The Friend Zone

by Abby Jimenez

  Jerk.

  I pursed my lips and took another step closer to him. He looked amused as I encroached on his personal space. He didn’t back up and I glowered up at him. “You want the shirt. I want your silence. This isn’t a hard situation to work out.”

  He grinned at me. “Maybe I’ll let you keep the shirt. It doesn’t look half-bad on you.” Then he turned for his truck, laughing.

  THREE

  Josh

  In honor of the new-guy-cooks rule, I made breakfast for the crew on C shift. A Mexican egg skillet, my specialty.

  I was on probation—the probie. Even though I was five years into the job, I was only five shifts into this station. That meant I was the last one to sit down to eat and the first one to get up and do dishes. I was practically a servant. They had me cleaning toilets and changing sheets. All the grunt work.

  Sloan and Kristen opted to help me, and Brandon took pity on me, so they all stood in the kitchen wiping counters and scraping food off plates while I washed the dishes and Shawn and Javier played cribbage at the table.

  Kristen had glared all through the meal, but only when she didn’t think anyone was watching. It was kind of funny, actually. I kept ribbing her. From what I gathered through my prodding, she’d told everyone the shirt was her boyfriend’s.

  I wasn’t going to say anything. Brandon didn’t need to have the thunder stolen from his new truck by learning it had already been defiled, but I was drawing untold amounts of enjoyment from giving Kristen shit. And she didn’t take any of it lying down either. She matched me tit for tat.

  “So, Josh, you drive the fire truck, huh?” Kristen asked casually, wiping down the stove.

  “I do.” I smiled.

  “Are you any good at it? No problems stopping that thing when you need to?” She cocked her head.

  “Nope. As long as someone doesn’t slam on the brakes in front of me, I’m good.”

  Glare. Smirk. Repeat. And Sloan and Brandon were oblivious. It was the most fun I’d had in weeks.

  Sloan handed me the cutting board to wash. “You’ll be walking Kristen down the aisle at the wedding.” She smiled at her friend. “She’s my maid of honor.”

  “I hope you walk better than you drive,” Kristen mumbled under her breath.

  I grinned and changed the subject before Sloan or Brandon asked questions. “What’s your dog’s name, Kristen?”

  The little thing had sat on her lap all through breakfast. Occasionally his head popped up over the table to look at her plate, the tip of his tongue out. He looked like a fluffy Ewok.

  “His name is Stuntman Mike.”

  I raised an eyebrow over my sink of dishes. “Tarantino?”

  She raised hers. “You’ve seen Death Proof?”

  “Of course. One of my favorite movies. Kurt Russell as Stuntman Mike. And your dog has issues?” I asked. The little Yorkie wore a shirt that read I HAVE ISSUES on it.

  “Yes, they’re mostly with Shawn.”

  I chuckled.

  Sloan swept cilantro stems into her hand and tossed them in the trash, and Brandon pulled out the bag and tied the top. “Kristen has an online business called Doglet Nation,” Brandon said. “She sells merchandise for small dogs.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?” I asked, setting a casserole dish into the rack to dry.

  Kristen pulled out the coffee grounds and dumped them into the compost bag. “Clothes, bags, gourmet dog treats. Sloan bakes those. Our big-ticket item is our staircases though.”

  “Stairs?”

  “Yeah. Little dogs usually can’t jump up on a high bed. So we make custom staircases that match your bedroom set. Stain, carpet, style.”

  “And people buy that?” I set the last bowl to dry in the rack and peeled off my rubber gloves.

  “Uh, yeah they buy that. Why would you drop a couple grand on a nice Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware bed, only to have some hideous foam staircase next to it from PetSmart?”

  I nodded. “I get that, I guess.”

  “Which reminds me—I’m out a carpenter,” she said to Sloan.

  Sloan’s brow furrowed. “What? Since when?”

  “Since Miguel quit on me last week. He got a union job at Universal doing set work. Dropped me like I was radioactive. I have three stairs on order.”

  Sloan shook her head. “What are you going to do?”

