The Friend Zone

by Abby Jimenez

  We stopped at Del Taco, grabbed food, and ate while we drove. Both of us just wanted to get in bed. I don’t think either of us had slept the night before because of our fight, and we were both spent.

  When we got to her house, we brushed our teeth together and went right to sleep without talking. She curled up against me, and I held her to me all night.

  In the morning, when the sun cracked through her window and I woke up next to her for the first time in weeks, my heart felt full, despite the events of yesterday. I nuzzled into her hair, breathing in the warm fruity scent that was her.

  My hands wandered over her body and I pulled her close, kissing the back of her neck, waking her up slowly. I wanted to get lost in her, just for a little while, before the reality of what we had to go back to came into focus.

  She stirred. “Josh, no.”

  “No what?” I breathed, moving against her, my hand sliding between her legs.

  She wiggled out of my arms and sat up, her hair falling seductively over her eye. “No. We’re not doing that anymore.”

  I slumped. I’d hoped we had moved past this. “Kristen, I don’t care about the hysterectomy. I mean, I care. It’s fucked up and I’m sorry it’s happening to you, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you. We can talk about—”

  “No. And don’t say you don’t care, because that’s bullshit. I didn’t tell you about that so you could say it’s fine, or figure out some sort of work-around.” She flung the blanket off her and got up. “We’re not seeing each other anymore. I let you stay with me last night so you wouldn’t be alone. That’s it.”

  She turned for the bathroom, and I got out of bed and followed her.

  She stood in front of the sink putting toothpaste on her toothbrush, and I came up behind her and slid my hands over her shoulders. She shrugged me off.

  I looked at her through the mirror. “Kristen, we’re in love with each other. I want to be with you. Let’s sit down and have a convers—”

  She whirled on me. “No.” Her face was hard. “I listened to you talk about having kids for months. We’ve already had the conversation. Plenty of times. And there is absolutely nothing you can say to me now to convince me that’s suddenly not some major priority for you. I can’t give you a family. I’m no different from Celeste.”

  “Celeste didn’t want kids. It’s not the same thing,” I said.

  She scoffed, waving around her toothbrush. “Isn’t it? The outcome is the same. In vitro is only forty percent successful—did you know that? Do you even know what it costs? Or how hard it is to find a surrogate? We could try for years, go broke, and never even have one baby. Not even one.”

  “Then we can adopt, foster—”

  She rolled her eyes and gave me her back as she ran her toothbrush under the faucet and put it in her mouth.

  “Kristen, you’re being ridiculous.”

  I put my hands back on her shoulders and she shrank away from me.

  She spit in the sink and turned back to me. “Josh, it’s not gonna happen, okay?”

  My jaw flexed. “Why not? You have no right to make this decision for me. I want to be with you. If I say it doesn’t change anything for me, then it doesn’t.”

  She laughed. “It changes everything.” She blinked at me. “Josh, I meant what I said. I do love you. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. And I love you too much to let you settle.” Her eyes softened slightly. “I know you think this is what you want right now. But in a few years, when you have a pregnant wife and kids running around, you’ll see that I was right. I can’t give you your baseball team. And I won’t take it from you.”

  I reached for her and she pushed my hand away. “No.”

  “You are not Celeste. You’re not even in the same league. And I’m sorry if things I said before I knew about this made you feel badly. I didn’t know—”

  “I know you didn’t know. That’s how I know you were being honest.”

  “I love you,” I said, looking her in the eye.

  She shook her head. “And what does love have to do with it? Love is completely impractical, Josh. It’s stupid. And you should never use it to make decisions.” Her eyes were determined and level. She pulled her hair from its ponytail and grabbed a towel. “We need to take showers and go back to the hospital. And I don’t want to talk about this. Ever again.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Kristen

  It was twenty-one days after Brandon’s accident and almost as long since I’d last spoken to Josh. The date of the wedding came and went, and Brandon hadn’t woken up for it.

