Page 61 of Friend Zone to End Zone

He just gazed at me with a tenderness in his eyes that I’d never seen before. In a low voice that did funny things to my stomach, he said, “You deserve it, Arianna. You deserve the world.”

When he said that, I was reminded of our drive back from Hannah’s party when I was trying to decide what to do with Chad and he’d said those exact words to me.

I hadn’t believed those words then, but I realized that even though it had just been a short time, it seemed like I’d experienced enough in just one week that I was starting to believe them now.

Maybe all it took was breaking away from the negative influences in your life to realize that we all were of infinite worth and should never settle for something that made us feel less than.

Cole let go of my hand and pulled open his menu. “What do you say we order some dinner?”

“Yes, let’s do that,” I said. Then I opened my menu and tried to decide what I wanted to eat. Because it was only right that the best night of my life include the best food I’d ever tasted.

26

Arianna

Coleand I ordered our dinner, cassoulet for me and boeuf bourguignon for him, along with a bottle of 2014 Château Climens Barsac wine.

After the waiter had filled our glasses, I took a sip of my wine and said, “I still can’t believe all of this is even real.”

“Why?” Cole unfolded his napkin and set it on his lap before lifting his own glass to his lips.

“I don’t know…” I lifted a shoulder. “I guess there’s just a part of me that is still the same girl I was at eighteen.”

“And your eighteen-year-old self didn’t like beautiful dresses and French food?”

“No, I’ve definitely always liked those things.” I gave him a slight smile. “It’s just, I was a different person back then—pretty jaded when I thought about my future. And so I just couldn’t imagine that I could be so happy, or that I’d ever have a friend like you.”

“What do you mean a ‘friend like me’?”

“I don’t know. I guess just someone so thoughtful and smart and hard-working.” I shrugged. “Someone unhardened by the world.”

“So you think I see the world through rose-colored glasses?” He furrowed his brow like he didn’t know whether to be offended or just confused or what.

“I don’t think you see the world wrong or anything,” I hurried to say. “It’s just…I don’t know. You seem to have a more optimistic view of things—like you just expect for everything to work out for the best so you aren’t afraid to go after everything you want. And I really admire that about you.”

“But you’re going after your dreams.” He grabbed a dinner roll from the small basket between us. “Don’t you have an optimistic view of the world, too?”

I took a roll from the basket as well and tore off a piece. “I’m getting better. But when everything seems too good to be true, I guess it’s a little hard not to expect for the other shoe to drop.” I picked up my knife and scooped up some butter. “I’ve just had so many things go wrong before that I try not to get my hopes up too high.”

He got the little pucker line between his eyebrows that he always got when he was trying to figure out a puzzle. After a short pause, he asked, “Are you talking about the plans you had for your relationship with Chad?”

And that was when I realized that I probably shouldn’t have started a conversation I wasn’t sure I was really ready to have with him.

A conversation on a topic that I never talked about because it was hard and I hated the pain it caused.

But keeping it hidden and hoping all the pain would stay buried as long as my secret was safe hadn’t exactly been working all that well. I still had my nightmares to make sure that I never forgother.

Maybe talking about it would help me get to a place where I could at least think about Harper without falling apart.

So after I swallowed a bite of my roll, I tore off another piece and said, “Maybe a little to do with Chad, but mostly has to do with some other things.”

“What other things?”

“I don’t know how much Vincent may have told you—or how much he even knows since he was out of the house and just starting to play for the NFL when most of this was happening. But there are just some things in my past that have made me think that things aren’t all sunshine and rainbows all the time.”

The waiter appeared with our salads and set them in front of us. “Vincent hasn’t told me anything about you that you haven’t told me yourself.” Cole poked at his salad with his fork. “All I really know is what you’ve hinted at before. That you had a year or two where you lived on your own and were estranged from your family.” He looked at me with searching eyes. “Is that the time that made you jaded?”

I nodded. And the memories of the desperation and loneliness and just utter hopelessness that I’d felt during that time came flooding back.

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