Page 47 of Just Friends

When the credits roll, Hazel sighs dreamily. “I love that movie. Want to watch another?”

What I want is to press her body into these couch cushions and explore it with my mouth and hands. What I want is for her to look at me like she is right now and never stop. What I want iseverything. But I know she’s not ready for that.

I smile down at her, my fingers reaching up to tuck a stray wisp of hair behind her ear before I can think better of it. I hope she’s too tired to remember it in the morning. I know she can’t be fully awake with the way she leans into my touch, the hum starting in the back of her throat. There’s no way she’d be this responsive if her eyelids weren’t drooping. If the busyness of the weekend wasn’t crashing over her in waves.

“Better not, sleepyhead,” I murmur, and her mouth hitches in a smile at the nickname. “I’m going to toss this.” I hold up the pizza box in my lap.

She curls against the couch cushions where my body was the moment I get up, and I know that the way she was snuggled against me was purely for comfort. I can’t bring myself to mind. I’ll take anything she’s willing to give.

When I come back after throwing out the pizza box, Hazel is sitting up, more alert. Her bottom lip is tucked between her teeth, and a furrow is etched in the space between her brows.

“Your phone vibrated, and I thought it was mine, so I checked it,” she says, holding my phone out to me. “It’s Chloe.”

Cold travels up my arm, slicing through my heart at her hollow tone. I grip my neck with the back of my hand, swiping open my phone to glance at the message. “She texted me last week, saying she was thinking about buying a condo.”

Hazel gives me a flat look that manages to look even flatter in the milky light of the TV. “Alex, she’s not interested inbuying a condo.”

Irritation crawls through me and seeps out my pores at the unfairness of this situation. I can practically feel Hazel slipping through my fingers over the girlsheset me up with on the dateshewanted me to go on.

“Well, that’s allI’minterested in,” I tell her, enunciating each syllable.

Hazel stands, the blanket we were sharing pooling on the floor in front of the couch. She picks up our cups and moves into the kitchen, flipping the sink on. Every move she makes is brisk.

“Why won’t you just go out with her again?” she asks, not looking up. She’s using a sponge to clean out our sticky glasses, steam rising from the hot water and turning her hands an angry red.

“I don’t want to go out with her again.” I have to cross my arms to keep from reaching for her, to keep from pulling her against me and showing her with my hands and mouth and teeth exactly who I want to be spending my time with.

Hazel looks up at me, fire behind her eyes. “Then who do you want to go out with, Alex?”

My teeth ache from how tightly I clench my jaw, and my muscles twitch with restraint. She holds my gaze, not backing down, and I see it there, that flicker of fear behind her eyes that melts my aggravation.

I move around the counter, shutting off the water. Her hands are fiery red and hot against my skin as I cup them with my own. “You’ll hurt yourself,” I say, tracing one finger over her palm, mapping out every line and divot.

“I don’t mind,” she says, her shoulder lifting in a shrug.

I meet her eyes through the fringe of my lashes. “I do.”

She holds my gaze, and her throat works as she swallows. “You don’t want to go out with Chloe again?”

“No,” I say softly, wondering how much she can read in my eyes, in my pulse pounding against her fingers grazing my wrist.

Her chest lifts as she breathes in, holding it for a heartbeat before stepping back, carving the distance between us as surely as a river wears away rock to form a canyon.

“Okay,” she says, and her voice sounds a little shaky. “I’ll find someone else for next week.”

Theloudclankofweights smacking against metal grates against my already frayed nerves on Monday morning. I’m at the gym with Adam, my body slicked with sweat from pushing myself hard for the last hour, trying to clear my head and burn away the frustration of the last twelve hours. Everything unraveled so quickly last night. One moment, Hazel was curled against me, and the next, she was picking out women to set me up with on our next blind date.

It feels like one step forward and two steps back. Before, I just had to convince Hazel to see me differently, to considerme. But now I’m fearing shehas, and that scared her more than anything. Square one would be an improvement to being off the board entirely.

“What’s going on with you?” Adam grunts from next to me, where he’s doing a set with free weights.

“Nothing,” I answer. Because I really don’t want to talk about it. Adam and Kelsey had the simplest, least complicated love story in history. They met during orientation week of their freshman year of college, became friends, and dated other people. Then, when they were both single at the same time in their junior year, Adam asked her out, and she said yes. There were no worries about ruining their friendship or possibilities that things might end badly between them. Adam looked at his newly single friend across the room at a frat party and knew she was the one. I was shocked when they told us they were planning to get married right out of college, but if they’ve ever hit a rut in their relationship, I haven’t seen it. They’ve been strong pillars, anchors in a storm, holding each other up and making each other better for over a decade.

“Oh, sure,” Adam deadpans, eyes rolling so far into the back of his head that I’m sure he can see another realm.

I ignore him. I don’t get frustrated easily. I’m usually pretty easygoing, and despite the anxiety I sometimes feel in new social situations, I can stay unruffled.

But Adam has always had a way of getting under my skin. So I learned at a young age how to burrow just as far beneathhis.

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