Page 13 of French Kiss

“You guys look tired. Want to throw in the towel now or take your lumps in part two?” Maddox asked when he came back with the Frisbee.

Sweat stinging my eyes, I looked up at him and wondered, again, how he managed to look so fresh and energized. Was he playing the same game I was? For me, every run felt like a sprint to my death in the futile hope I might beat a flying disc that whipped through the air like it had an engine. Maddox was a born athlete, six feet tall and wiry, and those long legs were fast. He’d once told me that his upper body was stronger than the average guy’s because his arms were so long. “I have to bench-press that much farther away from my body, so I build extra bulk.” Whether or not that was true, it didn’t matter. The fact was, Maddox was a super athlete.

“You know this is a recreational game,” I said. “You could tone down the trash talking.” I mopped the sweat off my face with my shirt. If our team had been in the lead, we’d probably be flaunting our success like Maddox was, though I had no way of knowing for sure, since we’d never come close.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Maddox asked, wiping a bead of sweat off his brow with one finger and flicking it away like a nuisance. He winked at me and trotted back to his team’s bench.

“What a dick,” Josh said out of the side of his mouth. He and Maddox were pretty close, and I credited that mostly to Josh’s ability to get along with anyone. For the past two years, they’d been roommates. They couldn’t have been more different, yet I never questioned their bond.

“Yeah, lovable self-inflated goon,” I said.

“Giant ego, annoying personality. The goon part I agree with. What do women see in him?”

“Aside from the obvious?”

“Yeah, aside from the pecs and the abs and the face…”

“He’s nice to look at, and he’s a flirt. But underneath all the bravado, he’s mostly decent and does a good job of hiding the crazy. Same thing you see in him.”

“I don’t look at his pecs or abs.”

“Don’t you?”

Josh gave me a punch in the arm.

“Hey, that was my Frisbee-catching arm.”

“Well, now we have an excuse if we lose,” he said.

“Thank God.”

I could banter with Josh like this all day. I almost told him that he was one of my favorite people in the world. Again. But if I got all sentimental, he’d get annoyed. Nothing rattled him except emotional conversations. He didn’t want to talk about the end of residency because he didn’t want to spend more time being sad than he needed to. He’d just wait until June when everyone moved on and be sad then.

I, on the other hand, was the type of person who needed to prepare for things. I could only successfully live in the moment if I’d thought through all the possible ramifications. If I was going to be moving away from my close friends in five months’ time, I needed to get my mind ready for that kind of sadness and pain by thinking about it for five whole months.

I snuck a discreet glance across the field at Maddox.

“He’s not looking,” Josh said, rolling his eyes. “You can gaze at him in admiration all you want.”

“I wasn’t doing that.” I hated when Josh called me on guilty pleasures I thought were more well-hidden. But Maddox really was hard to ignore. He was like a human Ken doll that I fantasized about twisting to my will.

It had become a bad habit, one that I needed to break. Especially if I was serious about Jordan. Was I serious?

“Just once, I wish a woman would look at me like that.”

“Come on, women look at you like that,” I said. “But we’re subtle. We do it when you don’t notice.”

Josh and I had our own banter, mostly geared toward boosting each other up when our egos took a beating, whether it had to do with residency or not. But he usually didn’t talk about feeling inadequate next to Maddox. He’d always exuded confidence.

“You’re saying you gaze at me with that same dumb besotted expression you have on your face when you look at Maddox?” Josh asked.

“Well, you have throngs of admirers who do just that, but now I refuse to join them because you’re calling me dumb.”

“Not you, just your wistful look. Just once, I’d love to bring that out in a woman.” Josh looked vulnerable all of a sudden, like he was taking it personally that Maddox could make a woman want to sleep with him just by staring at her. I looked at Josh, once more trying to imagine myself wanting him the same way I sometimes wanted Maddox. That stirring in my stomach, the flush on my skin, the shiver I felt when I stood near him.

With his grey-green eyes and straight dark hair, Josh looked like what I’d draw if someone told me to sketch a picture of a regular guy. His beauty came from other places. He seemed to take my non-answer as a decree.

“It’s okay. I accept my limitations. I’m a hundred percent average—average height and weight, conventionally smart like all my Jewish ancestors, and lacking in artistic passion, so medicine is perfect for me.” Josh said it without pity.

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