Page 97 of Just Friends
Pssssssssss,Niko got round three started with a roaring wave of heat. The itching had stopped; I’d sloughed my dead skin cells like a snake sheds his skin. The sweat that flowed from my pores felt different now—perhaps lighter, or purer, as if my skin had purged out all the built-up toxins. My body felt cleansed, refreshed.
Psssssssss.The waves of heat still came and went, but my mind had mellowed, and my muscles had elongated and loosened. It wasn’t a battle to survive the heat anymore. My body and mind were relaxed, ready for whatever heat thebanyacould throw my way. I’d found the comfortable balance.
“Can I ask you question?” Niko asked.
“Sure, bud.”
“You bring Piper here,” he said. “What change your mind?”
Hiding behind a smile, I stared out that foggy window, at the same old landscape I’d already gotten tired of staring at somewhere back during round one.
“I dunno,” I started to say—but before I’d even finished saying it, I realized I’d thrown up a wall to keep Niko out. And something of an epiphany struck me. I wasalwaysthrowing up that wall when it came to Piper, wasn’t I?
But why?
I let out a deep breath.
“Hell. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you,” I said. “Not like we’re going anywhere soon, anyway. We’re just two naked idiots in thebanya.”
He nodded. “Ya. Tell me.”
The truth flowed from my mouth. I told Niko what I’d never told anyone else—the whole story about me and Piper: how we’d met. How I’d chased her at first. How I’d had to shelve those feelings early on to be friends with her. How, up until very recently, that all worked just fine, because we were both comfortable being ‘just friends.’
But then her app paired us together. I was only trying to console her, but one thing led to another, and a single kiss changed everything.
Niko’s eyes lit. “Yeah? You kiss her?”
“Yup.”
“First time, right?”
“First time,” I said.
He clapped me on the back. “Nice, man.Nice.”
“Not so nice, bud. I mean, yeah, thekisswas nice—reallynice, actually—but I basically fucked everything up between us. And things have been weird ever since.”
“Okay, why weird?” he asked.
I sighed. “I dunno, man.”
There I was, doing it again—throwing up that wall.
“Fuck,” I grumbled. “Because now I can’t stop thinking about her, okay? And it feelsdifferent in a way.”
“Different how?”
“It’s hard to put into simple enough words you’d understand, Niko,” I said.
“Try?” he asked, his eyebrows meeting, as if he knew he was asking a lot.
“Fine.” I sighed. “I always thought she was hot—I mean, just look at her, for God’s sake—but it was just, well,differentbefore the kiss.” I gulped. “I could tune it out before, you know? But once we kissed, it was like I’d opened up this can of worms, and—”
The Russian tilted his head at the cliché. “Worms? What worms?”
“Forget the worms. What I’m saying is, we’ve been friends for years. So obviously, we get along really well, and I like her a lot. But then you throw in a super hot kiss, and the way I look at her changed. And all the feelings I had for her start to morph really, really quickly. From friend to something …morethan friend.”
I wasn’t sure how much Niko truly understood—hell, I wasn’t sure how muchIunderstood—but he nodded.
