Fuck Buddy (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

LUKE

My incompatibility with others made coexistence almost impossible, however, living a life free of conflict was simple for me. I had one true friend, I rarely offered an opinion to anyone, and I didn’t involve myself in other people’s business. My embrace of technology consisted only of a telephone, and I had no desire to ever watch television or utilize any facet of social media. As a result, my thoughts and my life remained private, allowing me to live without much influence or objection from outsiders.

Keeping my mind occupied was important to my mental health, and my entertainment came from watching people, reading, and above all, surfing. For me, surfing was more than a leisure activity or sport; it had become part of who I was. It kept me alive, and allowed me to focus on being instead of doing. It was my belief that my continued existence was reliant upon surfing as much as it was anything else.

No two waves were ever alike, and each day of surfing was an experience different than the last. Although waiting for a wave allowed my mind to wander, often leaving me with thoughts of activities or events well beyond my grasp, paddling for a wave filled me with hope, and finally catching a wave was one thing and one thing only.

Cleansing.

Cleansing to my mind, spirit, and soul.

Scrubbing my mind of the lingering sexual desires that seemed to so freely inhabit it was much more than something I hoped for, it was a necessity. Without surfing, I had little doubt I would be able to exist amongst the masses of inhabitants in the state I so proudly called home. Surfing allowed me to live a life between each wave I caught, one with minimal desire to do anything else but catch the next wave.

Summer was now in full swing, and although Liv and I often ate dinner at her home, we had been doing so more frequently since she swore off dating. I enjoyed our meals together, and always looked forward the odd conversations we had.

I peered across the table and admired her choice of clothing. Shorts, flats, and a tasteful turquoise tank were a simple choice, but seeing her arms exposed satisfied me greatly. She told her stories with her hands, tossing them about as she spoke, and I enjoyed watching her lean muscular arms as she did so.

“Being single sucks,” she said.

It seemed I ate a Liv’s home more frequently than my own. If it wasn’t for her, I would probably be forced to survive on fruit, vegetables, yogurt, and cottage cheese.

“So how long has it been?” I asked.

I watched intently as she silently finished cutting a piece of chicken, picked it up with her fork, and let the utensil dangle loosely from her fingertips as she gazed beyond me for a moment.

She grinned. “Three months, four days, and roughly twenty hours.”

Liv’s recent anti-dating stage initially left her with a large hole in her schedule. After a few days of sulking, she filled the void by spending all of her free time with me. I found it hard to believe three months had passed, but time often seemed to slip away from me without so much as being noticed.

I tried to contain myself, but laughed regardless. “You sound like a recovering alcoholic, not a single woman.”

She shrugged and bit half of the piece of chicken from the tip of her fork. I thought of the night I had received the drunken text messages from her, and what had transpired in my life since then. It truly seemed that it had only been a matter of weeks since it happened.

My mind wandered to the time we had spent together since her swearing off of internet dating. “Hard to believe it’s been that long. It seems like, I don’t know, maybe a few weeks have passed.”

I attempted to convert the meals we shared into the amount of weeks that had passed and eventually gave up. “You know, I think one of these days I’m going to look up, and
poof
! Life’s going be over with.”

She wrinkled her nose and stuck her chin out slightly as she stared at me with eyes of disbelief. “Why do you say that?”

“I don’t pay much attention to time,” I responded.

“You don’t have to.” She waved her hand in my direction as she spoke. “The entire world does, but you don’t. You surf, you sleep, you surf, you sleep. You probably don’t even know what day of the week it is.”

I agreed with her completely. I didn’t know, and not only did I not know, I really didn’t care what day of the week it was.

“I’m not interested in having my life or the events in my life dependent on a clock.
Go to work at this time, come home at that time, it’s time to eat, it’s time to get up, I have to run to a meeting at 11:45.
I don’t know how people do it.”

Liv had been my best – and only – friend since we were in fourth grade. According to her, we had been best friends since kindergarten, but I didn’t completely agree. My first few years in school were difficult, and even though it seemed everyone wanted to befriend me, I had very little interest in becoming friends with anyone. By the time I was nine years old, I realized to survive I may not need to be friends with everyone, but I certainly needed to be friends with someone.

Liv became that someone.

I picked up a slice of avocado only to have it slip from my fingers when it was half-way to my mouth.

“I envy you,” she said.

“Because I don’t wear a watch?”

“No, because you don’t have a schedule,” she said. “And you should use a fork.”

I reached for the salt, sprinkled a little onto the avocado and picked it up. “I couldn’t live like that. And you doing so is by choice, and nothing more.”

“You don’t have to pay rent, and I do. Big difference, Dude.”

“We’ve been over this, Liv. You could do what you do from home. Independently you could probably make more money, certainly have more freedom, and be happier. It’s your own fault.”

She lowered her fork to her plate and sighed. “I don’t know. I think it’s the risk, it scares me.”

“Don’t complain, then,” I said flatly.

“I can complain if I want.”

I widened my eyes. “You shouldn’t. You have the capacity to change it, and you choose not to take the risk. Complaining only brings disappointment into your life. Why be disappointed if you don’t have to be?”

“You make me mad,” she said.

“Okay, be mad. Mad, and reliant upon others to sustain life. Oh, and single by choice.”

“That’s another thing.”

“What’s that?”

