Just Friends With Benefits (10 page)

“A hundred years ago!” Suzanne cut in again.

“Which is exactly what I said, but he was adamant.”

After interrupting me several more times, Suzanne finally allowed me to conclude my story.

“We started kissing and, before I knew it, we were drenched in post coital sweat.”

Suzanne raised her eyebrows. “Before you knew it?”

“Figure of speech, Suze! No, it was really good. Really, really good.” I felt my face flush and a tingle in my pants as I flashed back to Hille’s body hovering over mine, my hands gripping his firm butt cheeks.

“Damn, Stephanie, you’re full-on beaming right now!”

“I know,” I said, smiling. “Weird, huh?”

“No, not weird. I like seeing you excited about a guy!” Leaning over the table in interest, Suzanne asked, “So, what was so good about it?”

“Suze, it wasn’t just the sex. Kissing him was like butter. Literally, his mouth was smooth like melted butter and my lips practically slid off his. So many guys have rough lips. I don’t know why soft lips aren’t as important to guys as they are to girls!” I closed my eyes. If I concentrated hard enough, I could still feel Hille’s lips on mine.

“Stephanie!”

I opened my eyes. “What?”

Laughing, Suzanne said, “I lost you there for a minute. Tell me more!”

Feeling the heat rise in my face, I said, “Oops. Where was I? Oh, yeah, his mouth tasted like butterscotch. A butterscotch flavored Altoid!”

Looking at me skeptically, Suzanne repeated, “Butterscotch?”

“Yes, I tasted butterscotch.”

“Maybe he ate a bag of Werther’s Originals before he got to your hotel,” Suzanne said smiling. “So, do you like the guy or was it just great sex?”

“I think I like him, Suze. He makes me nervous in a good way and I feel the need to impress him like I haven’t felt around a guy in ages.”

“Impress him how?” Suzanne asked.

“With my smarts.”

Before I could continue, Suzanne snorted and I waved my hand in protest, almost knocking over my drink. “Seriously, he’s a brain and, while I love chick-flicks and repeats of ‘The Brady Bunch,’ I want him to know I’m not one dimensional.”

“Stephanie, he’s known you since college. I’m sure your deeper side has surfaced at least once or twice in that time,” Suzanne said before breaking out in laughter.

“Don’t laugh at me!” I begged. “C’mon. I actually have feelings for a guy that go beyond tepid for the first time since you’ve known me and you laugh. Nice.”

Finally serious, Suzanne said, “I’m sorry, Steph. I admit, I am having too much fun with this. I’ll stop.”

“Thanks.”

“So, when you are going to see Butterscotch again”?

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard from Butterscotch since he left my hotel room five days ago.” And I had double checked to make my sure my phone was charged and on at all times. And since Hille had responded to the ‘joke of the day’ email Paul had sent to all of us, I knew he wasn’t trapped under a dresser in his apartment.

Tapping her perfectly manicured pointer finger on the table, Suzanne said, “You know what I always say?”

Hoping for sage advice, I asked, “What’s that?”

“Don’t put all your eggs in one bastard.”

The following night, Hille still hadn’t called and I needed an excuse to put distance between me and my phone so I went to the gym. Running was a much better stress reliever than sitting in front of the tube with a pint of Cherry Garcia and I wanted to be in good shape in case Hille called and wanted to see me naked again. I stepped on the treadmill, entered my stats and began my two minute warm-up of walking briskly. Although I was usually pretty focused at the gym, I decided to actually look around and see if there was any eye candy. I needed to prove to myself that Hille was not the only guy I found appealing. To my left, a girl who weighed next to nothing was running vigorously. She was probably better off strength training or eating something more than raw carrots. To my right, a plump guy, probably close to my age, was jogging at a slow pace. He was perspiring so profusely that some of his sweat landed on my treadmill and I scanned the room for another open machine. There weren’t any so I focused on not vocalizing how disgusting I thought he was. Next to the row of treadmills, the resident meat heads showed off their massive biceps by lifting heavy weights but none of them did it for me. I was never attracted to the really muscular type. I preferred guys who were in shape, like Hille, but didn’t look like they spent all of their free time at the gym.

Just thinking about Hille made me horny and as the beginning notes of U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name” played on my MP3, I increased the speed of the treadmill to 8.0. I quietly sang along to the music, hoping to drown out thoughts of him but it didn’t work. The faster I ran, the more vividly I could imagine him cheering me on, screaming “That’s my girl!” while I crossed the finish line of the National Marathon.

After my run, I walked to the floor mats to stretch and do some sit-ups. As I passed the row of Nautilus equipment, I stopped short in my tracks and banged into one of the male fitness instructors.

The instructor, a tall guy wearing a black t-shirt with the word ‘Trainer’ printed across the left breast, put his hand on my shoulder and asked, “Are you okay?”

Flustered and distracted by another guy who, from the back, looked exactly like Hille and was wearing a Phi Alpha Omega t-shirt, I turned to the instructor and said, “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. I thought I recognized someone. Sorry about that.”

“No worries. There’s some heavy equipment here, though, so you really should be more careful.”

