Page 90 of The Friend Zone

The phone shuffled. “Okay. Hold on.”

I reached under the bed and pulled out my laptop. “Can I follow you too?”

“You can follow me anywhere.”

He was flirty when he was drunk. It was cute. He didn’t usually say things like this to me. I shut it down immediately when he did. But Drunk Josh wasn’t really Josh.

“How come Sober Josh doesn’t have all this swagger, huh?” I teased.

He snorted. “He does. He’s just trying to follow your many rules. Drunk Josh doesn’t live by rules. Drunk Josh does what Drunk Josh wants,” he said, stumbling over the words.

“And what does Drunk Josh want?” I smiled, tapping his name into the search bar on Instagram.

“You.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You’re lucky you’re not here. I’d take advantage of you. You sound too weak to fight me off.”

“I consent.”

I sent him a follow request, laughing at his comment. A second later I got his and approved it.

We got quiet as we looked at each other’s pictures.

“I didn’t know you rock climb,” I said. There was a picture of him hanging off the side of a seriously high cliff face. He had on a harness and helmet, and he looked, as always, so handsome. “And you water-ski.”

“Tyler,” he said dryly.

I forgot I had those pictures on there. Tyler and me at the Marine ball. A few more goofy selfies during his leaves. One of him kissing me.

“Celeste’s pretty,” I countered, looking at picture after picture of them smiling together. She was a Sloan. The kind of woman who doesn’t need makeup. The kind who glows when she smiles.

“You’re prettier,” he said.

“And your dick is bigger than Tyler’s.”

This garnered me a laugh. I could imagine the sparkle in his eyes and the dimples in his cheeks.

I missed him.

The ache ripped through me. I hadn’t seen him in so long, and somehow the separation didn’t lessen how I felt the way it had with Tyler.

Tyler faded. He always faded, even though we’d talk on the phone and Skype and write. But Josh just got brighter. The ache got deeper the longer I went without him.

Hopefully it was the opposite for Josh. I hoped the time away from me had cooled any feelings he might be having, because I didn’t think I could keep my walls up when he got back. I missed him too much, and the time I was going to get with him was too short now.

How was I going to do it when things were over, when I told him after the wedding that I didn’t want to see him anymore? It was going to kill me.

I went back to the photos, and my mood dampened.

There were a lot of pictures of him with his nieces and nephews. Him holding a new baby in a hospital. Giving piggyback rides. One picture had him buried to his neck in sand on a beach somewhere, flanked by two little boys who looked a lot like him, holding red plastic shovels.

“You really love kids, don’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Come to Vegas. Let’s get married.”

I snorted. God, he was fucked up. “And upstage Brandon and Sloan?”

“Come on. Why not?”