“Shhh!” I waved at her to keep it down but her eyes grew wide and Jenzy can’t whisper. It sounds more like a four-year-old that thinks she’s whispering.
“You and Chloe?”
I stopped and she knelt next to me with a grin. “Jenzy, it’s top secret. Don’t get excited.”
“Are you dating?”
I looked around but no one was close. “No…I don’t think so…it’s…complicated. We’re friends.”
“Is that all?”
I rolled up the sleeves on my button down, “I really can’t answer any of that.”
“Do you have feelings for her?”
I swallowed hard, “Jenzy, I’m serious, it’s complicated. Unzoned love is dangerous. As her friend, I know where I stand but as a lover, things could suck fast.”
She looked me over, “or they could be really great.” I kept working because her eyes are penetrating. “You know, the other reason Chris and I work, is because he’s my friend. When he sucks as my lover from being an ass, it’s his friendship that brings me back. Friendship is so special, if it can develop into more it can be the strongest bond ever.”
I picked up my crate and stood. She jumped up with me and I started for the next shelf. “Yeah, and it can also develop into unfixable problems.”
She didn’t have an answer for that, “Okay, that’s true.”
“If I lost Chloe’s friendship, I would never not regret it. I have guy friends that can’t come close to what she’s done for me.”
Jenzy rubbed my arm, “you’re right, and I’m sorry I made it more complicated with probing.”
I smiled, “you’re a Sagittarius, you can’t help it, with your blunt self.”
She hugged me and I hugged her back. She feels good and like someone I can trust with this information.
Chris appeared at her back with three books under his arm. “Okay, alright, that’s enough physical contact, get off.”
He pulled the back of Jenzy’s dress and I laughed but she turned around and punched his shoulder, “stop it!”
He looked totally unaffected, “we all hugged, that’s great, now we apply,” he pulled her a little further back, “distance.”
I laughed even harder but Jenzy looked truly pissed. “Chris. Knock it the fuck off.”
“Come on. This whole store is crap but I found three books.” He showed her his find and she glared about the insult but looked at the titles.
“We have these two at home but this one is good.” She took two away and handed them to me.
Chris looked and took the one she approved, “nice, okay.” He took out his wallet and nodded at Jenzy. “Find anything else or were you busy hugging the tree hugger?”
She hit him again but left to look. When he was sure she was gone he took a CD of Tibetan bowl sounds from inside his suit and a topaz pendulum from his pant pocket along with a tree of life necklace and laid it all on the counter. “Can you bag these before my flower child returns?”
“Sure. That was smooth.”
“Yeah…I like to piss her off then be romantic. It’s like emotional whiplash.” He slid three boxes of incense from his back pocket to me as well.
I rang up the items and wrapped them. I could feel Chris looking at me. By time I was bagging the stuff I felt urged to ask, “are you envisioning my death?”
He laughed, “no. It’s not your fault I was so much of a dick she almost gave up.” We were silent a minute then, “you know…I specified in the letter that you weren’t supposed to show Jenzy. I knew if she read it she’d come back and I wasn’t sure if that was right for her. Why’d you do it?”
I got lost on that one. I don’t know why I did it. I knew her reading it would make her go back too. I know I loved her and I know we could’ve been happy but now I’m wondering if some small part of me let her go because of Chloe.
I handed him the bag. “Her Dad was scary.” I said to avoid answering a question I couldn’t. It also doubled as a mood lifter.
Chris smiled, “yeah, Scotty can be pretty intimidating.”
He let it go and then Jenzy was back. She brought three things up including a box incense.
“No,” he took it away, “you know I hate the smell.”
I hid the smirk from knowing he’d already bought her three.
She reached for it, “I’ll burn it when you aren’t home.”
“It lingers, Jennifer!”
“Gaaahhhh!”
When she stormed for the door he winked at me knowing what he secretly purchased would more than makeup for it.
I saw him catch up at the door and take her hand but she wrenched it away. Outside I could see him try again and she took it and let him pull her close as they walked. Strange couple.
I had a quick vision of holding Chloe’s hand down a street and warmed considerably. What would it feel like to hold her hand? We’ve never done that.
Brianna came back up with things to buy and as I checked her out she said, “also, Chloe’s birthday is in six days… April 1st! Our little April Fools baby! Are we doing a party or…?”
“Actually,” I saw Dad coming up and waved him over since he was in on this. “I have a surprise that might make having a party a good idea. It needs to only be people close to her though. Not many. No girls from the studio and stuff just you, me, and Dad. It’s going to be an emotional surprise and I don’t want her freaking out.”
Brianna looked so intrigued she came closer to lean over the counter, “what is it? Can I see it- well…feel it?”
“It’s on its way so to speak. It’s two somethings and its part two in a gift I already gave her.”
She looked her most excited but I was wrong. She was her most excited when I told her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
CHLOE
I was skipping down my stairs happier than I had been in…well…maybe forever. This thing with Moses, and I can only call it a thing because I have no clue what it is, but this thing is so wonderful.
I hopped in my now working elevator. This device is always in and out and I don’t mind the long ass stairs but yay, it’s working!
