How to Love

“Please tell me that you didn’t actually say that,” Liz shook her head. We were sitting on my couch in the family room on Sunday afternoon. I’d invited Liz over to fill her in on the previous night’s events that she’d missed, ending with the kiss.

“I did,” I nodded regretfully. If I was capable of kicking my own stupid ass, I would have gladly done it.

“Why the hell would you even say that?” She was rolling her eyes in an exasperated manner now.

“I don’t know, I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.” I shrugged at her, embarrassed. I knew Liz’s reaction would be similar to this. “I haven’t kissed anyone in like three years.”

“Well, what about Ryan?” Liz asked. I hadn’t officially dated anyone since I was fourteen, but I’d had a very brief fling with Alexander’s friend Ryan a few months after I’d turned fifteen. Not much came from that, except some loss and a whole lot of heartbreak on my part.

“Ryan never kissed me,” I said quietly. However, he’d had no problem helping me out of my clothes and ceasing communication with me almost immediately after. Sleeping with each other wasn’t something Ryan and I had told anyone else about; it was an unspoken, mutual agreement that we would keep that piece of information to ourselves, though Liz was privy to that fact that Ryan and I were semi-sort of seeing each other. I was angry and hurt about the whole Ryan thing for a long time, but I eventually got to a point where I didn’t care about it anymore. It happened and I no longer had any control over it. Now, I had no problem being around Ryan and being friendly with him, even making a few jokes, but there was still a nervousness and mistrust about all things intimate in the back of my mind. “Maybe that stupid comment was a good thing, though.”

Liz raised her eyebrows in curiosity. “How do you figure that one?”

I hesitated momentarily before answering her honestly, though I knew she wouldn’t be pleased with my response. “Well, relationships are complicated. Any kind, really. I don’t need any more.”

She stared blankly at me. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“I’m not,” I said. “I have my family. I have enough friends. I don’t need anything else.”

Liz could see right through my bullshit and challenged me on it. “Name three friends that you even have.” She raised a finger to stop me before I could even start. “Family members don’t count as friends.”

“Fine,” I crossed my arms. There went more than half of my list. “You…” I wracked my brain, trying to think of someone else. “Tasha…”

“You haven’t even talked to her since Christmas,” Liz pointed out.

“Fine,” I said again. “Not Tasha, then. Sammy-”

She cut me off again. “She moved to New York City over the summer. You haven’t seen her since June.”

I could feel irritation burning in my chest. “Okay. Emily from my French class freshman year.”

“You haven’t talked to her since you went to that Chase Coy concert last February,” she deadpanned.

I rolled my eyes, knowing she was right. “Gina. I just saw her like three weeks ago and we went to a concert together.”

“Is her number in your phone?” Liz asked. I shook my head in response. “Not friends.”

I glared at her. “Jen from Maine.”

“Internet friends don’t count,” Liz waved me off.

“Oh my God,” I threw my hands up in the air in annoyance. “How the hell do you even know all this? Fine. Okay. Clay. Clay’s my friend.”

“Do you ever hang out together?” Liz asked, examining her fingernails in a bored fashion.

“No…” I trailed off, awaiting her rejection of the notion.

“Then you’re not friends,” Liz shrugged. “Try again.”

“Exactly what kind of point are you trying to make here?” By that time, I was beyond irate.

“My point,” she started calmly, “to put it bluntly, is that you don’t have any friends outside of me. You don’t have that many relationships and I know you’re not happy. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. You’ve got me, Matt, your dad, Alexander, and like it or not, Andrea. But you could have Jake too if you’d just open up a little.”

“I told you,” I protested, “relationships of any kind are messy, let alone romantic ones.”

“I’m not saying you need to date the guy,” Liz said. “I don’t think it would be bad for you though, to be honest. And I don’t know where you’re getting this whole ‘relationships are messy’ shit from. How often do you fight with any of us? Excluding Andrea, of course.”

