Friend Zone

When she gave me a dad hug – light, brisk, and with two pats on the back – I could see the writing on the wall.

She’d put me in the Friend Zone.

Once I got my bearings, I chatted to some of the other lads milling about there. They clearly didn’t know they’d been Friend-Zoned, even though there was a massive sign above their heads.

The Friend Zone.

Being totally honest, they weren’t really my kind of people, these other lads. I can only assume they weren’t really her kind of people, either.

She would sometimes come to get me from the Friend Zone. We went for walks — she wanted to hold hands, which I like to do too — sometimes a bike ride, sometimes a picnic. All kinds of other stuff.

It made me question what my role there was. Was I her kind of people after all?

She taught me not to overthink things; said to be “like the breeze” – which was a slightly irritating thing to say, but I could see where she was coming from.

Anyway, I ended up taking her down to my Friend Zone.

It was pretty empty down there. I had copied the design of her sign – although I’d put mine together myself from old palettes and other found wood, and it was nowhere near as good as hers.

We spent a while discussing the correct grammar, whether it was Friend Zone, Friend-Zone hyphenated, or Friendzone all one word, and decided that it didn’t really matter.

I gave her one of my pumpkin plants, which I’d grown from leftover seeds that otherwise would only have been thrown in with the food waste.

To show her gratitude, she gave one of her dad hugs, while holding the pumpkin plant in the other hand.

I had so many of those plants, and never a single pumpkin from a single one.

vss #32