by Ava May
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FRIEND-ZONED NO MORE
AVA MAY
Friend-Zoned No More
Chapter 1
Sara Dylan pulls into the parking lot, shuts off her car, and steps out of her early 2000 model sedan. She looks up at the building she is parked in front of. Even though she has been here a thousand times before, she still can’t believe that one man could own an entire building. Fifteen stories to yourself. Granted, the first eight floors are solely devoted to R&D, but seven floors to do whatever you want with is an absurd amount in her mind. Closing the door of her car, she clicks her remote and is greeted with the sound of the locks engaging. The clunk of the mechanisms working is plenty loud enough for her to hear, but like every person, she clicks the lock button again and is rewarded with the horn bleating one time, shattering the relative calmness of the parking lot. Placing her keys in her purse, she turns and heads for the front doors of the building. But before she can take two steps, her best friend for over fifteen years now comes out of the front doors in a run.
Sara stands still as Dan Petrie runs across the parking lot dressed in his normal shorts and tank top, his arm and legs bulging with muscle. I bet the man wears that stuff to business meetings when he is pitching his new inventions, she thinks with a smile. His long, dark hair flies out behind him as he runs.
“What took you so long Sara?” Dan asks as he wraps her in a hug.
She relishes the feel of his strong arms around her. “I got caught up in traffic just off the freeway.”
“Sure you did.” He smiles, his dark blue eyes tinkling. “You were with a new boyfriend, weren’t you?”
Somehow, Dan always has a way of knowing when she was lying and where she had been. She didn’t know if it was the way she looked or what, but she could never pull the wool over his eyes on anything. Well, except for one thing, she thinks. One big thing.
“I was on a date, but not with a boyfriend by any means.”
“It was that bad, huh?” Dan asks as he puts an arm around her and guides her toward the building.
“He pulled the whole ‘I forgot my wallet and all I’ve got on me is a few dollars’ bit so he wouldn’t have to pay for my food.”
“What an ass. Did you tell him off?”
“I did. I paid for the whole meal and told him to get lost. I should have known better than to go out with him when I had to pick him up. He said it was because his car was in the shop, but I figure he doesn’t have one. I half suspect that if I would have went inside when he came to the door that I would have found his Mama peeking out the window to see if I was the right girl or not.”
Dan laughs and pats her on the back. “You have the most horrible times with dates, Sara. I swear that I’ll find you a man one day. You have my word.”
“Thanks, but I think I’m done dating for a while. I’m gonna focus on my career and getting myself together first. Maybe lose some weight so I’m not so big.”
“Don’t talk like that.” Dan spins around in front of her. “So what you’re a bigger girl? Be proud of what you are. Don’t let the world demoralize you because you’re not a size two with a thigh gap or whatever. You’re damn beautiful, and you should flaunt it.”
“Easy to say from the six-foot-one man who weighs in at two hundred pounds and all of it is muscle,” she retorts.
“Don’t be like that.” Dan pouts his lips.
“You know I’m kidding, Dan. There is no way that you have a perfect body. I mean, look at the face.”
They share a laugh as they step on the elevator and Dan pushes the button for the fifteenth floor, his bachelor pad, but deep down inside, Sara feels like someone had just taken her stomach and twisted it into a ball. For what seemed like forever, she had been keeping a secret from Dan. She was afraid that if he ever found out that she liked him as more than a friend, it would destroy their friendship, and she valued his friendship so much. He was always there for her when she needed him and they had such great times together. For those reasons, she keep her secret and bit her tongue when she was around him.
The elevator jerks into motion and shoots through the fifteen floors in a matter of seconds. Sara never liked elevators and as she is soaring upwards she remembers why. Her organs still seem to be five floors below when they come to a stop and the doors open to a lavish apartment.
The decorative theme of Dan’s apartment is mostly modern, but he also collects old artifacts from different cultures. Sara never grows tired of looking at the different masks, statues, idols, and weapons from ancient cultures that most have already forgotten. Dan points to the couch and tells her to have a seat while he gets them something to drink. As she sits on the white couch with black pillows she feels the same as she always does. Uncomfortable. For a girl that grew up on a farm playing in dirt and manure, the white couch is an oddity. She is forever afraid when she comes up here and sits that she will dirty the couch and ruin it. It’s not like Dan couldn’t buy more. Heck, he could buy the company if he wanted to, but I would still feel bad, she thinks.
Dan emerges from the kitchen a few minutes later with two large martini glasses in his hands. Each glass is filled with a bright purple liquid. Oh lord, thinks Sara, he’s concocted another new drink and wants to know what I think about it.
“Here.” He hands her one of the martini glasses and sits down opposite to her in a chair. “It’s my new drink. I call it Purple Thunder.”
