Friends With Benefits

Based on the fact that I had never been on a date in my entire life and the fact that Matt was using Friday night to catch up with his old friends from school, my parents relented from their previously mandated “family time” and allowed me to go out with Heath. It didn’t hurt that Wednesday evening, just as my father got home, Heath met him in the driveway with a letter written about his honorable intentions and the reasons why I should be allowed to go out with him. Sara thought the entire thing was terribly sweet and I had a hard time explaining to her why the entire thing was completely embarrassing the next day at lunch.

“It’s romantic,” Sara fawned.

“It was written in purple crayon,” I snorted. “And he misspelled like every third word.”

“I still think it’s sweet,” Sara replied.

“I think Heath’s brain got jarred in his helmet one too many times,” I argued. “One of the reasons he gave for why he should be allowed to take me out was because he has a theory cars get better gas mileage if two people are riding in them. He also said he wasn’t above allowing my dad to install a GPS chip in his car so my parents could know where we were at all times… He’s… a freak…”

“That is pretty freaky,” Eric admitted. Sara frowned, not wanting to agree out loud.

“Well, at least you know he’s not remotely attracted to you,” Fletch offered. “I mean, the whole GPS thing just shows the guy is willing to go out of his way not to do anything remotely sexual with you.” I was about to smack him, but Sara and Will both got to him before I did. Fletch glared at everyone angrily as he rubbed the sore back of his head. There was a loud clattering and we saw Chuck drop his tray at the end of our lunch table.

“Why aren’t you canoodling with Laurel?” Will asked him curiously.

“It figures, doesn’t it?” Chuck grimaced. “She dresses like a slut, she acts like a slut, and she flirts like a slut…”

“What figures?” Sara asked.

“Laurel is always dressing in booty shorts and tight shirts, so it just figures that she’s president of the school Purity Club,” Chuck grimaced. “How come the hottest, sluttiest looking girls always have that ‘waiting for marriage’ mentality? I mean, I can understand using that excuse if you’re ass-faced ugly, but with a rack like that…”

“Maybe she just didn’t want to sleep with you,” Fletch pointed out.

“Whatever,” Chuck rolled his eyes. “Apparently, she’s married to Jesus and her father until she finds her one true love like in some fucking Disney movie. She was only trying to use her tits to convert me to Jesus so we could sing hymns, skip around fields, and not have sex ever.”

“Horrible,” Sara snorted. “Someone with morals and principles…”

“I know?” Chuck moaned. “Where have all the whores gone?”

“They’re all at a convention in Las Vegas,” Fletch replied. “Or so I heard.”

“Then why aren’t you there?” I shot back at him.

“Because you forgot to reserve our plane seats,” Fletch hissed at me.

“Seriously, can we have one lunch without you two ripping each other’s heads off?” Eric sighed. Sara elbowed him yet again and then went back to eating her sandwich.

The rest of the day and really the rest of the week passed as normally as possible. The only difference from this week and every other week was that Fletch was acting like a storm cloud, always in a general nasty mood and ready to rain on everyone’s parade. I was glad I was able to hitch rides to and from school with Will for the entire week since Fletch seemed to have developed some weird multiple personality disorder. I wasn’t the only person who noticed either. During lunch Friday, we were all waiting for Fletch and Will to show up at the lunch table when Will strutted in with a black eye and a story about how Fletch had just started randomly wailing on him while they were at their lockers after chemistry. Normally, people would get detention for starting a fight, but the principal had decided that Fletch would be better served by visiting the school psychologist every day during homeroom for the next month. Talk about going crazy.

Friday evening rolled around and Heath came to pick me up. I hadn’t spent too much time picking out my outfit, like some people think girls are supposed to do before a date. For one, I wasn’t exactly riddled with nerves about Heath since the guy seemed pretty much like a pushover and, besides being fairly attractive, he didn’t really have any qualities that interested or attracted me. Secondly, I knew if I was attending a party being thrown by one of the Blonde Bombshells or their boyfriends, there would be copious alcohol consumption which would lead to even more copious puking, and I wasn’t about to ruin my good clothes that way. When the doorbell rang announcing Heath’s arrival, Matt again managed to race to the door and get there before I did.

“Aileen! There’s some scared shitless looking guy here saying he’s here to take you out!” Matt shrilled shouted up the stairs. “Should I tell him to get lost or just kick him to the curb!”

“Matt! Get away from the damn door!” I glowered at him.

Matt grinned at me as he pulled away from the door, a terrified looking Heath standing in the threshold. I shoved Matt out of the way, grabbed my jacket off of the coat hanger, and then yelled goodbye to my parents before slamming the door behind me. Heath looked one hundred percent confused and a bit petrified at what he had just witnessed inside my house. I wasn’t surprised since anyone who generally didn’t know my family well was always a little confused by anything and just about everything that went on between members of my family.

