Let's Waste Time

The next morning, I woke up tangled in my own sheets and confused. I groaned and lifted my head to look at the clock on the bedside table. The drawer was still open, revealing the hastily ripped open box of condoms. I dropped my head back on the pillow. It was Monday morning, so I had to work. I was already late signing in since I’d crashed before setting my alarm and then slept like the dead. I was pretty sure I’d found a better remedy for my insomnia problem.

Eventually, I managed to pull myself out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom. My hair was a disaster. It was sticking up in random places, and I had a zit forming on my chin. My thighs ached. I felt dehydrated and wobbly. But not in a bad way. Like my body just wasn’t accustomed to getting off so many times in the span of twelve hours. Of course, we’d only done it twice, but—I was pretty sure I’d never actually done it more than once at a time.

I wasn’t actually in any rush to get to work. But I decided to forget about my coffee shop trip just to get online as quickly as possible. My friends were working on their D and D campaign later, and I wanted to watch them. I didn’t play, but they bickered a lot, and I was kind of invested in the story. Plus, they sometimes asked me for advice. So I felt like there was a tiny part of me in the story somewhere. Like a small guide or something.

After work, I took a bus to the comic store my friend Al worked in. When I got there, the store owner was the only one standing behind the front counter. Larry wasn’t very nerdy. Actually, he always referred to the regulars as his nerds. But he had his own kids, and they’d all been pretty big comic book fans. One even went on to make his own webcomic. But when they were still kids, he wanted to be supportive, and there wasn’t a comic book store in the area yet. So he made his own.

“Hey, Marley,” he said when I pushed the door open and stepped in from the heat.

“Hey. Are the nerds here yet?”

“They’re in the back. Ready to start. They’re about to battle that monstrous crocodile, remember? They won’t shut up about it.”

“Yes! I’ve been waiting for this part. I helped Todd come up with ideas for it. It’s gonna eat them alive.” He just smiled and went back to work.

The back of the shop was kind of a storeroom that also doubled as a hangout place. There were a lot of boxes and extra things that couldn’t be kept out front. But since it was also the local hangout place for nerds, it also had an uncomfortable brown couch and three plastic tables with chairs. My friends were sitting at one table. Another was occupied by some kids playing Magic or something. I sat down with my three best friends at the only empty seat.

“Hey, guys,” I said, trying to get comfortable. They all looked at me and stayed silent for a long moment, staring until I was settled. Then, all at once, their eyebrows rose simultaneously. As if they’d coordinated being weirdos.

I’d known Todd since we were in high school. We became friends when he was being bullied by some kids in my year. So I helped him devise a plan to dump rotten eggs on the bullies at the homecoming football game. We’d been stuck together like glue ever since. He wore glasses and had shoulder-length brown hair that was parted in the middle. He was also the DM since he liked to tell the stories rather than play them.

I met Albert after graduation when he tried to ask me out at the comic book shop. I turned him down, but I ended up dragging him to hang out with Todd and me anyway, and he just sort of never left. He had short brown hair and glasses with an even higher prescription than mine. So his eyes always looked small and distorted, and you could never tell if he was actually looking at you or not.

We met Doug a year later. He was the only one of us born with twenty-twenty vision. He had a bit of a babyface and was stupidly good at tech stuff. And there was one brief, fleeting moment when I thought I might be attracted to him. But that flew out of the window very quickly. Either way, they were my three best friends on the entire planet, and I would die for them.

“What?” I asked since they were all staring at me. And I was certain Albert was even though his eyes were kind of out of focus. “Do I have something on my face?”

“More like your neck,” Doug said.

“What? Where?” I ran my hands over my neck but didn’t feel anything.

“You have a hickey,” Albert said. Todd smiled. Mischievously. Like he knew something the others didn’t. I ignored it.

“It’s not a hickey. I have a rash.” Todd began to shake his head very slowly, still smiling.

“I know what that is, and it’s not a rash,” he said. I glared at him and his stupid smile.

“What is it then, if you’re so fucking smart?”

“You got laid.” I must have frozen or made a face or something because his smile grew wider.