“Almost never,” I admitted. Confrontation with people I didn’t care about was one thing, but I tended to pick and choose my battles with those closest to me. “Okay, fine. I’ll give you that. But I’m also not in a romantic relationship with one of you. I mean, if Jake and I started dating, we’d probably have some huge fight, break up, and then never speak to each other again.” I swallowed kind of hard, preparing for any backlash I’d receive from my next sentence. “I like Jake too much for that to happen, you know?”

“I can’t believe you finally said that out loud,” Liz half-smiled in relief. “I’m gonna mark that down on my calendar. It’s going right in there with the day that Matt was on time and the morning that Andrea woke up early.”

I shook my head, grinning. “Smart-ass.”

“Man, just a week ago you were swearing up and down that you didn’t,” Liz teased. I was sincerely hoping that she’d forgotten about our conversation from our sleep over, but Liz had a better memory than most people I knew, especially when it came to late night conversations.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged, continuing to smile, though this was more to myself now. “He’s just different than just about everyone else I know. We get along really well, and I can pretty much talk to him like I’m talking to you, and I really like that. It’s rare that you find that in a friend, let alone a boyfriend or whatever. You throw kissing in there and you’re gonna ruin it.”

“Or make it better,” Liz countered. “Who knows? You might break up, if you ever even fucking get together, or you might be together for a really long time. Every relationship I had before Matt only lasted two or three weeks, so I didn’t think we’d last very long. But here we are over a year later and we’re gonna have a life together.” She chuckled now. “I’m not saying that Matt’s perfect. Far from it. He has no concept of time and he’s embarrassing to take out in public sometimes, but he’s got a heart of gold. The good definitely outweighs the bad, but I love him for all of it. Basically what I’m getting at here is that nobody can tell you what’s gonna happen with you and Jake, but you’ll also never know if you don’t give it a shot. So have a little faith and take a chance. You know you want to.”

I did want to. Badly, actually. But any interest that Jake had in me had probably diminished after my display of idiocy the night before. “What about the kiss?” I cringed at the uncomfortable scene playing out in my head.

“Tell him what you told me,” Liz advised. “You haven’t been kissed in a long time and you didn’t know how to react. He’s a nice guy. I’m sure he’ll understand if you level with him. Even if you decide not to date him or anything, you owe him that much.” She glanced at my dad’s alarm clock on the end table. “I’ve gotta get back, and you need to start your dinner.” She got up and began to walk out of the family room.

“Oh, hey, I almost forgot. Are you still coming over Tuesday?” I asked, getting off of the couch and trailing after her.

“Tuesday’s Valentine’s Day, right?” Liz checked. I nodded. “And that means you’re making spaghetti.” Another nod. “So hell yeah, I’ll be here. Everyone’s coming, right?”

“It’ll be the usual suspects, unless Alexander gets a date, which I kind of doubt,” I confirmed.

“I’ll see you Tuesday,” Liz agreed. “What time should Matt and I come?”

“Six is good,” I told her. She turned again to leave, but I called after her. “Hey Liz? Thanks for listening.”

“Sure,” she smiled. “No problem.”

With that, Liz left and I hunted around the kitchen for something to cook for dinner. I finally decided to make roast chicken and parmesan pasta noodles. While I prepared the food, I tried to focus on what Liz and I had talked about. I hadn’t thought about dating for a long time up until I’d met Jake. I’d thought guys like Clay were attractive, sure, but even I knew that they were shallow attractions and that I didn’t really want anything out of it. At Tri-C, I’d gotten hit on a number of times out in the smoking section, but I wasn’t attracted to any of those guys, nor did I even like them as people. But Jake was different. He hadn’t been anything but kind to me from the start, even when I was stand-offish and sarcastic. I liked spending time with him and even looked forward to it, the complete opposite of my typically anti-social behavior. Plus it didn’t hurt that he was ridiculously good-looking. But there was just something special about Jake that I couldn’t put my finger on, though I liked it. I just hoped that he hadn’t written me off after I’d awkwardly ruined what would have been a perfectly good kiss.

The viewing was over at five, so Dad was upstairs by five-thirty, around the time I’d finished making dinner. We grabbed plates and sat down together for the first time all day since I’d slept in a little and missed him reading the morning paper.

