Page 86 of Friend Zoned

Katherine pulls out a platter of cheese, crackers, and fruit and puts it in front of us. I haven’t eaten since early this morning, so I attack it. Jeannie only slowly sips her wine, making no move to eat. I offer her a grape, but she pushes my hand away without looking at me. Katherine catches my eye, but she quickly looks away.

She takes an apron and puts it on.

“What’s this?” I ask her. “What the hell is up with the apron?”

She blows a breath upward and her dirty blonde hair bounces on her forehead. Lincoln chuckles.

“So, Lincoln’s mother got me cooking lessons for Christmas,” she says, making a face as if she smells something bad. “Me. Cooking lessons because her son deserves a woman who will cook for him. That’s what she said to me. What the hell do I look like? Lucy Ricardo? And then my husband betrays me and says he wants me to take the lessons.” She tries to elbow him in the stomach, and he doubles over. “Anyway, Aid, you know how I’m good at everything?”

“No, I don’t know any such thing,” I say right before I throw a grape at her. She catches it and eats it.

“Well, I am. Including cooking. I don’t hate it, but the idea that my mother-in-law is forcing me to cook for some man is making me feel oppressed. Like all the progress we have made in the last hundred years is being chipped away each time I put on this apron.”

“Well, that’s dramatic,” I tell my sister.

“Your husband, dear. You’re cooking for your husband, not some man,” Lincoln reminds her.

“Whatever. Why don’t you just club me in the head and drag me to a cave.” Lincoln leans in for a kiss, but Katherine pushes him away.

Jeannie laughs a little at their antics. “So, how did you two meet?” she asks.

“I’ll tell it,” Katherine volunteers. “He works for me,” she says proudly. “On the corporate law team. We bought out a dying chain and Lincoln was one of the lawyers going over the contracts. I thought he was so handsome when I first saw him, but he was all business, so I invited him to dinner one night. He shows up, dressed in a bespoke suit and clutching his briefcase for dear life. My husband can wear a suit like no one else. Anyway, after the wine is poured, he pulls out a contract. I inch closer, cover his hand with mine and say, ‘I think you misunderstand. This isn’t a working dinner, counselor.’ Then, I held my breath and waited to see what he would do next. He grabbed the bottle of wine, topped mine off, and held his up. We clinked, and we’ve been together ever since.” She rests her head on his shoulder and smiles wistfully. He puts an arm around her and kisses her temple.

“Married ten months later,” Lincoln says.

Chapter 47

Aiden

She smiles at the story and takes another sip of her wine. I reach for the bottle and refill her glass.

“Thank you,” she says without looking at me. “So, tell me more,” she says to my sister and brother-in-law. “Did you really have no idea it was a date?” she asks him.

He steps away from my sister and leans across the island. “No idea. I almost pissed myself when I got her email asking me to dinner.” He holds up a hand while he drains his wineglass. “Let me back up. It wasn’t a request. It was a two-sentence email telling me when and where to meet her. I thought she wanted to go over the contracts.”

“Guys never asked me out,” Katherine says. “I had to take matters into my own hands. Go after what you want because no one is going to give you anything. That’s what our dad always says.”

“Why didn’t guys ask you out? I find that hard to believe,” Jeannie says.

I squeeze her thigh and get nothing back.

“Right, because I’m so hot.” Katherine does a dramatic twirl.

“Please don’t make me vomit,” I tell her between bites of food.

“I’m taller than most men, and even though I wasn’t the CEO when we met, I was working directly under my dad, and I always had the biggest dick in the room.”

Jeannie starts to choke on her wine, and I rub between her shoulder blades.

“Enough with the dick talk, Katherine,” I warn.

“Now, look at me. Wearing an apron and cooking like a nineteen-sixties housewife. Lincoln says I have to cook one weekend a month. This cooking thing might be what breaks us.”

Lincoln leans in and kisses the shell of my sister’s ear.

“One weekend a month, I’ll have the biggest dick in the room,” Lincoln says. While Lincoln and my sister bicker, Jeannie finally turns to look at me. She leans in, and I anticipate a kiss, but I’m mistaken.

“Where’s the bathroom?” she whispers, but then she turns away from me and poses the question to my sister. Once Katherine tells her to go down the hall, she gets up from her chair and leaves without a word to me.

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