With a spring in my step and earbuds in, I swung open the door to my apartment building and collided with someone. I looked up into the kind eyes of Elijah and I yanked my buds out.
“Elijah?” I smiled and he laughed then we hugged. Wow, he feels great. Elijah is that guy. The one you know you’re safe with because he’s not really in the dating game for anything less than the hope of a partner. Even though I broke it off he’s himself.
“I’m really happy I caught you.” He said letting go. “I don’t know where you’re headed but we need to talk.” I gestured to the far end of the stoop and he sat with me. He bumped his knee with mine, “how you been?”
I zipped up my hoodie because there was a chill today. “I’m…good, just working and getting by…”
“Are you eating other than Ramen noodles?” he teased.
I sighed, “there’s a lot to be done with ramen noodles, Mr. Lane.”
He touched my cheek with the back of his fingers. “You look good Chloe.”
I felt my cheeks warm a little then smiled, “you too.”
“So.” He pulled himself from the intimacy of the moment and set his briefcase over his lap. “How do you think your audition went?”
I twirled the wires of my earbuds. “I haven’t heard back actually. They said a week max and it’s been almost three so…I guess I failed you again.” I looked up to seem less sad, “you kind of made me want it. So badly. The idea of doing better, and being good enough to make it happen… I don’t know.” I shagged the side of my hair, “I’m just Chloe…the stripper from the wrong side of the tracks.”
He nodded and was silent a minute, “so did confident Chloe get the scholarship or stripper, Chloe? Because they didn’t specify on the form.”
I snapped my head around to look at him and cleared the lump in my throat, “What?”
He pulled thick papers ou
t of his bag and handed them to me, “apparently the secretary in charge of the audition forms lost all of three winner’s contact information. When nobody showed for the announcements we all had to scramble to find everyone. You are so off the map they had to call me in. But I decided to come tell you in person.”
My heart is racing and my head is spinning in the best way, “Elijah, please don’t be joking.”
He reached over and tapped the paper in front. My scholarship. My hopes. My future. Then he held my shoulder, “Nothing about you is ordinary. You’re gifted and it’s not just me that sees that.”
I hugged the Bible stack of papers he’d handed me and kept them close to my chest, “I can’t thank you enough, this is so big.”
“Thank yourself. You got you here. Now here’s the thing. The semester starts in September and the Arts & Hopes campus is only a forty minute drive from here. Read the papers but you’ll be offered jobs in four divisions. Some are on campus and some are at the center where you went to audition. It’s all going to be in relation to dance or backstage stuff so to speak. You’ll become acquainted with all the different aspects of dance and art.”
I winced, “so I have to leave my class at the studio?”
“You don’t have to work for us. You could keep your job at the studio and just school with us or you could work both, but that may be hard to balance, and it’s a bit of a conflict of interest. I can tell you the pay is far better if you do classes associated with Arts & Hopes.”
“Could my students transfer to the public classes at the center?”
“Absolutely. It’s a community center. Meant to pull people in, meaning not private, like your schooling.”
I took a breath so deep my chest hurt. “I’m so grateful Elijah this is…so unreal.”
Then I laughed. It was like a nervous bubble. He laughed too and we hugged. I kissed him on the lips but it was an innocent expression of happy and he reached for my papers, “here I’ll tell you the news again, and you kiss me again.”
His banter made the heaviness of my happiness lighter and we laughed hard together.
MOSES
When I saw Chad’s ass the night I walked in on him screwing my fiancée I was pretty disgusted but I wasn’t jealous. The lie upset me, not the deed. Maybe I didn’t love her as much as I thought.
When Jenzy told me she kissed her husband at Disney World and then read his love letter months later, I again felt sad and hurt by the situation not the deed. Even when she chose to go back to him. Maybe I didn’t love her enough either?
Jealousy doesn’t resonate in me like most people. I have to almost force envy to rear its ugly head to appear normal.
I have to work at being the jealous boyfriend that’s territorial. I’ve had girls accuse me of not caring enough or being weird as fuck. I recall one girl asking if I had some fucked up fantasy of threesomes, like my lack of response to her getting male attention was because I wanted to screw her with another guy.
I really don’t know why I was born without a possessiveness that turns me into a prick.
But all that happened in my past with girls, all the attempts to make me jealous and the flirtatious flaunts…none of them activated a green eyed monster.
Until this moment. Until I parked a block down from Chloe’s and walked to her apartment to see her kiss Elijah. It was a quick and PG kiss, but holy shit I think my chest grew three sizes and my eyes glowed. Even their close proximity was making the tick in my jaw overbearing.
I remembered Chris in the bookstore, tugging Jenzy out of the hug. I thought he was childish about it and I mocked his need to be so macho just to prove she belonged to him like a thing not a person.
Not now… now I’m debating if I should leave, or drag Elijah off the stoop. This is the strangest feeling I’ve ever had. It’s like I’m pissed, and sad and my alter ego must look like an enormous peacock with more color than a rainbow.