“So how was your date?” Dad asked after swallowing a mouthful of noodles.

“It was fun,” I nodded, though I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t even bother looking up from cutting my chicken. He probably wasn’t genuinely interested, only asking to be polite.

“You came in pretty late last night,” he observed. He was clearly fishing for details. Apparently I was wrong.

“We were bowling until two and we went out to eat after,” I told him. “I got in around three-thirty. I did remember to get milk, though.” I smirked to myself, remembering Jake’s comment about the dirty titty milk, which tasted perfectly fine.

“I noticed,” Dad said, moving his chicken into some gravy. “Thank you.”

We picked at our food for a little while, Dad talking about the viewing. I let my mind wander while he spoke since I didn’t particularly care about the viewing. Once the paperwork was off of my desk, my job was done and that was generally where my interest ended. I heard him mention something about Andrea, which got me thinking about how few relationships I had. When I’d dropped out, I’d attempted to keep in contact with a few friends, but eventually we all drifted apart, equal blame to go around. The only socially interaction I had outside of my family up until this point was Liz. The more I thought about it, the more panicky I got as I realized that I would see Liz less and less in the coming months before the baby, and then I could pretty much forget about hanging out after it was born unless they needed a babysitter. I needed a friend for that purpose alone, intimacy or no intimacy.

“Listen, Dad, do I have friends?” I had a feeling that I was interrupting him, but at the moment, I didn’t care. It was just payback for all the times I’d tried to talk to him at dinner and would find that he wasn’t paying attention to what I was trying to tell him.

He seemed taken aback by the question and simply blinked at me. “Well, Liz, of course.”

“I mean outside of Liz,” I clarified. I knew what Liz thought and I knew how I felt, but I needed some confirmation that this was accurate, or even a rebuttal and a reminder of someone I’d somehow left out.

He paused momentarily and looked like he was searching his mind for someone, anyone. He gave up fairly quickly. “I can easily give you a list of people that you don’t like. More like a novel, really.” He chuckled slightly. “I’m sorry. I really can’t think of anyone else. Liz is the only one that comes around, so I don’t know about school, and I don’t know how you want me to classify Jake.”

I scoffed. “Yeah, that’s where I’m stuck.”

Dad smiled sadly. “Your mother would have been better with this kind of thing.” I sort of resented how he referred to it as this kind of thing, as if he’d never had to talk Alexander or Matt through a personal problem before, especially in the girl department.

“Probably,” I kind of laughed. I had no idea why I was even talking to Dad about getting personal advice. That was what I had Liz for. She was a best friend, a sister, and a mother wrapped up all in one, especially after my mom had passed away. There was very little that she didn’t know about me; the only information I never really let her in on were my sexual exploits, of which there was the lone episode with Ryan. Hell, Liz had been the one responsible for getting me birth control when I wasn’t getting my period earlier in the year. I couldn’t even say the words “irregular period” in front of my dad, and here I was asking for potential relationship advice.

“I don’t really know if you want my two cents or not,” Dad spoke softly, “so feel free to stop me at any time. But I feel like some good fortune is due your way, and you should bank on it before you miss out on a good opportunity.” He leaned back in his chair, full from dinner. “I like Jake. He’s a hard-worker, he’s respectful, and he’s a good guy. Plus he doesn’t wear his pants around his ankles and always holds the door for people.” He laughed at his own stupid joke before continuing. “Really, though. I like the way he treats you, and you seem so much happier and at ease when he’s around. I can’t argue with something like that.” Dad shrugged. “I don’t know how helpful that was to you, but that’s what I think. Take away from that what you want.”

That was probably the most interest that Dad had taken in my life in a long time. He didn’t have to worry about me; I was the responsible child. I went to class and had every intention of getting a degree, unlike Matt. I also hadn’t gotten any girls pregnant for obvious reasons. I didn’t squander my money on stupid shit like Alexander did, and I definitely did not take advantage of the money Dad did spend on me. I was reliable and there was safety in that. But for once, I wanted to be a little reckless. And so that night, I decided that I would let myself fall for Jake Damon.