Page 31 of Once Bitten, Twice Fried
“Anyway.” Yasmine sat next to Zoe and put a hand on her knee. “How’s your wedding going?”
Zoe supposed it made sense that the two engaged women would bond over this, as much as she didn’t want to. “It’s going well. We’re probably going to do a small wedding in the countryside. Nothing fancy.”
Marion poked her head out on the terrace as loud thumping sounds came from the kitchen behind her. “Sorry to interrupt, but our train is in three hours and we still haven’t cleaned up anything in this house.” She seemed dismayed and extremely hungover.
“Ah hell. I totally forgot about cleaning. I’ll come and help.” Julie followed Marion back inside.
Zoe was relieved to have an escape from this conversation. She turned to Yasmine. “We should probably go help too.”
“Good idea.”
Zoe followed Yasmine inside. She hadn’t noticed it this morning, but the house was in a state. Glasses were piling up in the sink. Empty bottles and cans were strewn everywhere in the living room. The hens had gone hard yesterday: cocktailbrunch at the loft in Brussels,apérotime and pre-partying at the villa before hitting the club, then some more after partying. Zoe picked up a recycling bag that someone had left lying on the kitchen counter and started filling it with cans. She looked around and noticed that everyone else looked tired. Clearly, none of the women were used to partying like this any more, if they ever had been. Julie was scampering around the sofa with Maria, pointing at spots. They were trying to get some stains off the fabric. After minutes of aggressive scrubbing with a rag, Julie stood with her hands to her hips and a frown on her face. Zoe walked over.
“Having some trouble?”
Julie looked up. “Someone had the great idea of spilling whisky and coke on this light grey couch.” She sighed. “We’re never going to get our deposit back.”
“I hear lemon juice and baking soda work wonders.”
“Do we have any of those?” Julie raised a brow. She swiftly walked towards the kitchen area and started opening up cupboards. Zoe trailed behind her. “We do have baking soda! And we have lemons from the cocktails we did yesterday afternoon.” Julie ran to the fridge.
That was the friend Zoe remembered. Happily running around to help. Getting overly excited for the smallest things. If a dog was a person, it’d definitely be Julie. Zoe had been a bit scared this morning that their late night conversation would make things awkward between them again, but she was delighted that everything was fine. The past was in the past.
“Are you coming?” Julie glanced at her, a box of baking soda in one hand and a slice of lemon in the other.
“Sure. Go ahead.” Zoe smiled.
After two serious hours of cleaning, the house was in shape again. The stain on the couch eventually came off with some more aggressive scrubbing from Julie. Zoe had to joke that itwas thanks to all these muscles she got from building IKEA furniture. She inevitably blushed when Julie playfully flexed her arms.
Finally, the group was ready to head out. They stumbled down to the tram stop just in time to hop on. Half the hens dozed in their seats, then they all dragged themselves through the train station and onto their train. Zoe sat next to Julie, like the day before. They didn’t say anything to each other for a moment. The humming of the train and the snores of the hens were all Zoe could hear. She glanced at Julie and took the chance to finish their conversation from that morning.
“So what are your plans for this evening?”
Julie looked surprised. “I guess just going home and resting.” She sat back and looked at Zoe. “Why?”
“No reason. I was just curious.” Julie wasn’t going to make this easy, was she? Zoe pushed more. “Just… wondering if your girlfriend and you had something planned.” Her blood was rushing to her face. She knew this was clumsy, but she really needed to know, for some reason.
“Oh.” Julie frowned. “There’s not really…” She looked away for a moment, slightly embarrassed. “I’m as single as they come. No one’s waiting for me at home.”
“Really?” Zoe was genuinely surprised. Who could’ve thought? She felt more relieved than she had any right to.
“We can’t all have handsome actors lounging around waiting for us.” Julie smirked.
“Doesn’t sound that hard to me.” Zoe gently pinched Julie’s arm. “Though I don’t think Tom is lounging around, waiting for my return.”
“He isn’t? He’s an actor, how busy can he be?”
Zoe sighed. “Quite busy. But I can’t complain, I’m as busy as he is.”
“How busy are we talking? What’s a normal work day for Zoe Lang?”
“12 hours? It depends. When I have to film my show, the days can get pretty long, then I go home and check my emails. When it’s catering season, I’m gone for weeks at a time and then I’m home for a few days, then gone again.”
Julie blinked. “That is… insane. When do you find time to cook in all of this?”
“Too rarely, to be honest.” Zoe briefly smiled. “I have assistants in the production of the TV show to help me come up with recipes. I wished I had more time to just truly cook.”
“What if you opened a restaurant instead of doing catering?”