  I spent my time between the hospital and Sloan’s house where I watered her plants and brought in packages. I washed whatever laundry she left when she did her momentary stops at home to shower and change before heading back to the ICU. I checked her mail. I’d made all the calls to her wedding vendors to cancel the wedding until further notice.

  At the hospital I brought books, magazines, coffee, and food for Sloan so she never had to leave her bedside vigil for anything trivial.

  Then I went home to my empty house.

  I cleaned for hours on end. I pulled out the contents of every cabinet in my kitchen and washed it all. I wiped out the drawers in the bathroom. I took apart my bed to vacuum underneath, and all the vacuum lines on the carpet had to be in just the right direction. I detailed the grout in my laundry room. I took a toothpick to the cracks in the stove, and I thirsted for relief from my own mind.

  My perfectionism was something I harnessed and cultivated for my own purposes. Something useful that made me focused so I could get things done.

  But now it was spiraling. None of the rituals made it better. Nothing shut off the urges or satisfied the feelings of incompleteness. Nothing gave me control again.

  I missed Josh. I missed him like I missed my sanity.

  It had become clear, almost immediately, that the burden of saving him from himself was going to fall on me.

  After I’d told him it was over between us, he refused to drop it. So I’d stopped answering his calls. Avoided him at the hospital and refused to speak to him when I did see him. Since I gave Miguel his old job back, my garage was empty and lifeless. The smell of Josh’s cologne on the throw pillows on my sofa was so faint it never puffed around me anymore when I sat down.

  It was for his own good.

  And the beast inside me roared.

  Every day it got louder. Nobody could tame it. Josh could calm me, but I wouldn’t let him close enough to try.

  Nurse Valerie buzzed me into the ICU. I slid the container of cupcakes across the counter of the nurses’ station. “Nadia Cakes.”

  She beamed at me. “You’re too good to us, girl.” She pulled the cupcakes down in front of her, looking over the assortment.

  Sloan had assigned me the job of bringing thank-yous to the nursing staff. Donuts, cookies, flowers. I tried to bring something every couple of days. The nurses had made all the difference in this situation.

  Valerie tapped her pen absently on top of the clear container and eyed me. “Can I ask you something?”

  I leaned over the counter, sorting her pens by color. “What?”

  I liked Valerie. She was my favorite nurse. She was no-nonsense. We’d hit it off immediately.

  “What did that boy do to you? ’Cause I can’t see any reason on my end why you’re not all over that man like white on rice.”

  Josh. Somehow in the last few weeks, the hospital staff had gotten wind of the Josh situation.

  “Valerie, we’ve talked about this.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Have we? ’Cause you came off a little evasive if you ask me.”

  I shook my head at her. I wasn’t getting into it.

  She twisted her lips and gave me a knowing grin. “That man drives you crazy.”

  I snorted. “I don’t need him to drive me crazy. I’m close enough at this point to walk.”

  She leaned back in her chair, chuckling. “Go on, girl. Sloan’s be
en waiting for you.”

  I turned for Brandon’s room. Sloan sat in her usual spot, a leg tucked under her. She looked good today. She must have gotten good news. She was pale and dark circles cradled her eyes, but she was smiling.

  I hugged her shoulders and took a seat in the empty chair next to her.

  “They’re taking him off the ventilator tomorrow.” She beamed.

  “Really?”

  “They took him off the ICP catheter. The swelling in his brain is gone. The doctor says he’s really hopeful, that his scans lit up.” She smiled down at Brandon, lying there as he had been for the last three weeks. “Kristen, he might be okay. Like, really, really okay.”

  Her eyes teared up and I hugged her. The beast retreated slightly.

  She put a hand on his stomach. “He’s going to have months of physical therapy. He might have to relearn things like talking. But he’s still in there.”

  Valerie came in and Sloan grinned up at her.

  “Ready for today’s sedation vacation?” Valerie asked, fiddling with a drip bag.

