Friends With Benefits

My parents seemed to sense I was in a bad mood all day Saturday since I was cooped up in my room, listening to dreary tunes, and didn’t really speak to anyone at dinner. For some reason, my mother thought a Sunday afternoon trip to the grocery store would help cheer me up. There wasn’t really anything exciting about the prospect of handing my mother cans of mixed vegetables and tomato sauce so she could check them off of the list she had written on her notepad that featured kittens playing with a ball of yarn, but I went anyway. It was something to get me out of the house and away from thinking about Will, who was in his room next door either currently hating my guts or sending lovey-dovey text messages to Natalie while she had “family day” with her annoyingly saccharine parents.

It wasn’t until we arrived in the grocery store parking lot that my brain began to function again, reminding me that Fletch worked in the grocery store. I managed to convince myself that it was okay to go in because he had worked the previous day and there was a good chance he wasn’t working this afternoon at all. Mom and I made it through the bakery, meat, and fresh produce sections well enough, but when we got to the aisle with all of the household cleaning supplies, Mom realized she had forgotten to pick up a can of green beans in the canned food aisle. She sent me back to fetch and, lo and behold, that was the same aisle Fletch was on, shelving a fresh supply of canned corn and carrots. He looked up at me, a little surprised but not displeased to see me.

“What brings you here?” Fletch asked curiously as I tried to focus on the eleven varieties of green beans the store carried.

“You may not know this, but my family has to eat,” I snorted.

“Yeah, we get a lot of those people who like to eat in here for some reason,” Fletch nodded. I reached up for a can of green beans, hoping to get out of the aisle as quickly as possible. “You don’t want that one…”

“What?” I frowned as Fletch walked over.

“Too watery,” Fletch informed me. “There’s almost no green beans in it and the ones that are taste nasty.”

“What about these?” I asked.

“To dry. No matter how you cook them, they end up crunchy,” Fletch replied.

“What about this one?” I asked, picking up a third can.

“They taste like the can,” Fletch said. “Aluminum all the way.”

“What about the store brand?” I asked.

“I know I’m probably not supposed to say this because I work here, but everything in this store that is ‘store brand’ tastes like cardboard,” Fletch shrugged.

“Well, which one would you pick?” I asked Fletch.

“These,” he said, reaching up to the top of the shelf and handing a can to me. “Great taste, good water to bean ratio, and they’re on sale this week.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Anytime,” Fletch grinned at me.

“You know way too much about green beans,” I told him.

“It’s the job of a stock boy,” he shrugged. I nodded and headed back to where my mother was while Fletch continued stocking cans.

My mother made it the rest of the way around the store and when we were finished, just about every cash register at the front was crowded. We immediately went to the one that only had one person in it: a middle aged man who was buying eggs, milk, beer, and a copy of TV Guide. My mother was acting like she wasn’t scanning all of the tabloid headlines while I tried to pick out a candy bar to eat on the way home. It wasn’t until it was our turn to start putting things on the conveyor belt that I realized exactly who we were checking out with. The cashier was a girl Matt had gone to school with, a burnout who would probably spend the rest of her days as a grocery store cashier who popped her gum in an obnoxiously loud volume underneath her dyed-pink bangs. However, the bag boy happened to be none other than Fletch. I glowered up at him and he grinned at me.

“We’re awful busy today,” Fletch informed me. I rolled my eyes and went back to stocking things.

My mother tried to make idle chatter with the cashier, who only glared at her as if to say she didn’t give two shits about having a conversation with a middle-aged woman buying toilet paper in bulk. Mom surrendered her coupons to our lackluster cashier, who popped her gum and read them through the scanner before disinterestedly telling Mom the total of her purchases and asking about her payment method. She handed the receipt over, glad to be rid of us, and closed her aisle since the crowd was now dying down. My mother went to get the cart Fletch was putting the last few bags into, but he stopped her.

“Allow me, ma’am,” Fletch grinned up her in his best good-two-shoes, impress the parents voice.

I rolled my eyes and stalked off behind as he made inane small talk with my mother. She asked him about school and he told her and then asked her about her meaningless hobbies. I didn’t know why Fletch remembered my mom was in a book club and a gardening society. Instead of leaving us with the cart in the parking lot, he insisted on helping us load the trunk with our groceries and then very politely wished as a good day as he took the cart back to the store behind us. My mother was, needless to say, impressed as we got back into the car.

“You know, that Fletch Murphy is such a nice boy,” my mother commented off hand. I didn’t say anything staring out the window. Inwardly, I was absolutely horrified that she dared say such a thing.

I’m sure my mother wouldn’t think of Fletcher Murphy as a nice boy if she knew what a jerk he was to everyone. She definitely wouldn’t think of him as a nice boy if she knew he only gave me those rides to and from school so he could slither his tongue into my mouth at the end of the day. She undeniably wouldn’t think he was nice if she knew he had given me a hickey right behind my left ear in July that I did my best to hide by wearing my hair down until it disappeared. She certainly wouldn’t think he was a nice boy if she had been there Saturday afternoon, when Fletch was on top of me, pressing me against the sheets on his bed, one hand gently caressing my breast while the other ventured down, tracing designs on my hip bone as he ground his body against my own. She wouldn’t think Fletcher Murphy was such a nice boy then.

