The Friend Zone

Kristen arrives at the fire station with her small dog. A firefighter named Shawn flirts with her, and she rebuffs him sarcastically. It is Family Day at the fire station, and Kristen and her best friend, Sloan, are there to visit. Sloan’s fiancée, Brandon, is a firefighter, and Kristen has come along to meet a firefighter named Josh who has just transferred there. Josh is going to be the best man in Brandon and Sloan’s wedding. Kristen will be Sloan’s maid of honor, so they have planned an afternoon at the firehouse to get to know each other.

Earlier, Kristen had borrowed Brandon’s truck and left the firehouse to run an errand. Now, Sloan asks her why she is wearing a large t-shirt that clearly belongs to a man. Kristen does not want to explain about spilling coffee on herself or damaging Brandon’s car, so claims that the shirt belongs to her boyfriend, Tyler, a Marine who is currently deployed. She says that she misses him. Sloan reminds her that in just three weeks, Tyler will be home for good.

Kristen feels pain in her stomach, partly because she feels anxious about living with Tyler, but mostly because she is having terrible cramps from her period. She also did not sleep well, and the police were at her house in the middle of last night. She decides not to tell Sloan any of this. Josh is late, and Kristen is annoyed with him even before meeting him.

Josh finally arrives, and Kristen realizes that he is the same man who bumped into her that morning while she was driving Brandon’s truck. Before Josh can say anything, Kristen says that she needs to run out and get something from the truck while Josh goes back to get more breakfast items from his car. Speaking with Josh privately, she makes him promise not to tell Sloan and Brandon about their run-in that morning because she has already lied about it. He agrees but teases her and says that she can keep his shirt even though it’s his favorite.

Because Josh is new to the fire station, he has to cook for the others on his shift and do housekeeping tasks around the station. He and Kirsten trade jabs while still managing to keep their earlier meeting a secret. He learns that her small dog’s name is Stuntman Mike, a movie reference that he understands. He also learns that Kristen runs an online shop that sells clothing and accessories for small dogs. Kristen says that the carpenter whom she worked with to create custom wooden staircases for small dogs has just quit, and she needs to find a new one. Brandon volunteers Josh, saying that he is a talented carpenter. At first, Josh declines, but when Kristen tells him that he could make as much as $200 or $300 per staircase, he becomes interested. Because Josh lives in an apartment, Kristen reluctantly agrees that he can work in her garage.

A call comes through at the station, and Brandon and Josh have to leave abruptly, but Josh plans to contact Kristen later about the carpentry job. He can tell that she dislikes him, but he is used to such disdain; he has six sisters, a mom, and several nieces who are angry at him for moving away from South Dakota, and his ex-girlfriend, Celeste, is still holding a grudge.

Brandon asks what Josh thinks of Kristen. He admits that she’s attractive, but because she dislikes him and already has a boyfriend, he is not interested in pursuing a romance with her.

When Kristen and Sloan leave the fire station, Sloan immediately starts asking Kristen what she thinks of Josh. Kristen decides to tell Sloan the truth about how she met Josh; she admits that she spilled coffee in Brandon’s truck. Sloan agrees that they can never tell Brandon. When questioned, Kristen admits that she is physically attracted to Josh and likes his teasing, but she is trying not to think about it because she already has a boyfriend. She is still experiencing painful period cramps, and thinks they’re getting worse, but she doesn’t want to worry Sloan, so she does not admit the extent of her pain.

Later that day, Tyler calls Kristen, and they talk about mundane concerns. She mentions that she has a temporary option for a new carpenter but wants to find someone else to take his place. He tells her to wait to interview people from a Craigslist ad until he gets home because that approach doesn’t seem safe.

Kristen is feeling anxious about the fact that Tyler’s deployment will soon end and he will come to live with her; in the past, they have only ever had a long-distance relationship in which he visits for two weeks out of every year. She does not know what it will be like to live with him full time. While she talks to him, she nervously cleans her kitchen—which she does whenever she is stressed. He tries to assuage her anxieties and then asks her when her surgery is. Kristen says that it is scheduled for after Sloan’s wedding in two months. He tells her that he wishes he could take care of her. By the end of the call, she is feeling better but continues scrubbing the kitchen.

Josh arrives at Kristen’s house a couple days later to start building sets of stairs. Clearly not interested in impressing anyone, she is wearing a green facemask and is in a bathrobe when she answers the door. She shows him to the garage and points out the bathroom and refrigerator before leaving him to get to work. During this brief tour, Josh notices a pair of her underwear hanging over the dryer and a vase of flowers on a counter. He assumes that her boyfriend gave them to her for Valentine’s Day, a holiday that Josh hates.

Josh is curious about Kristen’s boyfriend, but Brandon only knows that Sloan doesn’t like Tyler very much. Josh unloads his building supplies and gets to work. He comes inside several hours later to use the bathroom and notices that Kristen has changed but is now using a heating pad. She says that she’s fine, but he can tell that she is in serious pain. He offers her Motrin and promises to pick up lunch, as well as supplies like pads and tampons. As someone with six sisters, he is no stranger to menstruation. When he gets back, he brings her an array of junk food. Kristen’s attitude toward Josh softens a bit as he talks about his six sisters.