  Sloan was practically bouncing. “This is what I wanted to show you. Every day they lift the sedation a little to see how his vitals respond. Not too much, or he’ll fight the ventilator, but just enough to make him a little aware.”

  We sat and watched him for a few moments.

  “All right, baby girl,” Valerie said. “Do your thing.”

  Sloan smiled and picked up Brandon’s hand. “Babe, can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

  I held my breath and watched his fingers.

  They squeezed.

  Sloan let out a laugh that pushed tears from her eyes. “Did you see? Babe, squeeze twice if you love me.”

  Two squeezes.

  Our laughter was the sound of relief. Hers was that Brandon was still in there.

  Mine was that she was.

  She kissed his hand. “One more day, babe. One more day and then I’m going to get to see you, okay? I love you so much.”

  When Valerie put him back under, Sloan’s elation still lingered on her beautiful face. But she looked so, so tired.

  “It’s your turn to go home tonight, right?” I asked.

  She and Claudia rotated nights in the ICU with the occasional help from Josh or Shawn so they could get sleep in a real bed now and then. Brandon’s parents both had bad backs and couldn’t sleep in a chair and Sloan refused to leave Brandon alone.

  She never left longer than a few hours, but the night in a bed always transformed her. She looked like she hadn’t been transformed in a while.

  “No, Claudia had to go back to work,” she said. “I’ve done the night shift for the last three days.”

  “Want me to do a shift?” I asked. Brandon and I were friendly, but we weren’t close. For this reason, she’d never taken me up on my offer to stay the night. I guess she worried about awkward silences?

  She shook her head. “Josh is staying tonight so I can go home. He should be here any second, actually,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the door.

  “I should go, then.” I got up.

  “Kristen.” She put a hand on my wrist. “He misses you so much. Are you sure you’re doing the right thing?”

  “I’m doing the right thing for him.”

  Whether it’s right for me isn’t relevant.

  I hugged her one more time and made my way down the hall. When Valerie buzzed me out, Josh was coming in.

  It was the first time I’d seen him in over a week. We both froze.

  His presence was a physical caress, like a gust of warm air.

  My eyes pored over him. He had his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and he wore the shirt he’d won at trivia night—he wore the shit out of it too.

  It was amazing how anything he had on looked sexy on him. The man could wear a burlap sack and look incredible. I knew just looking at it what it would smell like, and I wished I could put my nose to the blue cotton.

  He’d lost weight. His muscles were more defined. His dimples didn’t show, because he didn’t smile.

  He looked good—but he looked sad.

  He’d get over it soon enough. A few babies from now and he wouldn’t even remember me.

  He didn’t make any move to get out of my path. I looked away and walked past him, and he stood like a statue, eyes on me. Then suddenly a hand shot out and touched my arm. It trailed lightly down my forearm as I walked on, across the top of my hand, over my fingers, and then it was gone.

  I didn’t jerk away because that would have been acknowledging that he was even there.

  But the few seconds of contact moved through my whole body.

  I felt it the rest of the day.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Josh

  I took off my glasses and pinched the bridge of my nose, setting the book down on the table by Brandon’s hospital bed. “Sorry, I gotta take a break. Shantaram is long, man.”

  It would take me a month to read it to him, but it was the book he’d started at the station before the accident, and I knew he’d want to hear it.

  It only took me a minute before my thoughts slid back to Kristen. My mind always slid back to Kristen.

  At least at work I had distractions. I picked up extra shifts when I could so I wouldn’t be at home, staring at the walls of my studio, thinking about her or worrying about Brandon. I went to the gym on my days off after visiting the hospital. I went all day sometimes. I’d unpacked my apartment, bought a couch and a TV. Tried to stay busy.

  But inevitably, no matter what I was doing, I was thinking about her.

  And now, without the book to read, sitting there with Brandon in the middle of the night, I had nothing to do but think.