“Definitely. Really sorry.” The instructor walked away and I immediately turned back to the Hille look-alike who was now facing me and looked nothing like him. I shook my head in embarrassment and left the gym without doing my sit-ups. On my way home, I stopped at Safeway to pick up dinner – Ramen Noodle Soup. I was in the mood to indulge in serious MSG.

Later that night, I picked up the phone to call my mom just as it rang. “Hello?” I said.

The male voice on the other end of the phone said, “Hello.”

I immediately recognized his voice and felt a pulsing in my throat like my heart had relocated to my mouth. To waste time while I swallowed my heart back down to my chest, I asked, “Who is this?”

“It’s Hille.”

“Hey there,” I said.

“That was weird. I didn’t even hear the phone ring.”

“I don’t know. I had my hand on the phone, ready to make another call and picked it up mid-ring. Maybe that’s why.”

“Do you want me to call you back?”

“No, that’s okay. It wasn’t urgent.” I knew my mother would gladly come second to an eligible bachelor. “What’s up?” Hoping his call would be worth the long wait, I sat down on my favorite reclining chair, kicked my feet up and muted “Bones” on my television set.

“Nothing much. Just wanted to say hi.”

“Hi back at you. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. It’s pouring here so I’m just looking out the window and watching the trees sway in the wind.”

“You have trees in New York?” I joked.

“One or two. But I live in New Jersey. We have lots of trees in Hoboken. We even have flowers.”

“Is that why they call it the Garden State?”

“No. I think the Garden State was a reference to New Jersey truck farms that provided floral and agricultural produce to cities in the area back in the nineteen-thirties.”

I smiled to myself. If anyone would know the origin of a state’s nickname, it was Craig Hille. “You’re a wealth of information, Craig.”

“So, I had fun last week.”

Picturing him naked, I said, “So did I.”

“I actually wanted to call you sooner but we’re building out the forty-fourth floor of my building and I’ve been in charge of the computer installation. It’s been crazy.”

“No worries. I’ve been so busy lately, too.” Yes, I had been very busy anxiously waiting his call.

“I just didn’t want too much time to go by—I don’t want things to be awkward the next time we see each other, you know?”

“Why would things be awkward?” I asked.

“It’s just, we’ve been friends a while...”

As I heard the word “friends” escape Hille’s mouth, my lips started to quiver and I readjusted the recliner to the upright position.

“And I don’t want what happened to get in the way of our friendship,” Hille continued.

As I recalled the many times I offered a guy my friendship as a gentle letdown, I knew what was coming and felt moistness behind my eyes I couldn’t hold back.

“We’re friends, right, Steph?”

Wiping my inner eyes with the knuckle of my pointer finger, I thought to myself ‘fake it till you make it,’ swallowed down my tears and said to Hille in my brightest voice, “Of course, we’re friends! Don’t be silly!”

That was a first. A guy had never pulled the friend card on me. Sure, I had crushes on guys who never asked me out and there were plenty of times I was too afraid to even strike up a conversation with one, but I had never actually hooked up with a guy who afterwards said he didn’t like me ‘that’ way. And why did he wait until after we’d had sex to tell me? Was it because the sex was bad? I thought it was hot! Was it because he wasn’t attracted to me? He called me pretty at dinner and then said his attraction to me ‘wasn’t an issue.’ Was he lying? I just didn’t get it. Was this my comeuppance for all the times I had told a guy I didn’t feel romantic potential but would love to be friends?

After silently wallowing in self-pity failed to make me feel better, I grabbed a can of Diet Coke from my refrigerator, sat at my two-person kitchen table and called Hope to vent.

“Maybe it’s the distance,” she said. “I mean D.C. and New Jersey aren’t exactly in walking distance.”

“Maybe you’re right. I just don’t get why he bothered coming back to my hotel room in the first place. If he was so concerned with our friendship, why didn’t he just leave it at ‘I don’t feel comfortable sleeping with my best friend’s ex-girlfriend from three billion years ago?’ Did I do something wrong to turn him off?” I took a gulp of my soda, wishing it was beer. There was silence on the other end of the phone which made me paranoid. “What?” I demanded.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Steph. I don’t get men either. Apparently, they’re from Mars or something. Paul leaves me guessing all the time,” Hope said.

“How are things with you guys?” I felt a pang of envy as I said “you guys” since no one was likely to describe Hille and me that way.

“It depends on the day,” Hope said glumly.

“Dating Paul is like a box of chocolates, Hope—You never know what you’re gonna get!”

“That’s an understatement. Last time he came here, he pulled out all the stops—took me out to Davios for steaks and got us a room at the Hotel Sofitel. He was actually romantic. But the last time I went there, he left me in his apartment alone all day while he golfed with his work buddies. Not so romantic.”

“That’s because Paul is clueless,” I said. “One year in college, he made his pledges take me out for Valentine’s Day. He thought I’d be psyched. Granted, I have nothing against being the only girl in the company of men, but on Valentine’s Day? I don’t mean to laugh at your expense, but it’s just Paul being ‘Paul’ and it’s not a reflection of his feelings for you. I can assure you of that.”

“So, I guess I should just be happy that he didn’t send
me
out to golf with his work buddies while
he
watched football at home alone? Is that your point?”

“No, my point is that guys suck.”

“No argument there,” Hope said.