“No.”
Our stare-off intensifies. I don’t know why it’s happening, but I’m here for it if he needs me to be. I’ll take his anger, his frustration, a thousand times, because I know it hurts him far more than it’ll ever hurt me.Bite my head off, chew it up and spit it out. Ride or die, I’ll still fuckin’ be here.
It sounds so final for something temporary, but I need to start thinking beyond the physical and learn how to be his friend from here to wherever he lands next. Could I talk him down over FaceTime?
Can I talk him downnow?
Fuck if I know, but I’m here.
In the few seconds it takes my thoughts to run away from me, Joss cools his jets. His rigid shoulders drop, and he closes his eyes. Screws them shut, actually, like he wishes they were iron gates. I ache to touch him, but though the fight in him has faded, something else lingers. Something dark and defeated and so unlike Joss that real anxiety squeezes my chest. “Are you okay?”
Joss opens his eyes, and the cold dread spikes again. “What?”
“Are you okay?” I repeat. “You seem fuckin’ pissed. Did something happen?”
“You think something has to happen to turn me into a moody cunt?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you’re wrong. This is me. I’d say get used to it, but there’s no fucking point.” Joss abandons the roadkill on his cutting board and spins away. He disappears into the walk-in refrigerator and doesn’t come back.
Jeez.I blow out a breath and consider leaving him to it. Giving him fuckin’ space or whatever. But I’m a proud goddamn fool for this dude, and the idea of walking away from him when he’s this rattled feels wrong to my core.
Ignoring Trent standing impotent at the fryers, I follow Joss into the refrigerator. He’s crouching by a crate of apples, rooting through them with rough hands.
“Joss.”
Nothing.
“Joss.”
“What?”
I squat beside him and still his hands. He lets me and for a minute, I think I’ve cracked it, then he wrenches them away.
“Fuck’s sake, leave me alone.”
His rejection is a hot poker to my heart, but the turmoil in his eyes hurts more. Already stained with guilt, they’re red-rimmed and tired, and I want more than anything to steer him out of whatever funk he’s sunk into. But I know I can’t. Joss has got to Joss. I know that as much as I know I can’t fix him because he’s not fuckin’ broken.
Like me. I’ve felt shattered for so long, but in this moment, I don’t. I feel like a fortress who can stand beside him, even if I have to do it from the bar while he rages in here.
I rise. My phone buzzes in my pocket as I come upright, then launches into the new call alert I’ve set for my mom, so I don’t answer with a sad fuckin’ voice because she’s not Joss. “Hey, Mom.”
It isn’t my mom, it’s my grandma. She has her own phone but no clue how to use it. She invites me to a card game at my mom’s house. Tells me to “bring a girl or a date or whatever,” which clues me into the fact that my mom saw right through me when she asked me about Joss a few weeks back at the potluck dinner I failed to dodge.
I don’t get a word in. She’s gone before I can take a breath, and in any other circumstances, I’d have laughed my ass off, but there’s nothing funny about the brick wall Joss has constructed in my absence. Only a challenge.
Brick walls don’t scare me. Cement doesn’t last forever.
Nothing does.
I lounge against the refrigerator door, casual as can be, and hold my phone up. “My grandma just invited me to play poker with her and her friends. Wanna come? The food will be shitty, but she has booze and medical-grade weed.”
Joss drops the apple he’s holding. Picks it up again. “Your nan smokes weed?”
“For her joints. It ain’t my thing, but—”
“It’s not mine either. I haven’t smoked in years.”
