Friends

Josh did call me later that day, he had just watched Jesse go with Carol and he wanted someone to talk too. He kept me on the phone for about an hour as he told me about his weekend with Jess and anything else he could think of to say. At the end of the conversation, he asked me what days I had off that week and I told him Wednesday and Thursday.

“You don’t have plans in the evening on those days, do you?” He asked hopefully and sounded disappointed when I told him I did. “Well what about the rest of the week? Are you working nights all week?”

“No,” I told him. “I work during the day on Friday and Saturday.”

“Damn it,” he sighed. “And next week? Are you busy on your days off?”

I thought about it for a moment and then slowly told him that I believed that I was free next Thursday if he wanted to do anything. “But don’t wait,” I joked. “My time fills up quickly!”

“I see that,” he said. “I don’t recall you being this hard to see when we were dating.”

“No,” I agreed. “But at that time I was pushing back things I had planned on doing with my friends and family to be with you; that’s not the case anymore.”

“You don’t need to remind me.”

“Good, then I don’t need to remind you that this was your idea.”

“I’m well aware that this was my idea,” he told me. “I’m also aware that this means that you will probably be seeing other men and I won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.”

Tell me you don’t want me too and that you love me! I wanted to say to him but instead I told him that the same was true for him as my heart ached at the thought of him with another woman.

“Yeah, I guess.” He didn’t sound too happy about that idea and that made me feel a little better. “Are you seeing someone now?” He asked, “Is that why you aren’t available until next Thursday?”

“No,” I told him. “I’m not seeing anyone nor am I thinking about seeing anyone at this time but if that should change, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

He tried to get me to tell him what I was doing on my days off but I refused to tell him anything other than something with friends. “Are you not telling me because there is more to it than something with friends? Or because the ‘friends’ is really Jordan?”

“Oh my god Josh!” I snapped. “If I was hanging out with Jordan, I would say I was hanging out with Jordan but I’m not.”

“Ok sorry. I just didn’t think it was such a big deal to ask what you were doing.”

I sighed, “I told you what I was doing; I’m going to be hanging out with friends.”

“For two days?”

“Yes, it takes two days to really spend any time with them.” The friends in question lived in the ‘city’ which was three hours from where I live, so I rarely saw them unless I made a special trip to see them. I’m going this week because they’ve been in a situation similar to mine a few years ago and they worked through it; I was hoping for some pointers, hints, or words of encouragement…anything.

“That does…” Josh sighed. “You know what? It doesn’t matter; I’m just upset that I don’t get to spend time with you until next week. I was kind of hoping that we would see each other at least once a week.”

“Hey well you can always call me,” I tried to make him feel better. “Of course I may not always answer it right away but you can call me.”

“That’s true,” he sounded a little cheerier but not by much.

When I hung up from talking to Josh, I held the phone to my chest for a while; thinking of Josh as a friend like Nick isn’t going to be easy.

And then with Nick in my mind, I decided to give him a call to see how he was doing.

“Holy shit! Trouble!” He exclaimed when he realized it was me. “I haven’t heard from you for a while, I thought you disappeared off the face of the earth!”

I laughed, “I didn’t go anywhere, you did! Why have you been ignoring me? Do I smell bad?”

“Yes,” Nick told me with a laugh. “You smell like cheese!”

“Some cheese smells alright,” I told him; the conversation was one we had many, many times before; it was almost ‘our’ thing. He would go on to say I was some really horrible stinky cheese but he would still be my friend because ‘even stinky ass cheese needs someone to talk too some time’.

“So how are you doing?” I asked him once our ‘routine’ was over. “How are Amy and the baby doing?”

“I’m bored out of my tree,” he told me. “Amy took the baby with her to her mom’s and she won’t be back until late; her mom is making her go through boxes and boxes of baby stuff that people have been giving her since we told them about the baby.”

“First things first, you know the baby had to go with Amy right?”

Nick chuckled, “I know Anna, I was just seeing if you were paying attention! But in four months, the baby will have to learn to do stuff without mommy and hang out with dear ol’ dad some times too.”

“Four months?” I almost called him crazy but then he told me that they didn’t tell anyone about the baby until Amy was almost three months along. “So wouldn’t that mean in three months time?”

Nick was quiet as he thought about it. “Oh hell I don’t know! All that matters to me is that some time in the first week of July, Amy will be cursing me, telling me I’ll never touch her again and then I’ll get to hold my baby!”

I smiled, really smiled. I found that talking to Nick always helped make me feel better, some times he was better at it than Jordan was but of course he also had his own life and wasn’t always around. “Nick did you want to go out for supper with me?”

My question must have taken him by surprise because he seemed to stumble over his words. “Umm, sure,” he said finally. I told him he didn’t have too if he rather sit at home and he told me I was crazy if I thought he was going to turn down a free meal. “You did say you were paying, right? Because if you don’t, then we’ll have to go to McDonalds so I afford to eat something.”

“Of course I was paying,” I had planned on it anyway, I knew he didn’t have that much extra cash and with the baby coming things were probably getting really tight for them. Since I had to drive in from my brother’s house, I told him I would pick him up in a half hour. “So decide where you want to go,” I told him and then hung up.

I was looking forward to spending some time with Nick without Amy, it wasn’t that I didn’t like Amy because I did but whenever she was around he acted differently than when he was alone with me; he always treated me like one of the guys but when Amy was around he treated me like one of her friends, he barely said shit to me.

Nick picked Humpty’s as the place he wanted to go. “I was going to pick the Grillhouse,” he told me. “But I wasn’t sure if you go paid Friday or not.”

I laughed, “In fact I did.”

“Really?” His eyes lit up. “Does that mean I can order dessert too?”

“As long as you eat it all Nick, you can order whatever you like from their menu.”

When the waitress came he jokingly told her he wanted one of everything on the menu. “You didn’t say I had to eat it all here.”