“Ohh,” the others said, nodding as if this confirmed a suspicion.

“How the fuck would you know? A bruise doesn’t mean I got laid,” I retorted. He grinned.

“So now it’s a bruise?”

“She does look more relaxed than usual,” Doug pointed out. I shot him a dirty look too.

“I know because I know YOU. And if I remember correctly, Trent is still in LA, and you’ve never looked like this after spending a night with him.” I crossed my arms over my chest defensively. I didn’t know what that meant. And besides, I’d looked at myself in the mirror just that morning, and I never noticed a hickey. But I couldn’t figure out how they would have found out, and Chris had definitely chomped my neck a few times.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. Now they were all grinning.

“So who was it?” Albert asked as he turned his attention back to his character sheet.

“I just got a good night’s sleep. And maybe I’m just allergic to something. Or punched myself in my sleep. I don’t know. I never noticed anything.”

“I’ve seen you after a good night’s sleep. You look different.”

“You guys are just ganging up on me!”

“So? It’s true, though, isn’t it?” I stared them down as Larry came in from the front.

“What’s going on?” he asked, obviously not looking for an answer. He went right to the filing cabinet to find a comic.

“Marley got laid last night,” Doug informed him. I smacked him hard on the shoulder. But it only made him snicker like a moron.

“Is that so? Huh, I thought that looked like a hickey.”

“I did no such thing!”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Albert said. Larry shuffled back out to the front to deal with his customers. He obviously didn’t care about sex talk between nerds over D and D.

“You guys are assholes.”

“So who was it?” Todd asked.

“Remember that neighbor guy I told you about? The one who comes over every week to watch movies with me?” They all smiled again, pausing to stare at me.

“Yeah? What about him?”

“Well, last night, he came over with pizza and beer. Only—we sort of took a while to get to the pizza and beer.” Then they all erupted into laughter like this was the funniest thing I’d ever said. “Why is that so funny?”

“We were taking bets on how long it would take for you guys to go to at it,” Todd informed me. They actually began to reach into their pockets to distribute real cash.

“You were taking bets? Like for real? That’s really unfair. I can be friends with someone without wanting to fuck them. You three are all examples of that.”

“Yeah, but we’ve all tried at one point or another. Except for Todd because he had the hots for your brother,” Albert said.

“Yeah, but I rejected you because I don’t feel that way about you.”

“We didn’t think you’d reject this guy.”

“Why not? I can control myself, you know? I don’t go bananas in the presence of every hot guy I come across.”

“Yeah, but he’s like hot-hot,” Todd said. “I mean, I only saw him that one time I went to get the package I had sent to your house. But he was like—criminally hot.”

“He is really hot. But in a very traditional, athletic kind of way.”

“So, do you guys have a thing now, or what?”

“No. No thing. Not now. Not ever. It was just a—different kind of thing. Mutual satisfaction kind of thing.”

“That sounds like a thing.”

“Yeah, but he has a girlfriend, and I have Trent. Neither of us is interested in a relationship.” I picked up Doug’s notes to see where they were and get their focus turned back around.

“So, are you guys like fuck buddies then or something?” I shrugged.

“I don’t know. Maybe. We talked about it. We don’t like each other that way. He has an open relationship with his girlfriend, and I guess I kind of do too. Trent is hardly ever around these days, and she lives like an hour away. So it just—works out.”

“If you wanted sex that bad, you could have come to one of us,” Albert said. I glared at him again.

“Listen, I value you as a friend, and I plan on keeping you around forever. When Chris and I no longer have the same interests, we’ll go our separate ways, and my life won’t be any worse off. It works better that way. No one has to get hurt. Besides, I doubt you’d know what to do anyway.”

“I’m not a virgin, Marley.”

“You did it like once. In high school. And she was your cousin. That’s disgusting.”

“She wasn’t my cousin. She was my cousin’s cousin. We’re not blood-related.”

“That’s still gross, and you guys are still assholes. Can we stop talking about my sex life? I came here to watch you guys fight that damn crocodile or whatever. Stop being gross.” I handed Doug’s notes back over. They all rolled their eyes and got to work.