Off Limits

Chapter one

Mia Reyes sat on Jake Torres's couch with a pint of ice cream in one hand and a broken heart in her chest. Her phone was face down on the coffee table, screen dark, like if she couldn't see it, the words on it couldn't hurt her anymore. She didn't want to see another text from Daniel. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

Rain tapped against the window in a slow, steady rhythm, the kind of rain that made a city feel smaller, like the whole world had shrunk down to just this apartment, this couch, this ache in her chest that wouldn't quiet down.

"He really said that?" Jake asked, sitting down next to her, close enough that his knee brushed hers. He had two beers in his hand. He gave her one without being asked, the way he always did, like he'd memorized exactly what she needed before she knew it herself.

"He said he needs space to figure out what he wants," Mia said, her voice flat and tired. "Five years, Jake. Five years, and he needs space. Like I'm a project he's not sure he wants to finish."

Jake shook his head, jaw tight. "His loss. I mean that."

They had been best friends since their first week of college, back when Mia had shown up to the wrong dorm building and Jake, a stranger then, had walked her three blocks in the rain to find the right one, holding his jacket over her head the whole way. Eight years now. Jake had seen her through two bad breakups and one truly disastrous haircut she still wasn't over. She had seen him through his mess with Amber, the woman he thought he'd marry until she packed her things and left him for someone else three months ago, taking the good blender and, it seemed, a piece of his ability to trust easily.

"How are you doing?" Mia asked, turning to look at him properly for the first time all night. "With the Amber thing. You never really talk about it."

Jake shrugged, but something tired flickered behind his eyes, there and gone. "Some nights are fine. I go to work, I come home, I don't think about her once. Other nights I remember she took the good blender and I get furious about exactly the wrong thing. Like the blender is the tragedy. Not the five years before it."

Mia almost laughed despite herself. It was the first time she'd laughed in a week, and it startled her a little, how good it felt.

"We're a mess," she said, pulling her knees up to her chest.

"Speak for yourself. I'm thriving." He gestured at his apartment — takeout containers stacked by the sink, a jacket thrown over a chair instead of hung up, the general quiet chaos of a man who used to have someone to come home to and now didn't.

"Jake, when's the last time either of us went on a date that didn't end badly?"

He actually thought about it, counting on his fingers like it was a real math problem. "Eight months. Maybe nine. I met a woman named Carla who spent the entire dinner talking about her ex-boyfriend's new fitness routine. In detail. I know things about that man's protein intake I didn't ask to know."

"That's rough."

"You have no idea. What about you?"

"Before Daniel, there was nothing. During Daniel, there was nothing, apparently, because he was clearly keeping his options open the whole time." She winced at her own words. "Sorry. That was bitter."

"You're allowed to be bitter. He's an idiot."

Mia leaned her head back against the couch cushion, staring at the water stain on Jake's ceiling that he still hadn't fixed. The ice cream in her lap was melting, going soft and soupy. She didn't care. Some things just weren't worth the energy tonight.

"Can I say something that might sound crazy?" she asked, turning her head just enough to see him.

"You've never asked permission before. Why start now?"

"I'm serious." She sat up a little, facing him properly. "What if we stopped trying so hard? At dating, at putting ourselves back out there for people who don't deserve it. What if, for a while, we just... took care of each other? No dating apps. No looking for the next big thing that's going to disappoint us. Just us."

Jake raised an eyebrow slowly, the corner of his mouth pulling up. "Define 'took care of each other.'"

Mia felt her face go warm, heat crawling up her neck. "You know what I mean, Jake."

He was quiet for a second. A second that stretched long enough that Mia's stomach dropped, long enough that she thought she'd ruined eight years of friendship with one reckless sentence. Long enough that she almost took it back, opened her mouth to say forget it, that was stupid, pretend I didn't say anything.

"You're saying friends with benefits," he said finally, his voice careful, testing the words like they might be fragile.

"I'm saying... maybe. If we're smart about it. If we set rules." She said it fast now, like if she stopped talking she'd lose her nerve completely. "We're both hurting. We both trust each other more than anyone else on the planet. Why not just... be there for each other. Completely."

"Rules," Jake repeated, and there was something almost amused in it now, like he was starting to warm to the idea despite himself.

"Rule one: no falling for each other. We keep this simple. Rule two: if it ever gets weird, or if either of us starts feeling something we shouldn't, we stop, no hard feelings, no awkwardness. Rule three: the friendship comes first. Always. Before anything else."

Jake looked at her for a long moment, his beer forgotten in his hand, condensation dripping down onto his knuckles. There was something in his face she couldn't quite read — surprise, maybe, or something warmer and more complicated than that, something that made her heart beat a little too fast for a proposal she'd meant to sound casual.

"You've clearly already thought about this," he said.

"I might have thought about it on the drive over. A little. Okay, a lot."

He laughed, low and real, and the sound of it eased something in her chest that had been wound tight for a solid week.

"Okay," he said, setting his beer down on the coffee table with a soft click. "Rules first. Then we talk about the rest."

"So that's a yes?"

Jake reached over, slow, giving her every chance in the world to stop him, and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. His fingers lingered a second longer than they needed to against her cheek.

"That's a yes," he said quietly, and something in the room shifted, some invisible line neither of them could see yet, crossed and gone forever.