Page 65 of Just Friends
He smiled. “Great. Got any ideas how to do that?”
“No, not really.” I chuckled ironically and threw myself into the couch.“Come, sit. Let’s just try to hang out like normal.”
“Okay.”
He joined me on the couch.
“So, um, how was training camp today?” I asked, trying my best to makefriendly conversation.
“Good,” he said. “I set a new PR on the squat today. Seven hundred pounds.”
“Cool,” I said. “Sounds heavy. Congrats.”
“Yep.” He drummed his hands on his knees. “How’s, ah, Soulmate doing?”
I laughed bitterly. “I’d rather not talk about it.”
Why? Because with each passing day, Soulmate lost thousands and thousands more followers on social media. Soulmate’s mentions and replies were filled with incendiary accusations—the promotion with Jax was a scam, which clearly meant that Soulmate itself was a fake app that mined and sold users’ private data for personal profit, etc. The speculation was rampant and the outraged mob demanded my head. Over on the app store, the one-star review-bombers had successfully tanked Soulmate’s rating. The sudden spike in angry reviews had resulted in the app being pushed so far down the search results, it’s visibility was effectively zero, which meant no new users were seeing it, let alone downloading it.
Long story short: Soulmate hadn’t even been out a week, and it was already dead and buried.
“Sorry,” he said, gnashing his teeth. “That was a dumb question. I just … I don’t know what to talk about anymore, Pipes.”
“I know the feeling,” I said.
“Fuck,” he snarled, smashing his fist into a throw pillow. “I hate this, Pipes. I really,reallyhate this. I want everything to be normal between us again.”
“Me too,” I said, but I knew it was a lie. Because I didn’t want things to benormal.I wanted things to be different than they used to be. And that was the source of all our tension, wasn’t it?
We smiled at each other—not a happy smile, an uneasy one, like we both knew ‘normal’ just wasn’t possible anymore.
“Fuck,” he said again. “Why’s this so hard?”
“I don’t know,” I lied.
Why couldn’t I come clean and just tell himthat I liked him? So what if it made things even weirder?At least then, the weirdness would all be on himand not me. I’d have nothing to feel weird about, because I’d been honest and laid my cards on the table. And there’s nothing more liberating than telling the truth.
But … I couldn’t. Because I knew he didn’t feel the same way about me—and even if he did like me as more than a friend, it wasn’t the kind of all-consuming love I desired. It was sex appeal; carnal and exciting, yes, but shallow and limited. He might want to sleep with me, maybe even sleep with me alot,but in the end I’d find out what I already knew: Jax Cameron, as good of a friend as he might be, simply wasn’tboyfriend material.
Jax pointed at my laptop. “So what were you working on when I came home? Just browsing the web, or?”
I let out a quiet groan. I didn’twant to tell him because I knew how he’d react … but then again, it’s not like we really had anything elseto talk about. And if he were justa friend, I’d have no problem telling him, right?
“I’m emailing Nate,” I said at last. “Ortryingto email Nate, but I can’t exactly figure out what to say.”
“Nate?” He squinted, trying to remember. “Wait. That’s not your ex, is it?”
“It is.”
He flinched. “Why? I mean, what do you have to say to that ass?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed. “I emailed him about the whole stupid spray situation a month ago when it happened.”
“Yeah, I remember you telling me, but you never told me that he replied.”
“Well, he did,” I stammered, “I just never wrote him back. Anyway, that’s what I was trying to do before you came home.”
“But wait, what did he say in his email? You never told me. Did he offer to pay the damages? Or hire a different sprayer, at least—someone who knows not to spray on a windy day?”
