Friend-Zoned(7)

One is of a little girl who is so beautiful, my heart aches. Her smile is pure sunshine and she is missing one of her front teeth. She has Nik’s eyes. The frame is bright pink with purple glittery butterflies around it.

Aww, cute.

The other frame is exquisite. It is thick silver with pieces of beige mother of pearl swirling through it. The photo is an old one, a family portrait it looks like. A tall, dark haired, middle aged man stands with his arms around a short but beautiful dark haired, dark eyed woman. The woman is very much pregnant. The man looks like Nik but he is pale skinned where Nik is much darker. Most importantly are the man’s eyes. They are Nik’s eyes. I’m going to take a stab and say these are Nik’s parents.

Two small girls flank the couple, hugging them both around the legs. Hugging the two girls are two young men. Looking closer at this picture I can see Max’s cheeky dimpled smile and it confirms my earlier suspicions that Nik and Max are brothers. Both girls have their mother’s eyes; both boys have their father’s eyes. All the children got their mother’s beautiful skin tone. They are all laughing and smiling.

Wow, I love this photo.

Everyone in this picture is so happy. Like, blissfully happy. I think back to Nik and wonder what happened to his happiness.

I take another look around but there is nothing else to note except a filing cabinet in the opposite corner of the room close to the door.

No more photos, nothing at all personal, nothing to suggest he has a girlfriend or wife.

Then it clicks.

His reaction to my stupid questions. And I almost burst out laughing but manage to stop it and make a choked sound instead.

He thinks I’m coming onto him!

I mean, I can’t blame him for thinking that because he is beauty defined. And now that I’ve spent some time with him I realize I had nothing to be nervous about. He seems like a nice, well-mannered guy but still a little too broody for my liking.

An idea enters my brain and before I can think about it and verbal diarrhea spews forth.

***



Tina spends a good few minutes looking around my office. Her eyes land on the family portrait which was taken a few months before Dad died.

I realize she’s looking for photos of a wife or girlfriend.

Here we go. She’s gonna make her move. I should’ve left the damn note thing alone.

Tina makes a choked noise and I look up to find her trying to hold back a smile.

Cut her loose and no one gets hurt. She’s too cute.

She is too cute. Too cute to fuck and leave, she ain’t that type. I can tell. I spend a lot of time with girls like that and they normally have the same interests as me.

Sex without strings.

My body tenses. How do I turn her down without sounding like an asshole?

Girls like Tina hurt easy. That’s why I don’t deal with girls like this.

She’s smiling a small smile and waiting for me to say something. I don’t know what to say to her, she’s nervous as it is and doesn’t need me going all asshole on her.

I start tapping my pen on the desk. I’m thinking so hard I’m sure she can see my brain moving around through my skull!

I haven’t noticed she started to speak.

“So we can be friends, right?”

Wait, what?

I stare at her, a frown forming at my mouth.

Did I..? Did I just get Friend-zoned?

I look over again to see Tina nodding vigorously and smiling brightly.#p#分页标题#e#

Wow, this has never happened to me before. Girls usually come to the club knowing I got money; they ask me out or ask me to their place for a “drink”, which one hundred percent of the time ends up meaning sex.

Tina takes my silence as her cue to speak again. “I mean we work right across the street from each other. We can do lunch sometimes and, Ooh,” she widens her eyes almost comically, “we can get together for coffee at Winnie’s!”

She looks so excited at the prospect of us being friends, she’s practically bouncing up and down in her seat.

You don’t need another friend. Definitely not a friend that’s a girl; too complicated. Cut her loose, man. You don’t need this shit.

“Uh...”

Just do it! Cut her loose. This is a mistake.

I look into her sweet face and the words are out of my mouth before I realize.

“Yeah, sure. We can be friends”

What. The. Fuck?

Where the hell did that come from?

Before I can think about what just happened, Tina looks at me and smiles big. Her lips are a pale pink, not lipstick or gloss, but naturally. Her teeth are white and perfect. I tell myself to stop staring at her damn lips. So I focus on her eyes. Her eyes are slightly crinkled at the corners. Goddamn, even her eyes are smiling.

Great. Just great, you moron.