“Sorry about that. My brother is home from college this weekend, so he has a lot of messing around with my life to catch up on,” I explained as we both jumped into Heath’s car.

“Yeah…” Heath said, pulling the car out of the driveway and heading to the lake.

Heath’s attempts at creating conversation between us were dismal at best. He spent the first half of the ride telling me entirely about an article on how beneficial pomegranates are that his mother had read to him that morning during breakfast. The second half of the car ride was him trying to remember a lame joke someone had told him and screwing up the punch line every way possible. I tried to listen and laugh at his lame attempts to be funny, but by the time we reached the lake, I knew our date was a dud and I was less interested in Heath than ever.

The party had just started when we had gotten there and I instantly got the feeling I wasn’t welcome from Kelly, Maddie, Jean, and Heather, who all looked at Heath as if to say “Why did you bring her here?” Heath, true to his nature, was completely oblivious of this, and went over to fist and chest bump his friends, leaving me alone outside the rickety cabin they had rented for Lee. I looked around, hoping to see Will somewhere, but he hadn’t arrived yet. I felt completely out of place, being with a bunch of popular kids, most of whom hadn’t spoken more than three words to me since the fourth grade. Even though Heath insisted we could just go as friends, it seemed as though we were less than even that since he abandoned me as soon as he got out of the car.

I hung around by myself for about ten minutes or so, slowly sipping what seemed to be equal parts tequila and apple juice. It was a nasty combination, but a lot less nasty than the remainder of the stale alcohol Luke Garretson and his deadbeat older brother Larry had boosted from the dumpster behind the convenience store where Larry Garretson worked as a baked-out of his mind clerk. There were cans of beer a couple weeks past their sell by date, a strange mesh of vodkas and flavored rums, as well as some of those alcoholic energy drinks that had the few guys running around like those lab mice they test cocaine usage on. Will’s car rolled up in the parking lot near the cabin and I was about to run and greet him when I noticed Fletch hop out of the passenger seat. Just as they spied me, Heath decided to come back over and act like my date.

“So, you having fun?” Heath asked, draping one arm around my shoulder and holding a cup of vodka in the other hand. Thanks to his Celiac disease, Heath wasn’t allowed to partake in too much beer, so he opted for other forms of slowly poisoning his liver.

“Not particularly,” I replied. “I don’t really know many people here and the ones I do know hate me for some mysterious reason.”

“The Blondies? Yeah, that’s probably because you’re Will’s friend and they’re jealous that he actually talks to you instead of trying to get into your pants,” Heath nodded. I frowned at the irony. All I wanted Will to do was shut up and try to get into my pants. “Don’t bother with them, though. They’re all bitches.”

“You’re alright, Heath,” I laughed. He laughed as well and tightened his grip around me as Will and Fletch approached us.

“Having fun?” Fletch sneered.

“A blast,” Heath nodded, oblivious to Fletch’s tone. Will looked at Fletch confused and then back to Heath with a smile.

“So, where’s the birthday boy?” Will asked.

“Last I saw, doing a keg stand,” Heath replied, “though he and Kelly have probably locked themselves up in the cabin’s bedroom, if you know what I mean.”

“Why are you drinking that pansy ass shit?” Fletch asked Heath in reference to his fruity vodka.

“Dude, he has an allergy,” Will rolled his eyes.

“I’m not supposed to have stuff with gluten in it,” Heath nodded.

“Can’t you pester other people?” I asked Fletch with a sigh.

“Let’s go say hi to Lee,” Will suggested to him.

“I don’t like Lee. Why the hell would I want to say hi to him?” Fletch muttered.

“Because it’s his birthday,” Will replied.

“I hope he has the shittiest birthday ever,” Fletch snorted.

“Alright, then you stay here,” Will said before trotting off to find Lee. I wanted to pelt Will for leaving me in such an awkward situation, Heath dangling his arm around my shoulders and Fletch acting like he was about to explode into the Incredible Hulk at the drop of a hat.

“So,” Heath asked Fletch, “How do you and Aileen know each other?”

I gulped, terrified of what Fletch could possibly say. I honestly didn’t want him announcing that we were frequent make-out buddies in front of a guy I was technically on a date with, no matter how lousy that date was proving to be. Fletch muttered something under his breath that neither of us could hear and I was glad that Heath decided not to press the matter. Instead, he looked over at me.

“Hey! They’ve got canoes! You wanna go ride in a canoe?” Heath asked me excitedly.

“Heath, I think you’re too drunk to be paddling a canoe around the lake,” I replied. “You’ll probably fall in and drown.”

“Drowning might do him some good,” Fletch muttered.

“What did you say?” Heath said, suddenly showing off his muscles and general beefiness. At around six foot and with his well-toned physique, Heath seemed to just tower over Fletch.

“I said maybe drowning would do you some good,” Fletch said. “Might squeeze the oxygen out of the last two or three brain cells rattling around in there.”

