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It was stupid.
Then everything happened with Kai, and my haircut earlier today after finishing at the studio became not a physical representation of my success but a desperate change. Anything to distract me from what was happening in my life. Anything to drive the conversation away from the problems I’d created. Anything to make me feel a little bit less like myself, because myself was acting like a real dick.
But then Kai said she loved it. I thought she might hate it. She loved my long hair so much. But the way she looked at me, the way she spoke to me… It was the same way I felt when I saw her new body, her new confidence, on display for the first time. As if the most beautiful creature on the planet somehow went and got even more beautiful, inside and out.
She was across the yard, chatting with the girls in the corner. I was glad to see her enjoying her time. In the past, when she and Javi were fighting, it would ruin her whole day. That didn’t happen today. Not that I in any way compared myself to him. She loved him, not me. But the fact that she wasn’t letting our tiff drag her down, as I was, made me proud of her. The way she’d been treating me lately with such confidence, telling me when she was angry with me, not worrying about making me upset as she expressed herself, let me know that, while it would never be me, her future partner wouldn’t walk all over her.
A figure blurred in the corner of my eye, and my shoulders fell as I realized a pair of humans were approaching us. I registered a large, dark figure and a smaller, lighter one. They came into view and occupied two of the plastic seats in front of us. I sent Oli a telepathic message with my eyes, attempting to hide just how disappointed I was by Briggs’ and Aaron’s arrival.
“Jonah. We need your help,” Aaron said. My gaze shifted to the sitting giant. He looked at me with no trace of hesitation or intimidation. Not that I expected someone like him to ever feel either of those things.
Thankfully, the seemingly polite Briggs cut in before I was pressed to supply an answer, sticking his hand out across his friend’s chest. “We do not, thanks. Aaron, give it a rest. Jonah. Oliver. How are you guys?”
“Yes, we do,” Aaron said, smacking Briggs’ hand out of the way. “Briggs here likes our friend, Thalia. See her over there? The muscular one in pink.” He pointed to the corner in which the girls were huddled. I saw her. She was standing next to Kai and June, giggling and dunking a solo cup into the bowl of cheese puffs.
My returned line of vision to the men in front of me was answer enough to his question.
“But the problem,” Aaron continued, “is that he’s totally stuck in the friend zone. So, we wanted to get your advice. How do you get out of the friend zone?”
A laugh exploded from Oli, and I whipped my head to glare at him. The asshole was supposed to be on my side. He quickly covered his lips with a strong hand. I did not look back at Kai’s friends. Instead, I stared at the spot of grass in front of my feet. “Why would you ask me that?” My voice was probably a bit too grating for a skinny kid sitting in front of a behemoth and his sinewy sidekick.
Aaron bit back immediately. “Not gonna play that game with you, dude. How did you do it?” He crossed those giant arms over his chest, his gaze burning into me. I had no choice but to lift my head under his compulsion. Even sitting, he was twice my size.
“Aaron!” Briggs again held out his forearm in front of Aaron’s obnoxious position. “Sorry about him. He’s an idiot.”
“No, come on.” Aaron unfolded his arms and put his hand over his heart, unraveling himself for his next sentence. “Jonah, man, with full respect. What the fuck did you do to Kai? Because she’s been freaking for the last forty-eight hours, and Briggs needs to do that to Thalia.”
I rubbed my eyebrows between my thumb and middle finger. As if the whole thing weren’t hard enough, she had to go tell these guys about it? And they were taking it up with me? I couldn’t fucking believe it. Apart from losing one of my friends in some kind of freak accident, this was my worst nightmare.
Aaron continued to speak, and I wondered if anyone would notice if I simply got up and walked out of the party. “Look, I get the sense you’re a little reserved.” Great observation. Smart guy. A rock would’ve had enough sense to gather that. “Don’t worry. You know she’s respectful. She hasn’t given us a single detail. I promise. But we can see it and we know you did it.”
My chest rose and fell. There was no way I was getting out of this one. I pressed my fingers into my eyes and stared at the shapes made on the insides of my lids by my vigorous rubbing. “Kai and I have been friends since we were kids. I’m not sure it applies to what you’re talking about.”
“Humor me,” Aaron said. Truthfully, he was hard to say no to. There was something about that intense stare. It made me worry. A lot. Kai had been feeling…frisky lately. And she sure did spend a lot of time at the gym with these guys.
“I don’t have any advice to offer.” I uncovered my eyes and immediately locked my gaze to an inconsequential spot on the fence.
“Oh, come on, you old grump,” Aaron whined. Another chuckle from Oli and another moment filed away in my mental Oli Sucks Folder. “We’re buzzed at a cookout and B needs to pull out the moves. Plus, we want to pry, but I assume you already know that.” Obviously, I knew that. “It’ll be fun. This is called having a conversation.”
Aaron pronounced the last three words slowly to ensure I understood them. As if I were fucking two years old. I turned to Oli once again and saw that his lips were fully folded back between his teeth to stop his cheeks from bursting with laughter.
“I’m sorry. He’s probably not going to leave you alone,” Briggs said.
“Details, friend, details,” Aaron insisted. Friend.
They didn’t know the truth. They didn’t know that this was all just a major fuck up that was quickly leading me to a world without my favorite person. It was almost offensive how entertaining they found it, meanwhile I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that my life as I knew it was over forever. And just when I was starting to come around to it.
“I guess just go for it.” It was all I could offer. Vague. Avoidant. Just like me when it came to anything of value.
“No way, man.” Aaron shook his head and leaned forward in his seat. “We’ve asked Kai this question too, and she says the friend zone is way more complicated than that. That it takes thought. Plus, I said we wanted to pry.”
My ears rang red, producing a hot burn down the sides of my neck. “You asked her?”
“Mhm.” Aaron’s lips stretched into a complacent smirk. “Let me pry, man, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Oh, that was tempting. Too tempting. I had to know what the fuck she said, and I had to know if there was anything I could do to bring us back to normal. Maybe I could offer them just a little bit of information. “I, uhm… I accidentally crossed a line that I shouldn’t have crossed. And she liked it.”
Aaron’s weight shifted forward. Briggs’ did too. Even Oli leaned in, though likely not for the same interest as Kai’s friends, but in shock that I was actually about to open up even the smallest crack of my mind.
