The Science of Growing Apart

22- Dress

For two days straight, I didn't stop thinking about what Casey said at the bar.

I was always looking, Josie.

How had I never seen it? Even when I try reliving every second of our four year friendship, I couldn't remember a single time that he ever let on to finding me attractive. Granted, I was hiding it from him too, but I never thought of him to be a very good secret-keeper. In some ways, it was a little bit of an ego boost to know that all of my efforts to attract him were actually not a waste like I always thought they were. In other ways, it started to ignite a very dangerous fire inside of me that I was so familiar with.

A fire that I tried to stomp out in my mind, tried to remind myself that those feelings couldn't come back because nobody should have a flame in their belly for another woman's fiance. It was only going to hurt me in the end, and yet... those words continued playing repeatedly over and over in my head and in my dreams.

The dreams, I'll add, that had not gone away at all since I walked into his apartment and saw him all sweaty and taut, standing there in just a towel. I thought they'd dissipate by now, but every time I saw him, it was like it reignited their fury.

All of these reasons were why I needed a date with somebody who wasn't Casey, and I needed it fast. I even started pulling out some older clothes from the back of my closet that I hadn't worn since college. The plunging necklines and tight skirts that were sure to get the job done. Desperate times, desperate measures and all that.

As I was pulling these clothes out, piling them on my bed to try them on, my phone started ringing and I nearly tripped over Tulip sleeping on my bedroom carpet to get to the phone that was resting on the corner of my desk. Only one person would be calling me at nine p.m. on a weeknight and my chest was already feeling a pathetic sense of warmth.

"Hello," I answered quickly.

"Hey," Casey responded. "I know this is breaking your weekly call rule, so you can hang up if you want. I don't really even have anything important to talk about, but do you still watch Survivor?"

"I'm always a sucker for reality TV, of course I still watch Survivor. Although I'm not caught up. All my TV time right now is being consumed by binging every season of Love Island. Don't spoil it for me, I'll catch up eventually."

"What's Love Island about?"

"Just a bunch of really hot English people hooking up and being dramatic." I put the phone on speaker so that I could sit it on my dresser and slide into one of my little black dresses. "Natalie got me into it, it's a riveting show."

He paused and then said, "She doesn't like me very much, huh?"

"What makes you say that?" I zipped up the dress and started looking at how it hugged my body a bit more than it did in college. I'd gained a bit of weight in my hips since I was twenty and I blamed that on my late night writing sessions and tight deadlines. I liked my new hips, and I loved how they looked in the dress.

"I think she made it pretty clear at the bar," he chuckled lightly. I knew that Natalie could be passive aggressive when she wanted to be, but she really let that part of her fly at the bar with Casey, occasionally throwing jabs at him, but usually in a friendly tone with a laugh following like she'd just told a joke. It clearly left Casey feeling confused and I would quickly try to steer the conversation in another direction.

"Yeah, she did," I admitted, even though I'd rather just lie and say that she was just like that and she actually didn't hate Casey, it was so obvious that she did. I start sliding the dress off of my shoulders until it pools around my ankles and step out of it to hang it back up in the closet, this time pushing it to the front. "I guess she does feel a little bit uneasy about you. She had a 4-D front row seat to how sad I was when you left."