The Friend Zone(66)

The phone shuffled. “Okay. Hold on.”

I reached under the bed and pulled out my laptop. “Can I follow you too?”

“You can follow me anywhere.”

He was flirty when he was drunk. It was cute. He didn’t usually say things like this to me. I shut it down immediately when he did. But Drunk Josh wasn’t really Josh.

“How come Sober Josh doesn’t have all this swagger, huh?” I teased.

He snorted. “He does. He’s just trying to follow your many rules. Drunk Josh doesn’t live by rules. Drunk Josh does what Drunk Josh wants,” he said, stumbling over the words.

“And what does Drunk Josh want?” I smiled, tapping his name into the search bar on Instagram.

“You.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You’re lucky you’re not here. I’d take advantage of you. You sound too weak to fight me off.”

“I consent.”

I sent him a follow request, laughing at his comment. A second later I got his and approved it.

We got quiet as we looked at each other’s pictures.

“I didn’t know you rock climb,” I said. There was a picture of him hanging off the side of a seriously high cliff face. He had on a harness and helmet, and he looked, as always, so handsome. “And you water-ski.”

“Tyler,” he said dryly.

I forgot I had those pictures on there. Tyler and me at the Marine ball. A few more goofy selfies during his leaves. One of him kissing me.

“Celeste’s pretty,” I countered, looking at picture after picture of them smiling together. She was a Sloan. The kind of woman who doesn’t need makeup. The kind who glows when she smiles.

“You’re prettier,” he said.

“And your dick is bigger than Tyler’s.”

This garnered me a laugh. I could imagine the sparkle in his eyes and the dimples in his cheeks.

I missed him.

The ache ripped through me. I hadn’t seen him in so long, and somehow the separation didn’t lessen how I felt the way it had with Tyler.

Tyler faded. He always faded, even though we’d talk on the phone and Skype and write. But Josh just got brighter. The ache got deeper the longer I went without him.

Hopefully it was the opposite for Josh. I hoped the time away from me had cooled any feelings he might be having, because I didn’t think I could keep my walls up when he got back. I missed him too much, and the time I was going to get with him was too short now.

How was I going to do it when things were over, when I told him after the wedding that I didn’t want to see him anymore? It was going to kill me.

I went back to the photos, and my mood dampened.

There were a lot of pictures of him with his nieces and nephews. Him holding a new baby in a hospital. Giving piggyback rides. One picture had him buried to his neck in sand on a beach somewhere, flanked by two little boys who looked a lot like him, holding red plastic shovels.

“You really love kids, don’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Come to Vegas. Let’s get married.”

I snorted. God, he was fucked up. “And upstage Brandon and Sloan?”

“Come on. Why not?”

“How much have you had to drink?”

Another hiccup. “You’re a unicorn.”

I smirked. Yup. Wasted out of his mind.

He went on. “When you find a unicorn, you marry her. I think about you all the time. Do you ever think about me?”

Always. “Whenever I’m horny.”

He got quiet. It didn’t feel like a comfortable silence. It felt like a disappointed one. At least it was for me. I hated the lies I had to tell.

“Kristen…I think I’m gonna throw up.”

I closed the lid of my laptop. The room went pitch-black again, and I sat there against my headboard in the dark. He wouldn’t remember this call. He was too fucked up.

“Josh?”

It took a long minute until I got a slurred, “Yeah?”

I took a deep breath. “I think about you all the time. I miss you when you’re not with me.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. I do.”

It felt so good to say it out loud. And to say it to him. Even if he was too wasted to retain it, it felt liberating to say just once how I felt.

I spoke low. “When you’re not with me, it feels like I’m hollow. I wonder what you’re doing. Who you’re with. I read your texts a hundred times.” My heart pounded. “I wanted to tell you I missed you back, but I can’t say that stuff to you. But I did miss you. The last two weeks felt like torture.”

He groaned and I heard the dragging of something metallic. Probably a wastebasket.

I sighed. “Josh, don’t black out there. Go back to your room.”

“No. I want to talk to you.” He sounded like he was spitting. He didn’t hear a word I’d said.

We sat in silence for a moment. I wondered if he’d passed out. “Josh?”

“Get Sloan and drive down here tomorrow. Let’s get married. Come on.”

I smiled gently. “I can’t marry you.”

Spitting. “Why? I would be a good husband to you. I would take care of you. I’d be a good dad.”

I moved the phone away from my mouth as a sudden wrenching urge to sob bolted into my throat. I pressed my lips together and forced it back down. “I know you would,” I whispered. “That’s why I can’t.”