Friends With Benefits

Saturday afternoon was our group’s last big hurrah before school started that Monday. We were all supposed to bring some sort of food and I ended up helping Fletch bring the bulk of it, since he worked at the town grocery store and was able to get the most food for the cheapest amount. Sara and Eric had assigned themselves to bring drinks, cups, utensils, paper plates, and a few other things. Chuck was bringing some desserts. Will was supposed to bring chips, fruit, and some other foods when he came with Natalie.

Sara and Eric were already there at the picnic table we had gotten near the lake to set up with Chuck. While Fletch and I were unloading the various items we had gotten, Will drove up with Natalie. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just Natalie only person who Will had brought along. She had somehow convinced him to bring three of her annoying little sophomore friends along. We all stopped what we were doing when the four giggly girls got out of the car and Will came over to us in front of them, causally flipping his hair out of the way.

“Guys, these are some of Nat’s friends,” Will said. “Sasha, Jenna, and Melissa…”

“Dude… why didn’t you tell us you were bringing them?” Eric said, annoyed. Chuck was busying sexually harassing the three girls with his eyes.

“What’s the big deal?” Natalie huffed. “Can’t I bring my friends along or are you guys too good for this?”

“We didn’t bring enough food for your friends because we didn’t know they were coming,” Fletcher replied. “We only have enough burgers and hot dogs for seven, not ten.”

“Sorry man… you think you could make a quick run…” Will began.

“No,” Fletch replied. “The nearest grocery store is thirty minutes away. It’d be an hour before I could get back with the food and we don’t have enough ice to keep the rest of the food cold that long.”

“Look, I know those chicks are pretty hot,” Chuck said, making everyone slightly gag, “but we don’t’ have room for them here.”

“This was supposed to be just us, Will. Just us friends,” I said.

“Fine,” Natalie snorted. “If you guys don’t want us to be here, we’ll just leave. Come on, Will…”

“Nat…” Will sighed. He turned back to us. “Guys, come on…”

“We don’t have enough for them,” Sara reminded him. “And it would have been nice to get a phone call. We could have been prepared for them.”

“Come on, Will!” Natalie huffed.

“You promised you’d stop ditching us, Will,” I reminded him. “You ditched again at the mall. This is our thing, Will. You and I have done this every weekend before school started since first grade. Are you really going to bail on us now?”

“What is your problem?” Natalie snorted. “Seriously, Will, are you going to be swayed by Miss Pathetic and Needy here?”

“Just take them home and come back,” Fletcher offered. “They’re a nuisance to everyone. You don’t even like them. Remember what you told me about the bowling thing…”

“What does he mean you don’t like my friends?” Natalie demanded to know.

“Look, Nat…” Will began.

“You’re seriously dragging this out Will?” Fletch snorted. “Come on, you’re going to break up with her soon anyway, right? I mean, you have that three months rule, don’t you?”

“What is he talking about?” Natalie shrieked.

“Fletch, shut the hell up,” Will said. “Come on, Nat. We’ll take your friends home.”

“I can’t believe you’re choosing your loser friends over me!” Natalie hissed. Will piled the girls back in the car and backed off, leaving the rest of us pretty angry.

“I can’t believe Will did that!” Sara said, more frustrated and angry than I had ever seen her before. “He just shows up with them and expects us to just deal? I am so giving him a piece of my mind when he comes back.”

“He’s not coming back, Sara,” Eric sighed.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“He’s taking Nat and her friends home,” Fletch sighed. “They’ll fight, she’ll cry and he’ll do whatever she says. He won’t be back here today because he’ll be too busy trying to smooth things over with her.”

“But… he has to come back…” I said in disbelief. “Will and I… this… we always have this picnic! Every year!”

“Lenny, it’s okay,” Sara said comfortingly.

“No it’s not! We’re supposed to be best friends! We’ve been doing this for a decade now!” I said , upset. “How can he choose some girl who annoys the crap out of everyone over me?” I started shaking and seriously didn’t want to start crying in front of everyone.

“Let’s go for a walk, okay?” Sara said. She turned to the guys. “Start getting lunch ready. Eric, I want my burger well-done.”

“Aye, aye!” Eric said, giving her a mock salute.

