The Friend Zone(53)

“Nope.” I marched past him to the front door. “You’ll just have to make my excuses to the ma?tre d’.” I stomped outside.

He ran around me to the passenger side of his SUV and held my door open. I got in grouchily and stared into the garage as Tyler slipped into the driver’s seat.

Josh stood over a staircase holding a nail gun with Stuntman leashed by his feet. Josh looked at me for a flicker of a second before he turned back to his project, his jaw tight. I wondered what he thought of all this.

Stuntman barked and strained against his leash as we pulled out of the driveway, and I couldn’t shake the super weird feeling I was leaving my family behind.

Tyler’s sandalwood cologne was more concentrated in the closed SUV. It blasted my face through the AC, familiar and new at the same time, stirring feelings of nostalgia in my heart.

“I missed you,” he said. He reached for my hand, but I yanked it away.

The heavy-duty door that I’d stashed Tyler behind rattled and shook and then it burst open. A tornado of emotions rotated around me, and I couldn’t process any of them. All I knew was that the general consensus was that I was pissed.

I felt indignant about him making his choice without the courtesy of even speaking to me first.

There was guilt that he was no longer the last man I’d slept with. That I’d jumped on Josh literally within minutes of us breaking up without so much as a twinge of regret.

Hurt that he seemed hurt.

Confusion as to why he was even here.

Surprise that seeing him made me wonder why I’d been so nervous about us moving in together.

Anger that he didn’t have more of an effect on me when we were still together so Josh might have had less.

Outrage that he hadn’t kept his promises so I would have to keep mine.

Pissed.

That was the muddied summary of how I felt. I was just pissed.

I glanced at Tyler. He seemed to be upset that I hadn’t let him hold my hand. His face had darkened. “Are you sleeping with him?”

We both knew who he was talking about. There was no reason to act coy.

“That is none of your business,” I snapped.

“Were you sleeping with him when we were together?” He didn’t look at me, but his knuckles were white on the wheel.

I fumed. “You know what? Stop the car. Let me out.” I unbuckled myself.

“Kris—”

“Fuck you, Tyler. I was faithful to you. And I didn’t do this shit to our relationship. You did it. If you didn’t want me sleeping with other people, you shouldn’t have broken up with me. You gave up the privilege to be butt hurt the second you left me that voicemail.”

He didn’t stop the car.

“Okay,” he said after a moment. “Okay, I apologize. I know you wouldn’t do that. I just…seeing how he was about you, I…I’m sorry.”

How was he about me? What the fuck happened in the garage? I wasn’t going to ask, but what the hell?

We drove in silence for several minutes. When he finally spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper. “Do you love him?”

I ignored him. This answer was one that hurt to admit to myself. I turned to the window and tried to sort my feelings by staring out at the freeway.

As expected, he picked some ridiculously dim, hoity-toity seafood place in Malibu. Our table was under a stupid lamp made out of coral with a view of the ocean. He pulled my chair out for me and I refused to sit, glaring at him until he made his way around the table to his own seat.

I’d had enough of his chivalry. I wanted to get this over with. As far as I was concerned, this whole thing was too little, too late.

I sat and squinted at the menu. I was starving and irritable. The drive had taken forty-five minutes in rush hour. Josh and I would have been done eating dinner already. Josh never let me get this hungry. He would have put me in the passenger side of the car, closed the door, tapped the glass with his knuckle, and pressed a bag of chips against my window, grinning with those fucking dimples of his. Josh would have taken me somewhere I wanted to go, and he would have wanted to eat there too because we liked the same food.

A server put a bread basket between us. It wasn’t even bread—just weird, jagged paper-thin crackers with sesame seeds on them. It totally triggered me, and I instantly felt hangry and more annoyed.

“The tuna tartare is supposed to be excellent,” Tyler said, his tone conciliatory.

“Is it?” I slapped the menu closed and dropped it on the table with a smack. “Order for me because I have literally no idea what the hell I’m looking at.”

“We could go somewhere el—”

“Nope. Let’s do what you want. Always,” I bit back. “Let’s have a long-distance relationship that leaves me alone for months at a time while you do you. And let’s eat what you want to eat. Because you’re the important one here, right?”

It wasn’t fair and I knew it. I’d signed up for a military relationship. But I wasn’t rational at the moment—I was hungry.

I leaned forward. “Order oysters. I dare you.”

All I needed was shells filled with snot set in front of us for me to completely lose my shit.

He pressed his lips into a line. He seemed to sense I was too hungry to be reasoned with. So when the server came back, Tyler placed our order, watching me the whole time from the corner of his eye like I might flip the table or something.