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Twelve
BJ
Out for a bite at Shack Fuyu with the Lads and J. Get the Yuzu Margaritas, trust me.
It was supposed to be a date, but I asked Jonah to come, which turned into Christian coming, which meant Hen was coming too.
I just didn’t feel like being on a date with my girlfriend who I feel like I should dump. Feels disingenuous. I wanna do the right thing, not just by myself, but by her too.
And Parks.
A lot of balls in the air I don’t know how to catch, but I feel like I need to fracture a bit of the romance — even if it’s just for my sake. Dilute it with my rowdy best friends who sap the tenderness out of everything. She’s a big fan of them though, thinks they’re fun. They are. They’re not all mad on her though, if I’m honest. It’s not her fault, not her doing either.
They like her enough — don’t get me wrong — couldn’t not like her, she’s cool and hot and chill; she watches sports, she drinks beer, eats burgers and shit, and if Magnolia wasn’t this ominous presence in the back of all our minds, if she didn’t have these crazy expectations of loyalty, I think they’d like Jordan more.
She is happy to leave early though, they don’t like that. Always wants to take me home with her.
“She’s domesticated you,” is what Jonah says about her.
Parks and Paili, they slotted in with me and the boys easily. Probably because we grew up together, but Taura and even Daisy both slotted in pretty seamlessly too. Happy to stay up all night, happy to sleep all day.
“It’s past our bedtime,” Jordan declared once at 11pm on a Saturday.
Christian was fucking horrified.
“Bedtime?” he gawfed. “Who do you think he is? Tiny fucking Tim?”
I snorted a laugh. “It’s fine — it’s fine—” Swatted my hand. Told him I liked going to sleep early now.
“Because we get up for 7am coffees,” Jordan told him with a big smile.
Henry made a face over her head that she couldn’t see and I hit him in the stomach for it, left them laughing.
It’s bullshit though.
I hate those 7am coffees and not just because they’re at that shitarse cafe by her house, but because I don’t like going to sleep early. Not now, not ever.
I don’t even go to sleep. I just lie there, on my iPhone. Read a book. Try not to look at photos of my ex-girlfriend on the internet.
I don’t do that last one. Don’t let myself.
I think about doing it most days though. Fight the urge.
The urge has won the last few days.
She looks happy in New York.
That scares me.
She seems to have fallen in perfectly with a bunch of people she’d think are real fun.
Dinners with the Timberlakes (Justin’s an old friend of her dad’s), shopping with the main girl from Sex and the City. At bars with the loud girl from the Hunger Games.
Fuck.
That’s what I was thinking last night once Jordan had fallen asleep and I was lying in bed looking at photos of a girl who isn’t her. That she looks okay — and I want her to be — but she looks okay without me.
Fuck.
