Fabio vs. the Friend Zone (The Pen Pal Romance Series)

by Kelsie Stelting

  “I tried in Cold Stones.”

  “And after?”

  She hung her head. “I wanted to in the car, but you were on the phone...”

  “You’re blaming this on my grandma?”

  “No.” She shook her head so quickly her pony tail spun behind her. “I should have told you. I just...I wanted things to be perfect...at least for a little while.”

  “But how can something be perfect when it’s just a lie?”

  She put her finger on my chin to make me look at her. “It wasn’t a lie. The way I feel about you—it’s real. Remember?”

  I stepped back, and her hand dropped. “I remember. I just don’t know if I believe it.”

  “Fabio...”

  I walked to the car and opened the door. “Just give me some time, Grace.”

  “How long?”

  I stared at her. “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll be leaving August first,” she said. The final stake through my dying heart.

  I couldn’t respond. I just closed the car door and drove away.

  How could Grace have done that? She was my best friend. We told each other everything. She even told me when she got her period. Of course, I’d been grossed out, but that wasn’t the point. If she could tell me about blood spewing from her lady bits, she could tell me about this. She shouldn’t have kept this from me.

  I had something in my eyes that made it hard to see.

  Oh yeah, tears.

  Freaking great.

  I pulled over to the curb and pressed my forehead against the top of the steering wheel.

  Why? This weekend had been perfect.

  A perfect lie.

  She’d known the whole time. And she hadn’t loved me enough to tell me the truth. Maybe I wasn’t even her friend anymore.

  That thought killed me.

  I wasn’t going there.

  I used the bottom of my shirt to wipe my face and pulled out my phone.

  Fabio: You up for a training sesh?

  My phone lit up with a message almost immediately.

  Connor: Be on in fifteen.

  Good.

  I put the car in drive and started back home. The competition was only a few days away, and I couldn’t let this thing with Grace distract me anymore. I needed to give it my all, focus on my own future for once.

  When I reached the apartment building, I grabbed my duffel bag from the trunk, threw it over my shoulder, and walked inside as fast as I could. People around the retirement community were always wanting to talk. Usually I didn’t mind, but today that sounded like pure torture.

  I managed to make it inside our apartment without getting sucked into any conversations.

  Planes, Trains, and Automobiles blared on the television. Grandma and Gretch sat on the love seat, Alice sat on the recliner, and Cora had taken the couch to herself, spread out with a bowl of popcorn resting on her stomach. Grandpa was nowhere to be seen. He’d probably saved himself and hid in the bedroom.

  Great minds think alike.

  They twisted at the sound of the opening door and grinned at me.

  I put on the best smile I could. “Hey gals. I’d love to chat, but I’m late for a training session. Have fun.”

  Grandma opened her mouth to talk, but I turned toward my bedroom. If I heard one more elderly lady tell me how amazing I was or how dumb Grace would be not to choose me, I’d lose it.

  No, I needed to forget about Grace, forget about anything other than Fallout so I could win that internship. My sanity, my future, depended on it.

  Twenty

  Grace

  The door to my room cracked open, but I didn’t turn around. I curled tighter around my pillow and willed whoever it was to go away.

  Instead, my bed sunk down.

  “Nuo...” Cookie said. “Zhīyīn nánmì.”

  She didn’t need to tell me that good friends were hard to find. I knew that already. And I blew it.

  Cookie scooted closer to me, grunting on the way. I pictured her short little legs poking over the side of my bed. And then she rolled over and hugged me tight.

  That just made me want to cry more.

  “Fabio is a good friend,” she said. “I hope you will treat him as such.”

  As she stood up, the bed sprang back into place. I fell asleep with tears fresh on my eyes and regret searing through my heart.

  In the morning, the door cracked open, and I got ready to hear another Chinese proverb.

  But this time, I heard more than one set of footsteps. Was my whole family here for an intervention?

  Nora whispered, “Should we wait in the living room?”

  My eyes flew open.

  London said, “No, just go wake her up.”

  “You wake her up!”

  I rolled over and grinned sleepily at my friends. “You guys are the loudest whisperers ever.”

  London screamed, and Nora burst out laughing.

  I wiped the crumblies out of my eyes and stretched my arms wide.

  They launched onto my bed and wrapped me in hugs so tight I almost couldn’t breathe. Not that I minded. Having someone else holding me together felt amazing.

  London buried her head further in my shoulder. “I missed you so much!”

  I hugged her tighter. “I missed you too...and I’m about to miss you more.”

  She and Nora pulled back, looking at me curiously.

  “What do you mean?” London asked.

  I dropped my hands on the blankets and stared at the contrast between my skin and the white comforter. Why was this so hard? I just needed to come out and say it.

  “I got a job teaching at the orphanage,” I said. “I’ll be there for the whole schoolyear.”

  There it was, out in the open.

  No weight came off my chest. If anything, I felt more nervous waiting for their reactions.

  Nora’s eyes were wide. “That’s so amazing. It’s like you’re skipping a step!”

