Sharing Is Caring – Chapter 1 – The Offer
Three months.
That’s how long it had been since anyone other than a battery-operated device had shown genuine interest in my body.
The device was outperforming the field. It didn’t cancel last minute. It didn’t ghost after a promising second date. If anything, it had exceeded expectations, which says less about the device and more about the field.
I mentioned this to Lesley over wine, because Lesley is the kind of best friend you can mention this to without her flinching, gasping, or reaching for a self-help book on my behalf.
“Three months,” she repeated, like she was doing math she didn’t like the answer to.
“Give or take.”
“Jean.”
“I’m fine. I’m thriving. I bought a very good vibrator.”
“That’s not thriving, that’s triage.”
“It’s self-sufficiency.”
“It’s a cry for help with excellent battery life.”
I threw a couch pillow at her. She caught it without spilling her wine, which is a skill Lesley’s had since college and one I’ve never forgiven her for.
Lesley had not had my problem.
She broke up with her boyfriend the same week I broke up with mine, back in June. While I spent the summer recalibrating my entire relationship with hope, Lesley spent it doing what Lesley does best – meeting people, discarding the boring ones, and keeping one specific guy on rotation she’d described as “gorgeous, athletic, and roughly as verbal as a golden retriever.”
“How’s the retriever,” I asked.
“Excellent. Very good at fetch.”
“Please never say that again.”
“I stand by it.” She topped off both our glasses, entirely too pleased with herself. “He’s not going to win any debates. But God, Jean, the stamina.”
“I hate you.”
“You don’t hate me, you’re jealous, there’s a difference.”
“Same thing, different tax bracket.”
She laughed, and I let myself laugh too, because it was funny, objectively, the sheer unfairness of it – Lesley, casually swimming in options, and me, three months into a relationship with a rechargeable silicone object I’d started referring to, in my head, with something dangerously close to affection.
“At least yours is useful,” I said, gesturing vaguely at her phone, where the guy in question had apparently just texted something, because her face did the specific thing it does.
“I can share.”
I laughed. Actually laughed, wine-in-throat laughed, because obviously she was joking, obviously that sentence was a bit, the kind of thing best friends say to each other over a second bottle of wine that neither of them means literally.
“You’re disgusting,” I said.
“You didn’t say no.”
I opened my mouth to say no.
I did not, in fact, say no.
I said, “That’s not – I mean, obviously – that’s not a real offer.”
“Isn’t it, though.”
“Lesley.”
“I’m just saying. He’s not complicated. He’s not going to fall in love with you. He’s not going to fall in love with me, honestly, I don’t think he’s capable of falling in love with anything that doesn’t have a leash or a group chat named after him.”
She said this with genuine, unbothered affection, the way you’d describe a golden retriever you were extremely fond of, which, given her own metaphor, tracked.
“I’m just saying there’s a lot of him to go around, and you’ve had a rough three months, and I’m a generous person.”
“You’re a menace.”
“I contain multitudes.”
I should have left it there.
I changed the subject, we talked about her sister’s wedding, we ordered food, the conversation moved on the way conversations do, easy and looping and unserious.
But somewhere around eleven, three glasses of wine deep, Lesley looked at me over the top of her glass with an expression I’d come to recognize over fifteen years of friendship as I’ve already decided something and I’m just waiting for you to catch up.
“I’m serious, by the way,” she said. “About sharing.”
“You cannot possibly be serious.”
“Dead serious. What’s mine is yours. Consider it a group project.”
“That is the worst use of the phrase ‘group project’ I have ever heard in my life.”
“I got an A on every group project I’ve ever done, Jean. I know how to delegate.”
I laughed until I had to put my glass down.
I told myself, walking home that night, that it was a joke.
A good one. A Lesley one. The kind that gets said after three glasses of wine, gets a laugh, and dies quietly of embarrassment by morning.
At 9:07 the next morning, my phone buzzed.
Lesley: I asked him.
I stared at the message.
Three little dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
Then:
Lesley: He said yes.
I put my phone facedown on the kitchen counter.
Picked it back up.
Read it again.
Apparently we were doing this.