Against the Odds (Book 2)

♥ Chapter XI ♥

The sun had long gone down and most of the food disappeared when Zahair and I started on ice cream. He'd brought neapolitan and cookies and crème. We'd cleared and put away all the empty containers to make more space for our limbs and were facing the dark ocean that crashed against the sand soundly.

I hummed, holding the spoon in my mouth a second longer to savor the flavor. I felt like I was bursting out of my shorts from everything else we ate but it was so good.

"I can't stop," I whined.

"You're not supposed to," Zahair said, stuffing his spoon in his mouth.

I turned to meet his eyes, shaking my head. "You're bad for me."

He smiled. "Me?" He held up the tub of cookies and crème and said, "I don't even eat this shit, baby. This my cheat night."

I almost glitched at that 'baby'. He slipped it in so casually like he'd call me that a thousand times but I most definitely caught it. It settled in my stomach and made me queasy and excited at the same time.

I managed to get out a, "Really?" but maybe it's the giddy look that's probably all over my face that clued him in to where my mind actually was. He tilted his head and gave me the cutest look. I shook my head and turned to him entirely, crossing my legs. "Okay, so tell me what's in your diet, then. Because you make your own food, you don't eat ice cream... At this point, what are you made up of?"

He very dramatically sighed but all in good humor and twisted to me. "If you need to know," he said, covering his ice cream and setting it down along with the spoon. "I'm a little bit of a health fanatic." I made a disgusted sound around my spoon and he rolled his eyes. "I'm on a Mediterranean diet, so a lot of fruit and fish and grains. Stuff like that. Not much meat or oil."

My mouth is hanging open by the end of that. "No meat?"

He snorted but shook his head. "Not all the time, and not red meat anyway. Maybe once every two weeks or something."

"Wow," I breathed out around the spoon still sticking out of my mouth.

Whatever's on my face made him laugh. "You're looking at me like I just said I've been to Mars."

I snapped out of it and shook my head, stabbing the spoon into the tub again. "No, it's just that I tried that diet thing." My lips twisted. "It never works out. But it's doing great for you." I eyed him.

He pulled one leg up, wrapping his arm around it. "Maybe you just don't have the right motivation."

"Are you offering?"

He watched me take another spoonful into my mouth and slowly pull it out, a grin spreading across his face.

"You're dangerous, you know that?" he said when he met my eyes.

"What-ever do you mean?" I teased, holding back a laugh.

He shook his head and decided to ignore me. "Whenever you're ready, just let me know."

"Ready for what exactly?" I leaned forward, mocking, well aware he was talking about the diet but there was an opening to torture him and I couldn't let it slip away.

He tilted his head back and said, "Red!" his voice rising.

"Yeah, yeah, you don't give it up on the first date, I remember."

He looked at me, biting down on his bottom lip to hold back a smile. He wasn't doing a great job at it. We both cracked at the same time—laughing loudly and even drowning out the sound of the waves.