Friends With Benefits

Sara was furious when I admitted to her that I hadn’t exactly broken things off with Fletch and she didn’t seem to believe me when I said I was just looking for the opportune moment. However, she seemed oddly happy when I mentioned the conversation Fletch and I had about whether or not Will had changed, especially when I told her that I wasn’t so sure if Will was the same guy I had developed a crush on all those years before. Rather than assure me that Will was still a great guy who made bad decisions occasionally, Sara encouraged me to give up any fantasies I had of myself and Will to pursue guys who were more available and interested in me. When I asked her to name one guy who was interested in me as well as available, she sheepishly gave me one name.

“Fletcher Murphy is not interested in me,” I insisted as we sat together in the back of our first period class history class. We were supposed to be watching an introductory video to the course, though the majority of the class was sleeping since it was also first period.

“Yeah, Lenny,” Sara scoffed. “He can’t keep his hands off you because he is completely disinterested in you.”

“He can’t keep his hands off me because he’s a hormonal teenage boy and will get what he can,” I hissed back.

“If he’s just out to get what he can, why does he keep coming back?” Sara asked. “If he was like that, he would have left as soon as he realized you weren’t going to put out for some girl who would. Sort of like what Will does…”

“Will is not like that, okay? He just makes bad choices in girls and when he realizes they don’t have any substance, he leaves,” I snorted.

“Three months is more than enough time to realize you’re girlfriend is an idiot,” Sara argued. “He dates girls until he gets bored with them.”

“He wouldn’t get bored with me,” I insisted.

“I thought you were going to drop this silly crush thing,” Sara muttered, annoyed. “Come on, Lenny. You deserve better than moping around and waiting for Will to wake up and want to date you. You deserve to have some fun!”

“How can I have fun with Fletch?” I snorted. “If he’s not sticking his tongue down my throat, he’s screaming at me.”

“Passion comes in a lot of forms,” Sara shrugged.

“Maybe I should just ditch the idea of Will and Fletch,” I sighed. “Go for something different all together…”

“Like… lesbianism?” Sara said, confused.

“Not lesbianism, you dolt,” I snorted. “Like other guys.” Sara’s eyes suddenly lit up.

“Alright then,” Sara smiled. “I will find you a date.”

“Wait… what?” I grimaced.

“I will find you a date,” Sara said. “You’ll be going out with some lucky bachelor this weekend.”

“Sara…that’s not what I meant…” I began.

“You need to branch out,” Sara said. “So, you’re going out with a guy who is not Will and not Fletch. Just do it as an experiment, you know? Maybe going out with a guy you don’t really know will help you figure out what you want. Then you can forget about Fletch and Will and have a shot at a healthy relationship, one where you don’t fawn all over an unattainable guy one moment and then make out with a guy you despise the next.”

“What do you mean unattainable?” I said, insulted. “You don’t think I’m capable of attaining Will?”

“I don’t think that, deep down, Will is the guy you really want,” Sara shrugged.

“Fine. Set me up on this stupid blind date,” I frowned. “But if you set me up with Chuck Fink, I’m murdering you in your sleep.”

“Don’t tell Eric,” Sara confided. “But I wouldn’t wish a date with Chuck on my worst enemy.”

I headed around to my second period math class, finding to my chagrin that I shared it with Fletch. After calling roll, our teacher, Ms. Batte, let us talk amongst ourselves about our summers. I honestly didn’t need to share with Fletch what I had done over the summer since he had been there with me for most of it. I was certain he was especially versed in the parts where I let him touch me under my shirt and grind his body against my own.

“Will stopped me in the hall earlier. One of his jock friends is throwing a back to school party Friday,” Fletch informed me. I grimaced.

Fletch and I had been to a few parties over the summer. Even though we had come in Fletch’s car, I always insisted we weren’t coming together, mainly because I was only going to get a glimpse of Will. The parties always ended up the same way. Will would run off with Natalie and I would console my sorrows in perhaps a sip or two of the alcohol on hand followed by a furious make out session with Fletch in the back of his car to dull the pain of the never-ending rejection I felt from Will.

“So, you in?” Fletch asked me, a little too excited. Fletch typically hated any social function involving people at school, so I never knew why he bothered showing up to their terrible parties.

“Can’t,” I said coolly. “I’ve got a date Friday night.” Fletch seemed a little surprised and I felt a bit insulted that he seemed to think I wasn’t capable of getting a date.

“Who with?” Fletch asked curiously.

“Don’t know,” I shrugged. “Blind date.”

“Who’s setting you up?” Fletch asked.

“Sara,” I replied.

