HAZEL

I must have fallen asleep beneath Josh on the new hardwood floors of my hallway, because I don’t remember getting into bed. The only reminder that last night happened is the fact that I’m naked, sore, and a little sticky. Josh is gone.

But Josh being Josh, there’s a little note on my pillow that says, simply,

I’ll call you later this morning

—J.

My stomach takes an anxious leap. On the one hand, last night was pretty great—I think?—so I don’t imagine he’ll be mad that we both got laid. On the other hand, sex always changes things, and the last thing I want is for anything to change between us. I might have enjoyed the sex more than I’ll admit to him, but I’m Crazy Hazie and he’s Awesome Josh (hangover prevents me from finding something that rhymes with Josh) and nothing—I mean nothing—scares me more than the idea of us dating and him deciding that I’m too wild, too weird, too chaotic. Too much.

Rolling over, I attempt to avoid all of this by falling back asleep, but my cotton mouth rears its head and I’m aware I’ll need to hit the ibuprofen sooner rather than later. As soon as I stand, I feel the sickening lurch of my bad drinking decisions waking up. And my phone rings.

It’s 7:17, and Josh is calling.

I drop back down to the bed. “Hazel’s Den of Sin,” I answer in a dry rasp.

“Hey, Haze.”

My throat tightens at the deep vibration of his voice, at the memory of his words last night:

You feel as soft as you look.

Ah, fuck. You’re wet. It’s good. It’s so good …

Oh, God, I’m coming so hard.

“Hey … you.”

Josh clears his throat, and I’m realizing we’ve seen each other naked. Maybe he’s thinking the same thing, because all he can manage is “So.”

I laugh, and it sounds like a screech. “So.”

“I hope … you’re okay?”

“Yeah.” I look down at my bare legs. There’s a bruise on my knee, and my tailbone is a little sore from the unrelenting reality of being fucked against the wood floor, but other than that, I’m intact. “I’m good.”

“And we’re okay?”

Nodding, I rush to reassure him. “I’m your best friend, Hazel. Of course. We agreed just once. We’re perfect.”

I understand the relief in his slow exhale. “Good. Good.” He pauses and I hear him inhale like he’s going to speak, but then the quiet stretches into five, ten, fifteen throbbing seconds. I like to think I’m more confident than the average person, but his silence makes tiny bubbles of insecurity rise to the surface. I know it wasn’t the best idea, but I don’t want him to like, regret it, either.

Regret me.

“The thing is,” he begins, “we didn’t use a condom.”

Well, that explains why I’m so sticky. My stomach tilts. “Oh. No, it’s okay. I’m covered.”

“You’re on the pill?”

This feels so weird. This isn’t exactly how I imagined this conversation going. Then again, when did I actually imagine having this conversation with Josh? “Yeah. The pill.”

“So, I guess I also need to ask whether you’ve been tested recently?”

Oh.

“I don’t mean—” he starts, and I can practically hear him wincing.

“Yeah,” I cut in, “no, it makes sense. I haven’t been with anyone else in over a year. But I’ve been tested since then.” Defensiveness crawls hotly up my neck. “What about you? I mean, after the whole Tabby and Darby thing …”

“Sorry,” he says immediately. “Of course. I should have said that first. I’m good.”

A hush falls over the line and I feel oddly melancholy. I’m not sure why. Josh and I are going to be fine. We’re bulletproof. Last night was fun, and look—he’s calling me at 7:17 the morning after. He didn’t avoid me for days following our drunken hookup. Everything is fine.

“Haze,” he says quietly, “I’m sorry I left.”

“No, I totally get it. I’m sure it was weird to wake up naked and on top of me in the hall.”

“I didn’t actually fall asleep. I carried you to bed.”

And now I have the image of me, a bag of drunken bones, snoring asleep immediately after sex and needing to be hauled naked and sweaty and sticky into bed. Awesome. “Well, I’m sure that was a great reminder of my undatability.”

He doesn’t say anything to this.

In fact, his silence feels brutal.

For once I’m able to stop myself from saying the words I shouldn’t, words that appear at the front of my mind as if projected across a screen: Am I delusional or did it feel a little like making love? Even I can tell that would tip us into the weird(er) zone, and who am I to know what making love feels like anyway? The longest relationship I’ve had was six stupid months.

Finally, he speaks. “My ass is pretty sore.”

An unexpected cackle tears out of me. “I think I remember grabbing it a lot. Your ass is pretty great. You probably have claw marks in your cheeks.”

“Your boobs are pretty great, too.”

“Emily told you that ages ago. See, you should listen to your sister.”

He pauses, and I suspect we’re both thinking of how Emily would react to this information. It could go either way, and adds more turbulence to my uneasy stomach.

“It’s probably a good thing I don’t remember every detail,” he says quietly.

This is undoubtedly the better opinion to have, but I’m actually wishing it all eventually comes back to me. It will likely never happen again, and I want to be able to remember it forever.

“Yeah, probably,” I say.