“Are you insulting me?” Heath demanded to known.

“That just proves my point,” Fletch snorted.

“Sounds to me like you’re cruising for a bruising,” Heath hissed.

“That is the lamest insult ever,” Fletch countered. Heath started to open his mouth and rear back his first before I jumped into the middle of things.

“Fletch, we need to talk. Now,” I replied, dragging him off into the woods. I left a mostly confused Heath behind me.

“He’s an ass,” Fletch informed.

“You’re the one being an ass,” I snorted. “It was really nice until you showed up. Heath and I were having…”

“A good time? Please, Lenny,” Fletch snorted. “You looked like you were going to ralph all over yourself if that’s what it took to get him to leave you alone.”

“Fletch, I am on a date with a very nice, sweet guy, and you are completely sabotaging it for some reason,” I snorted.

“I wonder what reason that is,” Fletch harrumphed. I sighed.

“Look, when we started this, there were rules we put in place to avoid this exact thing…” I began.

“What rules?” Fletch snorted.

“You suggested half of them!” I shot back. “Remember? It’s in secret. It’s only in your house or your car. There’s no going on dates. There’s no hand-holding. There’s no hugging. There’s nothing romantic. We’re both free to go out with other people whenever we want to because we aren’t together, and if either of us wants to stop, we drop it. No questions asked. We both agreed to those rules and now you’re just breaking them for no reason!”

“New rule, if the guy you’re going out with is a douche, I can harass him,” Fletch suggested.

“You can’t just make up a new rule like that and Heath is not a douche!” I snorted.

“Then why is he attempting to stand up in that canoe?” Fletch snorted. I looked around, just to watch Heath fall into the water with Lee and Jason laughing hysterically at him, still dry in the canoe.

“Why do you have to ruin everything for me?” I glowered at Fletch.

“I’m not standing up in a canoe,” Fletch pointed out.

“I hate you,” I hissed at him before storming off.

I managed to find Heath inside the cabin, where he was down to just his boxers and had draped his clothes over the back of the couch to dry them. I just about blushed at how well-sculpted Heath’s body was from football practice and he didn’t seem to notice as he put on a spare pair of clothes he had brought along. He turned around and smiled at me, his hair still wet and dripping from his antics earlier. Sure, he wasn’t much to talk to, but physically, Heath was a modern-day Adonis.

“Hey!” Heath said cheerfully. “I was worried for a moment there you were going to leave me for Murphy.”

“That’s just gross,” I snorted. Heath laughed. He took my hand and lead me outside to just behind the cabin, allowing the tow of us to sit on a wood-carved bench overlooking everyone else hanging around the bonfire and he lake. “By the way, thanks for asking me to come with you tonight.”

“No problem,” Heath nodded. “You know, I was really misinformed about you. But I’m glad. This turned out better than I expected.”

“What do you mean you were misinformed about me?” I frowned.

“I mean, the guys were totally wrong,” Heath shrugged. “I didn’t need an easy lay to get over getting dumped, you know. I needed a nice evening out with someone…”

“You only asked me out because you thought I would sleep with you?” I grimaced.

“Well, yeah,” Heath said. “I mean, the way you dressed at Jason’s party and Will said you were looking for someone to take you out and I mean, Kelly and Jean and Heather and Maddie said that you and Will…”

“Will and I are just friends! Can’t a guy and girl be just friends?” I glared at him. “You seriously only took me out because you thought I was easy?”

“Yeah, but my mind’s changed about you…” Heath began.

“Well, my mind’s changed about you, too,” I glared. “I thought you were a nice guy who was actually interested in me, not getting into my pants. I’m sorry, but I can’t date a guy who’s only in it to get laid.”

“Who said I was planning on asking you out again?” Heath huffed. “You know, Aileen, you’re actually pretty boring…” I spotted Will across the yard.

“Yeah… well… you look like a flamingo!” I basically yelled. Heath thought I had gone insane. I wanted for Will to come rescue me, but he was still chatting with his friends. I was about to repeat the code word again when I felt someone pull my left arm.

“Lenny, I need you to help me with something,” Fletch said, tugging on me and pulling me toward him.

“About what?” I grimaced. Fletch rolled his eyes and then tossed his head in Heath’s direction. I suddenly realized Fletch must have overheard my code word conversation with Will and was now here to rescue me.

“Oh, okay…” I nodded.

“What? You’re just going to leave me here? Just like that?” Heath said angrily.

“No,” I snorted. “Before I go, I want to tell you I only went out with you because I felt sorry for you because I heard you only had one ball. Now I realize you just don’t have any!” Heath’s face completely fell as I stormed off with Fletch. We were hardly a few feet away when Fletch burst out laughing.

“Other than calling him a flamingo,” Fletch laughed, “that’s the most hilarious thing you could have said.”