The Friend Zone

“‘A lot of reasons. The biggest one being that she didn’t want to have kids. I did. It wasn’t negotiable.’

She nodded again. ‘That’s a big one,’ she mumbled.”

When Josh and Kristen meet, Kristen finds herself inwardly dismayed at Josh’s explanation for why he broke up with his previous girlfriend, Celeste. At this point in the novel, the true nature of Kristen’s medical condition are still a complete mystery, and Jimenez uses this scene to indicate that Kristen herself may have strong opinions about the issue of having children. This suggestion lies primarily in the dramatic change in Kristen’s body language and overall demeanor, as when she mumbles her response.

“There’s something you should know about me, Josh. I say what I think. I don’t have a coy bone in my body. Yes, you’re sexy. Enjoy the compliment because you won’t always like what I say to you, and I won’t care one way or the other if you do or don’t.”

This quote from Kristen shows that she knows herself well and that she is blunt, funny, and sometimes harsh. However, her ongoing stubbornness and determination to keep her medical concerns to herself gives the lie to her statement. Far from “saying what she thinks,” Kristen spends much of the novel refusing to say much of anything at all, and her lack of honesty on this point damages her burgeoning relationship with Josh.

“The little thing was a roller-coaster ride of emotions. He seemed to take to Josh though. He hated Tyler. In fact, I was worried how it would play out once Tyler moved in. Stuntman wouldn’t even let him sit on the bed. Even thinking about how that was going to go launched me into a manic cleaning spree.”

This quote is significant because it shows that Kristen’s dog, Stuntman Mike, behaves differently with Josh than with Tyler. Stuntman Mike functions as a litmus test for the people in Kristen’s life. In Kristen’s mind, if Stuntman Mike doesn’t like a person, they are probably not a good fit for her life. Right away, Kristen can tell that Josh is special because he wins the affections of her picky dog.

“I tried to see the silver panty liner whenever I could.”

This quote not only shows Kristen’s toughness and grit when it comes to getting through her painful periods, but it also reveals her playful and witty sense of humor. She is not a person who feels sorry for herself or dwells on things in her life that she cannot change.

“‘I just couldn’t stay in a relationship that was a dead end like that.’

‘I see.’ A dead end […] A disappointment I had no right feeling dropped into my stomach.”

Josh describes his relationship with Celeste as a “dead end” because he knew that the two of them were at a stalemate on the issue of having children. The scene also carries an element of dramatic irony, for although Kristen’s first-person narration reveals just how deeply Josh’s statement has cut her, Josh himself remains unaware of this undercurrent for the time being.

“‘I ain’t through with you by a damn sight. I’ma get medieval on your ass.’

‘Is this…?’ I asked in awe.

‘Yup. The pawn shop from the gimp scene in Pulp Fiction.’”

This scene occurs after Kristen and Josh prank Brandon and Sloan. Kristen takes Josh to see the pawn shop where a scene from Pulp Fiction was filmed. When she quotes the movie, he recognizes the reference immediately, and this is just one of many instances in which the two bond over their mutual love of Quentin Tarantino’s films.

“‘I don’t be tickling or nothing,’ I said, giving her a Pulp Fiction line […] I thought about what Vincent Vega says in the movie, that foot massages mean something. That men act like they don’t, but they do and that’s why they’re so cool. This meant something, and I knew she knew it. She was as familiar with that movie as I was. She had to be making the connection. And she’d allowed it.”

In this scene, Josh offers to give Kristen a foot massage, and he also references another scene from Pulp Fiction. In the movie scene, one character tells the other that foot massages are an acceptable form of physical contact because it is possible to pretend that there is no greater significance to the moment, even when there is. In this context, the reference means that Kristen is aware that Josh’s foot massage is his way of trying to bring them closer together. However, the fact that she allows this to continue indicates that she feels the same way about him.

“Why aren’t you answering his calls when you’re with me?”

In this scene, Josh notices that Kristen does not answer Tyler’s calls whenever she and Josh are spending time together, and he immediately intuits the significance of this pattern. He believes that Kristen has romantic feelings for him, too, and he is pushing her to acknowledge it.

