Nellie and the Friend Zone

"Nope."

"And these shoes here, the ones that look very familiar as well, those are...?"

I shrugged nonchalantly. "They're just shoes. Lots of people have shoes."

"It's just so funny," she said lightly. "My brothers both have shoes just like these, but they aren't very common, you know. They're from Veritas Bespoke."

"Yeah, well, anyone can order things online," I replied. "Maybe they're more common than you think."

"Bespoke shoes means they are custom-made, Nellie," Anne-Marie said.

I scoffed. "Well. Maybe they're knock-offs or something."

"Mm-hmm," she said unconvincingly. "So the doughnuts from Trou de Beigne are from your friend, who is not from Montreal, where Trou de Beigne is located and where my brother Jean-Paul lives. And the luggage you say is yours, even though it looks much like my brother Jean-Paul's luggage. And the shoes you say are your friend's, even though they look surprisingly like my brother Jean-Paul's shoes..."

"I've told you a million times, there's nothing happening there," I said. "You're just trying to find patterns where there aren't any. It's called apophenia, actually, I learned that from Ben! This, um, guy. I was sleeping with him. I can tell you all about that. He was a professor. Interesting, right? A psychology professor."

"Sure he was, chérie." She bit her lip, excited energy trembling off her. "And is he in your bedroom right now?"

"Well, no, but—"

"And so if I were to go over to your bedroom right now, I would see...?"

"Nothing."

Her eyes sparkled. "Well then, there's no reason for me to not look, is there?"

"Anne-Marie, please. Don't."

"Ohmigod, Nellie," she squealed.

Before I could even react, she lunged across the apartment.

"No!" I rushed towards her, but there was no chance of me stopping her before she threw my bedroom door open.

The idea of time standing still was strange to me. I could understand the concept of shock. I could understand how moments, big moments, could affect people. The concept of time pausing at those moments didn't make sense to me. A second is a second, no matter what is happening in that second, and a minute is a minute.

However, the moment Anne-Marie opened my door and froze, I felt time slow down. I didn't feel myself slow down, but it was like trying to walk through water rushing the opposite direction.

"Hey, sis," I heard J.P. say.

"I knew it!" shrieked Anne-Marie. "Jean-Paul, you absolutely filthy man-whore!"

By the time I was at the door, Anne-Marie was turning to me with a grin on her face that showed all of her sparkling white teeth.

"Nellie Belanger, you sly girl," she squealed. "How long? When can I tell everyone? Are you coming to Thanksgiving dinner? Oh, you absolutely must, Mom will be ecstatic."

"No, I—"

"I won't hear it," she said. "You must, if not at Thanksgiving, then another night. They're going to be so excited, Nellie! And your father, well, we all know he already loves Jean-Paul so you'll have no problem getting his approval, and..."

I glanced helplessly into my bedroom. J.P. was sitting on the bed with the sheets around his waist, shirtless, his hair tousled almost artfully. He looked bemused, watching Anne-Marie blabber relentlessly about all the things we absolutely must do now that we were an "item." When he finally caught my eye, he pressed his lips together, but wasn't able to keep himself from shaking with laughter.

At least one of us found it funny.

"...can't believe you didn't tell me sooner! You must have gotten together when, Nellie, before the Diamond Gala? Is that why he agreed to go with you?" Anne-Marie was still talking, though she finally paused when she saw J.P. starting to laugh.

I took advantage of the single moment between her short-term silence and J.P.'s muffled laughter to say my piece.

"Get out."

"What?" Anne-Marie said.

"You heard her," J.P. said.

"Both of you," I said.

"Wait, what?" he said, still laughing.

"Both of you need to get the fuck out of my apartment." I pointed at the door. "Now."

"But Nellie, chérie—"

"Out!" I said.

"Babe, come on—"

"Now!"

J.P. shrugged and started to get out of bed.

"Ohmigod, you're naked," Anne-Marie muttered, her face going red as she turned away.

"No, really?" J.P. said sarcastically. "I don't know how you usually do it, but most people take their clothes off."

"You're disgusting." Anne-Marie laughed again and looked at me. "How do you put up with him?"

"I don't," I said. "I'm not dating your brother. I don't even like him. It was just sex."

I ignored the flash of something that resembled hurt on J.P.'s face and turned, stalking away from the bedroom.

"Can both of you just get out of my apartment, please?" I said loudly.

