Safety in the Friendzone Read online

I looked him over and there was more than just this incident that felt…off.

  “Are you…okay?” I asked him.

  “Always,” he spluttered, full of bravado. “Why?”

  “You’re not…upset about Thea or anything?”

  He’d seemed a bit more…wayward the last week, even for him. Add that to the fact he hadn’t bounced onto the next girl yet… I was starting to wonder if he’d liked her more than he’d let on.

  But his scoff was totally him and totally real. “No.” He kicked his head sideways. “Nah. All right. I’m a bit pissy about being dumped, but I didn’t like her that much.”

  My hand went to my heart as I gasped sarcastically. “Was that… Is Mr Pop capable of…” I leant towards him and whispered, “feelings?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Laugh it up.”

  “That is not a denial,” I pointed out.

  “I’ll deny it to anyone who asks.”

  I smirked involuntarily at him throwing my own words back at him. I quickly sniffed the smile away. “Right. I’m going back to class. I’ll see you later.”

  “You don’t want to know what I did?” he cajoled.

  I shook my head. “No. Thanks.”

  “If it was a doozy?”

  “You can keep your doozies to yourself.” I put my hand on the door handle, but paused when he spoke again.

  “You want a ride home?”

  I shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Cool. Meet you at the car?”

  “Sure.”

  I sidled my way carefully out of the cupboard and found a blessedly empty hallway, and made my way back to class. I threw a look over my shoulder once and saw Zane standing in the hallway, watching me go with his hands in his pants pockets and a cocky smile on his face.

  My heart thudded once, then I dutifully ignored it.

  I could love a guy without it being more. Zane and I worked as friends. Or more like siblings really with the whole love-hate thing we had going on more often than not. Which just put a whole disgusting tinge on the notion of a moment between the two of us.

  “Ew,” I muttered to myself. “You nasty.”

  When I met him at the car, there was a lingering hint of awkward between us. Although, I wasn’t sure how much of it was me projecting my awkwardness onto him, how much was just him responding to me being weird, or how much it was borne of a mutual awkwardness after the possibly-not-even-a-moment.

  “Had a good day?” he asked.

  I looked at him askance as I put my seatbelt on. “In the hour and twenty minutes since I last saw you? Sure.”

  “No more cupboards in your life?”

  “Blissfully cupboard-free, thanks.”

  “You sound almost disappointed by that.” He leant towards me as he turned the car on. “You hoping your crush will give it a try.”

  I jumped so guiltily that anything I said would make it worse. Especially when my rapid response was, “No!”

  Zane laughed as he pulled out of the car park. “Shit! Do you have a crush?”

  I tried to take a breath before I replied, but my, “No,” came out less self-assured and more self-doubt.

  “Little Charley has a crush,” Zane sang with a laugh.

  “I do not.”

  Because honestly, I didn’t. I just particularly didn’t want him thinking it could be him after that moment in the cupboard. Especially if I was the only one who’d had a moment. Which was probable. If it was actually a moment. Which I still wasn’t convinced by. Basically, I was just digging myself further and further into some sort of hole of my own devising and I couldn’t rightly see a reasonable way out at this point.

  “What’s that thing about protesting too much?” Zane chuckled.

  “Something far beyond the understanding of your tiny mind,” I huffed back.

  “Oh,” he exclaimed. “Someone’s shirty.”

  “Someone doesn’t like being falsely accused. How would you like it if I accused you of…being a decent human being?”

  Zane laughed. “God forbid. I might implode.”

  I rolled my eyes and settled back against the seat, crossing my arms. “I could tell your friends how you feel about Thea dumping you.”

  I wasn’t looking at him, but I knew he’d frozen as much as driving would let him. “The things I tell you are in confidence, Charlotte.”

  Oh my, God. He actually thought I was serious. Shit.

  “Relax, dude.” I backpedalled as fast as I could. “Doing so would just mean I’d have to talk to Cody.” I fake-gagged and the mood in the car shifted back to jovial.

  “I think Bleeker’s got a little crush on you,” Zane said, throwing me a smile as he turned the corner.

  This time, my gag was a little less fake. “Gross.”

  “You are such a reverse snob.”

  I nodded. “And I admit my faults.”

  “Your many faults.”

  “Countless faults.”

  “Near-infinite.”

  “Takes one to know one,” I quipped cheekily as I leant forward.

  “Oi!”

  The rest of his protests were drowned out as I turned up the radio. I stuck my hand behind my ear, miming I couldn’t hear him. Zane just grinned and went back to driving. I sat back in my seat and felt like whatever blip I’d encountered wasn’t going to be a problem after all.

  Chapter 4: Zane

  Charley had been even more moody the last few days. Which wasn’t particularly weird for Charley, but this still seemed slightly more testy than her usual.

  I wasn’t going to worry. My trustworthy charm never failed to get a smile out of her. Even talking about the most mundane things, she couldn’t resist relaxing around me.

  “You get an invite to Mitch’s?”

  “I said you could stay if you were going to work,” Charley said tersely.