  I checked my watch: 2:12 a.m. I pictured Kristen, sleeping on her side under her flower bedspread. Her hand tucked under her favorite pillow—the one with the beige flannel pillowcase. Stuntman Mike curled up on top of the blanket in the tangle of her legs. The clock on her nightstand giving me just enough light to see her long lashes across her smooth cheeks.

  I mentally pulled the blanket up to her chin and kissed her forehead and saw her eyes flutter open as she smiled at me.

  Fuck, I missed her.

  “I wish you could talk to me,” I said to Brandon. “Tell me what to do. I need you to wake up and straighten me out. Or even better, wake up and straighten her out.”

  I dragged a hand down my face. When I saw her today, it just confirmed what I already knew. I wasn’t ever going to get over her. I wasn’t ever going to not miss her.

  She was punishing me for a crime I didn’t even know I’d committed. For things I had said and things I wanted before I knew what they’d mean later. Every comment had been a nail in the board across the door she’d closed on me.

  “I don’t even know how to begin to convince her,” I said. “She won’t even speak to me.” I snorted. “Leave it to me to be in love with the world’s most stubborn woman.”

  I tried to think about what Brandon’s response to this would be. He was always so level-headed. He would know what to do.

  The more I tried to sway her, the further she distanced herself. The more I told her I loved her, the more she shut down. And I didn’t know how to stop it.

  I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, and I peered around the cold, sterile room. Beige walls. Gray machines around the bed. Some I recognized, some I didn’t. The only sounds at the late hour were the faint jingle of a phone ringing in the nurses’ station, the ping of an elevator, the faraway sound of the wheels of a cart, and the gentle beep of Brandon’s vital signs monitor.

  They wouldn’t allow any flowers or personal items in the ICU, but Sloan had snuck in an engagement photo. It sat on the table next to the bed. Her and Brandon on the beach, the surf crashing around their feet, her tattooed arm over his shoulder, them looking at each other. Both of them laughing.

  I looked back at him and sighed. “You’re going to have some gnarly scars, buddy.” They’d sta
rted the skin grafts for the road rash on his arm. “But you’ll get to do everything you planned to do with your life. One of us is going to get the girl. I’ll help you any way I can. Even if I have to wheel your ass to the altar.”

  I could picture his smile. With any luck I’d see it in a few hours.

  A knock on the door frame turned me around in my chair.

  “Hey, cutie.” Valerie came into the room for her vitals check. She turned the lights up, and I stood and stretched.

  As if sleeping in a chair wasn’t hard enough, the activity every two hours was the final kicker. I wouldn’t call anything I did on these overnight shifts sleeping. Maybe napping, but not sleeping. Every two hours Brandon was moved. They checked his airways, changed out bags, looked at his vitals. I don’t know how Sloan was handling doing this almost nightly for the last three weeks.

  Sloan was a good woman. I’d always liked her, but now she’d earned my respect, and I was grateful Brandon and Kristen had her.

  “Did you decide what day you want to bring the kids to the station?” I asked Valerie, yawning.

  She cycled the blood pressure cuff on Brandon’s arm and smiled. “I’m thinking Tuesday. You on shift Tuesday?”

  “Yup.”

  She wrote down some notes on Brandon’s chart and then gave me a raised eyebrow. “Any updates with your lady friend?”

  I laughed a little. “No.”

  The whole nursing staff knew about my depressing love life. I’d gotten hit on a few too many times by some of the younger nurses. I couldn’t claim to have a girlfriend, and I wasn’t married, so it was either “I’m gay” or “I’m in love with that girl over there.”

  I’d gone with the latter, and now I wished I’d said I was gay.

  They didn’t know why Kristen wouldn’t date me, just that she wouldn’t. It had turned into the favorite topic of the ICU. A real-life episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I rarely got through a Brandon visit without it coming up.

  The drama escalated when Kristen had been hit on by the nurses’ favorite single orthopedic surgeon. According to the nurses’ gossip circuit, Kristen told him to go fuck himself.