Anne-Marie was just gracious enough to leave right away. J.P. got dressed, quiet for once, and stopped in front of me in the kitchen before leaving.

"I know you kicked me out but I actually do have to go," he said. "I'll come by later so we can talk."

"No," I said.

"I'll bring pizza."

I glared at him. "Fine. But I don't like you."

"I know you don't, babe."

For a moment, I thought he was going to reach for me, to bring me in to kiss him again. Maybe it was the fact that I'd boldly stated I didn't like him, twice, but he hesitated. There was a strange tingle of guilt, but before I could do anything, he grinned and grabbed a doughnut from the box on the table.

"Don't call you babe," he said. "I know."

I spent the day studying; legitimately studying, doing anything I could to take my mind off the morning's drama. Anne-Marie texted to apologize; I'd accepted, then immediately started ignoring her when she insisted yet again that J.P. and I were perfect for each other. Sydney stopped by around lunch, apologetic and wary until I told her at least five times that it was fine, I didn't blame her. More wisely than Anne-Marie, she dropped the subject when I told her to after she started asking why it was such a big deal that Anne-Marie found out I was sleeping with her brother.

When my phone went off around dinnertime to indicate that someone was buzzing to be let in, I almost considered letting him stay outside. I didn't want to talk. Still, even I couldn't justify not talking to him. I might have been petty, stubborn, and vindictive, but that went past the line of fair.

"Pizza delivery," J.P. said as I picked up the call.

"I don't have any cash."

"That's okay. I just need you to take care of the tip," he replied.

I rolled my eyes as I buzzed him in. When he knocked a few minutes later, I dragged myself to the door. I opened it to see him standing on the other side, holding a large pizza box and grinning.

"I've got an extra-large sausage for Nellie?" he said.

"Ha, ha," I replied monotonously. "So clever."

He chuckled as he let himself in, the door swinging shut behind him. "I know. I've been working on that one all day. The workshop was mind-numbingly boring."

"And that was the best you came up with?"

He put the pizza on the table and then turned to me. "Let's talk."

"Can we not?"

He looked serious for once, folding his arms across his chest. "You really think that's the best course of action?"

"What do you want me to say?" I asked. "I told you, this isn't... what Anne-Marie wants isn't—"

"You don't want a relationship," he said. "Yeah, I know. You want this to be just sex, I know that too."

"So what is there to talk about?" I asked, exasperated.

"You're not stupid, Nellie," he said. "Both of us know that it's not just sex."

"Yes, it is."

He raised his eyebrow at me. "I just said you weren't stupid."

"Stupid and willfully ignorant are two different things."

He laughed, startled. "Okay. Fair. So you're in denial?"

"Being in denial would imply there's something to be denying." I walked into the kitchen, grabbing plates and napkins to bring to the table. "Since there isn't, I can't be in denial."

"You really would've made a hell of a good lawyer." He followed me, taking the plates and napkins so I could grab each of us a drink.

"This isn't actually a sausage pizza, is it?" I asked.

He shook his head and flipped the box open. "Pepperoni and mushroom."

"Good."

He smirked and put two slices on a plate before handing it to me.

"Okay, so there's nothing more to this than sex for you," he said, sitting at the table. "Correct?"

"Yep."

"Okay. So, hypothetically, if there was something more..."

"Don't," I said. "Seriously, J.P. I don't want... that."

"Why?" His voice was soft, not angry or disappointed, but without a hint of laughter. "Look, I'm not saying... we don't have to want that. I just want to know why."

Sighing, I looked across the table at him. He looked back, uncharacteristically vulnerable, his expression patient and open.

"I don't want a relationship," I said. "I don't want to be tied down to someone and not be able to... you know, just enjoy myself. The idea of being with one person... it makes me feel like I'm suffocating. I don't want someone to... I dunno. Own me."

J.P. regarded me as I took a bite of pizza. As I chewed, I raised my eyebrows at him.

"What?" I asked.

"Have you ever been in a relationship?"

I snorted. "Yes."

"Seriously, Nellie," he said. "I know you had a boyfriend in high school, but that barely counts. I know you slept with me and then went a little... wild."

"Are you judging me?"

He shook his head. "I'm trying to understand. Relationships aren't about owning people and they shouldn't be suffocating."

"You've met my parents. You know what my dad is like. He owns people. I don't want to be in that situation."