“You know, if I didn’t know better, I would think that you were gay.”
“Well, I’m not.” Dan grins. “I don’t see why everyone thinks that these drinks are girly or gay. First of all, beer is disgusting. Second, these so-called girly or gay drinks have hard liquor in them, which gets you drunk faster and tastes way better. And tell me this. Most of them contain something that is vaguely similar to punch or Kool-Aid. Who the hell doesn’t like Kool-Aid? No one, that’s who. Everybody likes it.”
“Agreed.” Sara raises her glass to her lips and takes a cautionary sip. She is ready for it to be nasty, as most of Dan’s drink combinations are, but the drink is surprisingly sweet and delicious. She takes a larger drink and smiles. “This is great.”
“Thanks, but you could have said that like the other times weren’t so horrible.”
“Sorry.” She smiles over the glass at him, her blue eyes twinkling. “But most of them were.”
“Yeah, you’re right. So, what are we going to do tonight?”
“I don’t know.” Sara takes another sip of her drink. “To tell you the truth, after the date I just had, I really don’t feel li
ke doing much of anything.”
“Well, how about we have a little dinner here later on? We don’t have to go out anywhere. We can stay here and maybe watch a few bad action movies, pop some popcorn, and have some drinks. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds great, except for the bad action movie part. How about a nice romance or maybe a romantic comedy?”
“No freakin’ way. My love for things female goes only so far as the drinks. I’d rather see the action hero blowing away the bad guys with a machine gun than watch a couple row around in a boat while swans and ducks float gently by and they realize that they have always loved each other.”
“Whatever,” she says with a snort of derision. “That all sounds like a great night, but first, I think I’ll take another one of these Purple Thunders.”
“Coming right up.”
Dan leaps up from the couch as nimble as can be and scoops the glass from Sara’s hand. She watches him walk away with a longing in her heart. For so long at the beginning of their friendship, she tried to hint to him that she liked him as more that just a bro, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t take the hint. Eventually, she gave up and fell into a kind of niche with him. She wasn’t exactly a bro, but she wasn’t exactly a girlfriend either. Over time, she had become a person that he could talk with about the women he was dating. These were the stories that she hated to hear, but she sat through them patiently and offered advice when she could.
Oh, how I wish I would have just come out and told him how I felt about him in the beginning, she thinks to herself as she hears him clinking glasses around in the kitchen. But then again it’s for the best that I didn’t. A man like him would have never went for an overweight girl like me. Face it, Sara—you’re fat and alone.
She smiles as Dan comes back into the living room and places the glass of purple liquid in front of her. Digging in her purse, she comes out with a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Holding them up for him to see, she speaks.
“Do you mind?” She asks the same question every time she comes up here. It is just one of those things that has become a ritual.
“Why do you ask that every time?” He replies and the ritual moves forward.
“I would hate to ruin your bitching pad with my smoking.” She grins and lights up.
“Sure you would. How about some music?”
“None of that rap shit that you listen to.” She exhales smoke and points her finger at him. “I mean it.”
“You know, you’re the first girl I have ever met in the city who doesn’t like rap. Want to hear some country? That’s were you’re from. Head on back down to your roots?” Dan snickers as his voice takes on a southern drawl.
“You know damn well I don’t.” She laughs along with him. “But if you had some nice grove metal or just plain old heavy metal, that would be fine.”
“Yeah. Let’s rock this joint!” Dan shoves his right hand into the air in devil horns as he head bangs to nonexistent music.
Sara laughs and raises her own devil horns. She deepens her voice as she speaks. “Crank it to eleven and rip the knob off!”
The music starts and the chugging riffs, the thundering of the double bass drum, and the roar of the screamer takes Sara back to the night she met Dan.
Chapter 2
Sara wasn’t the most outgoing person at Hinderburrow High. She was about thirty pounds overweight, and even though it was all in the right places, the boys hadn’t started to care about anything other than the cheerleaders and skinny girls. She went through most of the days with her head down. The only real friend she had was Pam, a girl from Boston. Pam tried to get Sara to go to parties with her every weekend, but Sara refused. She was more of a homebody, and besides, no one could make fun of you or ridicule you if you didn’t go.
But tonight was different.
For some reason that Sara couldn’t quite put her finger on, she let Pam talk her into going to a party at Vince’s house outside of town. Apparently his parents were gone for the weekend and he had the house to himself.
Why would any parent ever leave their eighteen-year-old boy alone for the weekend? They watched the shows on television. Did they think that none of that stuff ever really happened? Heck, they had been young once and knew what it was like. So why would they trust anything a hormonal teenager ever said to them? These things were beyond Sara.
