The Side Effects of Starving - Chapter Five
My night didn't start out bizarre. It started out very normal. Julie called because I had told her I would go to a party being thrown by some friends of hers who I didn't know."I'm getting off work at ten, then I'll come over. Can I shower there?"
"Yeah, that's fine…"
"Okay. And then, we can just take my car." Julie knew me when I learned to drive, and she knows I haven't gotten much better since then.
"Sounds good," I said.
"Oh, and hey, Seth is going to be calling you in about fifteen minutes."
"What?"
"He called me to get your number."
"Okay..."
"I have to go, I have to get to work."
"Okay..."
"'Bye."
"'Bye..."
I decided not to wonder why Seth would want to call me. I went back to what I was doing. About ten minutes later, the phone rang.
"So, what's up?"
"Well, not much, I guess. Julie's coming over at ten and we're going to some random fiesta."
"You mind if I come over and hang out until then?"
This sent me for a bit of a loop. "Um..." This Seth and I had never hung out alone. We had barely hung out at all. He was a giant flirt who Julie had known since childhood. He had gone to school with one of my ex-boyfriends. He had been in a band with a guy who I once had the warm-fuzzies for. All I really knew about him was that he worked as a programmer and he liked to tickle and flirt with any girl who he could get a reaction out of.
I, of course, am horribly, horribly ticklish.
"Um... Yeah… Sure, absolutely."
He laughed. "Girls are funny," he said.
"Right," I said. "Sure we are."
"I'll be there in twenty minutes."
"Okay, see you then." I hung up, and immediately dialed Steve. "Want to come over?"
"Sure."
"Okay, see you soon." I liked Seth. He was funny, clever, and sexy as Hell. But I worried that we wouldn't have a thing to talk about, and I needed the comfort of a friend, someone I knew and trusted.
Steve showed up at my door twenty minutes later, and before I could close it, I saw Seth approaching.
I offered them drinks and snacks, which they refused, and we seemed to gathered in the living room. We had a long, random conversation that went nowhere. They inspected my large collection of books on feminist thought and made offensive remarks to mock me.
"I was almost a Women's Studies major," I told them. "Just watch it."
Meanwhile, Seth wouldn't stop poking and tickling me. He was really getting under my skin, but not in a bad way. It was annoying, because I knew he couldn't possibly have any real interest in me. He was flirting with me for no reason, which made him nothing more than a placebo; a tease. We wrestled around on the couch while Steve sat quietly in the recliner. I kept trying to talk to Steve, but finally he had had enough of the hormone-drenched atmosphere and said good night. I walked him to the door, then returned to Seth in the basement, where the flirting and fighting resumed.
This went on until I ended up sprawled on top of him on the couch. We took a break from fighting. I was inching my fingers up his back, under his shirt. He had a hand on my thigh. I almost kissed him, then changed my mind, turning my head, visibly flinching.
He laughed. I narrowed my eyes. "What?" I said.
He just shook his head. "Girls are funny."
Let me stop to tell you right now that I haven't been in a "relationship" since high school. Stephanie once locked at me and said, "What you should do, is you should just admit that part of you actually really does want a committed relationship, complete with gooey promises, jealousy, cheesiness… the whole roller coaster, all of it."
I looked at her and said, "Yeah. The really stupid part."
So, there I was, looking at Seth less as a potential boyfriend than as an semi-willing snack.
There are plenty of female demons that are carnivores.
I kissed him. He let me. I kissed him again. He kissed back. But then he gave me a look that made me ask him if he wanted me to stop.
"No, and, yes."
And at that most perfect moment, the phone rang. It was Julie. I must have sounded half-dead, I was beyond exasperated. She told me that she was on her way to my house.
I went back to the couch, and listened to Seth talk about his addictive personality and make vague allusions to past relationship scars. I listened, but only half-understood. We all had skeletons. We've all been hurt. But he was making things too complicated, a classic juvenile mistake. When two relatively intelligent adults are attracted to each other, they should be able to do what they want without getting bent out of shape about it.
I gave up, the doorbell rang, Julie came in, and asked me, again, if she could use my shower. I again told her it was fine. Seth and I talked in her absence about nothing much at all. I silently pondered my attractiveness as a human female. Julie got dressed and came back into the living room, and the three of us drank lemonade and played our little social games. I decided that Julie was my friend, and if she got Seth, that was all right, because she deserved him more. I wasn't going to compete with her, she clearly wanted him and he was rather complicated. Sooner or later, I got around to asking Julie, "So are we going to this party, or what?"
"I think if we went now, we could only stay about half an hour, because I have to get up early."
"Oh, well, forget it then," I said. Time went on, and I had a good time in spite of my flailing self-esteem. It's an amazingly adult feeling to be able to have fun even after a blow to the ego.
Eventually, it was time for Julie to go home. Seth and I walked her to the door. I hugged her and said "Good night," and even though Julie doesn't usually hug anyone, or for that matter let people touch her, I think she knew that something was wrong, and she wrapped her arms tentatively around me for a precarious and awkward moment.
And then, I tried not to show how completely and utterly taken aback I was when Seth didn't follow Julie out the door.
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