Page 87 of The Friend Zone

Maybe she was telling the truth, that all it would ever be between us was casual hookups and no strings attached.

Maybe even the casual hookups are over.

When the water show was done, Brandon looked at his watch. “I want to check out that rare bookstore before it closes.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a great fucking idea,” Shawn said. “Hey, let me get a picture of you guys. You can send it to Sloan.”

Brandon rummaged in his pocket and handed over his phone.

“Let me get one on your phone too,” he said to me. “You can send it to Kristen. Maybe she’ll print it and keep it where she keeps your balls.”

“Dick.” I put the phone in his hand.

Brandon and I posed against the railing in front of the lake, and I faked a smile. Shawn stood and held up Brandon’s cell for the picture. Then he drew his arm back and chucked Brandon’s phone over our heads into the water.

“Hey—” Before I could lunge for it, mine was next. Then he took his own phone, and like a fucking lunatic, he threw that too.

“What the fuck?!” I pushed him.

He laughed, taking the shove. “You two motherfuckers are in Vegas! This dude wants to go to a fucking rare bookstore, and your pussy-whipped ass is practically crying over some girl. I’ve freed you, bitches!”

Even Brandon looked irritated. “You’re buying me a new phone, asshole.”

Shawn pulled out a flask. “Yeah, yeah. We’ll all get new shit when we win at the craps table.” He shoved the flask into Brandon’s chest. “No more Sloan and Kristen. No rare motherfucking books either. We’re in Vegas, and we’re gonna fucking do Vegas!”

TWENTY-SIX

Kristen

Sloan and I stood in a waist-deep pool of rust-colored water, slapping mud on each other’s faces. I started her bachelorette party at Glen Ivy, a sprawling day spa in Corona.

Hot tubs, steam rooms, saunas. We rented a cabana by one of the pools and spent the first half of the day lounging and having mojitos. We’d just gotten out of massages and we’d made our way to the mud pit, a pond-size pool with a pedestal in the middle featuring a heaping pile of the spa’s signature red clay. We were supposed to smack it on, let it dry, and slough it off to exfoliate our skin.

Sloan’s mom, cousin Hannah, and Brandon’s sister Claudia were already baking their mud into a crusty layer, lying under the sun in lounge chairs.

“Did Brandon say what they’re doing today?” I asked, trying not to sound too interested.

Sloan smeared mud on her stomach. “They were walking on the strip the last time he texted me. And just so you know, that’s the last update you’re going to get from me. If you miss him, call him.”

I pressed my lips into a line and wiped two muddy fingers on her cheek. She’d taunted me earlier with a picture of the guys on their motorcycles. Wouldn’t let me see it. Told me if I wanted to see pictures of Josh, I should send him an Instagram request like a normal person.

“I can’t call him.”

She rolled her eyes. “Kristen, this is so stupid.”

“It’s not.”

Ghosting him was for his own good. Josh and I needed a reset—especially after some of the things I’d said when I was drunk.

Josh was nursing a little crush on me—I was almost positive. And ultimately we needed to stop hooking up altogether. But I couldn’t call off things with him just yet. Once I really thought about it, I realized there were complications with the timing. But his two weeks on a strike team were the perfect opportunity to put some much-needed distance between us. If he still wanted to see me when he got back, I’d see him. But for now this was the right move.

Sloan shook her head at me. “You can’t be serious about this. You miss him. And I bet he misses you too.”

I knew he missed me. He’d said it in a text not four hours ago. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, wondering exactly how he meant that to be taken. Was he horny? Did he see something funny that Brandon wouldn’t get and he wanted to tell me about it and it made him wish I was there? Or did he miss me, miss me.

No matter the answer, it reinforced my decision to back him off these last two weeks. He shouldn’t be missing me. We were fuck buddies—he should only be missing the sex. I wasn’t going to encourage him by engaging. Not talking on the phone or texting him had always been a hard-line rule for me, and I needed to stick to it, now more than ever. I didn’t want to lead him on.

“He sees other women, you know. We date other people,” I said defensively.