For two days straight, I didn't stop thinking about what Casey said at the bar.
I was always looking, Josie.
How had I never seen it? Even when I try reliving every second of our four year friendship, I couldn't remember a single time that he ever let on to finding me attractive. Granted, I was hiding it from him too, but I never thought of him to be a very good secret-keeper. In some ways, it was a little bit of an ego boost to know that all of my efforts to attract him were actually not a waste like I always thought they were. In other ways, it started to ignite a very dangerous fire inside of me that I was so familiar with.
A fire that I tried to stomp out in my mind, tried to remind myself that those feelings couldn't come back because nobody should have a flame in their belly for another woman's fiance. It was only going to hurt me in the end, and yet... those words continued playing repeatedly over and over in my head and in my dreams.
The dreams, I'll add, that had not gone away at all since I walked into his apartment and saw him all sweaty and taut, standing there in just a towel. I thought they'd dissipate by now, but every time I saw him, it was like it reignited their fury.
All of these reasons were why I needed a date with somebody who wasn't Casey, and I needed it fast. I even started pulling out some older clothes from the back of my closet that I hadn't worn since college. The plunging necklines and tight skirts that were sure to get the job done. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that.
As I was pulling these clothes out, piling them on my bed to try them on, my phone started ringing and I nearly tripped over Tulip sleeping on my bedroom carpet to get to the phone that was resting on the corner of my desk. Only one person would be calling me at nine p.m. on a weeknight and my chest was already feeling a pathetic sense of warmth.
"Hello," I answered quickly.
"Hey," Casey responded. "I know this is breaking your weekly call rule, so you can hang up if you want. I don't really even have anything important to talk about, but do you still watch Survivor?"
"I'm always a sucker for reality TV, of course I still watch Survivor. Although I'm not caught up. All my TV time right now is being consumed by binging every season of Love Island. Don't spoil it for me, I'll catch up eventually."
"What's Love Island about?"
"Just a bunch of really hot English people hooking up and being dramatic." I put the phone on speaker so that I could sit it on my dresser and slide into one of my little black dresses. "Natalie got me into it, it's a riveting show."
He paused and then said, "She doesn't like me very much, huh?"
"What makes you say that?" I zipped up the dress and started looking at how it hugged my body a bit more than it did in college. I'd gained a bit of weight in my hips since I was twenty and I blamed that on my late night writing sessions and tight deadlines. I liked my new hips, and I loved how they looked in the dress.
"I think she made it pretty clear at the bar," he chuckled lightly. I knew that Natalie could be passive aggressive when she wanted to be, but she really let that part of her fly at the bar with Casey, occasionally throwing jabs at him, but usually in a friendly tone with a laugh following like she'd just told a joke. It clearly left Casey feeling confused and I would quickly try to steer the conversation in another direction.
"Yeah, she did," I admitted, even though I'd rather just lie and say that she was just like that and she actually didn't hate Casey, it was so obvious that she did. I start sliding the dress off of my shoulders until it pools around my ankles and step out of it to hang it back up in the closet, this time pushing it to the front. "I guess she does feel a little bit uneasy about you. She had a 4-D front row seat to how sad I was when you left."
"Was it really bad?" he asked in a nervous voice that made me think he didn't really want to know the answer to it. I pulled out the next dress in my lineup. A red velvet mini dress with spaghetti straps and a plunging neckline.
I didn't know how I should answer that question, or how he wanted me to answer it. Did he want the uncomfortable truth or did he want to be coddled into thinking I took our separation like a champ, just shook it off and moved on with my life. It would probably be convenient for him to think that I was fine without him so that he wouldn't have to feel as guilty about his aftermath, but it just wasn't the truth.
"You annihilated me, Casey," I said under my breath, barely a whisper. There was a long, uncomfortable silence after that and my entire body froze as I waited for his response.
"I missed you, all the time," he finally said. "You know, I just don't want you thinking that I totally forgot you existed when I went to college. I thought about you constantly, I just didn't know how to pick up the phone. I was being such an idiot."
"Yeah. You were." I slid the red dress onto my body, this one not as forgiving as the black dress around my rounder hips and I had to squeeze it up my body.
There was another long pause. "Do you think she'll give me a chance?" he finally asked.
"It'll take some time. She's very stubborn. And it makes us even, if you think about it. Rebecca hates me, Natalie hates you."
"Yeah, I didn't think about it like that," he laughed, but I could sense that he was clearly uncomfortable. He was the one that brought it up though. "Can you help me win her over? What kind of things does she like?"
"I think the only thing you can do is just not make me cry." I said it like a joke, but I wasn't actually kidding.
"Hopefully, I'm doing a good job at that so far?"
"So far, so good," I assured him as I gave up on the dress and let it fall back around my feet, but ended up tripping on the fabric as I stepped out of it, causing a squeal to leave my lips.
"What was that?" Casey asked me.
"I'm trying on some date clothes that I lost in the back of my closet," I told him as I tossed the dress into my discard pile and grabbed a denim skirt as the next victim. "It's like getting an entirely new wardrobe, I forgot I had most of this stuff."
"Date clothes," he repeated before asking, "Are you dating anybody?"
"Not yet, but I do have a date scheduled for this weekend." A part of me feels like I'm that girl at homecoming again, dancing with another boy just to prove to Casey, and to myself, that I was fine without him. It felt very performative.
"That's exciting, where are you going?"
"Amber's Steakhouse, it's pretty fancy. Which I don't normally do for a first date, but I let him choose," I explained to him as I pulled on the skirt and matched it with a corset crop top. "So I have to get all dressed up, but it's worth it because they have the best rolls."
"How much do you know about this guy?"
"I know that he's a teacher, he likes cats, likes fancy steakhouses." I also knew that he was very attractive from his Tinder pictures, but I left that part out.
"That's it?"
"We haven't been talking for very long, that's what the date is for. To get to know him." I tried the same top with a different skirt and I stared at myself in the mirror for a minute, wondering what my date on Saturday, Emmett, would think of this outfit. I pictured it for a moment until my brain replaced Emmett's chiseled face with Casey's and I found myself wondering if he would like the outfit.
"Well, I hope you have a good time," he said, breaking me out of my horrible thought process. "I've been to Amber's before, they have great mac and cheese. Rebecca makes fun of me for ordering mac and cheese at a fancy restaurant, but it's really good."
"Mac and cheese is appropriate for any occasion."
"I know, that's what I said," he told me with a light laugh. "You know, I think sometimes she puts too much importance on appearance and the need to feel sophisticated. She was raised in a really rich family, so I think it comes from her parents. They're nice people, but very... I don't know, pretentious, I guess."
"Are they paying for a giant, lavish wedding?" I asked him teasingly, knowing how much Casey would probably hate a wedding like that. He'd probably prefer to just run off to the courthouse if Rebecca would allow it.
"They want to, but I don't really want a big wedding," Casey said as I got undressed again to try on my last dress. "What would be your dream wedding? Something in the forest, probably. Fall with an open bar and a bonfire?"
"That actually sounds amazing." I squeezed into the dress and started coercing the zipper up my back. "I haven't thought much about what my wedding would be like. Finding somebody to get married to feels pretty unattainable right now."
"Well, it'll be hard to find somebody good enough to be with you, but he's out there somewhere," he assured me. The dress fit and it made my boobs look incredible. Maybe even better than they looked when I used to wear this dress in college. I was definitely keeping this one. "You could meet the love of your life this weekend on your date."
"Yeah, maybe," I said with a chuckle, not sounding very convinced at all.