  Kristen shrugged. “Put an ad on Craigslist. Hope the guy doesn’t end up being some kind of pervert out to kill me to sell my organs on the black market.”

  I snorted.

  Brandon nodded at me as he put a new bag into the trash can. “Josh is a carpenter. He’s pretty good at it too.”

  Sloan looked at me. “Really?”

  Brandon was already fishing out his cell phone. I knew what he was pulling up. The tiki bar I’d built in my backyard. Celeste’s tiki bar. Brad’s tiki bar.

  “Look,” he said, handing around the phone. “He built this.”

  Sloan nodded in approval. Then the phone went to Kristen, and she glanced at it before her eyes shot up to mine.

  “Not bad,” she said begrudgingly.

  “Thanks. But I’m not looking for any side work,” I said, waving them off. I didn’t need to build dog stairs for pennies on my day off. The living room of my new apartment was still full of boxes.

  “Yeah, who needs an extra two hundred dollars for three hours of work?” Kristen said, flipping a hand dismissively. “Not Miguel apparently.”

  I froze. “Two hundred dollars?”

  Sloan sprayed the counter with lemon-scented all-purpose cleaner. “Sometimes it’s more—right, Kristen? It depends on the style?”

  Kristen stared at her best friend like she was telling her to shut up. Then she dragged her eyes back to me. “The stairs run four to five hundred dollars apiece, plus shipping. I split the profits fifty-fifty, minus the materials, with my carpenter. So yeah. Sometimes it’s more.”

  “Do you have a picture of the stairs?” I asked.

  Kristen unenthusiastically handed me her phone and I scrolled through a website gallery of ridiculous tiny steps with Stuntman Mike posed on them in different outfits. These were easy. Well within my ability.

  “You know, I think I do have time for this. I’ll do it if you don’t have anyone else.” A few of these and I could pay off my Lowe’s card. This was real money.

  Kristen shook her head. “I think I’d rather take my chances with the organ thieves.”

  Sloan gasped, and Brandon froze and looked at Kristen and me.

  “Is that right?” I said, eyeballing her. “How about we talk about this over coffee.”

  Kristen narrowed her eyes and I arched an eyebrow. “Fine,” she said like it was physically painful. “You can build the damn stairs. But only until I find a different guy. And I will be looking for a different guy.”

  Sloan looked back and forth between us. “Is there something you guys want to tell us?”

  “I caught him staring at my ass,” Kristen said without skipping a beat.

  I shrugged. “She did. I have no excuse. It’s a great ass.”

  Brandon chuckled and Sloan eyed her best friend. Kristen tried to look mad, but I could tell she took the compliment.

  Kristen let out a breath. “Give me your email address. I’ll shoot you the orders. When you’re done with them, let me know and I’ll generate and send you the shipping labels. And I’ll be inspecting every piece before you take them to FedEx, so don’t try and half-ass anything.”

  “Wait, you don’t have a shop?” I asked. “Where am I supposed to build these?”

  “Don’t you have a garage or something?”

  “I live in an apartment.”

  “Shoot. Well, it looks like this won’t work out.” She smirked.

  Sloan stared at her. “Kristen, you have an empty three-car garage. You don’t even park in it half the time. Can’t he work there?”

  Kristen gave Sloan side-eye.

  I grinned. “He can.”


  A loud beeping came over the speakers throughout the station followed by the red lights. We had a call. Kristen held my stare as the dispatcher rattled off the details. Too bad. I could have hung out with my cranky maid of honor a little longer.

  No luck.

  Brandon leaned in and kissed Sloan goodbye. The girls would probably be gone by the time we got back. “We’ll finish cleaning up,” she said.

  “Get my number from Brandon,” Kristen said to me, crossing her arms over her chest in a way that I think was meant to keep me from offering her a hand to shake.

  Since the call was medical, we didn’t have to put on our fire gear. So Brandon and I headed straight for the apparatus bay where the engine was parked. I could feel Kristen’s eyes on my back and I grinned. She hated me. An ongoing theme with the women in my life at the moment.