"I wouldn't do that to you," he said.

"If you want something more than what we're doing, it's not happening," I said bluntly. "You asked what my issue was, I'm explaining it."

"I know," he said. "Look, I'm just saying, for future reference... there's no reason a relationship has to fit into the box you're creating, okay?"

"Fine. I still just want to get laid and have fun with no strings attached."

He chuckled. "Okay. So, the big question, then."

"What big question?"

His lip curled between his teeth. "Is that still on the table for us? 'Cause I realize Anne-Marie is intense, but I'd kinda like to keep doing this. I'm not stupid, you know. I know a good thing when I see it."

"As long as you know that this is it," I said seriously. "It doesn't go any further than that."

"Can we change one thing about what we're doing?"

"I just said—"

"Can we say we're friends, at least?" J.P. continued. "'Cause like it or not, Nellie, I care about you. I don't need that to be anything more than as a friend who occasionally begs me to fuck her senseless, but I do."

I stared at him for a moment. "I mean... I guess."

"Are we not friends?" he asked bluntly.

"No, we are," I said. "I guess... I mean, yeah. That makes sense."

"I'm allowed to care about you as a friend, right?"

"Well... yeah."

"Great," he said, grinning. "Super glad to be in your friend zone, babe. Especially knowing how well you treat your, ah... friends."

I picked a mushroom off my slice of pizza and threw it at him as he laughed. He ate it and then I let him pull me away from the pizza at the table and into his arms. And even though we'd just said it was sex and friendship, we continued where we had left off that morning.

J.P. kissed me, far more softly than he should have for someone I was just supposed to be fucking. I kissed him back and trailed my fingers along his neck in a way that was much more intimate than we'd agreed to. When he undressed me, he did so slowly, running his hands along my skin as he revealed it. I unbuttoned his shirt and he shrugged it off before pressing his lips to mine again.

"This is pushing the friend boundary," I mumbled against his lips.

"Nah," he whispered. "You said I could care about you as a friend."

"Is this your way of slowly pushing boundaries further and further until you've tricked me into marrying you or something?" I asked.

He lifted my shirt over my head. "Jeez, babe. You think I'd do something so diabolical?"

"Yes," I said bluntly, and he laughed even harder.

"Nah," he said again, and his hands trailed down my chest. "I'm just appreciating my really attractive, really sexy, really turned-on friend. Don't read too much into it."

He was such a fucking liar, and for some reason, I didn't care. Instead, I chose to believe him, chose to let him use his body to guide me into my bedroom. His lips didn't leave mine, his fingertips feathering along my skin until he nudged me onto my bed.

Just like the night before, our usual urgency was gone. I was free to let my mind go blank and just enjoy the feel of his mouth on my breasts, to appreciate the way he sucked on my nipples and circled his tongue around them. I ran my hands through his hair, twisting the curls absentmindedly between my fingers while he explored my body.

He didn't really need to explore it. He had multiple times before. He played with my tits the same way he had the very first time we'd had sex. It had been years earlier, when I was eighteen and a virgin who could barely stutter my way through a conversation with the older boy next door. He'd explored them thoroughly over the entire previous summer, his hands tracing every inch of me, his mouth exploring even further.

I couldn't admit to him the real reason we couldn't be together. Sure, part of it was that I didn't want a relationship, but I couldn't tell him that I couldn't be in a relationship with him. He represented everything I hated; he represented the life my father wanted me to have. More importantly, a relationship with him would mean I'd have to admit to my mother that I'd been accepting money from my dad for years. I'd have to come clean about my involvement with him after she spent years trying to pull me away from the ritzy, societal life my father was part of.

There was no chance for me and J.P. There was no future other than what we already had.

It didn't matter at that moment, though. What mattered was the way he was kissing my body, the way his cock was pressing against my thigh as his lips moved from my breasts to my ribs and my ribs to my stomach. His hands gripped my sides, holding my body steady before his mouth delved further south.

He kissed my mound before teasing his tongue along my folds, glancing up at me with sparkling eyes. I bit my lip as he kissed the inside of my thigh, then inhaled sharply as he nipped lightly at the sensitive skin there.

I didn't have time to say anything before he stuck his tongue between my folds. He groaned before licking me more firmly and my hands moved back to his hair, my head tilting back as he started working my clit.

"That feels so good," I whispered.

