Friends Without Benefits

Nico was trying to bait me into a fight. He always used to do this in high school—the unkind nickname repeated at every opportunity, insults flung down the hall at my back, knocking books and folders out of my hands, introducing me as a boy to new students.

He was just a mean person.

Freaking Niccolò Manganiello.

Nico had been tormenting me from the moment he put a dead and road-flattened toad down my dress in Sunday school when I was four. Despite our mothers’ close friendship and the time we spent playing, growing up together, my aggravation with him—and therefore avoidance of him—increased yearly.

In kindergarten he cut one of my braids during nap time leaving me with long hair on the left, short hair on the right.

In third grade he gave me what I thought was vanilla pudding, but it turned out to be mayonnaise; of course I didn’t realize it was mayonnaise until after I had a huge spoonful in my mouth, and, of course, I couldn’t spit it out, because we were at his parents’ restaurant for dinner. I still hated mayonnaise with an unholy fire.

In fifth grade he gave me the nick name Skinny Finney which stuck with me until college.

Worst of all, in sixth grade he became best friends with Garrett.

And even through all of it, the baiting when I was a kid and the persecution when I was a teenager, I couldn’t seem to force myself to loath him like he’d apparently despised me.

I was so confused—his outburst at the hospital then later apology, his request to be friends, and now his flirting with Sandra as well as the arrogant and flippant retorts. I had Nico-mood-swing whiplash.

I clenched my jaw and glanced around the small hallway, over Nico’s shoulder toward the door of the gym. I was officially flustered. I wanted to scream at him, indulge my instincts, give in to the spiteful verbal sparring match—as was our typical pattern. Instead I clamped my mouth shut.

I was determined to let the old habit die. I didn’t want to be that person anymore.

My voice was a bit higher pitched than normal as I tried to literally and figuratively avoid the minefield of his last statement. “Well, Sandra and I are going to head in, so . . . See you later.”

I stepped to the side, hoped to walk around him, but he mirrored my movements, effectively caused me to collide into his chest. Nico’s hands lifted to my bare shoulders and he held me in place. It was one of those moments where my body ceased listening to my brain.

My brain said: Step away from the naughty hottie.

My body said: . . . I like cookies.

“Wait, where are you sitting?” He dipped his head such that only eight to six inches of air separated us, “Where’s your table?”

Nothing is more frustrating than being attracted to someone who is a complete jerk—except for maybe also caring about that person despite continued abuses. I was such an idiot.

I cleared my throat and my eyes—the traitors!—focused on his mouth. “We’re, uh—”

OhMyGodYouSmellFantastic.

“—we’re at table ten, I think.”

“You should sit with me, with us.”

Sandra and I responded at the same time, talked over each other.

Me, shaking my head: “No, no, we’re not supposed to switch tables—”

Sandra, nodding her head: “Yes, we’d love to. What table are you?”

Nico smiled warmly at Sandra. They both pretended like I hadn’t spoken. Matters weren’t helped by his thumb dancing little sweeping caresses over the exposed skin of my shoulder, rendering me mute.

“I’m at table two, right next to the dance floor.”

“Well then, we’ll just see you inside.” Sandra hooked her arm through mine, pulled me out of Nico’s grip and toward the gym. “But first we’re going to go to the ladies room so we can talk about you.”

The sound of Nico’s laughter followed us only as far as the inside of the gym where it was swallowed by loud chatter and dance music.

Sandra leaned close to my ear and semi-shouted. “Where is the bathroom? Lucy! You have some ‘splaining to do.”

I frowned—not at her, at the entire situation—and pointed in the direction of the girls’ locker rooms. She grabbed my hand and maneuvered us through the crowd. My once carefully coiffed waves of blonde tumbled over my shoulders in a messy mass.

No sooner were we inside did she open her mouth. I clamped my hand over it and with the other raised a finger to my mouth. Her eyes grew large and her eyebrows lifted. I motioned with my head toward the showers, silently asked her to follow.