  My lips twitched. It kind of was. I’d always wanted to work with children as a teacher, and now was my chance to work at a school from the ground up. Most people would have paid for an experience like this, and here I was, eighteen years old with a job that had benefits.

  Something was missing, though.

  London took me in, her eyes seeing way too much. “Fabio wasn’t happy about it.”

  “That’s the bad part.” I buried my face in my hands. “He didn’t know about it.”

  London rubbed my back. “You haven’t told him yet?”

  A sharp shard of pain twisted inside me. “My parents asked him what he was going to do without me next year.” The look of pure agony, betrayal, Fabio had on his face flashed through my mind, making it even worse. I had lied to my best friend—my boyfriend. The love of my life.

  I thought of Nora and how she’d dealt with the secret her boyfriend had kept from her. She’d been devastated only months ago, and now it seemed like she was happier than she’d ever been.

  “How did you deal with it, Nora?” I asked. “When Emerick didn’t tell you he was the one you’d been writing to all that time?”

  They’d been lab partners, friends even, before she found out he was our school’s advice columnist. And she’d forgiven him.

  A small line formed between her perfect eyebrows. “I don’t know. I didn’t have a choice. I either forgave him for a mistake he made or let go of him forever. I guess I wasn’t ready to let go.”

  London leaned forward. “What happened between you two at the conference? You kinda just dropped off the map that first night back.”

  Memories that I’d thought would be happy forever suddenly felt painful. “I said I loved him back.”

  Both of their mouths dropped open, and they looked at each other like I wasn’t there.

  London looked back at me first. “You said you loved him?”

  “Come on,” I said. “You knew already.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know you’d actually say it!” she cried.
<
br />   I sighed. “It doesn’t matter anyway. He couldn’t get out of here fast enough after he found out I’m leaving.”

  Nora rubbed my shoulder. “Have you tried texting him?”

  I shook my head. “He said he needed time.”

  London stood up. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Let’s go’?” I asked.

  She waved her hand. “He’s had time. Let’s go get your man.”

  I smiled at her. Not because I thought Fabio would love me showing up on his doorstep or because I thought it was a great idea, but because I loved her. London had always been braver than me.

  Nora looked between the two of us. “Um... maybe brush your teeth first?”

  I covered my mouth. “I’ll be right back.”

  After brushing my teeth and sweeping on some mascara, I came back to my room to find London and Nora had gone through my closet. They had a pair of distressed denim shorts and a formfitting tank top laid out on my bed.

  I raised my eyebrows. “What’s this?”

  London nudged my shoulder. “It’s your get-him-back outfit. Now put it on. We’ve got a guy to get.”

  Twenty-One

  Fabio

  I stared at my phone.

  Grace still hadn’t texted.

  She knew I had my contest today, but she still hadn’t texted.

  That was probably my fault. I’d told her to give me time. Not in the literal way. In the lame way that meant I wanted her to wait a day and then chase after me. But she hadn’t. Why would she?

  I was just some gamer kid living in a retirement community. I had nothing. She had everything.

  She hadn’t told me for a reason. Was moving halfway around her way of letting me down easy?

  A message flashed across my screen.

  Connor: You are going to win this. I know it sounds lame, but believe in yourself. You’re ready.

  I read over his words again, tried to believe they were the truth. Then I went back to the last text I’d gotten from Grace, telling me she was in the food court.

  How could a guy be so happy and so sad in the span of a couple days?

  I guess I knew.

  I stood up and put my phone in my back pocket. Then I picked up my blazer and shrugged it on over my shoulders. It felt a little tight, but Grace had told me it looked good.

  My door cracked open, and Grandma peeked her head in. Her visor barely fit through the narrow space. It looked like something a dealer would wear in Vegas. Maybe she didn’t understand what kind of gaming this was?

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Ready, honey?”

  I smoothed out the front of my jacket and picked up my messenger bag. “I think so.”

  She smiled and stepped back.

  I followed her out of my room, and she, Grandpa, and I walked to the car. Grandma looking like a blackjack dealer, Grandpa looking like the grumpy guy from Up!, and me so nervous not even three applications of Blue Mountain would be able to hide it.

  I drove us to the hotel downtown, having memorized the directions.

  Finally, we were there, at the contest that would change my life forever, one way or another.

  I dropped Grandma and Grandpa off at the front and then drove around until I found a parking spot. My hand shook as I switched the car into park.

  I wished Grace was here to talk me down, to tell me everything would be okay. But she wasn’t.

  With the car off, the inside quickly became suffocatingly hot. I pushed the door open, got out, and stared down the road at the banner on the hotel’s entrance.

  FallCon: Internship Competition

  I glanced at my phone, willing Grace’s message to come through.

  But it didn’t.

  I powered my cell down and walked toward the hotel, already feeling sweat pool at my hairline.

  According to the website, more than a hundred kids would be playing today. We’d each get ten minutes to show how we played the game, and then the judges would make their decisions. One person would get a life-changing internship, and everyone else would have to figure it out the hard way.

