The Friend Zone(82)

She wiggled out of my arms and sat up, her hair falling seductively over her eye. “No. We’re not doing that anymore.”

I slumped. I’d hoped we had moved past this. “Kristen, I don’t care about the hysterectomy. I mean, I care. It’s fucked up and I’m sorry it’s happening to you, but it doesn’t change how I feel about you. We can talk about—”

“No. And don’t say you don’t care, because that’s bullshit. I didn’t tell you about that so you could say it’s fine, or figure out some sort of work-around.” She flung the blanket off her and got up. “We’re not seeing each other anymore. I let you stay with me last night so you wouldn’t be alone. That’s it.”

She turned for the bathroom, and I got out of bed and followed her.

She stood in front of the sink putting toothpaste on her toothbrush, and I came up behind her and slid my hands over her shoulders. She shrugged me off.

I looked at her through the mirror. “Kristen, we’re in love with each other. I want to be with you. Let’s sit down and have a convers—”

She whirled on me. “No.” Her face was hard. “I listened to you talk about having kids for months. We’ve already had the conversation. Plenty of times. And there is absolutely nothing you can say to me now to convince me that’s suddenly not some major priority for you. I can’t give you a family. I’m no different from Celeste.”

“Celeste didn’t want kids. It’s not the same thing,” I said.

She scoffed, waving around her toothbrush. “Isn’t it? The outcome is the same. In vitro is only forty percent successful—did you know that? Do you even know what it costs? Or how hard it is to find a surrogate? We could try for years, go broke, and never even have one baby. Not even one.”

“Then we can adopt, foster—”

She rolled her eyes and gave me her back as she ran her toothbrush under the faucet and put it in her mouth.

“Kristen, you’re being ridiculous.”

I put my hands back on her shoulders and she shrank away from me.

She spit in the sink and turned back to me. “Josh, it’s not gonna happen, okay?”

My jaw flexed. “Why not? You have no right to make this decision for me. I want to be with you. If I say it doesn’t change anything for me, then it doesn’t.”

She laughed. “It changes everything.” She blinked at me. “Josh, I meant what I said. I do love you. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. And I love you too much to let you settle.” Her eyes softened slightly. “I know you think this is what you want right now. But in a few years, when you have a pregnant wife and kids running around, you’ll see that I was right. I can’t give you your baseball team. And I won’t take it from you.”

I reached for her and she pushed my hand away. “No.”

“You are not Celeste. You’re not even in the same league. And I’m sorry if things I said before I knew about this made you feel badly. I didn’t know—”

“I know you didn’t know. That’s how I know you were being honest.”

“I love you,” I said, looking her in the eye.

She shook her head. “And what does love have to do with it? Love is completely impractical, Josh. It’s stupid. And you should never use it to make decisions.” Her eyes were determined and level. She pulled her hair from its ponytail and grabbed a towel. “We need to take showers and go back to the hospital. And I don’t want to talk about this. Ever again.”





THIRTY-FOUR





Kristen




It was twenty-one days after Brandon’s accident and almost as long since I’d last spoken to Josh. The date of the wedding came and went, and Brandon hadn’t woken up for it.

I spent my time between the hospital and Sloan’s house where I watered her plants and brought in packages. I washed whatever laundry she left when she did her momentary stops at home to shower and change before heading back to the ICU. I checked her mail. I’d made all the calls to her wedding vendors to cancel the wedding until further notice.

At the hospital I brought books, magazines, coffee, and food for Sloan so she never had to leave her bedside vigil for anything trivial.

Then I went home to my empty house.

I cleaned for hours on end. I pulled out the contents of every cabinet in my kitchen and washed it all. I wiped out the drawers in the bathroom. I took apart my bed to vacuum underneath, and all the vacuum lines on the carpet had to be in just the right direction. I detailed the grout in my laundry room. I took a toothpick to the cracks in the stove, and I thirsted for relief from my own mind.

My perfectionism was something I harnessed and cultivated for my own purposes. Something useful that made me focused so I could get things done.

But now it was spiraling. None of the rituals made it better. Nothing shut off the urges or satisfied the feelings of incompleteness. Nothing gave me control again.

I missed Josh. I missed him like I missed my sanity.

It had become clear, almost immediately, that the burden of saving him from himself was going to fall on me.

After I’d told him it was over between us, he refused to drop it. So I’d stopped answering his calls. Avoided him at the hospital and refused to speak to him when I did see him. Since I gave Miguel his old job back, my garage was empty and lifeless. The smell of Josh’s cologne on the throw pillows on my sofa was so faint it never puffed around me anymore when I sat down.