Page 67 of Friend Zone to End Zone

“I see…” Incognito nodded his head slowly, like he was somehow actually understanding all the nonsense Arianna was saying. “So now Cole is your best friendandyour boyfriend?”

“Oh, no.” Arianna frowned. “This is just apracticedate. We’re just friends. But…” she trailed off like she had lost her train of thought before saying, “But sometimes I want him to be my boyfriend.”

My heart thundered in my chest.

Arianna was all over the place. And what she was kind of hard to follow, but was it possible that she was finally saying the things I’d dreamed she’d say ever since we first met?

Was she basically admitting that she wanted to be more than just friends with me?

I glanced at Incognito, hoping to give some sort of signal to him to pry something more out of her. Anything.

Because this was possibly the most open of a book she’d ever been around me.

So I coughed to get his attention, and when Incognito looked at me I tried desperately to communicate with my eyes and a slight head nod that I’d love for him to pry for more info.

A smirk lifted his lips. After giving me an almost imperceptible wink, he looked back to Arianna and said, “I think I know what you’re talking about.”

“You do?” Arianna asked, her eyes wide and innocent-looking.

He glanced down and rubbed the back of his neck like he was about to say something he didn’t normally admit to strangers. “I actually have a good friend like that.”

“Like what?” Arianna gave him a confused look that told me she might have already forgotten what they were talking about.

“A friend who’s beautiful and fun and makes me happy when I’m around her,” he admitted. “And hotter than Chad.”

“Ohhhh.” Arianna nodded slowly. Then she was quiet for a moment, like she had to concentrate very hard to make sense of their conversation.

“But it’s scary to put yourself out there, isn’t it?” Incognito asked, baiting her.

“Yes…” she said the word softly. But then her eye seemed to catch on me for the first time in the past couple of minutes and she gasped, as if she’d somehow forgotten I’d been next to her this whole time. “But we’re just going to always be friends,” she hurried to say. “This is just a practice date so I can help him find a girlfriend, so he won’t move away and leave me.”

“You two have only ever been friends?” Incognito asked. “Never anything more?”

And even though I could answer that question easily, that there had only been those few moments after my birthday party where the lines had been blurred, I wanted to know what Arianna would say.

Thankfully, she didn’t make me wait long because she said, “We’re only best friends. The bestest friends you ever saw.”

Incognito narrowed his blue eyes as if he was psychoanalyzing their whole conversation to figure her out.

And there was something familiar about him that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Like this might not be the first time we’d been in the same room.

My buddy Derek had been the one with the hookups to arrange for Incognito to come here. Was it possible that I’d met Incognito’s alter ego at Derek’s wedding a couple of months ago?

Because he almost resembled one of the groomsmen who had been partnered with Emerson to walk down the aisle—the guy who was Derek’s best friend from high school. Logan? Or Landon?

But that guy was a psychology professor at a college in Utah. He couldn’t be a professoranda rock star…could he?

I blinked my eyes a few times. Maybe I’d had more wine than I thought because I was probably just seeing things.

“Oh, I need to pee,” Arianna suddenly said, bouncing up and down and breaking me away from my thoughts.

“Can you make it there on your own?” I asked her.

“Uh huh.”

And before I could stop her, she was stumbling toward the bathrooms.

“I should probably make sure she doesn’t hit her head on something,” I said to Incognito. “I promise she’s not normally like this.”

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