“My heart yearned for him. I wanted to cuddle with him. I wanted him to stay. ‘Okay, time to go.’”

This quote shows the disconnect between Kristen’s feelings and her actions. Jimenez has made it clear that Kristen is secretly in love with Josh, but her outward behavior and words do not reflect these feelings. Even after the first time they sleep together, she immediately tells him that he needs to go, stolidly denying her own fervent desire to have him stay and cuddle with her.

“I wasn’t an emotional person. In the course of our friendship, Sloan had only seen my cry once after a cramp-induced trip to the ER, and that was more from pain and frustration than despondency. This was a violent shift in our dynamic, the moment when Dad breaks down and wide-eyed Mom has to comfort him. Sloan’s maternal instincts kicked into crisis mode, and she clutched me to her, shushing me and whispering in my ear, the way my own mom would never do.”

Kristen finally admits to Sloan that she has romantic feelings for Josh, and she also expresses her belief that it would be impossible for them to have a successful relationship. When she breaks down, Sloan comforts her like a mother, filling the emotional void that Kristen’s own mother, Evelyn, has left in her psyche. Later, when Evelyn is introduced, the narrative will make it abundantly clear that Kristen never had a warm connection with her mother. For this reason, Sloan has been the most nurturing and comforting person in Kristen’s life.

“I braced for Kristen’s snarky retort, but to my surprise she didn’t reply. Instead she stiffly kissed her mom hello.”

Josh has gotten to know Kristen well enough to appreciate her sarcasm and forthright personality, and he is therefore shocked when he realizes the power that her mother wields over her. Rather than standing up to Evelyn’s criticism, Kristen meekly endures it, feeling small and inadequate. This is the beginning of Josh’s introduction to Evelyn’s dysfunctional interactions with her daughter, and he will soon understand how deeply she has hurt Kristen throughout the years.

“Kristen looked at her eggs with dismay. She was pretty picky about her food, and she got cranky when she didn’t eat. I got the feeling she’d muscle through this because her mom seemed to have some sort of mind control over her, but she’d hate it […] I picked up her eggs Benedict and gave her my French toast. ‘Kristen doesn’t like her eggs like that,’ I said to Evelyn, not even trying to mask my annoyance.”

This scene demonstrates that Josh knows Kristen’s food preferences intimately, and his concern over her well-being, even in this minor instance, indicates how deep his feelings for her run. He knows that she hates the food her mother ordered for her, and, feeling protective of her, he offers Evelyn the resistance that Kristen has declined to display. By offering Kristen his breakfast instead, he takes care of her and simultaneously issues Evelyn a rebuke.

“So I did with Tyler what I did with most of the shitty things in my life. I put him where I kept my hysterectomy and my childhood—its own little room […] But for some reason, compartmentalizing today didn’t seem possible. I knew it the second I saw Josh standing in my living room with Mom. It was like things that happened with Josh couldn’t be locked up. They just smeared all over, messy and impossible to put away.”

Kristen has a tendency to deal with her problems by compartmentalizing them and keeping them separate from other aspects of her life. It was easier for her to do this when she was with Tyler because he was almost always overseas, but now that she has fallen in love with Josh, she is finding that she cannot compartmentalize him. He spills into every aspect of her life, and although she is used to having more control over the situation, she knows that this is the way love is supposed to be.

“He hadn’t eaten yet either. He was hungry too, but he didn’t even keep an olive for himself. Josh was going to make a very good daddy one day. He was selfless and principled. Brave. Loyal. He’d make a good husband to someone too.”

After Josh rescues Kristen from her mother and takes her somewhere else to eat, Kristen observes him giving her all of the garnishes from his Bloody Mary. In this moment, she understands that he is prioritizing her needs over his own. Now that Kristen knows that she is in love with Josh, every small kindness he shows her also brings her pain, because she believes that they cannot be together.

“He scoffed. ‘Well, there you go. The kid thing is too important. Can’t be with him.’”

