Every time my phone buzzed with a new text while I was at work, I jumped and grabbed it from my desk to see what the notification was. Sometimes, it was Natalie, other times it was a message from Tinder because yeah, I'm back on that again and I don't need any harsh criticism about it. I was still having very inappropriate dreams about Casey and I needed to do something to get them out of my head. Other times my phone would buzz with a text from him, and even before I'd read the message, I would smile at the screen like an idiot.
The wet dreams, the jumping at each text, going bowling together, they were all signs that I was going too fast, getting in over my head with this relationship very quickly, but there was nothing I could do about it now. I tried to give him an inch of me, but he was taking the whole mile. That was why I desperately needed a date from Tinder to work out soon. I needed a distraction, a reminder that I'm not a teenager anymore and I can't fall back into old feelings with somebody who was engaged.
But then, he texted me asking if we could go out for some happy hour drinks and I eagerly accepted the invitation without even consulting the logical part of my brain that was demanding I decline for the sake of keeping just an ounce of distance between us.
Natalie, after I told her about the plan, agreed vehemently with the logical part of my brain. I think she could tell that I was going down a rough road and she was really trying her hardest to stop me from stumbling.
At the end of my work day, I said goodbye to Clary on my way out the door and drove my merry way to the bar Casey suggested. I made sure my auburn hair looked okay in its pony tail and then I headed inside.
I was wearing a soft white turtle neck, a plaid blazer, and a nice pair of jeans that day. The weather was starting to get nippy outside and I was bundled up to save me from the cold. Other than the frizz in my pony tail, I looked nice. Although, I tried to remind myself, it doesn't matter what I look like. Looking nice was not necessary for me to hang out with Casey. I was spewing tears and snot onto his hoodie just a few days ago anyway, there really was no coming back from that.
"Hey, Josie," Casey waved at me from the bar and I joined him, hiking myself up onto the tall stool beside his. "How was work?"
"Pretty lame today, not very much going on," I told him. "But I think my boss is pretty happy with me right now, the engagement on my articles is up, so things are looking pretty good. Have you gotten a chance to look at the article yet?"
"Yeah, I read through it. Looked good. Is Kripke going to let you publish it there or are you going to sell it to someone else?" he asked me curiously, living his drink to his lips as I waved down the bartender and ordered a fruity beer.
"Th plan right now is to show Kim the article when it's finished and hope that she lets me publish it at Kripke. If not, I don't know. I guess I will have to shop around and find somebody that'll take it. I don't really know how much pull Silas has around here," I admitted to him. I hadn't had time to do the research into how difficult it might be to actually get this published, if Silas is a donor to the paper. We have a politics section of the journal, but I don't think anything this big had ever been publicized there.
"Kripke is already a huge journal, but it would still be amazing press if you guys were the first to report on the story," Casey said and I nodded in agreement. "But no matter where it's published, it'll have your name on it and your career is going to skyrocket."
"Or I'll get attacked and if my sources aren't airtight, it could destroy me," I added, because I was more anxious about the project than I was excited. "I could become a laughing stock, it's nerve wracking."
"You're going to crush it, Josie," he promised me. "Don't stress about it."
I was so stressing about it, but the easiest way to avoid stress was to lock it away in the back of my head and pretend it didn't exist, which is what I did. "Anyway, anything new with your hybrid trees?"
"Nothing yet," he told me and the bartender dropped off my glass of frothy beer. "We're working with some saplings right now, but no leaves yet. It's been six weeks, so we're worried that the process didn't take on these ones. We've been working on this process for eight months now, so there's a lot riding on this batch. If we get our first flush of leaves soon, it'll be a huge breakthrough."
"Did you make sure to water them?" I asked him jokingly. "Trees need water, you know."
"Wow, I did not think of that," he laughed at my very funny joke and then lifted his beer to his lips. "Are you sure you're not the botanist here?"
"Clearly, I should be."
"You missed your calling," he teased me as he got a notification from his phone and started to text whoever it was.
"How's Rebecca? Any new wedding updates?" I asked him, mostly because I was looking at his buff shoulders too long and I needed to remind myself that he was engaged. "Or location updates?"
"What? Oh, the John Hopkins thing? She won't know about that for a couple more months," he told me and he didn't look very excited to be talking about the subject.
"Would you want to go to Baltimore?"
"Not really," he admitted with a small shrug. "I really love my job here, but whenever I say that, she turns it around and acts like what I'm saying is that my job is more important than hers, which isn't it at all. So it's kind of a sore subject that we've agreed to table until she gets her offer so we aren't fighting over something that might not even happen."
"Grown up life is so hard," I told him. "It would suck for me personally, if you moved to Baltimore. I know saying that will probably make Rebecca hate me even more, but after the incident Saturday, I don't think there's any coming back from that. So fuck it, right? For selfish reasons only, you shouldn't go to Baltimore."
Casey laughed at me and then said, "She's not upset at you for what happened on Saturday. She's upset at me for forgetting to lock the door."