Sara put her arm around my shoulder and we walked the shore of the lake over to some nearby rocks where we sat down. My lip was quivering and the tears had started to fall. Sure, Will had dated plenty of horrible girls, but he never ever ditched me for them. At least not until Natalie came along. At the beginning of their relationship, he usually would ditch her to hang out with me, but now he was never around. He was always seeing her. Even the times when we were supposed to be hanging out, he would bring her along and then spend the entire time cuddling with her and ignoring me. We were supposed to be best friends. I still wore the friendship bracelet we had made each other at arts camp in third grade and Will still had his, even though he seemed to forget what it meant. It was a few minutes before I realized I was practically sobbing and Sara was hugging me.

“It’s okay, Lenny,” Sara assured me. “It’ll all be okay…”

“He never used to ditch me for other people, but now I can’t even have a conversation with him,” I sobbed. “I don’t think I’ve seen him for longer than five minutes at a time for the past month! How can he stand her? She’s horrible! What can he possibly see in her? What can she possibly have that I don’t?”

“I know it’s hard, Lenny, but you’ve got to get over him,” Sara sighed. “Will’s not worth this. I mean, he tortures you day in and day out with the way he acts. You deserve better than that…”

“He doesn’t know that he’s doing this to me,” I sniffled.

“Maybe you should tell him how you feel then,” Sara shrugged.

“I can’t do that,” I shook my head. “It would freak him out and then he’d probably never want to talk with me again. We’re supposed to be best friends. We used to be inseparable… I’d rather have him torture me day in and day out than loose him out of my life completely.”

“This isn’t healthy,” Sara shook her head.

“He’s never done this before,” I sighed. “I mean, what does he see in her that he hasn’t’ seen in past girls anyway? She’s probably the worst girlfriend he’s ever had. Bottom three at the least.”

“You can’t keep doing this,” Sara insisted.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I sighed.

“Fine,” Sara sighed. “Have you talked with Fletch yet?”

“I’m going to do it this afternoon,” I replied.

“Good. You know, you really should break things off with him before you even consider pursuing something with another guy,” Sara pointed out. “You can’t be completely available when you’re involved with someone.”

“Fletch and I are not involved,” I snorted.

“You make out with him three times a week. That’s pretty involved,” Sara countered.

“Whatever. I’m going to deal with it, okay?” I sighed.

“Alright,” Sara nodded. “You wanna head back now? See how badly the guys have messed up the food?”

“I guess,” I laughed.

We headed back to find that the guys were managing the food pretty well. Eric and Fletch were taking care of grilling the meat while Chuck had tracked down a couple of girls about our age and was now flirting with them on the shore. They didn’t seem really interested in him, but Chuck didn’t seem to realize that. We ate and gave the food that would have been Will and Natalie’s to the two girls Chuck was busy flirting with. They were cousins and weren’t from the area, instead renting one of the resort cabins on the lake for the rest of the summer. They were heading back the following week.

The older one tried to flirt with Fletch a little, but he completely ignored her. I wondered if it was because I was there, as if Fletch thought I would be offended that he was taking a chance and actually letting a girl take interest in him. While Chuck thought every girl was interested in him, Fletch was the exact opposite, completely oblivious when any girl flirted with him. I went swimming with Sara and Eric, hoping that having me out of the picture might let Fletch branch out a bit. When we came back to shore, the two girls and Chuck had disappeared and Fletch was chugging the last of one of the two liter sodas.

“Where’d they head off to?” Eric asked curiously.

“Didn’t say,” Fletcher said. “Chuck will screw himself over somehow and be back though.”

“You not gonna swim?” Sara asked him.

“Nah,” Fletch shook his head. “I didn’t bring my glasses case. Basically, if I go in the water with them on, they’ll fall off into the water and I’ll lose them. And if I leave them here, they’ll get lost or stolen or broken.”

“Have you ever thought about contacts?” Eric asked him.

“Hurt my eyes,” Fletch replied. I looked at him for a moment, deciding it might be odd to see Fletch without the same thick framed glasses he had since fifth grade.

We cleaned up and, just as Fletch predicted, Chuck ambled back to us alone. The girls had gone off with some beefy football players from school, leaving him alone. Soon after, Eric had to head home because his family was going out to eat that night. Sara was going out with his family and since Chuck knew Fletch would never let him inside his car, he had to head home with Eric and Sara as well. Once we had finished cleaning up the picnic, the three of them left and Fletch and I were alone at the lake. Somehow, after we finished putting things away, Fletch and I ended up on our backs in the grass, pointing out shapes in the clouds.