She placed her fork to the side and reached for her glass of wine. “The single thing. I hate it. It’s driving me insane, but I deleted all the apps off my phone and I swore I wouldn’t do it anymore. I mean, it
really
sucks. I swear, I have no idea how you do it,” she said over the top of her glass.

As she took a drink of wine, I finished chewing my chicken and considered my response. My being single was no doubt a choice, but it was also something I viewed as a necessity. I fully realized a long-term relationship with anyone would be an impossibility, and therefore chose to live a life of solitude. 

“I guess it depends on exactly what it is you’re after,” I said. “You’re not going to find the man you’ll marry on Tinder, okcupid, or e-fucking-harmony, so why waste your time? Or their time for that matter?”

She took another drink of wine and shook her head. “You aren’t listening, I said I didn’t know how
you
do it. How you can be single and happy for like
ever
. I’m going insane, and it’s only been three months. And, it really doesn’t matter if it’s my future husband or just some dude to bone, both are human contact and sexual interaction.”

I coughed out a laugh and almost choked on my chicken. After taking a drink, I leaned forward, rested my forearms against the table, and gazed at her. Liv was beyond what anyone could describe as beautiful, and in all honesty she could have her pick of the entire single population of the city if someone took the time to get to know her. Her problem, at least in my opinion, was that she didn’t perceive herself as valuable.

To be willing to sexually give herself to a man she really didn’t know – under the feeble impression she
did
know him because she read whatever he chose to include in his online profile – spoke volumes of her emotional evaluation of herself. In summary, she was far too willing to attach herself to almost anyone who would pay her a moment’s notice.

“And, that is exactly what the men on those websites want. Sexual interaction. Nothing more, and there’s no way they’ll settle for anything less. They’re on there to get fucked,” I said.

Her mouth fell open and she stared back at me. “How can you say that?”

“Seriously?”

Her disbelief caught me off guard. I glared at her for a moment, pushed myself away from the table, and leaned against the back of my chair. To think she believed the men on the online dating sites were after anything other than sex was laughable. I realized I should address the topic cautiously, but also felt a need to make sure she understood my true thoughts.

“You know, when you started doing that a few years ago, I gave you my opinion, and it sure hasn’t changed since. Most of the guys lurk on those sites are looking for someone to fuck, and after they get it they go home to their girlfriend or wife. After a few weeks or a month, they make an excuse to
break up
, and then move on to another victim. They’re a bunch of narcissists feeding their self-esteem by their own personal count of the women they bone,” I said.

She gave me a
pffft
, and reached for her wine. “You don’t know that.”

“You’re right, I don’t. Answer me this, how many dates have you gone on since you started?”

She swallowed her wine, cast her eyes toward the kitchen cabinets, and stared blankly for a while. “Like, since the beginning?”

“Yes, Liv, the beginning.”

“I don’t know, maybe fifty.”

I leaned forward and rested my elbows on the table as I nodded in agreement. “Fifty. I’d say that’s pretty accurate. Probably one a month give or take, for four years.”

She took another sip of wine and wagged her eyebrows playfully.

“Now, how many twenty-five-year-old women in this city do you think have been on fifty dates in four years?” I asked.

She lowered her eyes to her plate and seemed consumed by the question. My guess was that she was going through her short list of girlfriends, and was truly trying to count the dates she knew they had been on in the amount of time we had been out of school. After a long silent pause, she glanced up.

“None?”

I nodded. “I’ll agree. None. I’d say most of them, if they’re single, have been on two or possibly three a year.”

“You
always
do this,” she snapped as she leaned away from the table.

I chuckled. “What?”

“Change the subject,” she said. “I asked you about you, and you turned it into me. I asked how
you
stay single, and you didn’t answer. You never answer. You just say you’re satisfied or whatever. Why don’t you answer me?”

She reached for her wine, finished what was in the glass, and stood from her seat. In a half-drunken stumbling maneuver, she stepped to the counter, grabbed the bottle of wine, and pulled the cork.

“More?” she asked, holding the bottle at arm’s length.

I laughed to myself about her drunken behavior. She didn’t get drunk often, but when she did, she was generally pretty cute.

“I’m good.”

She poured her glass as full as she was able and sat down. “So, you’re single and I’m single. I think you could have any girl you wanted, and you tell me I could have any guy I wanted. We’re both going without, and it’s fucking ridiculous.”

I shrugged and glanced down at my plate. I was no longer interested in eating, but felt a need to since she had taken the time to prepare it. As I considered taking another bite of chicken, she cleared her throat loudly.

I glanced in her direction.

She tossed her head back, flipped her hair over her shoulders, and pressed her biceps into the sides of her breasts. “I swear, we should just date each other,” she said with a laugh.

I pried my eyes from her bulging breasts, dropped my gaze to my plate, and cut a slice off the end of the chicken breast. Although throughout the course of our entire friendship we had never discussed it, I couldn’t say the thought of fucking Liv hadn’t crossed my mind. In fact, I had spent some time while waiting on a wave doing just that – thinking of fucking her. Dating her, however, was out of the question. I had no desire to be in a relationship with her and chance losing my only friend when the relationship went to hell, and there was no doubt in my mind that it would go straight to hell at some point.

I poked the tines of the fork into the piece of chicken and hesitated for a few seconds, hoping she would change the topic of conversation. My efforts to act as if I heard nothing, however, didn’t last long enough for me to raise the fork to my mouth.

She cleared her throat again. “So, are you going to just keep doing that?”