The Science of Growing Apart

17- Normal

The next night as I'm watching reruns of Dexter with a bowl of popcorn, my phone starts to ring. I can tell that Casey had fallen right back into the habit of our nightly calls from high school, because this is becoming a pattern for him.

"Hello," I greeted him after pausing the TV.

"Hey," he responded quietly. "The casual talk ban has been lifted, right? I could probably think up a question about the article to bring up, but I just feel like maybe you've changed your mind?"

"I'm officially lifting the ban," I confirmed. "Don't make me regret it, please."

"I won't." I listened to his long exhale of breath, as if he had been holding it in for hours. "I promise."

"So, what's up?"

"I just wanted to thank you again for coming to the dinner last night," he said. I continued eating my popcorn, because cold popcorn just wasn't as good. "And your joke was a hit."

"That's good. Nobody caught on to my dick joke, right? It was totally subtle."

"Not that I know of. Well, except for Rebecca, but only because you were snickering right beside her about it, so that kind of gave it away," he laughed. "I got an ear full about that when we got home."

"Oh. Sorry." I didn't know how to respond to that because I didn't mean to cause a fight and Casey obviously had final say on what he decided to put into his speech. "You blamed me, right? She already doesn't like me, so you might as well just use me as a scape goat."

"What makes you think that she doesn't like you?"

"Well, does she?"

His silence answered my question for me.

"Knew it."

"It's nothing against you or anything," he assured me quickly, but I could hear that he was struggling for the right way to phrase what he wanted to say next. "You know what it is? I just think you have different senses of humor."

"She doesn't think that dick jokes are funny?" I wondered, feeling so appalled, as if it was news to me that some people's sense of humor ever matured passed ninth grade.

"She's got a very no-nonsense way about her," Casey explained to me. "I mean, she has a soft side that she shows to me, but for the most part, she's got a tough shell."

"That's probably why she doesn't like me. I'm very pro nonsense."

I felt his laugh and it was like liquid gold being funneled right into my ear. "Honestly, I think I might have sabotaged things from the beginning," he admitted, sounding sheepish. "Because I told her what you told me, about how you felt about me back then. Not to start anything, but I was just so shocked and it came out."

"Oh." Things suddenly made a bit more sense. The cold shoulder, the subtle glares when she looked at me. Although that was six years ago, so I didn't feel like it was completely warranted. I didn't have those feelings anymore... probably. "It's good that you told her, I guess. You shouldn't keep secrets from your fiancee."

"Yeah, but she'll come around. Everybody that meets you loves you, Josie, once they get to know you," he assured me. "But also, you don't have to be her friend or anything. She has friends that I don't hang out with, I can have friends that she doesn't hang out with too. So don't stress about it too much."

"I hate knowing that there's somebody out there in the world that doesn't like me," I said to him with a cringe.

"I know," he responded with a gentle chuckle. "It'll work out."

"So tell me how did you crack her tough shell? I can see you really being scared shitless around somebody as no-nonsense as Rebecca."

"She did scare me shitless," he confirmed easily. "But I don't know, she's really smart and always asking me to study with her. Which, at the time, I just thought she needed help but over the years, I've realized that she's really capable of her own microbiology material. But anyway, so we were studying together a lot and that's how we got to know each other. And then I just asked her out one day."

"You just asked her out," I said with a laugh. "It was that easy for you?"

"Okay, when I say I just asked her out, I mean I spent two straight days on the phone with Ellie while she convinced me to go for it. And she'd just gotten back from her honeymoon, so she was probably exhausted, but she dealt with my crap."

"That sounds more like it. And how did you propose? Hopefully not with as much involvement from your sister?"

"No," he laughed. "But still not a very romantic story. She was hinting very heavily at wanting to get engaged, already had the ring picked out and everything. I wasn't as nervous because I knew she wanted this. So I took her to a nice dinner and asked her over dessert. Wasn't very surprising either, I'm pretty sure she saw it coming."

"Were there tears? Did anybody get it on camera?" I asked him eagerly. I loved a proposal story, they were always so romantic in their own way.

"No tears, no video footage," he shot me down. "I don't think I'm a romantic guy."

"Huh. That's surprising."

"It is?"

"Yeah, I mean, I would imagine the Casey I knew to be quite a romantic guy, in his own weird and nerdy way," I admitted to him. "But that doesn't matter. Your relationship works in whatever way it works for you, doesn't have to sound romantic to anybody else."

"What exactly shouted romantic to you when I was a teenager?" He clearly was not letting that go.

"I don't know, Casey. You would always go to school dances with me, and dance, even though you hated it and only did it for me. You brought me soup when I was sick, sent me playlists. You were just really good at making sure the people you cared about knew that you cared about them."

"Huh." He seemed to think about that for a while and I didn't know what to say in response.

"Do you think I should talk to Rebecca? Let her know that I don't have those feelings for you anymore and that I'm not, like I don't know, a threat?" I asked him curiously.

Casey started to laugh and said, "Don't worry about Rebecca. Josie, really."

"It bothers me," I reiterated.

"Honestly, I think the more you tried, the more she would dislike you," he warned me. "I'll talk to her about being friendlier."

"No, don't," I said quickly, not wanting that to be a discussion between them. How embarrassing would it be to have him tell her that I think she's being mean to me, like I'm a kindergartner who can't speak for myself. "It's fine."

I finished my bowl of popcorn and set the empty bowl on the coffee table, leaning back into my plush couch. "I really missed having these night talks with you, Josie," he told me out of the blue. "I don't know what it is about talking out loud when the world is so quiet that makes it so easy to say everything."

"Yeah," I agreed with him. "I missed it too."

"Can we do something on Tuesday?" he asked me. "Go to the gardens or something like we used to?"

"I can't on Tuesday, I'm going bowling with my dad and his lady friend," I told him, but before I could propose a new date for us to hang out, he was interrupting me.

"Can I come?" he asked enthusiastically. "I miss your dad so much."

"Um, yeah, I guess you can come," I said slowly. "It's the first time I'm meeting his lady friend, so he's kind of nervous about it. Maybe you'll be able to ease his tension a bit."

"Is he mad at me?" He sounded cautious now, as if the thought had just occurred to him that I might not be the only person upset with him for how things happened.

"No, he's been pretty forgiving," I assured him, deciding not to tell him about Natalie, who was completely and absolutely not forgiving.

He didn't need to worry about that yet.