  When I walked through the front sliding doors, I caught sight of Grandma and Grandpa in the lobby. Grandma already had her book out, and Grandpa was enthusiastically talking to someone. The only thing that got him that excited was the postal system. As a retired postmaster, he could talk about that forever.

  “Can I help you?” someone from the front desk asked.

  “Uh...yeah. Do you know where registration is for FallCon?”

  She nodded and pointed across the lobby. “That way and to the right. Ballroom one.”

  “Thanks.”

  I squared my shoulders. It was time.

  I walked to Grandma and Grandpa and told them we needed to go. Grandpa looked a little miffed he had to stop talking about the price of postage stamps but stood up and handed the guy his card. Which was really just a napkin with his phone number on it.

  The three of us walked to the ballroom filled with round tables. It had all the tension of a hospital waiting room, but way better food. The snack table looked epic. If only my stomach wasn’t wrapped up like unkempt game console cords.

  While Grandma and Grandpa went for coffee, I walked to the registration table. My legs felt like jelly and my thumbs shook, but I made my voice firm.

  “I’d like to check in. Forrester, Fabio.”

  The guy wearing a Bethesda shirt used his pen to trace down the line of names. “Ah. Right here.” He drew a long line through my name in hot pink ink. “Your slot’s at 10:30.”

  10:30. An hour and a half left before I even played. And four hours after that until announcements.

  My stomach twisted. This would be the longest day of my life.

  The guy kept talking like he wasn’t concerned. “Announcements are at 2:30. And here is your nametag.” He handed me a lanyard with my name card attached.

  I slipped it around my neck and thanked him.

  I sat with Grandma and Grandpa, forcing myself to eat a bagel and sip on water. Most of all, I tried to focus on the game to come. I closed my eyes, visualizing all the things I could do in my ten minutes. My thumbs twitched over imaginary keys, pulling from hours of practice.

  And then they called my name.

  Twenty-Two

  Grace

  The second I walked through the hotel doors, goosebumps rose on my skin. Short “get-him-back” shorts had been a bad idea. I just hoped they’d pay off like London promised they would.

  Nora walked up to the front desk worker with a political smile on her face. “Hi there. I was hoping you could help us find FallCon?”

  The girl gave her a sympathetic smile. “Sorry, registration closed an hour ago, and no one’s allowed to go in until the awards ceremony.”

  Nora leaned a little closer, rested her folded arms on the counter. “Are you sure about that?” She nodded her head toward me. “My friend didn’t get the chance to tell her best guy friend how she feels about him this morning.”

  The worker looked half incredulous, half amused. “Does this look like an airport to you?”

  Nora’s shoulders straightened. “No, but—”

  “Do you see any set lights around?”

  Nora bristled. “Excuse me, I—”

  “Well, if this isn’t a romcom, I’m sure your friend can wait to tell him how she feels until after the competition.” And then this girl had the nerve to wink.

  Nora looked back at me, eyes blazing. Then she turned to the worker, putting on her scary Nora face. “Do you know who my father is?”

  “No, and I don’t want to. You can go all Draco Malfoy on someone who cares. Or maybe security?”

  Okay, I kind of hated this front desk worker, but I had to admit, that was a good burn.

  Nora’s face was getting redder by the second. “Do you even have security in this dump?”

  “Why don’t you keep it up and find out?” the girl asked.

  London grabb
ed Nora’s arm and spun her around. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”

  My cheeks heated. Were we seriously leaving the hotel in disgrace? Before I even got the chance to tell Fabio good luck in person?

  We marched out the front, but instead of walking toward Nora’s SUV, London led us around the corner.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Back inside,” London said. “We’ll find Fabio on our own.” Her eyes looked fierce as she marched us through the July heat. I probably just looked sweaty. My thighs were already chafing.

  I said a quick prayer asking God to let this work out. For me to be reunited with my best friend—for us to make peace. And I hoped that was in God’s will, because now that I knew how I felt about Fabio, I didn’t know how I could stand not being with him.

  We walked until we hit the next exterior door and stood outside for someone to leave.

  Good news, we made it inside. Bad news, if we wanted to get any further, we’d have to walk right in plain sight of the front desk.

  I turned on London. “What now, genius?”

  She quirked a brow. “Just chill. I’ve got this.”

  Nora was already texting furiously. Probably trying to see what her dad could do. Or maybe getting her boyfriend, Emerick, to write a bad review of the hotel in the Norman Transcript. Who knew. Trying to talk her out of it would be futile.

  Without warning, London crouched down and ran/waddled across the lobby. “Come on!” she hissed, waving her arm behind her like a military sergeant.

  A quick peek at the receptionist desk told me the girl had gone back into the office. At least for a little bit.

  Nora and I followed London across the lobby Abd down a hallway. She stopped in front of a foamboard sign. FallCon 2018. We were here. But the door was closed...now what?

  London dropped to her knees and pressed her cheek against the floor so she could see under the crack.

  I giggled. “Are you serious?”

  She shushed me. “I’m trying to see what’s going on.”

  Suddenly, she rolled away from the door and snapped to her feet. “Hide!” she hissed.