  Well, I might have been a little wrong on that one.

  “What have we said about rag-rage?” I replied and she glared at me.

  Sure, I sort of deserved it. But in my defence, she’d been the one who’d started affectionately calling her period mood swings ‘rag-rage’, not me. It was also not my fault that her cycle ran like clockwork and I had the timing down-pat. This had nothing to do with me trying to be a good friend, this was all about self-preservation and knowing when I could and couldn’t make certain jokes.

  “Right, I’m sorry!” I sighed. “If it’s not rag-rage, what is it then?”

  She shifted in her seat and I tried to get a read on her. I was usually pretty good at knowing what she was thinking. A near lifetime of seeing her almost every day would have that effect. But I couldn’t work her out. She seemed awkward and almost…embarrassed? I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Charlotte Baines embarrassed.

  “Nothing. Just…be quiet,” she said quickly.

  Knowing that there was no point in pushing it any further, I did as she asked.

  I didn’t actually want to do my homework. I had zero interest in it. But it had been that or not coexist with my favourite human. So, I’d done as I was told and sat across from her at the kitchen table while she worked on her History assignment.

  Every time she moved my eyes flicked up to look at her. I watched every time she blew at that annoying wisp of hair over her forehead that never made it into her ponytail and was never pushed off her face.

  As she reached to stop her pen rolling away, I went to grab it as well. Our hands brushed and something happened. It was so quick I wasn’t sure I’d actually felt it. But it left me with this feeling so surreal that I kept trying to tell myself it was real.

  There’d been a spark.

  A palpable spark.

  It had been like electricity, lighting everything up.

  My heart had actually skipped as I’d looked at her from under my eyelashes. She paused for just long enough that I entertained the notion she’d felt it too. The way she’d snatched her hand back
made me believe in it harder. That or she was just annoyed with me. Which was equally, if not more, plausible.

  Charley cleared her throat and brushed invisible strands of hair behind her ear the way she did when she was a little uncomfortable.

  She went back to her work and I pretended to go back to mine. But my eyes kept rising of their own accord to look at her. Sometimes, she was already looking at me and would hurriedly look away. Other times, she looked up and I couldn’t make myself look away.

  “What?” she finally asked, dropping her pen.

  “What, what?”

  “You keep looking at me,” she accused.

  “You keep looking at me.”

  “Well…” she spluttered.

  “Well, what?”

  “Stop it!”

  “Stop what?” I asked.

  “Stop looking at me.”

  “No. Shan’t.”

  “Zane!”

  “Charley!”

  She was fighting a smile.

  I nodded. “Uh-huh. There it is.”

  She cleared her throat and looked back down at her book. “There’s nothing.”

  “You gonna be pissy because I made you smile?” I teased.

  “I’m not pissy because you think you made me smile.”

  “Then why are you pissy?”

  She rearranged in her seat, still not looking at me. “I’m not pissy.”

  “You are.”

  “Says who.”

  “Says me.”

  “How do you know?”

  I reached forward and covered her hand with mine. For a fraction of a heartbeat, I thought she was going to pull her hand away. She tensed, then looked up at me before she slowly relaxed. Her eyes looking right into mine.

  There it went again.

  My heart jolted in my chest. My breath caught. I got this feeling in my stomach that made tingles spread down my arms. Her eyes reminded me of rich, hot chocolates shared in front of the fire on a winter’s night while we re-watched the whole Marvel library. Her lips were pink and soft, the sheen of her lip-gloss winking in the light. She’d worn the same one for years and, even though I wasn’t close enough just then, I could smell it. I’d never wanted to taste it but, as she licked her bottom lip, I suddenly wondered what it did taste like.

  There was a weird feeling in my chest. It was like it constricted but warmed.

  “Zane?” she whispered.

  Her voice broke whatever weird moment I’d fallen into and I tried to pull myself together and remember what had started it.

  Her lips thinned. She was pissy. That was it!

  “What the hell is up?” I asked her.

  She pulled her hand gently from under mine, and smiled as she looked at the ceiling. “Nothing. I’m fine.

  I coughed, dragging my hand back to my side of the table. “Good.”

  She nodded. “Good.”

  I ducked my head and made it look like I was working on Geometry. After a few moments, I heard Charley’s pen scratching against the paper.

  But I couldn’t focus on Geometry. I couldn’t focus on much of anything. Nothing but whatever had just happened.

  There had been a definite moment there. A something-more-than-friends sort of moment. I just didn’t know if it had just been me or if she’d felt it too. Charley’s poker face had always been better than mine – she’d been beating my arse at poker since her Grandma taught it to us when we were seven. She was the closed book, the blank slate. I was the one who couldn’t hide a single emotion from my face.

  Which meant she probably just saw me go completely moony just then.

  She continued not saying anything though, so it was either just me or I’d actually not given it away for once.

  Well, that or it had been both of us and she just didn’t want to say anything.

  Which it couldn’t have been.

  It was totally just me.

