Page 20 of Friend Zone to End Zone

But then another viewer @juliesingsalot immediately commented:You need to give her newer recipes a chance. I made her French dip sandwiches last month and my whole family is addicted to them now.

Well, at least one of my recipes had turned out okay.

Though that was one of the recipes Cole had helped me problem-solve, so I guess I couldn’t really take all the credit there.

After taking a deep breath, I lifted my head again and said, “Anyway, since we all just found out that I will probably never share another recipe on social media again, how about we move on to the last question of the night—which is about whether Chad or I have any weird quirks.”

“Oh, that’s a good one.” Chad rubbed his hands together like he was excited for this. “And I think I already know what I’m going to say for your quirk.”

“Well, since I’m sure whatever you have to say is more exciting than what I have, I better go first.”

I looked back to the phone screen, trying to come up with a quirk that Chad had. But when I tried to think of anything he did that was out of the ordinary, I couldn’t think of anything. I mean, my viewers had already seen tonight that Chad didn’t have much of a filter, so that wouldn’t be news to them.

So after thinking about my answer for a moment longer and still coming up blank, I lifted my shoulder and said, “One of Chad’s quirks is that he whistles all the time.”

Sometimes to an annoying effect.

But I wouldn’t add that part since even though he didn’t seem to mind throwing me under the bus on tonight’s live Q&A, I refused to return the favor.

“My turn?” Chad asked.

“Sure.”

And when he rubbed his hands together and shot me a smirk, I braced myself for whatever he was about to say.

He paused for effect, and after building the suspense for a few seconds, he said, “I’d have to say that the biggest quirk that our sweet Arianna here has is that she is a big-time sleep talker.”

He didn’t…

I narrowed my gaze, wondering what he was going to say next and if I should just turn off the livestream.

“You can actually learn a lot about a person when they sleep talk,” he continued. “And while I don’t love having my sleep interrupted when Arianna falls asleep at my place, it does provide some great middle-of-the-night entertainment.”

My palms started to sweat as I wondered what kinds of things I could have mumbled in my sleep. Because while I was mostly an open book, I did have some secrets about myself that I planned on taking to my grave.

9

Cole

Why was I watching this?

I had to be the biggest masochist in the world tochooseto watch the girl I was in love with talk publicly about why she and her boyfriend had the perfect relationship—only to have Chad, the narcissist, basically rake her across the coals in front of her fans.

He was such a scumbag.

But even though it was pure torture to watch him publicly demean the most amazing woman in the world, I couldn’t not watch. Because if I was going to have to cheer her up afterwards and let her know that everything he was saying was a lie, I needed to know just exactly all the things I had to combat.

I considered calling her phone just to cut into her livestream to make the public humiliation stop, but I wished she’d just do it herself.

Actually, I wished she’d rip Chad a new one and chew him out right then and there for being such a jerk.

But she didn’t.

She just put a fake smile on her face and took his crap like always.

So I did the only thing I could think to do and just sent her as many encouraging comments as they went on, hoping that it would help her realize she was so much better than Chad would ever deserve.

I sighed and leaned back on my couch as I waited for Chad to answer the last of their questions for tonight.

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