We drove home with my mother blathering on about various things while I stared out the window, a bit annoyed at Fletch for the show of being a “nice boy” he had put on for my mother. When we arrived home, I helped put away groceries with my mother and Matt, who came out to help. He was leaving for school the next day, so he was doing his best to spend time with the family before he left. He had played dominos with me earlier that morning, helped Dad clean out the garage while Mom and I were at the grocery store, and we were all going to have a nice family dinner somewhere that evening before he left.

Around three that afternoon, Sara decided to randomly show up at my house and hang out. I wasn’t upset but a little surprised, wondering why she had picked that day of all days to show up. I wondered if she had somehow sensed I had again used making out with Fletch as a way to get over the hurt I was feeling about Will since Sara seemed to have a sixth sense for that sort of thing. She told me Eric had dropped her off since he and Chuck were going to skateboarding and she didn’t really want to come. Eric was supposed to be back for her around supper time so he could take her home being that he was her dutiful boyfriend/chauffeur.

“So, what have you been up to this weekend?” Sara asked.

“Went grocery shopping with my mom today,” I shrugged.

“What about Saturday?” Sara asked.

“It was okay,” I lied smoothly.

“Sorry about the whole blind date thing,” Sara sighed. “I really thought you and Evan would click. Maybe you’d do better with a guy who went to our school rather than Westmoreland.”

“I don’t know if that would do,” I shrugged. “Honestly, the whole dating around thing seems to suck worse than the situation I’m curiously in. I mean, it’s tortuous to sit around and make small talk with some vapid guy who’s only paying for my meal because he think has a shot at frenching me later. And I’m supposed to do this repeatedly until I randomly sync up with ‘the perfect guy’? Seems like a zillion in one odds to me.”

“Fine,” Sara sighed. “We’ll lay off the dating thing, but you’ve got to break this thing off with Fletch before things get out of hand. I mean, what if Will broke up with Natalie yesterday…”

“If anything, they got back together yesterday,” I grimaced. Sara looked at me oddly. “She came over… Will and I got into a fight because I got mad and started talking about how he kept saying he was going to break up with her because Will told me Natalie’s forbidden him from having friends that are girls because she doesn’t trust him. Anyway, he took her out after that…”

“Lenny,” Sara sighed, pulling me into a hug. “This is exactly what you need to stop putting yourself through.”

“I guess,” I sighed.

“But anyway, if Will broke up with Natalie tomorrow and wanted to date you or something other unbelievably amazing guy asked you out, what exactly would you tell Fletch? I mean, can you honestly expect him to be okay with just letting you go and forgetting about him?” Sara asked.

“Fletch and I have an agreement,” I shrugged.

“What about him? What if Fletch meets a really great girl tomorrow and decides he likes her too much to let you complicate things? What will you do every time Will hurts you then?” Sara pointed out. “Fletch isn’t always going to be there to make you feel better about yourself and the way he does make you feel better just isn’t… right…”

“I know,” I sighed. “I’ve tried. Believe me, but every time I start to, either I chicken out or something happens…”

“Like you and Fletch start making out?” Sara snorted.

“Or he says or does something else to distract me,” I shrugged. “It’s like he wants to have the conversation even less than I do because he always interrupts when I try to bring it up.”

“You can’t let him do that,” Sara shook her head. “Someone is going to get hurt and neither of you deserve to be put in that situation.”

“Can we cut out the sermon?” I sighed. “I know all of this.”

“I’m just looking out for you, okay?” Sara said. I nodded and leaned back against my bed.

“So… is Evan the only kid from Westmoreland you know?” I asked curiously.

“I know a few. Eric knows more,” Sara shrugged.

“Do either of you know a girl named Ivy? Our grade? Dating one of the football players there?” I asked curiously.

“Doesn’t ring a bell, but then again, neither of us know too many jocks from that school,” Sara shrugged. “I’ll ask Eric, though. Why do you ask?”

“Fletch mentioned her the other day. I think they used to be friends but have fallen out of touch or something,” I said.

Sara didn’t know about Fletch’s own unreturned crush and I wasn’t about to rat out his secret to Sara, who might go overboard and try to set them up or something. Even if she was pretty pragmatic, Sara was also a hopeless romantic on a lot of occasions. Her romanticism was why Eric was usually stressed out, finding new ways to shower her with rose petals and whatnot. Unlike Sara, I wasn’t too concerned with being swept off my feet, especially since my personal experiences with romance were a lot less than flower petals and scented candles.

“I can check on it for you,” Sara shrugged. “Though I don’t know if I’ll find much. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” I lied. “Fletch just mentioned if offhand…”

Sara stayed and chatted until it was time for Eric to come pick her up and then she said goodbye, but only after badgering me about the entire Fletch situation a thousand times. I wasn’t looking forward to school the following day, especially since I knew I would have to face a particularly annoyed Will and a definitely furious Natalie, who now had all the more reason to believe I was trying to ruin her relationship. It felt as though my head had barely hit the pillow when my alarm went off the next morning and I crankily dressed, ate breakfast, and then found Fletch in his car outside my house, waiting patiently to take me to school.

“Anything new in the Iverson household?” Fletch asked.

“Yes,” I snorted. “Apparently, my mother thinks you’re a nice boy because you helped her with her groceries the other day. She’s positively smitten.”

“Aw shucks,” Fletch smirked.

“You can shop that Tom Sawyer impersonation around somewhere else because I’m not buying it,” I snorted. Fletch laughed and revved his engine before speeding us off to school. I didn’t want to admit it, but perhaps Fletcher Murphy could be nicer than he let on.