Page 69 of Just Friends

IhaveabsolutelynowhereI need to be. I moved around my work appointments yesterday while Hazel napped. I’m way too buzzed for coffee. A grocery delivery will arrive at Hazel’s apartment in three hours, with every single thing she could possibly need while she recovers. She won’t need to buy food for weeks. Or Tylenol. I probably went overboard with the Tylenol. I bet the delivery person thinks I’m a prepper with the amount of pain reliever and canned soup I purchased.

But I had to get out of that apartment before I did something really, really stupid. For a moment, it looked like she wanted this too, and that’s more invitation than I needed. More temptation than I could handle. I almost told her everything, almostriskedeverything.

And now that the idea has wormed its way into my brain, I can’t get it out. I want to tell her, screw the consequences.

Without thinking it through, I end up at Adam’s house. I don’t know if I’m here for advice, to blow off steam, or to pick through his puzzle collection for a non-screen time activity to do with Hazel today, but I quickly realize whatever I choose will have an audience. Parker’s truck is in Adam’s driveway.

I almost back out, but then the garage opens, and Alex and Parker are there, dressed in gym clothes, a basketball under Alex’s arm. He squints when he sees me, raising a hand in greeting, and I know there’s no getting out of it. I guess the real question now is how much I want to tell him in front of Parker. Ideally, nothing. But Adam has a way of burrowing under my skin and pulling truths out of me that I’m not ready to reveal.

My breath huffs out of me, fogging up the window before I crank open the door.

“Hey,” Alex says when I climb out. “What’s up?”

I feel stretched too thin, exhausted in a way I can’t quite describe, as my eyes slide to Parker. He’s watching me with a pensive, appraising expression.

“How’s Hazel?” he asks.

Something inside me snaps at the question. A thread split right down the middle. “I’m in love with her,” I blurt, and it feels like aloe gel on a sunburn—instant relief.

His eyes soften, and a grin quirks his lips. I didn’t know how he’d respond, but this wasn’t it. “I figured that out,” he says.

“When?” I ask, suddenly desperate. Because ifhedid, a virtual stranger, there’s a good chance Hazel did too.

He shrugs one broad shoulder. “I suspected when we went dancing, but I knew for sure yesterday when she got hurt.”

I suck my bottom lip between my teeth, running a hand through my hair. It’s messy and disheveled from a night on that abomination of a couch. “Do you think she knows?”

Parker barks a laugh. “Not a chance.”

“I don’t see how,” Adam drawls, bouncing the basketball once against his driveway. “He walks around like a lovesick puppy.”

My eyes narrow in a glare at Adam, and Parker says, “She doesn’t know.”

I glance back at him again, the hope stirring in my chest painful enough that I press a hand against the ache there. “Why do you think that?”

“She wouldn’t have gone out with me if she knew,” Parker says easily, shrugging once more.

“Oh, so she’s stupid and oblivious,” Adam says, and despite myself, I laugh. His gray eyes sparkle with amusement, and I know this was his intention all along, to pull me out of the funk that’s been dragging me down for weeks.

He holds out the basketball. “We’re about to play for a bit, if you want to join.”

“I have to be back in two hours,” I say, taking the ball from him, the worn rubber smooth against my fingers.

“It won’t take me that long to beat you,” Adam retorts, smacking the ball from my hand and moving in to make a smooth layup in the basket across the driveway.

I hesitate for a moment, everything in my body screaming at me to go back to Hazel, but my brain holds me back. Temptation is waiting for me at Hazel’s apartment, but basketball with mybrotherandthe guy Hazel is datingwill be physically and mentally exhausting enough to drain me. Hopefully. If I’m lucky.

Before I know it, I’m moving, smacking the ball out of Adam’s hand. The grin he gives me is wild. It’s the same one he used to flash before retaliating against whatever prank I managed to pull on him. With that one expression, I know I’m going to be okay, at least for today. For this next hour or two, I don’t have to pretend, and I canbreathe.

Parker keeps up with us easily, telling us about the three brothers he grew up with, and I have to concede that maybe he’s not that bad, especially when he’s not pursuing the woman I’m in love with. In fact, I think we could be friends.

My chest is heaving and my pulse is thrumming when we stop for a break an hour later. Wiping my forehead with my arm, I ask Parker, “Did you and Marie end up finishing the whole five miles yesterday?”

The rental company we went with had stops every mile where you could get out and wait to be picked up if you didn’t want to do the whole trek.

A light pink suffuses his cheeks, and he takes a sip of the water he pulled from Alex’s garage fridge. He walked over there a minute ago, reaching in for a water bottle without looking, which only made me wonder even more how often he and Adam actually hang out.

“We finished it,” Parker says, screwing the cap back on his bottle. “And then we got dinner.”

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