"Okay, that was my mistake, I shouldn't have brought it up," I cringed when he started to laugh about the memory. "We've got to stop talking about it, I'm going to shrivel up and die."
"Sorry," he laughed even harder this time, clearly enjoying the bright blush that started to heat my skin. "I just think it's funny. The look on your face was like, you were suddenly realizing that I'm not a sixteen year old kid anymore."
"That's exactly what was happening," I agreed with him. "And it was traumatic. You were such an innocent little baby."
"I wasn't that innocent," he commented with a smile in his voice. "I mean, I wasn't doing anything with anybody, but not because I didn't want to, I just didn't have the confidence."
"Honestly, I was pretty convinced that you were asexual back then," I admitted to him without really allowing my brain to catch up with my mouth, which is a chronic habit of mine. Especially with Casey, who pulled my truths out of me like they were stuck on a rope that he had the end to and all he had to do was tug. "Which, now saying that sounds so conceited and ignorant, since I only thought that because you were never interested in me."
"What do you mean?" He continued to tug on my truth rope, tilting his head curiously at me.
"I would buy the shortest shorts and these low cut tops and try to catch you looking, but you never did." Now more than ever, I wished that I could just shut my big mouth and stop oversharing.
"Those fucking shorts," he said with a laugh. "With the white lace on the pockets and the little rip on the side. You wore those to try and get my attention?"
"Yes, but it didn't work," I reminded him, but felt a little confused as to how he could remember them so specifically. It would have been more embarrassing if he didn't already know that I had such devastating feelings for him in high school, but that secret was out of the bag. So did it really matter that I confess to wearing little shorts to get his attention, especially when it never even did anything? "You never looked."
"You never caught me looking," he corrected me, still laughing. "And I was trying not to look because every time you wore them, I got an instant boner. Literally every single time."
"Oh my god," I said with a shocked laugh as heat started rising to my cheeks my head turning in every direction to make sure that nobody could hear him. I wasn't even sure that I heard him correctly, because there was no way that was true. Not with the way I remembered things.
"I was very subtle about it," Casey said, his voice lower now with the humor fading from his voice. "But I was always looking, Josie."
No matter how much of my beer I drank, my throat was dry and every time I took a breath, it felt like rubbing against sandpaper. I couldn't breathe anymore, couldn't even think or move. What was he saying right now? None of it made sense. He was clearly enjoying watching me flounder like an idiot in front of him, so maybe he was just doing it to watch my reaction.
"Hey, hey!" a familiar, high pitched voice broke me out of the red-faced trance I was in just as Natalie's black hair came into view and she was squeezing a bar stool in between me and Casey. "Sorry I'm late, Josie!"
I gave her a weird look, scooting my stool so that she could fit between us. "I didn't know you were coming."
She gave me a confused frown and then said, "You told me you were coming to happy hour, told me what bar you'd be at. I took that as an invitation." It was scary how good she was at lying when she needed to. "That's not a problem, right? We're just friends catching up."
"Yep," I said quickly with a bit of ferocity in my tone.
She smiled at me like she was doing nothing wrong and then turned toward Casey and said, "Hi, I'm Natalie. So glad we finally get to meet, I've heard everything about you."
She knew I wasn't inviting her to get drinks with us, but this was her way of babysitting me, making sure that I kept my distance from Casey. She was a bit too late for that, but the distance was good. It's what I needed.
"Nice to meet you too," Casey said, looking completely unbothered by her presence.
"What were you guys talking about?"
"Just how it's kind of crazy, how well we thought we knew each other back in high school when there was so much we were missing," he answered her easily, while I was still reeling from what Casey said before Natalie popped in.
She ordered a beer from the bartender and then said, "So interesting."
"How was your day at work, Nat?" I entertained her, starting to laugh at how determined and ridiculous she was, and how much I loved her for it.
"Oh, thank you so much for asking, my day was great. My boss is giving me off the entire week of Diwali so that I can go to Pittsburgh to see the rest of my family," she said to me. "You solve any crimes today?"
"Why does everybody think that I solve crime? I've literally never solved a single crime," I reminded her with a laugh, trying to move passed what Casey said before she got here. How could he have been looking when I was watching him the entire time, begging him to do so? Surely, I'd be a shitty crime detective if I couldn't even catch on to that.
"Not with that attitude," she shook her her head at me.
"What do you do for work?" Casey asked very politely.
"Even though being Josie's best friend sometimes feels like a full time job, the one I actually get paid for is being an account manager at a consulting firm," she answered him.
"Being my friend is more of a volunteer opportunity," I said with a laugh. "I can be very hard work."
"But it's so rewarding."
"How long have you two been friends?" he asked.
"We were assigned roommates freshman year of college, so I guess it's been six years now," I answered him.
"We were quick friends," Natalie added, her voice lowering and I could tell that nobody was going to like the next words that came out of her mouth. "But I think when the heartbreak started to settle a few months into the year, that's what really brought us together. So I guess in a fucked up way, we have you to thank for our friendship, don't we?"
I swallowed the rest of my beer, feeling like this happy hour just got a lot less happy.