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They don’t look much alike, other than their height. Lulu is pretty tall.
“I get the feeling this isn’t really your thing.”
“You mean, being around other people?”
She bumps me again. The smell of her lavender shampoo and curry isn’t a particularly delicious combination, but I think it will always remind me of this moment. Early aughts pop music playing just loud enough to make everyone have to yell to be heard, laughter, hot food, full stomachs, and teetering on the edge of this booth with Lulu. “You know what I mean.”
I shrug. “How else am I supposed to learn?”
“Learn what?”
I look ahead, that suffocating feeling rising up inside me again. Learn how to talk again, how to fit in. Learn how to get out of this rut, what this feeling deep in my gut might be. “How to make friends.”
Chapter Six
Lulu
Jesse Logan is giving Grump Face to produce, cantaloupes specifically. I’m surprised they don’t shrivel beneath his stare. He doesn’t notice me as I pull my cart alongside his and peek inside. There are a lot of leafy greens and enough apples to be considered a bushel.
He hasn’t texted me once since our visit to Pete’s last week. I haven’t seen his name on the list of participants for any of the events the study has shared. My gut reaction is to assume it’s me. That he isn’t actually interested in friendship, that he was just being nice.
But I haven’t texted him, either. I’m too afraid I won’t get a response.
As he taps a few melons, I do what any self-respecting woman would when she sees a man who didn’t want to sleep with her and would rather be just friends: I pick up two cantaloupes and balance them against my chest.
“What do you think of these ones?”
Jesse startles. His eyes drop to my melons, then quickly back up to my face. He turns red, looking anywhere but at me, until he smiles and finally, slowly, he laughs. The sound vibrates through me; it vibrates in very specific places in my body. Places currently squished by melons.
I put the melons down and stand with my legs and arms crossed, a defensive posture against the particular octave of Jesse’s laugh. “Big plans on a Friday night?”
“Yeah, me and these melons have a big date,” he says, then looks completely horrified that he said it.
“Do you want to grocery shop with me?” I ask, rubbing my wrist, sore from the awkward grip I had on a melon. I don’t need the bandage anymore but I make a mental note to pack one the next time I want to palm produce.
“Sure,” he says slowly, and I think, like that night at Pete’s, he might not really mean it. Maybe this could count as an event that we can record for the study. We’ve all downloaded an app that will act as our journal. Every week we have to record the events we attend and our reflections on them. Since I am a lifelong teacher’s pet, so far all of my journal entries have been overly long and detailed, with the sole purpose of currying favor with the doctors and psychologists who are studying us. Maybe if they like me more, I’ll get an A+ in Friendship.
He pushes his cart alongside mine and together we move toward the meat section. Jesse grabs every animal ever slaughtered for human consumption before turning to me with a whole chicken in each hand. He peers into my meatless grocery cart. “You don’t eat meat?”
“I do, but my mom is a vegetarian, and she does most of the cooking at home.”
As soon as the words are out, I want to grab each one and cram them back in my mouth. Nothing saysI’m an adult with a PhDmore thanmy mommy still cooks dinner for me.
“That’s a lot of food. That can’t all be for you?” I say to change the subject.
“All me,” he says, clipped. He stares straight ahead as we make our way to the middle of the store. I make him stop in the health food section and I can feel his gaze on my skin like the softest touch as I read the nutritional information on a box of gluten-free pasta.
“For my dad.” I hold up the box but, of course, Jesse says nothing. In the next aisle, Jesse contemplates fabric softeners while I load up on toilet paper made from recycled materials and all-natural all-purpose cleaners.
I’m used to spending time around academics who love to fill silences with their opinions on research and thinly veiled braggadocio. And gossip. Academics love to gossip. I even participated once upon a time, when I thought it would make me friends at work, but then I became the person they gossiped about, and lately my days have been filled with less gossip and more silence. Jesse and I have walked the entire store with only a few words between us.
I don’t mind this silence, though.
“Logan,” a deep voice calls from across the store. Jesse stops, his shoulders slumping as he closes his eyes. He sighs before he turns around to face the owner of the booming voice. And I almost ask him what he’s doing, until I remember his last name and the first rule of bro culture: call everyone by their last names.
A group of men approaches, tall, muscular, and all dressed in the same variation of a casual navy blue uniform. Based entirely on assumptions and stereotypes built from years of watching first responder prime-time dramas, my brain immediately screams FIREFIGHTERS at me.
A Black man with biceps the size of my cantaloupes wraps Jesse in a hug. “Where the hell have you been?” I wince. Jesse is slow on the hug uptake, taking a beat too long to hug his friend back. “And how come you haven’t been texting me?” The man gives him a gentle shove, the kind bros give other bros to demonstrate an aggressive sort of affection.
