The Boss 5

“You already have. Aria is very lucky to have friends like you,” I said, starting to feel uncomfortable since I didn’t know how to make her stop crying and wasn’t expecting this reaction at all.

“No, Zayden.” She looked up and wiped her face with her sleeves. “Aria is very lucky to have you.”

Chapter 3

Aria

“Wow, Aria. That’s…shocking…utterly…surprising,” Nick mumbled while determinedly avoiding eye contact. I had just told him and Stacey the whole story with the very awkward situation at my mom’s house, followed by an even more awkward proposal.

“We couldn’t have guessed that Zayden would propose to you so quickly. At all,” Stacey added, also avoiding meeting my eye. Something was obviously amiss.

“You guys already knew,” I concluded based on their joint reaction. “Both of you knew. I can’t believe this. How?”

“What are you talking about?” Stacey gasped accusingly. “How could I possibly? I mean how could we? We have barely seen you in a week!”

She had a point, but their reactions were certainly out of the ordinary. There was more going on here than I understood and I hated not knowing things. But they hadn’t seen me in over a week, how could they? Unless…

“Well, there were two people in that bathroom that night. If you know about the proposal, it had to have come from the second source.”

Stacey burst out laughing in a mocking sort of a way. “Yes, because Zayden Sinclair told us. A rich, billionaire guy had absolutely nothing else in the world to do but gossip about his life plans with your sorry-ass roommates.”

“Don’t call yourselves that.” I frowned. “And don’t act like you haven’t been known to scheme with him regarding me in the past.”

“Scheme?” She gasped, trying to look horrified. “That’s a little much, Aria. At best we exchanged some polite emails and under totally different circumstances! It was just about dating him – or contracting him or working with him or whatever you were calling it back then – and I already knew you wanted to so I just gave him a little nudge in the right direction. This is completely different.”

“Well, you haven’t yet once outright denied that you have been helping Zayden in some fashion.”

“The oven!” Stacey exclaimed and got off her chair. “Do you smell it? The cookies are done. For you, Aria. See how much I love you? Don’t question me.”

When she was back with the chocolate chip macadamia cookies, she had won. There was no way I was going to give her a hard time about anything after she bestowed me with the delicious crunchy, sugary goodness. If she was scheming with Zayden, let her. It almost made me feel kind of warm and fuzzy thinking of the two of them getting together to plan my proposal. When we got married – I me

ant if we got married – Zayden would have to get along with Stacey anyway, so it only made sense for them to start now. That thought, along with the cookies, made me light hearted. So much so that I didn’t really feel like discussing what I was about to mention. But I couldn’t put it off much longer. The divorce was sure to finalize soon enough and he would pop the question any minute. I definitely needed some advice as soon as I could get it.

“I don’t care what you guys know or how you know it, but the important thing I need to know is what you guys think I should do? Is this at all a good idea? Getting married to Zayden, I mean. I have only known him a few months.”

“You’re joking, right?” Nick raised his eyebrows at me. “You’re obviously not considering saying no?”

“Why not? I mean, it’s a big commitment. And I love Zayden! I do. There is no question about that anywhere in my mind. I have never felt like this about anybody in my life before. He makes me feel so smart and funny and beautiful and these past few months with him have been the most thrilling of my life. Like a rollercoaster. So marrying him will kind of be like…uh, moving in to live to Six Flags.”

Stacey and Nick both chuckled. “I’ll be down for that move!” Nick said cheerfully.

“But seriously, Aria,” Stacey chimed. “If you don’t feel like you’re ready—”

“No, no! It’s not that I’m not ready,” I jumped in a little too quickly.

“There you go. A little hint of my advice going the other way and you were so quick to stop me. You obviously want to do this and you love each other. I don’t see why—”

“You’re right,” I said, finally accepting even to myself that the answer had been “yes” since the moment Zayden first asked the question. “But I’m only twenty,” I added, just for argument’s sake.

“And you have the intelligence and maturity of a fifty year old. To the point of boredom, some might say,” Stacey said. Upon meeting my reproachful look she hastily added, “Some might say, not me. In any case, stop looking for excuses. If you want to marry the guy, marry the fucking guy. It’s literally that simple.”

With a final misplaced frown, I surrendered. Even though I was pretty surprised by their eagerness to have me jump to get married to Zayden, deep inside, I had hopes that they would approve without a protest. Now that I was sure, with the blessings of two of my best friends, the only thing keeping Zayden and me from being engaged was his divorce…and his ability to plan a real proposal of course.

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Classes had lately become impossible to sit through, not because of certain inherent displeasing qualities in the classes themselves, but because of the state of mind I had been in. It was like a cheesy yet exciting romantic comedy was constantly playing in my head, featuring Zayden and I as the classic hero and heroine, destined to find each other against all odds and the harsh realities of life. My daydreams usually ended with him getting down on one knee at some exotic locale only suitable for the movies of the highest budgets featuring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Either that or some scenario where he made a public declaration of his love to me as I am about to go away forever – at an airport or a wedding – or I go crying, running into his arms.

As dramatic as it all sounded, thinking about the various ways in which our love story would find it’s worthy climax made it slightly easier to get through classes and count down to the time to go to work. Under the pretenses of doing my job, I could stare joyfully at Zayden for the rest of my day. Now that he had loudly professed his love to me in front of everybody at the bank, I was free to stare at him all day, answer his calls as his girlfriend, or flirt with him every time he came over to my desk. It still annoyed Mrs. Brian endlessly – as experienced by her constant disapproving sounds – but now that she knew Zayden took this seriously, she tried her best to keep her unsolicited opinions to herself. All in all, work had suddenly become my favorite place to go.