The Friend Zone(36)

“Because this is a sex thing, Joshua. It will only ever be a sex thing. We’re not dating. There are not going to be any public displays of affection or hand-holding or any of it. If you can’t deal with that, then let’s stop this right now.”

I stared at her, and she looked back at her screen, emotionless.

“Okay.” I straightened up. “Well, I’ll see you in a few days. For sex.”

“Bye,” she said, talking to her computer.

I gave her one more lingering look. She never raised her eyes.

A wall. An enormous wall had suddenly come up between us. What the hell?

I didn’t understand it. Could she actually be serious about this? She didn’t want to date me? At all? Ever? Why?

This wasn’t some girl I wanted to call at 2:00 in the morning to bang and leave. I liked her. I more than liked her—I wanted to be with her. I’d been hoping this was the start of something between us. If she’d wanted to be exclusive, I would have slapped on the boyfriend title in a second.

Could this be about Tyler? I mean, I guess I just thought by how quickly she’d thrown herself at me that she wasn’t too upset over the breakup.

We hadn’t talked about it—I certainly wasn’t going to bring up Tyler if she wasn’t, and she hadn’t broached the subject. She didn’t really filter, so if he’d been on her mind or the breakup was fucking with her, she’d say it, right?

But the only thing she was saying was that she didn’t want me.

It ate at me the whole way to work.

Once I got to the station, Shawn put me through a two-hour list of shitty probie chores. By the time I had a chance to talk to Brandon, he was working out.

The gym was a large gray-carpeted room off the apparatus bay. One treadmill, a bike, and an elliptical that nobody ever used sat in a row facing a mirrored wall. Three weight benches, a punching bag, and a rack of weights lined the other wall with a view of the fire engine through a large window.

I grabbed a cup of water from the watercooler by the door and took a weight bench next to where Brandon sat doing curls. “Hey. Sloan’s car broke down on us last night. Stranded us in a fucking parking lot in Skid Row.” I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees, holding my water cup between my legs. “And I hooked up with Kristen.”

Brandon finished his set. “Well, I can’t say either thing really surprises me.” He pivoted to face me and grinned, bouncing his eyebrows.

I took another swallow of my water. “She broke up with her boyfriend last night.”

“Good.” He started doing curls on his other arm. “Sloan’ll be happy.”

“Well, I’m glad someone’s getting what they want out of it. She doesn’t want to date me. Sex only.”

“Okay. What’s the problem?” He set his weight down with a thump. “I thought you didn’t want to date. Didn’t you blow off that yoga instructor?”

“This is different. I like Kristen. A lot. And we get along. We get along fucking great. And the weird thing is I know she likes me too—I can tell. Something doesn’t feel right.” I finished my water and crushed the cup, tossing it into the trash can by the towels.

“Hmm. How was the sex?” he asked.

I scoffed. “Fuck, it was the best sex I’ve ever had. Not even kidding.”

She’d pounced me like a hungry tiger that escaped its cage. The way she smelled, the way she tasted—even thinking about it made my dick twitch.

Shawn came through the door and tossed a gym towel onto the weight rack. “What up, fellas?”

Brandon and I nodded at him.

“Just ask her what her deal is,” Brandon said. “It’s probably because she just broke up with what’s-his-face. Kristen’s pretty blunt. I don’t imagine her not telling you exactly what she’s thinking if you asked.”

Shawn sat on the other bench next to Brandon. “You talking about Kristen? Sloan’s friend? She’s single now? She’s hot as fuck. I’d hit it.” He lay down and scooted under the weight bar.

I grabbed his towel and threw it at him. “Hey, asshole, she’s taken.”

Shawn laughed, dragging the towel off his face. “Not by you.”

“Yes, by me.” Sort of.

He paused with his hands on his barbell and looked over at me. “Damn! You’re crushing that? She’s gone slumming, bro!”

I gave him the finger.

Brandon chuckled. “Do you want me to ask Sloan?”

“No.” Kristen and Sloan would see that shit a mile away. “Don’t ask. Don’t tell her what I said, yeah?”

He picked his weight up and started doing curls again. “Just see how it goes. Give it a few weeks.”

Shawn grinned. “Can’t nail that shit down, huh?”

I ignored him and stood up to grab weights for my barbell. I wasn’t getting into this with him. Relationship advice from Shawn was the last thing I fucking needed. He’d had his car egged by girls so many times we’d had to start locking the gate to the fire station parking lot.

Shawn grunted through his set and put the bar back on the rack with a clang. “She probably wants to get back with the ex.”

“He reenlisted. It’s why they broke up,” I said, wanting to put that theory to bed. “He’s not coming back.”