that I’m a nerd, and you’re a jock. I’m not really your type.”

“I wasn’t aware that those things were mutually exclusive. Besides, I thought we already established that I’m as much a nerd as you are.”

“Yeah, but you’re a...”

“A what?” he asked when I didn’t finish. I kept my eyes on the screen.

“An attractive nerd,” I finished. I saw him nod to himself.

“And you don’t think you’re an attractive nerd?” he asked after a moment. We were crossing into dangerous territory, and I should have put a stop to it sooner. I didn’t. I never put a stop to it at all. That’s part of the problem.

“No,” I said with another laugh. "And I'm not your type."

“That’s stupid,” he decided. “You’re totally my type.”

And then my already whack mind went into hyperdrive. I'd called him attractive. Did that mean I was attracted to him? He said I was his type. Did that mean he was attracted to me?

“Yeah, but Heidi,” I reminded him as I began chewing on my nail and trying to pretend this conversation hadn’t just changed the entire feel of the evening.

“We’re in an open relationship,” he told me. I had the feeling that he was doing the same thing. Either that or he really was comfortable talking about this stuff and not at all thinking about the same things I was thinking about.

“What does that mean?” I’d asked. I saw him shrug.

“We’re far apart. We figured we were bound to see other people, and we might as well be honest about it. That way no one gets hurt. She goes on dates. I go on—not really dates.”

“Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

“You’re one to talk. Your boyfriend sees other people.”

“Yeah, but—it’s different.”

“How? He hasn’t allowed you to see other people?” I shot him a glare in anger. He made his dislike of Trent very apparent on several occasions. Usually, he tried to play it cool. But in the few instances where Trent had been mentioned, he made this little “mm” sound at the back of his throat like he found Trent completely vile. “I didn’t mean to piss you off,” he said, reaching for his beer again. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt that just happened to be showing off his muscular arms. “I just think it’s shitty.”

“It’s not your business,” I reminded him.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

That’s when it started. It’s stupid, right? It was just a few words exchanged between casual friends. But this was how casual friends became casual lovers. This was the moment that we both realized we each had what the other was lonely for. Arms. Affection. Someone to share a bed with, mostly. But also someone to listen. Someone to talk to. Someone who wouldn’t ask for much in return except maybe pizza. There was no messy dating business. Just friends. And orgasms.

And then everything changed forever. As I mentioned before, there had always been something there. At least on my end. I always thought Chris was cute, and maybe once or twice I admitted that he was as sexually desirable as a man could get. But a relationship never occurred to me because I figured he was so far out of my league it was laughable. But that was the moment where everything changed between us. Because he had made it clear that he did not put himself in a different league from me.

I was his type, is what he said.

We weren’t friends anymore because Heidi said he could sleep with other women. And my boyfriend had a wife so I could do whatever I damn well wanted. We could do whatever we wanted with each other, and no one had to know about it. No one could say anything. And it never had to get personal or emotional at all.

So, of course, Chris seemed to pick up on that vibe the second the conversation ended. It wasn’t an acknowledgment that both of us were the same age and sexually active and both in open relationships. It was made obvious by the way I was sitting tensely and his willingness to admit to me that he thought I was his type. Of course, he could have just been saying that to be nice. Maybe he just didn’t want to hurt my feelings. He hadn’t outright said I was attractive or that he wanted me. But it immediately changed my perception of him. And he was smart enough to figure that out.

We had a comfortable thing going on, and we had f****d it up by overthinking. I was lonely. And not in an emotional way, at least not at first. I was trying to put this too nicely. I wanted to get laid. And Chris was probably lonely too. In that same aspect. The silence that grew between us was too obvious. Sure, if things had been a little different, we could have kept being friends after this night. But Chris seemed to be in the same conundrum that I was in. Either that or he was just uncomfortable by mine.

He cleared his throat in a sudden, obvious discomfort.

“Hey uh—I’m going to head home early,” he said. I nodded and kept my eyes on my beer bottle.

“Yeah—okay,” I replied.

“See you later.”

“See ya.” He got up and left without bothering to help me clean up. I put my head in my hands. “s**t, s**t, s**t,” I said to myself.