The Friend Zone

by Abby Jimenez

I ran to the kitchen, praying that she hadn’t tossed all the trash. I spotted an old In-N-Out cup with Coke in it from yesterday and grabbed it, running back to the couch.

  “Kristen, I need you to drink this. You’re not going to like it, but I need you to do it.”

  It was flat, old, and room temp, but it was all I had in the apartment. I put the straw to her lips.

  She shook her head violently and clenched her teeth. “No.”

  “Listen, your glucose levels are low. You need sugar. Drink this. You’ll feel better. Come on.”

  She tried to knock the cup from my hands, and I protected it like it was the cure for cancer.

  If she didn’t get her blood sugar up, she could have a seizure next. Slip into unconsciousness. And her symptoms were already advanced.

  Panic overcame me. My heart pounded in my ears. What’s wrong with her?

  “A few swallows, please,” I begged.

  She took the straw in her lips and drank, and my relief was palpable.

  It took a few minutes and a few more sips, but she stopped shaking. I got a wet washcloth and wiped her face as she came back around. I peeled her sweatshirt off her—my sweatshirt.

  “When’s the last time you ate?” I asked.

  She was still a little disoriented. When she looked at me, her eyes didn’t really focus. “I don’t know. I didn’t.”

  I checked my watch. Jesus, it was almost 2:00 p.m.

  “Come on—I’m taking you to get some food.” I helped her up, putting an arm around her waist. She was so frail. The sides of her stomach were hard.

  Something is wrong.

  I helped her to my truck and went to the closest fast-food place I could find. It wasn’t what she probably wanted. She fucking hated Burger King, but I needed to get food in her.

  We went through the drive-thru and parked in the parking lot. I unwrapped her burger and watched her eat. She looked exhausted. Her skin was sallow.

  “Are you diabetic?” I asked, studying her.

  “No.” She sniffed.

  “Are you sure?”

  She ate a french fry slowly. “Yes.”

  “Does diabetes run in your family? Do any of your relatives have it?”

  “I know what ‘runs in the family’ means,” she snapped. She shot me a glare and I smiled, happy she had moved from hypoglycemic to just plain hangry.

  “And no, nobody has it. And neither do I.”

  I put the straw in the top of her orange juice and handed it to her. “How do you know?”

  “Because I don’t have time to be diabetic, Joshua.”

  I scoffed. Of course.

  “Look, you need to go to the doctor and have a glucose test. Has this ever happened before?”

  She shook her head.

  I glanced down at her stomach. The tank top she’d worn under my sweatshirt was fitted. From what I could tell, her stomach hadn’t gotten bigger than it was a few weeks ago. In fact, it looked a little smaller. I wondered if that meant the fibroids were shrinking. Could they respond to weight loss like the rest of her? It didn’t seem likely.

  I wanted to feel her abdomen, see if I could use my medical training to figure out what was wrong. But she never let me touch her stomach.

  “When is your surgery scheduled?” I asked.

  She took a sip from the soda. “Two weeks ago.”

  “When are you going to reschedule it?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Not anytime soon. It’s a six- to eight-week recovery. I have nobody to take care of me—”

  “I’ll take care of you.”

  She pressed her lips into a line. “I need to be with Sloan.”

  I sat back in the seat, shutting my eyes. I needed her to fucking take care of herself.

  Did what she had going on have to do with her condition? But insulin came from the pancreas. What did uterine tumors have to do with a pancreas? I wondered if whatever caused this had been lurking for some time. If she never let herself get hungry, she’d never get hypoglycemic. She was always really good about eating. She might not have ever let it get to this point before.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  I opened my eyes. “No, you’re not. You look sick. You’re pale. Your pulse is weak. You almost passed out back there. You could have had a seizure. What if you had been driving?”

  Protectiveness coursed through me. She was mine. I needed to be able to take care of her, and she wouldn’t let me fucking do it. It defied all the laws of nature. It was wrong. We were in love, and I was supposed to be there for her.

