Page 42 of Friend Zone to End Zone

And as if to assure herself that I wasn’t pathetic enough to have a pity-party birthday cake inside my takeout box, she walked over to where it was getting cold on my counter and opened the lid.

“Well, that’s better than I thought,” she said after breathing in my kalua pork with rice and cabbage. And before I knew it, she had stolen a pinch of pork from my meal and was popping it in her mouth.

“Hey!” I stepped closer to push the lid back down. “That’s my dinner.”

“And it’s delicious.” She looked up at me through her long lashes, and we were so close that her delicious perfume wafted up to my nose.

She took another pinch of the meat and closed her eyes for a moment as if savoring the taste. After checking to make sure no one else was watching us, I allowed myself to really take her in.

She looked even more beautiful tonight than usual. Stunning, really. Her hair was in a high ponytail, her long locks curled in luscious, silky waves that ran down her back. And I wanted to think that she had worn that amazing black dress just for my birthday, but this was simply how Arianna did things—always dangling the golden carrot in front of me and taunting me with what I wanted but couldn’t have.

Okay, so maybe she wasn’t tempting me on purpose. But her natural beauty and fashion sense were simply exactly everything I was attracted to in a woman.

“Mmm. This is so good.” She moaned after stealing yet another bite of my dinner. And when she turned back around to face me, I wanted nothing more than to send everyone else at the party away so I could have her all to myself and finally show her how she made me feel.

“What?” She narrowed her gaze, probably noticing the expression on my face that must have resembled something similar to a lion about to pounce on its prey.

“Nothing.” I cleared my throat and stood up taller, attempting to look natural. Then, sliding my dinner away from her, I said, “I’ll just take this back now. I still do need to eat dinner tonight.”

“Not until after we sing you happy birthday,” she said.

And seeming oblivious to all the thoughts I had running through my mind, she grabbed my hand and dragged me into the living room to rejoin the party.

“Doyou know what time you were actually born?” Arianna asked after everyone else had left the party and we were putting the remaining cake and Dole Whip away.

Yes, even though Arianna didn’t understand my pineapple obsession, she had still gone through the effort of finding the perfect recipe for my favorite pineapple-infused frozen treat. And even though I hadn’t been there to problem-solve anything as she whipped it up, it seemed like she had even followed the recipe just right and there was the perfect balance of ingredients so that it tasted amazing—unlike the last time she’d tried to make homemade frozen Butterbeer for our Harry Potter marathon last month.

“I think my mom said I was born around ten thirty-two p.m.” I rinsed off the knife she’d cut my chocolate cake with. “Apparently, I got stuck and she had to push for, like, two hours.”

“It’s those broad shoulders of yours.” Arianna looked up from what she was doing and shot me a wink. “You were destined to be a football player from the very beginning.”

“I guess.” I shrugged.

“Do you know how big you were when you were born?” she asked.

“Nine pounds and ten ounces,” I said, the number easy to remember since my mom had always bragged to her friends about the huge baby that had come out of her tiny frame.

“Your poor mom. I’d probably die if I had a baby that big.” Arianna winced. “I had a hard enough time when Harp—” She stopped mid-sentence and shook her head like she was suddenly flustered and had lost her train of thought. “I, um…” And her face was washed over with a look of grief I’d never seen on her before she turned her back to me.

I frowned, so confused at the sudden change in her demeanor.

Was it the talk of babies that did it to her? Because she’d caught herself talking about what it would be like to have a big baby even when she didn’t plan to ever have kids?

Or was it something else?

When she lifted a hand to her face as if wiping away a tear, I said, “Is something wrong?”

She just shook her head. After taking in a big breath, she turned back to face me with her expression smoothed out and said, “Sorry, um, just ignore that.” Then she went back to dishing the leftover cake into the storage container. “Anyway, you should probably warn your future wife that big babies run in your genetics so she can be prepared.”

“I don’t know.” I decided not to question her about her unusual reaction since she seemed to want to ignore it. “My brother was only eight pounds, so I think it’s more that I was almost a week late and I was my mom’s first full-term pregnancy so she really thought she had to eat for two.”

Arianna’s brow furrowed. “Your mom was pregnant before you?”

“Yeah. She had a baby that was stillborn.”

“Oh, that’s sad.” And from the look of pain in her eyes, it seemed like she actually felt the pain my mom must have felt.

“She doesn’t like to talk about it very much.” I swallowed, feeling sad for my mom and the brother I’d never met. “Brings back too many sad memories. But I guess going through that made her extra nervous when she was pregnant with me, and so she ended up thinking that every little hunger pang meant she was starving the baby. She gained, like, sixty pounds during her pregnancy with me.”

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