Once we were tucked within the last stall in the last row, I closed the curtain then covered my face and breathed out forcefully.

“Please don’t ask.”

“Oh, girl, I’m gunna ask.” She cut me off with a calm whisper. “And you’re going to tell me and you’re going to describe every intimate detail—do they shave his chest? Because, on the show, he has no hair on his chest and I think they must because he is Italian. And what about his—”

“Stop. Please stop.” I shook my head, still in my hands, and started to laugh. The sound was slightly frantic.

Sandra pulled my palms from my face and waited until I met her eyes. “Why are you so mortified about this? He is h-o-t hot. I would’ve thought you’d get T-shirts made that said ‘Yeah, I hit that.’”

“Oh Sandra.” I smile-frowned. “It’s so complicated.”

“Um, no it’s not. It’s simple really. Nico Moretti, or Manganiello or whatever, still has the leg humpies for you—”

I started laughing and shaking my head again. “No, it’s not like that. He—he’s—”

“No, girl, it is like that. It’s exactly like that. I thought he was going to grab you by the hair and drag you away caveman style. Instead he man-handled you, just a little, and it was hot. I bet if we go to his table he’ll—”

“No, we can’t do that. You don’t understand. Nico was Garrett’s best friend.”

Sandra’s mouth snapped shut, and she blinked at me. “Wait, what?”

I couldn’t believe this person was me. I was a grown woman, standing in a shower stall, whispering about high school drama. I didn’t even do this when I was in high school.

I stepped back, leaned against the wall; let my head fall backward, rest on the tile; “Garrett and Nico were best friends.”

“And you were what?” Sandra lifted her eyebrows. “And you were the girl that came between them?”

“No. Not at all. Nico and I—we used to play together when we were kids, like, all the time. Our mothers were best friends and he would tease me constantly. But then my mom died the same year Garrett moved to town. The next year, by the time Garrett and Nico became friends, Nico hated me and I didn’t like him much either. He started all kinds of rumors about me when I was in middle school—dumb, kid stuff. He used to follow me down the hall whispering Skinny Finney—his nickname for me, by the way, which ended up being adopted by everyone.”

“How did Garrett feel about this, about Nico’s treatment of you?”

“Garrett would stand up for me. Sometimes they’d go weeks without talking to each other. Eventually, Nico would apologize, in front of Garrett. I knew it was false, for show. But I didn’t want to be the reason Garrett and Nico fought. I always felt bad about it, like it was my fault.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, but I was an adolescent and I couldn’t think of what to do, I didn’t know how to process it, how to not overreact. Whenever we were in the same room together it was like—I mean—we were always at each other’s throats. I was shy with most people, but, with Nico, I gave as good as he did. I was really mean. He was really mean. I couldn’t stand him.”

“Hmm.” Sandra tilted her head to the side, studying me. “You couldn’t stand him?”

I looked up at the ceiling without really seeing it. What I saw instead was Nico next to Garrett’s bed, the two of them playing their guitars. “That’s not entirely true. I cared about him, about Nico. Even after—” I lifted my hands and motioned to the air around us. “—just everything. I mean, we grew up together. When we were kids it wasn’t all bad. Sure, there was lots of teasing, but there were good times too, you know? And I thought he cared about me, as a friend, but the older we got the worse he became.”

“You think he didn’t care about you.” It was a statement.

I nodded my confirmation. “How could he? How could he possibly care about me and be so awful?”

“His treatment of you must have hurt.”

“It did.” I glared at her, didn’t particularly like the fact that she was right, that it was still painful. I was a twenty-six-year-old adult whose feelings continued to be impacted by high school hurts. But, I supposed, that didn’t make me any different than the rest of the general population.

Sandra sighed. “So, what happened? What changed?”

“When Garrett got sick, Nico and I started—we decided—to pretend to get along, to make things easier for Garrett. That year we didn’t fight, we took care of him, together. And after Garrett died Nico and I continued to hang out.”