Bend (4 page)

There. I hit Send, mute the phone, and turn off the screen.

Whether he answers or not, I don’t plan on losing any sleep over it.

W
hen I get to Three Oaks Park at five to nine, the only vehicle in the parking lot is a black MINI Cooper Convertible with white racing stripes—Mia’s pride and joy. She made me come with her when she bought the pre-owned car only three months ago, to help her negotiate the price down. I told her she was dealing a blow to feminism just by asking me to do that, and her excuse was that she’s uncomfortable with conflict.

Which is true enough. And really unfortunate, considering she’s chronically incapable of keeping her big mouth shut.

I’ve been trying to keep those facets of her personality in mind ever since that clusterfuck on Friday night. That’s just Mia, I’ve been telling myself. Stuff pops into her head, and then it comes out of her mouth, unfiltered. Most people like her anyway.

I like her anyway. Like her a hell of a lot more than is good for me, probably.

I swerve out to pull into a spot farther down, but at the last minute I decide to back my truck in next to her car instead. It’s a petty and kind of childish move, done just to annoy her. She’s irritated by people who back into parking spots for some reason. I guess they slow her down too much?

I’m doing it as payback—or the beginning of my payback, at least—for the stress and lack of sleep she caused me this weekend. Because that crap she pulled the other night? Not okay.

So yeah, I’m here for our usual Sunday morning run, but that doesn’t mean we’re okay. And she’s going to find out just how not okay we are pretty quickly.

I’m gripping the steering wheel and staring unseeing at the dashboard, steeling myself. A melancholy Mumford & Sons song is playing on the stereo, the lyrics about love and sadness and death. It fits my mood exactly.

Have you ever thought about having sex with me?

Goddamn her. Maybe if she knew about the shit going on in my life right now, she’d understand I don’t have the energy to also deal with her obnoxious questions.

I probably should have told her about that shit. Should’ve told her a long time ago. But every time it’s seemed like a good time to bring it up, my mind has jumped ahead to the end of the conversation, and I grow terrified that she’ll look at me differently. Look at me like I’m…less. Less of the person she thought I was. Less of a person she wants in her life.

That’s how five years have gone by and she still knows nothing about the events in my past that made me who I am. And I have no plans to change that.

In fact, I’ve had no plans to change anything about my relationship with Mia. Which is why I was so blindsided by her questions on Friday night.

Have you ever thought about having sex with me?

Well, who hasn’t? I can guaran-fucking-tee that, except for her family members, there’s not a guy alive who’s met her and hasn’t thought about it. Plenty of women, too, probably. There’s this girl at our movie theater concession stand—a college kid, I’m guessing—who blushes every time we order our popcorn and drinks, and she sure as hell isn’t looking at me when she does it.

Mia and sex, they’re like bread and butter. Like pen and paper. Like Ben and Jerry.

One just makes you think of the other.

Maybe it’s those sea-green eyes of hers, eyes that make me think of relaxing on a tropical beach…and having sex with Mia in the warm sand. Or her thick and wavy hair, the color of milk chocolate, perfect for burying your fingers in…while having sex with Mia.

Or maybe it’s her infectious smile, her melodious and throaty laugh, her quick wit, or that slim and toned body with the most perfect little heart-shaped ass—

Have I thought about having sex with her? I let out a snort. Safe to say the answer is,
Hell, yeah.
It’s crossed my mind on a regular basis since the day I first met her.

Doesn’t mean I’m going to tell her, though. What’s the point? There’s no room in my life for Mia Waters to be anything more than she already is. She deserves more than I can give her, and there’s no way sex with Mia would end in anything but grief.

Why ruin a good thing?

I turn off the engine and get out of the truck. Time to go ask her that question.

Mia’s waiting for me on the bench closest to the park restrooms, where she’s sitting with her outstretched legs crossed at the ankles. It’s not hard to spot her there. She has a thing for flashy, and along with her eye-catching workout clothes, she’s wearing multicolored neon sneakers that look like a clown jizzed all over them. Her hair she’s tamed into place with a topknot and a pink headband, and she’s nudged her aviator sunglasses down to the tip of her faintly freckled nose so she can better see the phone screen she’s tapping away on.

She looks up as the pebbles crunching beneath my shoes on the sidewalk announce my presence, and before I have a chance to read her expression, she pushes her sunglasses back up. “I wasn’t sure you were coming.”

“I wasn’t, either.” And now I know why. After spending yesterday thinking about her almost non-stop, seeing her again is discombobulating. The muscles at the back of my neck are too tight, and my limbs all feel out of place. It’s like we’re not ourselves anymore, and I don’t know how to adjust.

