Offside in the Friend Zone novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: One Bed

Alone in the cabin they set rules and fail at them, until Elsa knocks in tears: Calla has set a couples' quiz for breakfast.

The Honeymoon Cabin sat alone at the end of the point, and it had a heart carved into the door.

Henrik stopped on the porch and stared at the heart.

"Rule one," I said, and shoved the key into the lock.

"We never speak of the heart on the door."

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"You were thinking it loudly."

The cabin was one big room with a stone fireplace, a clawfoot tub in the corner, and a bed.

It was a very large bed, with a white quilt, a headboard made of birch logs, and four pillows arranged in a heart.

Someone had scattered rose petals across the quilt.

Someone had also lit a candle, and I hated that person with my whole heart.

Henrik set his duffel bag down.

He was careful about it, the way he's careful about everything he doesn't want to break.

"There's a loveseat," he said.

It was a loveseat built for a toddler, and he is six foot three.

"You can have the floor," I said.

"There's a rug."

"I once played a whole playoff series with a broken hand, Astrid. I can sleep on a rug."

"You played two games."

"It felt like a series."

I laughed before I could stop it, and the sound hung in the room between us.

He looked at me then, really looked, for the first time all night.

"You cut your hair," he said.

"Four years ago."

"It suits you."

"It suits the Zamboni," I said.

"The bangs kept freezing to my face."

The corner of his mouth moved.

It was a small thing, and I felt it low in my stomach.

I turned away and started making rules, because rules were the only armor I had.

"Rule two, we touch only when someone's watching."

"Rule three, we don't talk about the last time we saw each other."

"Rule four, we don't mean any of it."

"That's a lot of rules for a girlfriend of five months," Henrik said.

"I'm a thorough girlfriend."

He took off his boots and lined them up by the door, toes out, side by side.

He'd done that since we were seven.

Rolf used to say a Lantern Street boy never walks past a clean floor without leaving it cleaner.

I picked up his wet hoodie from the chair where he'd dropped it and hung it by the fire without thinking.

He saw me do it.

Neither of us said anything.

We got ready for bed like two people defusing something.

I changed in the bathroom into the flannel pajamas I'd packed for a week of sleeping next to a bride's snoring mother.

When I came out, he was already on the floor.

He had pulled one of the four pillows down and lay on the rug in a grey t-shirt.

He was looking at the ceiling beams with his hands folded on his stomach.

I climbed into the bed.

The petals crunched under me, and I swept them off onto the floor, onto him.

"Hey."

"They were your petals," I said.

"They're nobody's petals."

He picked one off his chest and held it up to the firelight.

"Why'd you do it?" he said.

He asked it quietly, to the beams.

"Do what?"

"Stand up."

I looked at the dark rafters too.

It's easier to lie to a ceiling.

"Because Calla was enjoying herself," I said.

"And because it's Elsa's wedding, and I wasn't going to let a woman in cashmere turn it into her show."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

My hand drifted up to my left ear, and I made it stop halfway.

On the rug, he went very still.

He said nothing about it.

"Thank you," he said instead.

"I didn't say that earlier."

"You squeezed my knuckle."

"That was me saying don't mess this up."

"Then you're welcome."

The fire popped.

I turned to face the wall, and after a minute I heard him turn the other way too.

We lay there back to back, with a quilt and a hundred rose petals and about six feet of cold floor between us.

I counted his breathing out of habit.

It was the same.

He was ten years old again, sharing a pup tent in his backyard, and I was nine, and everything was simple.

"Bee," he said, so softly I might have dreamed it.

Nobody had called me that in five years.

I pressed my face into the pillow, because my eyes had gone hot.

"Go to sleep, Henrik."

"Okay," he said, and my heart cracked a little, because that was exactly what he'd said in the skate shed.

I was almost asleep when something knocked on the door.

It wasn't a polite knock.

It was the frantic, three-fingered knock of a girl who has been crying for an hour.

Henrik was on his feet before I'd found my slippers.

He opened the door, and Elsa fell into his arms in her bridesmaid robe, with mascara down to her chin.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't know she'd do it."

"Who did what?" I said.

"Calla," said Elsa, and she wiped her face on her brother's shirt.

"She told everyone at dessert she doesn't believe you."

"She's set up a couples' quiz for breakfast, in front of both families."

"Eight o'clock sharp."

"And if you get one answer wrong," she whispered, "Kaspar's mother is going to ask you to leave."

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