I pushed past the fog of this new emotion and kept on to her place as Elijah stood holding her hand. He gave it a squeeze then smiled and walked off not seeing me coming. She sat and watched him go but she looked annoyingly content.
I stopped at her bottom step and she looked then brightened. “Hi there.”
I tried to sound normal, “hey, so…Elijah?”
She grinned and it looked giddy, “yeah. I think my day was just made. No better yet…my life.”
Burning. There is burning in my throat and eyes. Is there like a side effects paper on jealousy? “He’s a cool guy.” I admitted.
“You have no idea. He just literally changed my life. All because he saw me as talented.”
“Talented in bed you mean.”
Oh! There are car wreck sounds in my head. Did my jealousy actually have a voice? It must because I just said something I’d never ever say to my best friend.
She lost all the whimsical happiness and looked at me like I was some guy she didn’t know, “did you really just say that?” she asked.
Instead of retreat like I should the envy took the driver seat in my mouth, “I don’t mean it like it sounded, but how many talent scouts date their clients? With the kind of dancing you do he can’t say the possibilities of getting closer to you wasn’t based a little off that.”
She nodded, “so I’m not talented, I’m an easy lay, and that won me this scholarship he brought by. Not the fact that I danced my heart out and they thought I was good.”
Oh the pain! So much pain! I would really like to be stepped on about now. I would like a very big foot to drop or an out of control bus to ride up on the sidewalk. It would be a mercy.
I closed my eyes and then opened them, “that was, totally out of line. I’m sorry. You know what? I don’t even know where the fuck that came from.”
She stood, still hugging her papers from Elijah close, “no, what you said has merit. It seemed fishy to me too. He gets like a commission too. Like if he gets me into the program, so…either way it’s a win for him.”
“That’s really not-.”
“No, Moses…thank you so much, for helping me see the very little worth I hold in this world. Since, you know I struggle with that concept anyway. Both parents checking out on me because I wasn’t enough to make them happy like most kids, if I couldn’t make them love me enough, then something like this scholarship, that’s obviously just someone getting in my pants, not actually giving a shit.”
I’m panicking, “Chloe-.”
“In fact,” she backed toward her apartment, “that even explains you fucking me. I’m an easy lay, you need an outlet since your break up, and well, it’s not like I’m girlfriend material. I’m just your cheap little friend, that makes you wear that cheap little necklace and gave you a cheap piece of ass.”
She turned and slammed the building door shut. I had to stand there a good minute just to compute where this started, how it escalated and what to do. Then I bolted up the steps and into the lobby. I saw her waiting on an elevator and raced her way just as the doors were opening.
“Chloe!”
She went in and pressed the button a dozen times so it would close on me but I beat her and stuck my hand in the door before squeezing in. “Get the fuck out of my face!” She snapped.
“No! Listen to me.”
“No!”
A guy tried to come in but I screamed, “Get out!” and he scurried off as the doors closed. The elevator started up but I hit the emergency stop, “I didn’t mean any of the shit I just said.”
She karate chopped my arm and started the elevator. “Go fuck yourself.”
I hit the stop again, “I just said I didn’t mean it!”
She shoved me and hit the start button, “you said it, so somewhere in your heart you meant it!”
I hit the stop and we jolted. “I didn’t mean it! I was just saying words!”
She wrestled with me to get to the buttons but I fought her hard. She still made it under my arm and hit start, “If you said them, then on somewhere in the back of your min
d you think them!”
I held her back with one arm and hit the stop with my elbow. “Guys don’t have a back of the mind! We only think with the front! Half the time we don’t even use that.”
She whacked me hard with her shoulder bag, “it’s a good thing your dick is so big then! The brain down there is probably bigger!”
She rushed me to get to the buttons but I laid my back against the buttons. “I don’t think you’re cheap! I didn’t just fuck you because you’re easy!”
Her eyes got wide and she thwacked me harder, “I’m not easy!”
“What the fuck is your problem? I didn’t say you were easy!”
She darted and got her hand behind me to start the elevator. “You said, you didn’t fuck me because I’m easy!”
“Oh my God, so I used the wrong grammar! I don’t think you’re easy, that’s not why I fucked you. Is that better?” I said hitting the stop again.
We did a weird drop then a screech and stopped. Her nose was pink. So she wants to cry even if she won’t.
“Either way you don’t even think I earned this scholarship. You think I just fucked my way to the top.”
“That’s not what I think. You dance like a pro, that’s why you got it.”
“Then why did you say-?”
“I don’t know why I said-.”
She lunged for the button but I blocked her and turned her back into my front so I could hold her in a deadlock. She wiggled around and fought, “you said it because it’s what you think!”
I struggled to hold her, “that’s not it!”
“Then what?!” she screamed.
“I was fucking jealous!”
All went silent and she stopped bucking in my arms. We both panted and the quiet brought us down.
“You were what?” she asked.
I let go and she separated from me to face me. I crossed my arms to feel less tiny, “I was jealous.” Oh, the woes of manly pride. It’s bad enough to feel this way it’s worse to tell her, but she’s my friend and I’m not losing all this over a miss communication.
The Friend Zone (The Relationship Quo Series Book 2) Page 25