  Besides Celeste, all six of my sisters and my mom were pissed that I’d moved. Even my little nieces were giving me the cold shoulder when I called. Seven and eight years old and they’d already mastered the little-girl passive-aggressive equivalent of “I’m fine.”

  “What’d you think of Kristen?” Brandon asked through a grin as we climbed into the engine.

  “She seems cool.” I shrugged, putting on my headset.

  Brandon and I had spent a year together in Iraq. He knew me well. Under normal circumstances, Kristen was my kind of woman. I liked petite brunettes—and women who tell me to go fuck myself apparently.

  “Just cool?” he said, putting on his headset. “Is that why you were checking out her ass?”

  Javier took his seat, chuckling to himself at Brandon’s comment and Shawn hopped in, catching the tail end. “Kristen’s hot as fuck. I check out her ass every time she’s here.” He put his headset on. “That dog bit me once though.”

  We all laughed and I fired the engine to life.

  “She’s not into me. She’s got a boyfriend. And I’m not looking right now anyway.” I hit the switch to open the garage door. “I’m not done paying for the last one.”

  Literally.

  FOUR

  Kristen

  The interrogation began on the drive home.

  “What the hell was going on between you and Josh?” Sloan asked as soon as we pulled out of the fire station parking lot in her crappy Corolla. “Since when do you get offended because a guy looked at your ass?”

  I didn’t. Nothing offended me except for cauliflower and stupidity. I just didn’t want this particular ass-man anywhere near me because if he looked, I was going to have a very hard time not looking back.

  Josh was the human version of ice cream in the freezer when you’re on a diet. He was my type, and I was sex deprived and not a particular glutton for punishment. Few men could spar with me when I was at my saltiest, and running that gauntlet was practically foreplay for me. I didn’t feel the need to torture myself unnecessarily by subjecting myself to it on a daily basis.

  “If I tell you the truth, will you tell Brandon? Where do your loyalties lie now that you’re engaged?”

  She laughed. “Tell me.”

  I came clean about the spilled coffee and the shirt.

  “Oh my God,” she said, turning on Topanga Canyon Boulevard. “Brandon can never know. Like, ever.”

  I scoffed. “Yeah, no kidding. He loaned me his truck for five minutes for an emergency tampon run and I manage to spill coffee in it and get into a minor accident with his best friend.”

  I’d have taken Sloan’s car, but it was impossible to start. It came with a volley of instructions. Jiggle the key while pumping the gas, put your shoulder into the door to get it open, don’t let the screeching belts startle you. I hadn’t wanted to find myself bleeding to death in a grocery store parking lot because I couldn’t get the engine to turn over. I could have spilled coffee and gotten into an accident in her car and nobody would have been the wiser. I could have totaled it and it would have probably been an improvement.

  “Why does Brandon get a new truck and a motorcycle and you have to drive this piece of crap?”

  “I like my car.” Sloan twisted her lips up on one side. “Josh’s cute, huh?”

  “If I didn’t have a boyfriend, I’d get under him.”

  She gasped and looked over at me, wide-eyed. Sloan was a lot more sexually conservative than I was. Shocking her was one of my favorite hobbies. I never missed an opportunity.

  I shrugged. “What? I haven’t gotten laid since last year. And this shirt smells incredible.” I dipped my nose back inside the neckline. “Like testosterone and cedar. And did you see him washing those dishes? He looked like Mr. February in a sexy firemen calendar. Guys like that are the exact reason why my grandmother always told me to wear clean underwear in case you get into a car accident.”

  She shook her head. “I swear to God you’re a man.”

  “I wish I were a man. Then I wouldn’t have to deal with all this faulty plumbing.” I cramped again and winced, rubbing a hand on my stomach.

  She looked over at me as she stopped for a red light. “Is it getting worse?”

  It was getting worse.

  “No, same as always.”

  Sloan didn’t need to know the truth. She was the kind of person who carried other people’s problems on her shoulders—especially the problems of those she loved. I had no intention of telling her what the doctor said until she was back from her honeymoon. Let her be ignorant and happy.