She didn’t really want to go, but she dressed up in her best blue jeans and a nice blouse for the occasion. Pam pulled up in front of her house at seven o’clock and started honking the horn on her little car. On the way out the door, Sara’s mother told her to have a good time and gave her twenty dollars. She knew that they didn’t have much, so for her mom to give her a twenty was a huge deal. She stopped and looked at her mom for a moment.
“I want you to have fun tonight, Sara. You never go out and I worry about you.”
“I’m okay, Mom. Really.” She handed the bill back. “Here. I have some money of my own saved up. I’ll use it.”
“No, you won’t.” Sara’s Dad, a tall thin man, stepped around the corner. “You’ll take the money from your Mom and you’ll have yourself a good time tonight. This is the first night you’ve ever went out and we aim to pay for it. Right, Mom?”
“Right.” Her mom nodded her head in agreement and pushed Sara’s hand back toward her chest.
“Thank you both.” Sara gave each of them a kiss and a hug. “When do I need to be back by?”
“Before you go to school on Monday,” her dad joked.
“Dad!” She rolled her eyes and looked to her mother.
“Just be back around midnight, honey.” Her mother responded. “And if you girls get drunk, please call us. Don’t drive home. You won’t get into any trouble if you just call.”
“She’s right, Sara. Don’t drink and drive.”
“I won’t,” Sara told them. They all knew that she would, but they also knew that if she ever got so bad that she couldn’t drive she would call them. It made everyone feel better. “Goodbye.”
“See you in the morning.”
“Have fun,” her father told her.
Sara opened the door and bounded down the steps of her front porch. Pam’s small car sat in her driveway and looked like an ant about to be squashed by a boot as it sat next to her father’s huge farm truck.
Pam stuck her head out the window and whistled loudly. “Looking good, girl!”
Sara blushed. She stopped and struck a seductive pose with her hand on her hip and her butt stuck out. “You know it.”
She hurried the rest of the way to the car and leapt in the passenger seat. The car was small and cramped, but for the first time, she didn’t care. She was too excited. Her door was barely shut before Pam accelerated out of the driveway.
“Are you ready to party you butt off?”
“I am,” Sara responded, but she wasn’t so sure that she was ready. In fact, she had already begun to get cold feet and they were barely out of sight of her house. Pam put some kind of hip-hop on the radio and began to sing along.
Twenty minutes later, they arrived at the party. The sun had just begun to dip below the horizon, but the party was already in full gear. Country music pumped from speakers somewhere inside the house, loud enough that it could clearly be heard outside. As Sara stepped out of the car, she knew right away that she had made a big mistake. She looked around at the people on the porch and only recognized a few of them. The door flew open and a drunk boy about the same age as the two girls ran out. He fell up against the railing on the porch, nearly toppled over as he leaned over it, and threw up all over some tulips that were planted by the porch. Sara was just about to tell Pam that she wanted to go home when her friend grabbed her arm and pulled her up the steps and into the house.
As they entered, Sara happened to glance at a guy who stood beside the door on the porch. She had no idea who he was or where he was from, but she did know one thing. He was absolutely gorgeous. An amazingly built body with long, dark hair and the darke
st blue eyes she had ever seen. He nodded to her and raised his red cup in a greeting. She tried to play it cool, but as always she blushed. She nodded back in return and hurried after Pam as she felt her cheeks redden.
Pam had already found someone she knew to talk to, so Sara grabbed the first drink she came to in the kitchen. The drink was a beer of some kind or another. She hated the taste of beer, but she didn’t really care; she just wanted to get her drink and find a corner out of the way that she could sit in until the night was over.
For a few hours, Sara sat in a chair near the front door, but out of the way. The party fell into full swing and she saw Pam from time to time. No one seemed to pay her any mind and she was glad for it. She nursed her beer as the music changed from country to rap, to hip-hop, and finally back to country. Just as she was about to see if she could find Pam and get her to take her home, the guy from the porch stepped through the doorway. She tried her best to blend into the surroundings, but he noticed her and gave her another nod. She nodded back as her face reddened. The beer she drank to try and hide her blushing almost made her puke because it was hot, but she choked it down.
The guy walked across the room to where Vince was running the stereo and tapped him on the shoulder. After a few minutes of conversation Vince nodded and the guy handed him a CD. Vince put it in, pressed play, and the whole night changed.
The thunder of double bass blasted through the speakers and was quickly followed by a the chugging of a guitar. Finally, some good music, Sara thought as she began to nod her head with the rhythm. A shadow fell over her and she glanced up. Her eyes widened in surprise.
The guy from the porch stood over her with a beer in each hand. He offered one to her and sat down on the coffee table.
“Hey.” He had to shout over the heavy metal.
“Hi.” She took the beer and held it.
