Page 25 of Welcome to the Friendzone

She smiled back at him, her stomach already grumbling in anticipation of a delicious dinner.

“Okay but I’m starving so I’m giving you an hour or I’ll start without you.”

“You wouldn’t dare!” Marta exclaimed, her eyes wide and her mouth open in a theatrically shocked expression.

“Oh yes, I would.”

Oliver winked at her and then his head was gone from the doorframe. Marta shook her head, but a warm smile remained on her face.

Exactly 55 minutes later she entered the community kitchen to find Oliver already opening a bottle of red wine.

“I thought you said you’d wait for me,” she spoke into the room, making Oliver jump from where he was currently standing.

“Holy shit, I almost spilled the entire bottle of wine. Imagine that!”

“That would've been a tragedy. I can’t stand having an evening with you without being drunk.”

Marta winked at him before stepping towards the kitchen island and slapping her palms on the cold surface.

Instead of answering her Oliver placed one of his hands above his heart, his face furrowed in pain to show her that her statement had hurt him.

“Stop messing around and start making dinner. You really don’t want to see me hangry,” Marta threatened, rounding the island and silently offering her help.

“Yes Ma’am,” he answered before grabbing a large pan and a casserole dish out of the cabinet next to the stove.

Marta quickly shook her head and tried to ignore the rising heat in her lower belly after hearing what he had called her.

“What can I do?”

“You can cut the onions and celery and peel the carrots.”

Marta raised an eyebrow at him before she asked “Carrots? Celery?”

She heard Oliver chuckle while he put oil in the pan and started to sauté the ground beef.

“My mom used lasagna to get Simon and me to eat some veggies. We hated veggies so she smuggled carrots and celery into the sauce. We never realized it until I asked her for the recipe when I moved out.”

“Your mom is a very clever woman,” Marta commented, carefully cutting the onions, which wasn’t easy as her eyes began to water.

“That she is.”

“So you have a brother?”

Marta tried to keep the conversation alive, not that it was hard talking to Oliver. They had great chemistry and talking to each other felt just natural but he barely spoke about his family so she tried to dive deeper into that topic.

“Yeah.”

He was unusually uncommunicative about it, which made Marta curious.

“You two are close?”

“Nah. We used to be as kids and teenagers but the SEALs separated us.”

“How come?”

Oliver didn’t answer immediately, focusing on pushing the ground beef around the pan. Marta could almost hear him searching for the right words. She gave him all the time he needed, knowing well that pushing it wouldn't be the right thing to do.

“My parents made the mistake of treating us very differently for our life choices,” he started before falling silent again.

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