The Friend Zone(6)
“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 of 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.