Page 76 of Friend Zone to End Zone

“That would be the party.” I grinned, imagining the look on Chad’s face when Cole and I walked into the party hand in hand.

“I think I can make it.” Cole winked.

“And you think you’ll be fine making it seem like you’re insanely attracted to me?”

He chuckled, a deep rumbling sound next to my ear. “Based on the past hour we spent together, I don’t think that will be an issue.”

“Yeah, me neither.” And I couldn’t keep a huge grin from stretching across my cheeks as the images of the past hour flitted through my mind.

Our chemistry was definitely off the charts.

The stuff romance movies were made of.

“You still need to give me a critique of our date, though.” He propped his head up with his arm, which accentuated the tone and size of his bicep.

I blinked my eyes a few times to keep myself in the present instead of trying to figure out excuses for why he might need to take his shirt off right then and there.

And I must have gone into a daze or something because he said, “Arianna?”

My cheeks burned with heat as I snapped my attention back to the present. “Yes?”

“Were you going to critique our practice date?”

“Oh, yes. That.” I knew I might need to put a little space between us if I wanted to have a coherent conversation, so I made myself sit up and scoot away from him.

He seemed to understand what I was doing and followed suit.

“So now that you’ve sufficiently tested all the different parts of a first date,” he said. “Do you think I’ll have any success at convincing my dream girl to date me?”

The way he gazed deeply into my eyes as he waited for my answer made butterflies flap around in my stomach. But I told them to be quiet as I tried to seem somewhat professional as I slipped my dating-coach hat back on.

“So first off, the date was amazing. Basically right off a romance novel, or a movie,” I said. “At first, I worried you might be planning to go all out like that on all your first dates, and then feel like you had to top all the consecutive dates afterwards with something even more spectacular and basically go bankrupt by the time you finally asked a woman to marry you…”

He chuckled. “But you know I wouldn’t do that for just anyone, right?” He raised an eyebrow, and the look in his eyes had me wondering if he was trying to convey something to me. “That a date like that would only be for a woman I was truly interested in?”

I was suddenly nervous because I very much wanted to interpret that look to mean that he was saying that date was something he would only ever do forme.

“I-I think I do,” I said. “At least, I hope I do.”

But instead of confirming, he asked, “And what about the practice kiss?”

Thepracticekiss.

Yeah…that kiss hardly qualified as a mere practice kiss in my book—unless there were such things as practice kisses that turned into full-on make-out sessions.

Yikes! I still couldn’t believe this was even my life anymore.

I pressed my lips together and made myself meet his gaze as I bashfully said, “I, um…I don’t think your kissing skills are going to be an issue.”

More like he needed to put a disclaimer out to warn women everywhere that one single touch from his lips would basically destin them to want to spend all their free time from then on kissing him.

I certainly wished I had a convincing reason to tell him I needed to practice with him again.

“Anything else I should know before going into another date? Anything I need to improve on?” he asked.

I ran through all the events of last night in my mind. It really had been my dream date. But there was one part I still hadn’t touched on.

I stared at my fingers. “I guess I just want to thank you for being so understanding when I told you about Harper.” Then I cautiously met his gaze. “And I, um, I hope you didn’t feel betrayed or disappointed that I didn’t tell you sooner.”

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