  Because Charley didn’t like like popular kids – and my ego was plenty large enough for me to think I was one of the popular kids. She liked the sorts of guys who wore guyliner and listened to old alternative rock songs. Or guys that played an instrument, preferably electric guitar. So, there was no way she would even consider liking me.

  Not that I liked her.

  No.

  I was just a little…unfocussed of late.

  It was merely the product of me being properly single for the first time in forever coupled with the fact that it was the first time I’d been single that Charley was too. That was all it was. My brain was just allowing her to be an option given the current circumstances. Every straight guy with a chick for a friend surely went through it at some point? This was mine. I just had to have the thought, decide it was a no, and move on.

  Simple.

  I just needed a new girl to occupy my thoughts and everything would be fine again.

  Charley was just a friend.

  There was absolutely nothing more to it than that. Even if she had turned into a seriously stunning young woman, inside and out.

  No. Bad Brain.

  I shifted.

  “You good?” Charley asked.

  I looked up and found her watching me.

  I nodded. “Sure. Fine.”

  “Good.”

  “I thought we weren’t supposed to be talking?”

  “I’m allowed to talk. You’re not allowed to talk.”

  “But I’m talking right now.”

  “I see that.”

  “If I didn’t talk, I couldn’t answer your question.”

  “I guess so.”

  “And that would just be rude.”

  She smirked. “I s’pose it would.”

  “Does that mean I’m allowed to talk now?”

  “Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

  Just when things felt like they were going back to normal, they felt all weird again. But it was definitely just me, because she was wearing that self-satisfied half-smile, her eyebrow up, that she always did when she was teasing me.

  How had her being pissy turned into me being weird?

  I knew how to fix it.

  I nodded solemnly. “Yes. There is something incredibly important I need to talk to you about.”

  All humour on her face dropped and she looked about ready to bolt. But she covered it with a swallow. “Uh-huh. And…uh…what was that, then?”

  “Toddlers.”

  She opened and closed her mouth a few times, unsure how to respond to that. Finally, she said, “Sorry. Toddlers?”

  I nodded, leaning back on the chair and lacing my hands behind my head. “Toddlers.”

  “Exactly what about toddlers did you need to talk about? Shit. You haven’t gone and fathered one, have you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes. That is exactly it.”

  She crossed herself. “Immaculate conception. Modern miracle.”

  I snorted. “Blessed be.”

  She looked at me and we laughed. And everything was back to normal again. For real this time.

  Chapter 5: Charley

  My eyes had been lingering on Zane for the past few minutes and I seemed powerless to stop them. Every time I dragged them away, the next thing I knew, I was looking at him again. Always when he wasn’t looking, my eyes were apparently desperate to catch those small moments of unfiltered Zane.

  Which was ridiculous. Because even unfiltered Zane was more often than not a butthole these days. Him with his ridiculous guffawing with the other Pops. It lighting up his grey eyes with mirth as the lot of them for some reason went into slow motion. Those dimples at the side of his mouth that always made me smile. The way he looked up through the strands of his hair that…

  Oh. My. God. No.

  I turned quickly, trying to remember what the hell I was doing, and my face smacked into a whole heap of books. Library books.

  The piece of paper in my hand told me I was looking for a book.


  Library was a good place to start with that.

  Why?

  I was in the library during my Free, looking for a book for my essay, and Zane just happened to be in there that day for his class.

  Right.

  Now I knew what was going on, I was going to get on with it.

  I wandered the shelves with this niggling feeling in the back of my head. I knew it wanted me to look at Zane – I could hear him laughing and hear the teacher telling him to get back to work – but I wasn’t going to give it the satisfaction.

  I was going to get my book and head back to the Common Room where I’d left all my stuff. Couldn’t really work on my essay without my laptop and my exercise book, could I?

  But I didn’t do that. I didn’t go back to the Common Room.

  I found the required book and, for some ridiculous reason, sat at a table in the library and read it. Well, I say I read it… It was more like I scanned my eyes over a few lines, then had to pull them off Zane. Again.

  This was getting really old.

  I forced myself to stand up. I was still looking at Zane so, when he looked up and saw me, he smiled warmly. He waved a ‘yeah, gimme a minute’ hand at Cody and got up. As he jogged over to me, I looked around and wondered if it was possible to make a quick exit without talking to him.

  “What’s a place like you doing in a girl like this?” he quoted. Bastardised was more like. But it was a thing we did. A normal thing.

  I tried smiling, but it felt forced. This was weird and I didn’t like it. I didn’t even know why it was weird so had no idea how to make it stop being weird. I held up the book.

  “Reference for Mr Mack,” I answered.

  He nodded. “That man does like his references.”

  I nodded as well. “Yep.”

  “You good?”

  I nodded again. “Fine. You.”

  “Fine,” he chuckled. “You sure you are? You seem weird.

  “You’re weird,” I said quickly. “I should go.”

  But instead of walking away from him like a normal person, I took a step forward. At the same time he did. We collided and I hurriedly looked down.

  “Your crush just walk in or something?” he joked.

  “What?” I asked, immediately looking around guiltily.