It's up to you

 Jared made the mistake of calling Jade to ask her what he should do about the Nori situation. After all, it was big news. She wanted him to meet her parents at Thanksgiving.

"I don't even do Thanksgiving," he said before he could think that he'd spent Thanksgiving with his brother, but that was different. This was evidently a real Thanksgiving that counted.

"What is going on with you?" She'd told him he was setting himself up for disaster if he was going to spaz like this over a dinner with her parents. So she handed over the phone to Ari and he told him the same thing, if he was that worried, he could come and help him build a new shelving unit for the livingroom.

Oddly, he didn't know Jade's husband well. He was usually at work. Of course, Jade felt he was doing all the work afterward with the shelving unit. Ari read off directions, and Jared just went with putting the pieces together. Honestly, it was pretty easy, but Ari looked at it as if it were a foreign math problem.

"You gotta keep calm during these Thanksgiving dinners. You know, find out what Nori expects. Have her dress you for the occasion."

"Oh." Jared nodded after they opened hard cider drinks and snacked on nutty trail mix.

"You gotta be in this together to win it." Ari made it sound like a playbook of some kind.

"I'm just afraid I'll be too goofy," he sighed. That's when he told him how he had to drink a few beers before meeting his first girlfriend's friends. "That was ages ago. They were college friends, and I wasn't in college then." He didn't want to tell Ari he thought he'd still be with her, but she had a family now. Needless to say he wasn't in the picture. And now he wondered if he'd drank too much back then. He was just a casual drinker now. He certainly didn't want to get sloshed before he met Nori's parents.

He also told Ari how Nori didn't think they should move in together just yet. "I just feel my time is up with Justin. I know he doesn't want me around."

"Well, you've been saving up, why don't you get your own place?" Ari suggested. "Maybe, you can show Nori that you are independent. Maybe she thinks you're too needy.

Jared laughed at the thought, but it made him a little dizzy at the thought too. "I guess I could." He just didn't want to be alone.

"Get a dog." Ari told him.

"A dog?" Jared sighed with a laugh. He'd never had his own dog.