Josh explains that he and Brandon met when they were in the Marines. Kristen asks Josh about his job at the fire station, and he says that his new station is busier than the one in South Dakota because they get a lot of calls for silly injuries like a stubbed toe. He tells her that he left South Dakota because he and his girlfriend broke up. There were many reasons, but the main deal-breaker was that she didn’t want children, and he does.

Josh asks Kristen about Tyler, and she tells him that he is also a Marine and is scheduled to return home in three weeks. This will be the first time that Kristen has ever lived with a boyfriend.

Josh teases Kristen about her dog, saying it looks like the kind of dog that celebrities like Paris Hilton would own. She defends Stuntman Mike, insisting that he is a hunting dog who “hunts women.” She challenges Josh to take the dog into a store and see if a woman will approach him because of the dog. He tells her that he doesn’t need help meeting women, and she agrees that the “sexy fireman” vibe is working for him, but she wants to be proven right. They make a deal: If Stuntman Mike helps him to meet a woman at a store, he will have to model with tiny dogs for her website.

The next few times that Josh comes over to work, they spend time chatting, and later, at the fire station, Josh asks Brandon to tell him more about Kristen. Brandon tells him that she is smart, competitive, driven, and faithful to her boyfriend. He does admit, though, that she is less interested in Tyler than he is her; he assumes that their relationship is far from perfect. This gives Josh hope that Kristen won’t be with Tyler forever.

Kristen is standing in her garage watching Josh work, thinking that it was a bad idea to hire him because she is so attracted to him. However, he is doing a good job building the staircases, and she needs him to continue. She brings him a plate of lasagna that he knows she didn’t cook herself. She invites him into the house to eat with her, and Stuntman Mike jumps at Josh, begging to be held. Kristen reflects that her dog likes Josh more than he likes Tyler; she is worried that this will be a problem when Tyler moves in.

Josh bites into the lasagna and finds that it is still frozen. He offers to cook for them whenever he is there, and she agrees. He asks if he can use her shower because he has a date later. Kristen is thrilled to learn that Josh got the date by taking Stuntman Mike to Home Depot. She is trying to hide her attraction to him by dressing sloppily and not attending to her appearance, and she thinks that soon she’ll have to start putting curlers in her hair to make her point more aggressively.

While they’re eating, Sloan texts Kristin to tease her about behaving herself with Josh. Kristen knows that Sloan is not fond of Tyler because he doesn’t quite fit into Kristen and Sloan’s mutual friend group. Sloan would be thrilled if Kristen were to break up with Tyler and date Josh.

Josh and Kristen talk about upcoming events for Sloan and Brandon’s wedding; they are in charge of planning the respective bachelor and bachelorette parties and will soon attend a gathering soon at Sloan’s house to stuff wedding invitations and work on party favors. By the end of their conversation, Kristen can see that they are very compatible, but she knows that there is one aspect that would be a complete deal-breaker.

Josh is about to go on a date with Amanda, the woman he met when he took Stuntman Mikey to Home Depot. He meets Amanda at a bar, and even though she is beautiful and nice, he realizes that he is far more interested in Kristen. When Amanda gets up to go to the bathroom, he calls Kristen to see what she’s doing. She can tell he’s bored, and he suggests coming over and ordering pizza after the date. When she answers the door in curlers 30 minutes later, Josh decides that she really must not care what he thinks about her. He respects her blunt attitude but does wish that she cared what he thought of her. They eat pizza and drink beer while she does invoices for her business, and they talk about Josh’s date with Amanda. He says that she wasn’t really his type.

As they are talking, Sloan calls Kristen because she received a package with a note saying that she had to call Kristen before she opened it. When Kristen is sure that both Sloan and Brandon are by the phone, she tells Sloan to open what turns out to be a glitter bomb. Josh can hear Sloan shrieking. Kristen tells Sloan that Josh came back over to her house to hang out after his date. Sloan reminds Kristen of her warning to be careful with Josh; Josh hears this because the call is on speaker. He asks what they’ve been saying about him, and Kristen jokes that they talk about how hot he is.

They change the subject and discuss the romance elements of movies and television, and Josh reflects that hanging out with Kristen is a better date than his actual date had been. However, she has so clearly put him in the “friend zone.” Kristen apologizes for being rude to Josh when they first met. She explains that she hadn’t slept well because of her period, and someone had tried to break into her house that night, so she’d called the police in the middle of the night. Hearing this, Josh is immediately concerned and decides to stay at her house until Tyler comes back—unless he has an overnight shift at the fire station, in which case Kristen should stay at Sloan and Brandon’s house. He tells her that she needs to come with him while he runs home to get his gun.

Kristen is resistant to let Josh spend the night at her house, saying that Tyler wouldn’t like it, but he insists that Tyler would be a jerk if preferred her to stay there by herself after an attempted break-in. She has not even told Tyler about the incident because she thinks it’s best for people in a long-distance relationship to avoid telling their partners things that will worry them.

Kristen goes with Josh to his apartment. She notices that he hasn’t really moved in yet; there are boxes everywhere, and he has been sleeping on the floor. The refrigerator displays a picture of him and his nephew, and she can see how much he loves children. He tells her that he loved growing up in a big family and that he wants at least five children of his own. She says that she would like to have kids someday, too, but she does not tell him that this dream will probably be impossible for her.