  She looked down at her burger. “Josh, I’m just a little run-down, okay? I’m sleeping with Sloan in the hospital every night. I’m living off of black coffee and whatever I can shove in my mouth. My OCD is manic—”

  “You have OCD?” It didn’t really surprise me. I’d seen a touch of it in her since I’d known her. One of my sisters had it. I knew it when I saw it.

  “Usually it’s not this bad, but it gets worse when I’m under stress.” She finished the burger and balled up the paper like it was an effort to even do that. Then she lay back against the headrest and closed her eyes.

  She was falling apart. She was deteriorating physically and mentally trying to keep Sloan together. And where the fuck was I in all this?

  Failing her.

  She wouldn’t ask for my help. I knew her well enough to know this, and I hadn’t even been to the hospital in three days to check in on her. I’d left her on her own with Sloan and Brandon’s family and all the rest of it.

  I should have been there. Maybe I could have gotten ahead of this life-support thing. Taken a spot on the overnight shift to be with Sloan so Kristen could get some sleep. Made sure she ate. Talking to me or not, Kristen never turned down food.

  I blamed myself for this. But I blamed her too. Because if she had let me, I would have taken care of her. We could have taken care of each other, and neither of us would be in such bad shape.

  I reached over and threaded my fingers through hers. She didn’t pull away. She looked too tired to fight me. She squeezed my hand, and the warmth of her touch coursed through me.

  “I’ll go to the hospital,” I said. “I’ll talk to his parents, and I’ll stay with Sloan today. I need you to go home and sleep. And tomorrow I want you to go to the doctor. Call to make the appointment tonight because you might have to fast before they do bloodwork.”

  She just looked at me, her beautiful face hollow and weary. She was always so strong. It was scary seeing her declining like this.

  Love did this to her. Her love of Sloan.

  And probably her love of me too.

  I knew it wasn’t easy on her. I knew she thought she was doing the right thing. But fuck, if she would just stop. If she would stop, we could both be okay.

  She looked at me tiredly. “I bet you wish you would have kicked the tires before falling for this hot mess.” She smiled weakly. “Aren’t you glad I saved you from yourself?”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s not how that works, Kristen. Love is for better or worse. It’s always and no matter what. The no-matter-what just happened first for us.”

  Her eyes teared up and she pressed her lips together. “I miss you.”

  My throat got tight. “Then be with me, Kristen. Right now. We can move in together, today. Sleep in the same bed. Just say okay. That’s all you have to say. Just say okay.”

  I wanted it so badly my heart felt like it was screaming. I wanted to shake her, kidnap her and hold her hostage until she stopped this crap.

  But she shook her head. “No.”

  I let go of her hand and leaned away from her against the door, my fingers to the bridge of my nose. “You’re killing both of us.”

  “One day—”

  “Stop talking to me about one day.” I turned to her. “I’m never going to feel differently about this.”

  She waited a beat. “Neither am I.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, and I closed my eyes. I fe
lt her move across the seat, and then her body was pressed against my side. I wrapped an arm around her and let her tuck her head under my chin.

  The feel of her was therapeutic. I think it was for both of us. A warm compress for my soul.

  I’d never had all of her at once. I’d only ever gotten pieces. Her friendship without her body. Her body without her love. And now her love without any of the rest of it.

  But even with what little fragments I’d had, it was enough to tell me I would never stop chasing all of her. Never. Not if I lived to be a hundred. She was it. She just was.

  “Kristen, you’re the woman I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with,” I whispered. “I know it in my fucking soul.”

  She sniffed. “I know it too, Josh. But that was before.”

  “Before what?” I wrapped my arms around her tighter, tears pricking my eyes.

  “Before I broke inside. Before my body made me wrong for you. Sometimes soul mates don’t end up together, Josh. They marry other people. They never meet. Or one of them dies.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and felt the lump in my throat get bigger. Just to have her admit it, to have her acknowledge that’s what we were to each other, was the most validating thing she’d ever given me.