  It didn’t need to ruin both our lives.

  * * *

  Tyler called while I was going through my emails, an hour after Sloan dropped me off at home. I was still cramping and feeling generally like shit. I stared at the chiming phone for four rings before I picked it up.

  “Hi, babe.” I put more enthusiasm into my tone than I felt. That was the thing about military relationships—you didn’t get a lot of calls. Maybe one a week. You had to take them when they came, whether you felt like taking them or not.

  And today was a not.

  “Hey, Kris,” he said in that sexy accent of his. A little French, a little Spanish maybe? All his own. “I got the care package. You’re a lifesaver.”

  I set my laptop on the coffee table and went to the kitchen with Stuntman trotting behind me. “Good—I worried it wouldn’t come in time.”

  “Got here Friday. I can’t wait until I can get chocolate-covered espresso beans whenever I feel like it.”

  “Yeah.” I grabbed a bottle of Clorox and a rag and opened the fridge. Usually I paced when I was on the phone. But I cleaned when I was stressed.

  Stress won out.

  I started pulling out Tupperware and juice cartons and setting them on the floor, holding my phone with my shoulder. “I’ll buy some so you’ll have them in the pantry when you get here.”

  The pantry. It would be our pantry. I don’t know why this weirded me out so much. I dragged the trash can next to the fridge and began tossing old take-out boxes.

  “It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow,” he sang, poking me.

  I made a dismissive grunting noise into the fridge. I hated Valentine’s Day. He knew that. Total waste of money. “I hope you’re not planning on sending me flowers,” I said dryly.

  He smiled through the phone. “What would you like me to send you then?”

  “Something practical that I’ll get use out of, like a dick pic.”

  He laughed. “So what’s going on at home?” he asked.

  I reached to the far end of the top shelf to pull down a two-liter bottle of flat Sprite. “Not much. Hey, do you know anything about working with wood?” I opened the bottle with a pith and turned it upside down in the sink and waited for it to drain.

  “No. Why?”

  “Oh, it’s just Miguel quit,” I mumbled.

  “What? Why?”

  “He got another job. I need a new carpenter. I have this one guy, but he’s not the best option.” I muscled the rack filled with condiments from the door. “He doesn’t have a workshop like Miguel so he has to do it out o
f my garage.”

  “I don’t know the first thing about woodworking, Kris. Hey, if you put an ad out, wait for me to get home before you do interviews. There are a lot of perverts out there and you’re home alone.”

  My mind went to my 911 call this morning. I wouldn’t tell Tyler about that. It would just worry him, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  I carefully unloaded the mustard and ketchup bottles and started washing the empty rack in the sink. “So what’s the game plan when you get out? How long until you get hired, you think?”

  It wasn’t like he had to worry too much about finances. Tyler came from money. But if he didn’t have a job to go to every day, I didn’t know how I’d handle all the togetherness.

  We’d been dating for two years, but he’d been deployed the whole time. I’d met him at a bar when he was on leave. Long-distance was all we’d ever known. Two weeks of leave every year, full of sex and eating out, was one thing. Having a live-in boyfriend who was going to sit around and hang out with me for an indeterminate amount of time was something else entirely.

  The whole damn thing triggered me. I was going from having a man who was almost invisible to having one that would be here 24-7.

  And this was my idea.

  He’d wanted to reenlist and I’d told him if he did, I was out. I couldn’t do another deployment. But lately I was afraid I couldn’t do this either. It’s not that I didn’t love him. It was just a huge change.

  “I’ve got an interview with the State Department as soon as I get back,” he said. “Might take a while before I get in. And I’ll get to spend lots of time with you until I’m out of background checks.”

  My lips pursed. I put the shelf upside down to dry. “Yeah. Maybe we can rent a cabin up in Big Bear or something while we wait. Catalina Island. Make it fun.”

  “Think bigger. Why stay in Cali when we can go somewhere we’ve never been?”

  He loved to travel.