The Friend Zone(87)

The coldness of his tone took me aback, but I kept my face still. “You haven’t been to the hospital.”

His bloodshot eyes dragged up to mine. “Why would I? He’s not there. He’s fucking gone.”

I stared at him.

He shook his head and looked away from me. “So what do you want? You wanted to see if I’m okay? I’m not fucking okay. My best friend is brain-dead. The woman I love won’t even fucking speak to me.”

He picked up a beer cap from the coffee table and threw it hard across the room. My OCD winced.

“I’m doing this for you,” I whispered.

“Well, don’t,” he snapped. “None of this is for me. Not any of it. I need you, and you abandoned me. Just go. Get out.”

I wanted to climb into his lap. Tell him how much I missed him and that I wouldn’t leave him again. I wanted to make love to him and never be away from him ever again in my life—and clean his fucking apartment.

But instead, I just stood there. “No. I’m not leaving. We need to talk about what’s happening at the hospital.”

He glared up at me. “There’s only one thing I want to talk about. I want to talk about how you and I can be in love with each other and you won’t be with me. Or how you can stand not seeing me or speaking to me for weeks. That’s what I want to talk about, Kristen.”

My chin quivered. I turned and went to the kitchen and grabbed a trash bag from under the sink. I started tossing take-out containers and beer bottles.

I spoke over my shoulder. “Get up. Go take a shower. Shave. Or don’t if that’s the look you’re going for. But I need you to get your shit together.”

My hands were shaking. I wasn’t feeling well. I’d been light-headed and slightly overheated since I went to Josh’s fire station looking for him. But I focused on my task, shoving trash into my bag. “If Brandon is going to be able to donate his organs, he needs to come off life support within the next few days. His parents won’t do it, and Sloan doesn’t get a say. You need to go talk to them.”

Hands came up under my elbows, and his touch radiated through me.

“Kristen, stop.”

I spun on him. “Fuck you, Josh! You need help, and I need to help you!”

And then as fast as the anger surged, the sorrow took over. The chains on my mood swing snapped, and feelings broke through my walls like water breaching a crevice in a dam. I began to cry. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. The strength that drove me through my days just wasn’t available to me when it came to Josh.

I dropped the trash bag at his feet and put my hands over my face and sobbed. He wrapped his arms around me, and I completely lost it.

“I can’t stop cleaning and I have a monster inside my brain and I miss you and Sloan is falling apart and his parents won’t take him off life support, so his organs are rotting. I can’t get all the lines right on the carpet with the vacuum and Stuntman is in a kennel and I haven’t seen him in days, and I just need you to let me clean this fucking apartment!”

I’m not sure how much of it he heard, if any. I was crying so hard I could barely understand myself. He just held me and caressed my hair, and for the first time in weeks the velociraptor hunted other prey.

Josh made me weak. Or strong. It was hard to tell anymore what I was without my coping mechanism. At least when I rode the beast, I got shit done. And now I was nothing but an emotional mess.

But at least the mess was mine.

Why did he have this effect on me? He had this way of waking up dormant parts of my soul. He ripped through me and let everything in with him like a storm surge.

I took on water.

And at the same time, something told me if I let him, he’d keep me afloat. He wouldn’t let me sink. I’d never felt this vulnerable and safe with anyone.

I felt hot and shaky. I gasped and clutched his shirt until the crying spasms stopped. He held me so tight my knees could have given out and I wouldn’t have fallen an inch.

“I can’t be the only one who has their shit together,” I whispered.

His chest rumbled as he spoke. “It doesn’t look like you have your shit together…”

I snorted. “Josh, please.” I looked up at him, my hands trembling on his collarbone. “I need you to insert yourself here. Go talk to his parents. They’ll listen to you.”

He looked at me like seeing me cry was agony. The longing on his face was razor blades to my heart. His sad eyes, the set of his mouth, his knit brows.

He loved me almost as much as I loved him, and I knew I was hurting him. I knew he thought I was enough. But I wasn’t enough. How could one of me be any kind of substitute for the half dozen kids he’d always wanted? It just couldn’t. The math didn’t work. The logic wasn’t sound.

He wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb. “Okay,” he whispered. “I’ll go. Just, sit down or something. Stop cleaning.” He dipped his head to catch my eyes. “Are you okay? You’re shaking.”

He put a hand over mine to still the tremor against his chest, and the closeness of him made me whole for the first time in weeks.

“I’m fine,” I said, swallowing. “Just hurry, okay?”

He looked at me for a long moment, like he was trying to memorize my face or steal an extra second to hold me. Then he turned for the bathroom.