  “Kristen, I know what I said, that I don’t want to adopt, that I want my own kids and I want a big family. But you make everything different.”

  She was quiet for a long time before she answered me. “Josh, if you knew that being with me would take away the one thing I’ve always wanted, would you do it?”

  I understood her reasoning. I did. But it didn’t make it easier.

  “What if it were me who couldn’t have kids?” I asked. “Would you leave me?”

  She sighed. “Josh, it’s different.”

  “How? How is it different?”

  “Because you’re worth it. You’re worth any flaw you might have. I’m not.”

  I moved her away from me so I could look her in the eye. “You don’t think you’re worth it? Are you kidding me?”

  Her exhausted eyes just stared back at me, empty. “I’m not worth it. I’m a mess. I’m irritable and impatient. I’m bossy and demanding. And I have all these health issues. I can’t give you babies. I’m not worth it, Josh. I’m not. Another woman would be so much easier.”

  “I don’t want an easy woman. I want you.” I shook my head. “Don’t you get it? You are perfect to me. I feel like a better man just knowing that I can do anything for you—make you lunch, make you laugh, take you dancing. These things feel like a privilege to me. All those things that you think are flaws are what I love about you. Look at me.” I tipped her chin up. “I’m miserable. I’m so fucking miserable without you.”

  She started to cry again, and I pulled her back in and held her.

  This was the longest talk we’d had about this. I don’t know if she was just too tired and sick to shut me down, or if she just didn’t have anywhere to run to, stuck in my truck like she was, but it made me feel hopeful that she was at least talking to me about it.

  I nuzzled into her hair, breathed her in. “I don’t want any of it without you.”

  She shook her head against my chest. “I wish I could love you less. Maybe if I did, I could stomach taking this dream from you. But I don’t know how to even begin letting someone give up something like that for me. I would feel like apologizing every day of my life.”

  I took a deep breath. “You have no idea how much I wish I could go back and never put that shit in your head.”

  Her fingers opened and closed on my chest. I felt happy. Just sitting there in my truck in a Burger King parking lot, I felt more peace than I’d felt in weeks just because she was there with me, touching me, talking to me, telling me she loved me. And then that joy drained away when I remembered that this wasn’t going to last. She was going to leave again, and Brandon was still gone. But it was this temporary reprieve that told me that with her by my side, I could get through anything. I could navigate the worst days of my life as long as she stayed by me.

  If only she’d let me get her through the worst days of hers.

  She spoke against my chest. “You know you’re the only man I’ve ever cried over?”

  I laughed a little. “I saw you cry over Tyler. More than once.”

  She shook her head. “No. That was always about you. Because I was so in love with you and I knew I couldn’t be with you. You turned me into some sort of crazy person.”

  She lifted her head and looked at me. “I’m so proud to know you, Josh. And I feel so lucky to have been loved by someone like you.”

  She was crying, and I couldn’t keep my own eyes dry anymore. I just couldn’t. And I didn’t care if she saw me cry. I’d lost the two people I needed most in this life, and I’d never be ashamed for grieving over either one of them. I let the tears well, and she leaned in and kissed me. The gasp when she touched me and the tightness of her lips told me she was trying not to break down. She held my cheeks in her hands, and we kissed and held each other like we were saying goodbye—lovers about to be separated by an ocean or a war, desperate, and too grieved to let go.

  But she didn’t have to let me go.

  And she would anyway.

  She broke away from me, her chin shaking. “You deserve to give all that you are to your children one day. To have a little boy who looks like you who you can raise to be the same kind of man you are. You have to move on, okay? You have to.”

  We were back at the stalemate. I held her forehead to mine by the back of her neck, and I was desperate to know what to say to change her mind. But there was nothing I could do. She was so deep in this mind-set. And how could I even chip away at her when most days she wouldn’t let me anywhere near her?