“You made sure to tell her not to set you up with Chuck Fink, right?” Fletch asked.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “She knows.”

“Good,” Fletch said.

To be honest, I was oddly upset that Fletch didn’t have more of a reaction. Sure, in the light of day and when I had all of my senses in order, I didn’t really find Fletch attractive. Most of the time when I looked at Fletch, I wanted to gag myself for being stupid enough to spend hours making out with him. I didn’t find him handsome or even really that cute and he was too much of an ass for me to be attracted to his personality. Sure, he was plenty smart, but he was more smartass than anything.

Still, it hurt my ego that Fletch didn’t burst out in a rage that the girl he tongue-wrestled with thrice a week was going out with another guy. It seemed odd to me that he could be rubbing his body up against me one day and then the next be seemingly encouraging me to go out with other guys. He should have been furious and threatening to beat up any other guy that touched me. It wasn’t that I wanted Fletch to be jealous, per se, but it would have given me a good self-esteem stroking if he had been a little bit mad.

Then again, I wasn’t exactly sure how I would react if Fletch came up and announced he was going on a date with another girl. We weren’t in a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. I figured frenemies-with-benefits came closest to describing what Fletch and I had. Personally, I was beginning to think things would be much easier for both of us if Fletch got a girl and broke things off. Having him break things off would be so much easier for me since I wouldn’t have to deal with all of the awkwardness of explaining to him that I still needed to hitch rides with him and stuff but there could no longer be any physical intimacy between the two of us.

“So… what prompted Sara to set you up with someone?” Fletcher asked, obviously fishing for information. I smirked inwardly, wondering if this was when his jealousy might start to flare up.

“She thinks I need to get over the whole Will thing and if I see someone else, she thinks I might stand a better shot of moving on,” I shrugged.

“Ah,” Fletch nodded.

“I hope you have fun at the party, though,” I shrugged.

“I wasn’t exactly planning on going,” Fletch admitted.

“Then why did you bring it up?” I asked.

“Will asked me to pass the news along to you,” Fletch shrugged.

“He couldn’t tell me himself?” I frowned.

“He doesn’t know if he has any classes with you,” Fletch shrugged. “And, apparently, Natalie’s been wigging out on him. She doesn’t believe that guys and girls should be just friends, so she’s terrified you’re trying to steal him away or something.”

“She’s paranoid,” I scoffed.

“Yeah, but you are trying to steal him away, right?” Fletch pointed out.

“Not at the moment,” I shrugged. “I guess I just need to entertain my options right now… I mean, Will Swain isn’t the only guy in the world. It’s hard, but I might just have to get over him.”

“You know, it’s not easy to get over someone you’re sort of in love with just like that,” Fletch pointed out.

“I’ve got to try. It’s either that or be miserable for the rest of my life,” I shrugged.

“I guess,” Fletch nodded.

Our next period chemistry class was difficult since Will was in it. Fletch was there too and so was Eric, but I forgot them completely when Will entered the class and took a seat next to mine. He smiled at me, but we didn’t get a chance to talk since Mr. Larson spent the entire period going over the syllabus with us. However, it was nice to see that Will wasn’t mad at me for what had happened Saturday afternoon. Strangely, I was no longer mad at him for ditching us and those bubbly, butterfly feelings kept creeping up in my stomach every time our eyes met in class, even though I was desperately trying to get over him.

Will also sat at the table with me in our next period Civics class, along with Sara, Fletch, and Chuck Fink who ended up in the class as well. Like Mr. Larson, Mr. Greene spent the whole period going over course objectives, not allowing us any time to talk. I tried to focus on the teacher and not on Will’s gorgeous face. If I stared too long, I would feel Sara’s angry gaze boring into the back of my head. Fletch and Chuck were too busy kicking each other under the table to really care either way.

During lunch, I sat with our usual group. Will normally ate lunch with us, but he decided to go hang out with Natalie and her friends, which really upset me. Even when he had dated girls from the Blonde Bombshells, the name of our schools popular clique, he still sat with us at lunch. Natalie, it appeared, had Will wrapped around her fingers. I stabbed the salad I had brought repeatedly while Sara and Eric cuddled, comparing their mornings. Chuck and Fletch nearly got into a fist fight, arguing over which female superhero was hotter, and I was about sick of both of them when lunch was over.

Fletch was in both my afternoon Art and English classes. Much to my annoyance, Chuck Fink wound up in our AP English class as well, an obvious mistake by the guidance department since Chuck wouldn’t know what a book was if you threw one at him. I was a little annoyed that Fletch seemed to be cropping up in all of my classes, especially when I found out we also shared our final period study hall in the library together. My mood changed entirely when I discovered Will would also be sharing our study hall. Though the period was meant for us to catch up on work, most people used it to whisper among each other. Mrs. Kastner, our librarian, was too much of a pushover to yell at anyone for talking out loud and spent most of her job reading romance novels with half-naked men on the cover.