He didn't stop; his tongue kept up its path, licking along my slit until he reached my clit, then ravishing it with attention. Each movement made my body prickle with delight, a pool of pleasure starting to gather somewhere deep inside me. I gasped, my eyes squeezed shut, and J.P. took the opportunity to dip his finger inside me.

When he dared to withdraw that slickened finger and press it against my ass, I whimpered. He smiled—not that I saw it, but rather, felt it—and pushed forward until he'd breached the tight ring of muscle. I cried out and he started fingering my ass more quickly, stopping only to put yet another finger inside my pussy.

I didn't last much longer; when I came, my thighs clamped around J.P.'s head and I probably almost drowned him. He didn't complain, didn't pull away, didn't even stop doing that thing to my clit with his tongue. Every second of that orgasm lengthened, drawn out by his actions, until I was quivering beneath him and tugging at his hair, so oversensitive that I couldn't handle a moment more.

He withdrew slowly, kissing my thighs again before sitting up. He held my legs as far apart as they would go and nestled himself between them, looking directly into my eyes as he guided his cock inside me.

I bit my lip, unable to look away from him that time, and he brought himself forward to kiss me as he drove his cock forward. I moaned against his mouth, the taste of my pussy still strong on his slick lips, and he shuddered as I darted my tongue out to meet his.

"Fuck, Nellie," he whispered. "Your pussy is... ugh... just fucking amazing."

I kissed him in response, letting him fill me and pull back, letting him murmur soft things to me about how good my body felt. I slipped a hand between our bodies, rubbing my clit as he fucked me, letting that build-up of pleasure begin all over again.

His voice took on the softest hint of an accent when he was distracted. I didn't know when I started noticing that, but now that I had, I couldn't stop hearing it. I knew he spoke French fluently—he'd grown up in Montreal, after all—but aside from being in bed with him, I couldn't remember another time I'd heard him fail to cover his accent. Unlike Anne-Marie, who leaned into her accent because she thought it made her sound sophisticated, J.P. almost always spoke smoothly in English.

I could hear it, though, those little inflections as he encouraged me, begged me to come for him, told me what it felt like when my pussy trembled around his cock and how hard it was for him to hold back when it happened. I didn't say a word. I couldn't say a word. I didn't really know this version of J.P., the one whispering dirty things to me and fucking me gently.

I tried not to think about how much I liked it.

He knew I was coming at the same time I did. A wide grin spread across his face as he watched me, his breath matching my gasps as I felt myself teeter on the edge, and his body stilling just for a moment as I came on his cock. He grunted, then pulled back just a bit before shoving inside me hard, and then he was groaning as he finished, too.

Before he pulled out, he kissed me, then flopped on his back beside me to catch his breath.

"That was awesome," he said.

Little aftershocks were still pulsing through my body. "Yeah, that was pretty good."

He lifted his hand. "High-five?"

I burst out laughing. "What?"

J.P. turned his head toward me and grinned. "C'mon. Don't leave me hanging. I'm pretty sure friends high-five after sex. If they don't, they should."

I had a hard time controlling my laughter as I high-fived him, even as he leaned in and kissed me again, his own laughter brushing against my face and lips. I couldn't quite remember the last time I'd had so much fun with someone, especially someone I was sleeping with.

Sure, Jake had been a lot of fun. We'd tried some new things and hooked up regularly, but he didn't make me laugh the way J.P. did. I'd had fun with those cops, the ones I'd met the night Sydney met Greg, but both of them together couldn't make me come the way J.P. did. And I couldn't deny that playing a raunchy game of Truth or Dare with my friends that culminated in sleeping with Brandon was fun, even if the resulting relationship with him was disastrous. If I had to choose between that and any of the times I'd hooked up with J.P., I'd still pick J.P. And Damon, he'd been... well. The man who had given me my tattoo was selfish in the best possible way, passionate beyond anything I'd ever experienced, and one of the coolest people I'd ever met. I just didn't like him the way I liked J.P. His arms didn't fit around me the way J.P.'s did.

And I had really liked Ben. I had to admit that. Ben had been funny, and smart, and considerate, and so good in bed. He could eat pussy for hours, he could fuck me until I could barely walk, and the conversations we'd had while recovering naked in bed were great. I missed him quite a bit, but even I knew part of our relationship stemmed from the fact that he was far older than me. I hated to admit it, but it was true.