  “Kristen, I’m never going to give you up. I’m just not. And you’re hurting me. Please stop hurting me. I need you with me. Do you understand?”

  And then I lost her again.

  Her face took on that stony look that I knew so well. She moved away from me, back to the passenger seat, the wall crashing back down, heavy and final.

  I leaned forward and put my face in my hands.

  I waited a few heartbeats before speaking again. “Can you at least start getting some sleep? If I go to the hospital, will you stay at my place and go to bed?” I looked back at her.

  She nodded. “Josh?”

  “What?”

  “It’s quiet,” she said.

  “What is?” I asked gently.

  “My mind. It’s finally quiet. It’s only quiet when I’m with you.”

  * * *

  It took a long, emotional discussion with Claudia and her parents, but they agreed to take Brandon off life support tomorrow.

  After our meeting at their house, his parents hugged me goodbye, and Claudia followed me out to the driveway. The sun was setting. The freeway hummed nearby. I dragged open the heavy white wrought-iron gate that enclosed their tiny East Los Angeles property.

  Claudia had volunteered to stay the night with Sloan in the hospital so I could go home. I just wanted to get back to Kristen. I wanted to slip into bed with her, feel the relief of the sleep that I only found with her next to me.

  “Thank you,” Claudia said as I turned back from the gate.

  She was Brandon’s carbon copy. They had the same expressions, the same eyes.

  I’d never see my friend’s expressions again. The thought hit me like a fist to the gut.

  Claudia pulled her sweater around herself. “I don’t think they would have done it if you hadn’t come. It meant something to them that you said this was what he’d want.”

  She hugged me and when she pulled away, she wiped at her eyes. “It’s hard to argue against faith. You can’t see it, you know?”

  “You should try arguing against logic,” I said, clearing the lump in my throat.

  She sniffed. “I’d argue against logic any day. Logic can be reasoned with as long as you have the facts. Good night, Josh.”
>
  On the drive home, I caught rush-hour traffic. I sat there thinking about the meeting with Brandon’s parents. Horns honked. Red brake lights flashed.

  I thought about Kristen, about how no matter how much I told her I wanted her, she didn’t waver. I wanted her to believe in my love for her, to put all her faith in something intangible, the way Brandon’s parents had believed in their prayers being answered. But Kristen wasn’t like that. For her, feelings weren’t grounds for decision making. She looked at this situation like she was a cool car that I couldn’t afford. Something I wanted because of the way it made me feel, not because I’d considered the price tag and made an educated decision to buy it. She was pros and cons, facts and numbers, black and white. Common sense. She was practical, and there was nothing logical about being with me.

  Or was there?

  Logic can be reasoned with as long as you have the facts…

  I stopped breathing.

  Holy shit.

  Holy fucking shit!

  I’d been making the wrong argument!

  Suddenly I knew how to get through to her. I knew what I had to do.

  It would take some time to pull it all together—a few weeks maybe. But I knew.

  I smiled the rest of the way home, until I got there and saw her car was gone.

  Inside, my laundry was washed and folded. The apartment was spotless and aired out. And the hoodie I’d given her all those weeks ago was folded neatly on the bed.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Kristen

  I parked in Sloan’s driveway and used the key under the flowerpot to let myself in, like I did every day since the funeral two weeks ago. I kept saying I had to get a key made, but I never had the time. Between trying to run Doglet Nation while taking care of what was left of my best friend, my days were full.

  I had begun to consider moving back in with Sloan. I didn’t see her ever not needing me here. Her mom tapped in sometimes. She did what she could. But she had a sixty-hour-a-week job, and Sloan’s dad lived two hours away. I was the last line of defense.

  The house smelled like decaying flowers. I set Stuntman down and brought groceries to the kitchen and unbagged it all. Then I started tossing bouquets. She’d be able to start her own flower shop with all the empty vases.