Being that it was the first day back to school, we didn’t yet have any homework or assignments to begin working on during our study hall period. The majority of the computers had already been taken by people aiming to check their mail or play online games, so the rest of us had to find other means of entertaining ourselves. Fletch got up and went to go find a book to read, leaving me alone at the table as Will came over, plopping his book bag down and sitting across the table from me with a lazy smile across his face.

“Hey,” Will grinned.

“Hey,” I replied.

“Look, Ailee,” Will sighed. “I’m sorry about Saturday. I know the picnic is our thing… But Natalie’s been having it rough lately… I mean, her grandmother got really sick toward the end of the summer. I’ve been meaning to break things off with her, but every time I get around to doing it, her grandmother always takes a turn for the worse. I mean, I don’t want to break up with her only for her grandma to die the next day or something…”

“I get it,” I said, marveling inwardly at how caring Will seemed to be. “She’s in a fragile state…”

“Yeah,” Will said, annoyed. “It’s like I have to baby her or something… Fletch thinks she is making it up, you know? He said that her grandma’s probably fine and every time she thinks I’m going to break up with her, she throws out her dying grandma to shut me up…”

“I don’t know if Natalie is smart enough to think up something like that,” I replied. Will laughed slightly.

“I think you’re right,” Will smiled. “Sorry I wasn’t able to hang out with you guys that much this summer. What did I miss?”

“Well, you very narrowly missed me killing Fletch quite a few times,” I shrugged. “Seriously, Will, you need to be around more. If you aren’t there, Fletch and I might murder each other and you don’t want a double homicide on your conscious, now do you?”

“I can’t believe you guys don’t get along better,” Will groaned. “The two of you are so much alike, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” I snorted. “Fletch is an ass.” Will laughed as Fletch arrived back at the table, a book in hand.

“What’s so funny?” Fletch asked curiously.

“Nothing, man,” Will smirked at him.

Will and I chatted back and forth like we used to before he started getting interested in girls. Well, before he got interested in other girls since he seemed to have no interested in me. Fletch, for once, didn’t interject anything annoying or stupid into the conversation, just sat back and read his book throughout the entire period. For a little while, it was as though things were finally back to normal between Will and me. He even mentioned finding some time to just hang out, the two of us. Of course, Fletch let out a grunt and Will just had to invite him along as well.

My time with Will was immediately cut short as soon as the bell sounded since he had to go find Natalie and take her home before rushing back to football practice that afternoon. I had to hitch my own ride home with Fletch that afternoon. I had gotten my license after my birthday in April, but my parents weren’t about to fork over the money for a car. Unfortunately, in our small town you could only get a part time job if you had a car, so it was a vicious cycle of me not being able to buy a car because I didn’t have a car to take me to work in.

I followed Fletch out of the library and toward the parking lot, but stopped to say goodbye to Sara and Eric along the way. I narrowly avoided a conversation with Chuck Fink before having to stealthily round several corners in order to avoid the Blonde Bimbos. They were had coordinated their outfits for back-to-school yet again and were all carrying big tote bags that read “Bombshell” across them, their little gang name for themselves. I about gagged from the wafting smell of the hair dye at least two of them used to stay blonde before finally reaching the parking lot to find Fletch leaning up against his car, reading the book he had in the library.

“Did you check that out?” I said, not remembering him making a visit to the librarian’s desk.

“Yeah,” Fletch nodded.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s called The Sorrows of Young Werther. It’s by Goethe… the same guy who wrote Faust?” Fletch said.

“I thought Christopher Marlowe wrote Faust,” I frowned.

“He wrote the play Doctor Faustus but Goethe wrote the full novel,” Fletch replied.

“The more you know,” I rolled my eyes. “So, what’s the book about?”

“Some emo kid named Werther who’s an artist in old-timey Germany,” Fletch shrugged. “He’s fallen in love with this chick who’s engaged to be married to this rich guy so she can support her family.”

“Sounds like it sucks,” I said.

“It has its moments,” Fletch shrugged.

“Well, tell me if it’s any good when you finish it. But don’t spoil the ending,” I glared at him.

“For the record, that was fifth grade and I had no idea that you were the only person in the world who didn’t know how Old Yeller ended,” Fletch snorted.

“Well, considering what happens at the end, my parents had a pretty good reason for sheltering me from it,” I grimaced. “Now, shut up and drive me home.”