Without giving her a chance to respond, I gesture at the unpaved trail that’s snaking along the grassy area toward a cluster of trees. “Ready?”

“Hang on,” she replies, fiddling with her phone again. “How many miles today?”

I reach up to adjust my baseball cap, hesitating. Four to five hours of sleep after a grueling fifteen-hour shift at the hospital yesterday, and I’m definitely not in shape for a half marathon—or even a quarter of one, for that matter.

“I’m not up for more than four.”

“Tired from work?” She stuffs her phone into her armband, right next to her car key, and straps it onto her arm. She uses her phone to track all her workouts. How long, how far, how fast, and how many calories burned. Me, I prefer to avoid habits that feel like a one-way ticket into OCD hell, so I leave my phone in the car.

“Not enough sleep, mostly,” I answer, starting to walk down the path, her falling into step next to me.

She only has to bend her neck a little to look up at me. Slightly above average height, she’s still taller than most other women I know. Tall, slender, and small-boned Mia.

It’s hard not to add the word “my” to the beginning of that description.

“Why?” she asks, frowning at me and sounding concerned.

Why? Seriously? Can she not take a guess? Just one wild guess?

Her obvious worry dulls the edge of my anger, though, so I only say, “Got a lot on my mind, I suppose.”

“Like what?”

Is she deliberately fucking with me? No. She’s trying to sound casual and concerned, but she’s not that good of an actress.

I can hear it. She’s nervous.

Good. She should be.

We’re not okay, Mia. So not okay.

I don’t bother to be subtle about the sarcasm as I say, “Didn’t you hear what just happened to Kim Kardashian? It’s so upsetting.”

She makes a face. Crosses her arms over her stomach and looks away. “You’re still mad at me.”

“And the award for Most Insightful Observation goes to...”

Her cheeks puff up as she blows out a sigh. “Can we talk about it after we run?”

“Sure.” That’s fine, actually. Despite the fatigue that now feels like a poison in my veins, running will be less exhausting than having this conversation with her.

“And in the meantime,” she continues, sounding guarded, “can you pretend you’re not angry?”

“I can try.”

We fall silent. This is supposed to be our brisk five-minute walk to warm up, so I lengthen my stride, and Mia, of course, doesn’t struggle to keep up. Instead she picks up her pace until she moves slightly ahead of me. Which gives me a perfect view of the way her tight, black shorts hug the curves of her ass and hips and thighs. And the dips of her waist under her hot-pink tank top. And the flexing of muscles in her toned and shapely calves with each step she takes.

I swallow hard, my breathing going shallow like I’m already running, and my dick starts to respond.

Jesus. Almost seven years of successfully keeping my hands off her—a stubborn and unbending self-control that began the day my best friend brought her to a party in our dorm and introduced me to her and I learned what it really means to be hit and stunned with lust at first sight—and now I can’t even go for a run with her without getting a goddamn hard-on? Fuck this shit.

Tearing my gaze away from her perfect and sexy little body, I stalk tensely along beside her and try to focus on my surroundings instead. The weather is pretty much perfect this morning—mild, sunny, no wind—so it’s surprising we’re the only ones here. Usually there are already families on the playground and several runners on the trail. April is a nice month to call Southern California home.

Not that I’ve ever lived anywhere else. I’m an Orange County native, unlike Mia, who grew up in the Bay Area. After high school, she moved down here to attend UCLA, which is where we met after she started dating Fuckface when she was a sophomore and I was a junior.

She’s the one who starts talking again first. “How was work last night?”

“Saturday night,” I say with a shrug. “A couple of dead drunks. One a high school girl, the other a middle-aged guy with a point-three-five blood alcohol content who was unconscious when his buddies brought him in, and when he finally came to, he started freaking out about his catheter.”

Mia scoffs and asks, “WTS?”

A smile tugs up the corners of my mouth, amusement that feels surprising and involuntary right now. “WTS” is short for “wanted to say,” a routine we do when swapping stories of annoying, rude, or otherwise frustrating patients. It’s a way of letting off steam, telling each other what we really wanted to say to those patients instead of the polite answers dictated by good bedside manner—and in my case, by the patient satisfaction scores that impact my salary.

It’s definitely immature, but it works. Helps me calm down and be the compassionate and level-headed professional I’ve always aimed to be. At least once each shift I manage to restrain myself by taking a moment to archive a WTS response to share with Mia later, and I did the same with catheter guy, just out of habit.

So I answer her question with: “‘Dude, if you didn’t want a tube shoved up your dick, you should’ve stopped after the fifth shot of tequila. At least you’re not lying in a ditch somewhere, pissing yourself.’”