When Kristen tells Josh that Tyler didn’t want children, he misunderstands her and believes that her reason for breaking up with Tyler matches his own reason for breaking up with Celeste. In reality, Tyler’s preference to not have children was an advantage of sorts because Kristen felt that if she were to marry him, her own medical conditions would not become a source of disappointment or resentment.

“I’d never trusted anyone else to be the one in control, and my manic mind gave it to him immediately and without reservation and retreated back into itself […] I wasn’t sure if I was comforting him, or if I was letting him comfort me.”

After Brandon’s accident, Kristen shifts into a mode that she calls her “velociraptor brain,” which means that she dissociates from the situation emotionally so that she can focus on helping Sloan and getting things done. When she sees Josh, though, she feels for the first time that she can let go and allow him to comfort her. She rarely feels comfortable relinquishing control of a situation, but with him, she can relax.

“You have no right to make this decision for me. I want to be with you. If I say it doesn’t change anything for me, then it doesn’t.”

Kristen finally tells Josh that she has resisted the idea of a romantic relationship with him because she cannot have children. This quote shows how withholding this information from Josh and unilateral decisions has hurt both of them. When given the chance, Josh is ready to choose her regardless of whether or not they can have children together.

“Nurse Valerie buzzed me into the ICU. I slid the container of cupcakes across the counter of the nurses’ station. ‘Nadia cakes.’ she beamed at me. ‘You’re too good to us, girl.’”

Sloan has asked Kristen to bring treats for the ICU nurses to show their appreciation for their care of Brandon. Kristen brings cupcakes from Nadia Cakes, which is significant because this is the real-life bakery that the author, Abby Jimenez, owns and operates. In each of her books, a character brings Nadia Cakes cupcakes to another person to show comfort, care, and love. Thus, the author works in a little extra publicity for her other business endeavor.

“I wish I could love you less. Maybe if I did, I could stomach taking this dream from you. But I don’t know how to even begin letting someone give up something like that for me. I would feel like apologizing every day of my life.”

This quote connects to the theme of Making Sacrifices for Loved Ones. Kristen is willing to sacrifice her own happiness because she loves Josh so much that she wants him to have everything he has dreamed of. However, she does not understand that by this point, Josh loves Kristen so much that he is willing to sacrifice his dreams of a family in order to be with her.

“Your mom. All your life she made you feel like you were never good enough. And so you don’t think you’re good enough for Josh either. But you are.”

Sloan explains that Kristen misguided belief that she is unworthy of love and marriage is based on her mother’s disappointment in her. Kristen has internalized her mother’s ideas of her failures to the point that she thinks she does not deserve Josh’s love. This is a difficult idea for her to unlearn, but Sloan plays a key role in recognizing the problem and helping her through it.

“So you can decide for Josh, but I shouldn’t have decided for Brandon?”

When Kristen and Sloan are having their final argument about how Kristen has rejected Josh, Sloan takes a different, more logic-based approach. She says that Brandon’s death is her fault because she let him ride his motorcycle, but Kristen tells her that Brandon was an adult who made his own decisions. Sloan uses that same line of thinking to ask Kristen why she won’t let Josh make his own decisions. In the last chapters of the novel, both Josh and Sloan realize that they can convince Kristen to accept a relationship with Josh by appealing to her sense of logic and reason instead of using emotional arguments.

“Josh looked infertility dead in the eye, and his choice was still me.”

After Kristen looks through the binder that Josh has compiled to prove that they have many ways to overcome infertility, she realizes that he fully understands the magnitude of the problem and still wants to have a relationship with her. She is surprised because she has been telling herself that her medical conditions were a dealbreaker.

“Can we get our wedding rings at the Pulp Fiction pawn shop?”

This quote is significant because it brings Kristen and Josh’s love for Pulp Fiction into their wedding plans and essentially enshrines this aspect of their courtship. It is also clear that they do not care about having a fancy wedding or expensive rings; instead, they opt for rings that make their wedding more unique to their relationship.