“That looks like elephant,” I said.

“It’s clearly an anteater,” Fletch scoffed.

“Well, that one is a crocodile wearing a tutu,” I said.

“No,” Fletch snorted. “It’s one of those lizards with the frills that pop up when they’re angry.”

“And what is that?” I said, pointing to a very blobby cloud that didn’t seem to be much of anything.

“It’s Chuck Fink,” Fletch shrugged.

“How does that cloud look like Chuck Fink?” I snorted.

“Well, it looks like a sack of shit to me,” Fletch grinned. I couldn’t help but burst out in laughter. Somehow, when my laughter started to die down, Fletch managed to get his arms around me and was pressing his lips against mine.

Inwardly, I knew I had to put a stop to it. First off, we were breaking the unspoken rules of our unspoken arrangement. We never made out publicly, just in Fletch’s room and TV room, and occasionally in the back of his car. We never did what we were doing right then, which was kissing out in the open where any idiot could stumble across the two of us. Secondly, I knew it was well past time to be breaking off the unspoken arrangement Fletch and I had. Sara was right that I could never expect to capture attention from any guy, especially not Will, if I had a weird physical involvement with another person. Thirdly, I was about to loose control from how far things were going. Sure, Fletch occasionally made his way around to second base, but this was different since his hands were underneath my shirt and caressing the flimsy material of my bikini top. The suite was still very much wet so it was basically like the material wasn’t there at all.

Finally allowing my brain to get control of my hormones, I pulled back from Fletch with a gasp of breath. Fletch smirked cockily, seeming to think his kisses had taken my breath away. He looked up overhead at the changing position of the sun and let out an annoyed sigh before turning back to me.

“We should get going. It’s getting late,” Fletch said. I merely nodded and got up out of the grass, following him to the car.

The entire ride home, the little voice in the back of my head was screaming for me to say something to Fletch, to tell him things had gone too far and we had to end it before the physical side of our not-really-a-friendship got out of hand. I fidgeted with my fingers in my lap, staring out the window, fiddling with the radio, and doing just about everything but looking at Fletch.

“What’s wrong?” Fletch asked out of the blue.

“Why do you think something’s wrong?” I said in a panic.

“Because you’re being awfully quiet,” Fletch shrugged. “Usually you’re giving me a headache because you won’t shut up.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I grimaced. Fletch groaned.

“Is this about that dumb bitch Natalie again?” Fletch sighed.

“Why would I be mad about her?” I said.

“I dunno, because you’re secretly in love with Will and she’s in your way?” Fletch suggested. I frowned. Sure, Fletch knew I had a crush on Will, but we had never really talked about other than that first night we hooked up.

“No,” I frowned. “I’m mad at Will.”

“Mad at Will?” Fletch snorted. “That’s a new one. I’m surprised you think Mr. Perfect can do something wrong.”

“I thought you and Will were friends,” I said.

“It’s hard to be friends with someone who’s always ditching you for his girlfriend,” Fletch shrugged. “Am I right?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Why is Will attracted to the stupidest girls?”

“Because they’re so stupid, they put out whenever he asks them to,” Fletch shrugged.

“I doubt that,” I snorted.

“Lenny, Will lost his virginity freshman year. To Kelly Montauk,” Fletch said. I sat back aghast.

“What? He never told me that!” I said, partially horrified about the secret and partially horrified that Will had gone so far with another girl. “Why wouldn’t he tell me that?”

“Well, he thinks of you like a sister right?” Fletch shrugged. “I mean, would you go running up to your brother and tell him if you had sex?”

“No,” I snorted, “but that’s because it would be weird and he’s probably kill the guy…”

“Exactly. It would be weird,” Fletch nodded.

“Why would he tell you, then?” I frowned.

“Because I’m a guy,” Fletch shrugged. “And Will wanted someone to brag too. He broke up with her the next week. She was super pissed, remember?”

“I can’t believe Will would do that…” I said, feeling sick to my stomach for some reason.

“He really isn’t the guy you think he is,” Fletch said.

“I’ve known Will my entire life. I think I know him better than you do,” I hissed.

“He’s changed a lot since middle school, Lenny,” Fletch said. I frowned and leaned back against the seat, contemplating if Will really had changed.