The Friend Zone(8)

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

We hung up and I surveyed the chaos I’d pulled from the fridge. Stuntman sat in the middle of it, looking up at me. His little white chin looked like the beard on a nutcracker.

This is fine. It’s all going to be fine.

But I spent the next three hours scrubbing the kitchen just the same.





FIVE





Josh




Two days after our fender bender, I knocked on Kristen’s door. Yapping started on the other side. I’d just gotten off my shift, and I had a heaping pile of building materials in the bed of my truck. Brandon let me raid his garage for power tools. Thank God. This job was temporary—I didn’t need to be buying shit.

Kristen opened the door, wearing a pink robe and a green mud mask. “Hey. Come in.”

Stuntman Mike bounced off my shins. I reached down to pet him, and she stopped me. “Don’t. He bites.”

“We’ve already met. He let me hold him at the station,” I reminded her.

“He’s got a misplaced sense of ownership over me and his memory is stored in a brain the size of a peanut,” she mumbled. “Wait a few minutes until he calms down. Then it’ll be safer.”

I looked down at the little fluff ball. He growled and wagged his nub of a tail at the same time. I followed her into the house and leaned down and gave Stuntman Mike a pat while she wasn’t looking.

A teetering stack of FedEx boxes sat piled by the front door. The coffee table was covered in carefully organized piles of paper. A laptop sat in the middle of it with a beer next to it, still cold. The glass bottle was perspiring. “Already drinking, huh? It’s breakfast time.”

“I had a Pop-Tart with it,” she grumbled.

I snorted.

Her house was clean. Sparse, but clean. Smelled a little like bleach. There was a huge vase of flowers on her credenza. From the boyfriend for Valentine’s Day, I guessed. I hated that holiday. Just an excuse to spend money on overpriced shit. I was glad I was single for it this year.

“Here’s the garage.” She opened a door off the laundry room.

A tiny lacy black thong hung from a hanger over the dryer at eye level. I looked at it longer than was probably appropriate.

I hadn’t been with anyone since Celeste. I’d been too busy and worn out from the new job and the move. And to be honest, I’d been enjoying not having to deal with a woman. It was a reprieve.

It had been my experience that all women, even the ones you’re only having sex with, are on some level exhausting. I wasn’t in any particular hurry to get back to it.

I came up behind Kristen and peered into the garage over her shoulder. It was cavernous and mostly empty except for a few containers stacked against the far end and a newer black Honda parked in the last bay. She hit a button on the wall and sunlight shafted under the opening garage door.

She turned to me, the green mask starting to crack around the edges. “Bathroom is down the hall. Sodas are in the fridge. Holler if you need something. I’ll get you a fan. It’s a hundred and fucks degrees out here.” She left me standing there.

Well, the reception was chilly, but at least she’d let me in.

I backed my truck up and started to unload, and she came down the stairs and set a fan in the middle of the floor. Then she walked out into the driveway, green mask and all, and put my folded shirt into my hands. “Here. I washed it.”

“Thank you.” A car rolled by and the driver stared at her. I looked back at her with an arched eyebrow. “Don’t you care what people think?”

“Do I look like I care?”

“No.”

“There you go.” She turned and went back into the house and I smiled after her.

Kristen had crossed my mind a few times over the last two days. I’d actually found myself somewhat looking forward to coming over and getting further abused.

I’d asked Brandon about her boyfriend. Not straight out—I’d asked him why she didn’t have him build the stairs. Just an excuse to find out more about her.

Brandon only met him once, almost a year ago. Didn’t have much to say about it, other than the guy seemed all right. But he did say Sloan didn’t seem to like him for some reason. I’d pressed for more, but he just shrugged and said she wasn’t a fan.

Two hours later I poked my head into the living room. “Where’d you say the bathroom is?”

She’d changed into sweats and a T-shirt and she lay on the couch with a heating pad on her stomach. Her mud mask was gone.

She answered with her eyes closed. “Down the hall, second door. Put the seat back down.” She winced.

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

She didn’t look fine. She looked like she was having the period from hell.

“Have you taken anything yet?” I asked.

“I took two aspirin at four a.m.” Even her words sounded painful.

I looked at my watch. “You can alternate with Motrin. I have some in my gym bag.”

I went out to the truck and got two pills and brought them back with a water bottle from the fridge and handed it to her. She took them gratefully.

“You get a lot of calls for period cramps?” she asked, lying back against the cushions, closing her eyes.