Page 32 of Once Bitten, Twice Fried
“Catering is a huge part of my income. And I’m not sure I’d have enough time to manage a restaurant.”
“It doesn’t have to be a fancy restaurant. You could open a Belgian fritkot in the UK. Fries aren’t hard to make.” Julie was beaming like it was the brightest idea she’d ever had.
“Only if you come and help me. I’m not sure I can master the twice-frying technique.”
“It’s not that difficult. You fry your fries once for 10 minutes at 150°C, then you let them cool down and then you fry them again at 190°C for around 3 minutes…”
“And how do you know when they’re cool enough?”
“You just open yourself a nice beer and when you’re done your beer, that means you can fry your fries a second time.”
Zoe laughed. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“I’ll happily run this fritkot with you if you put me in charge of fry cool-down time.”
“Great idea! You can move into my guest room.” Zoe winked.
The murmur of the train filled into the silence of the conversation. Julie smiled, with her cheeks colouring a bit. She awkwardly nodded then cleared her throat, turning towards the window to look at the passing landscapes of Flanders. Her armwas brushing against Zoe’s, whose heart sank at the idea that she’d have to be away from this friendship once again, after the wedding.
Chapter 14
“Hope things are going well in Switzerland! Julie was nice again and we talked about things… It’s pretty crazy, but in short: she had a crush on me back then and didn’t want to get hurt so she didn’t tell me anything and that’s why things got weird between us.”
Zoe dropped her phone on the bedside table of her hotel room. Nicki was on holiday, but she did ask for news yesterday morning. She hadn’t answered Zoe’s text but Zoe couldn’t keep this to herself. She settled on the soft comfortable bed and felt her eyes close. She had totally forgotten that she hadn’t slept the night before. She started to doze off when her phone rang. She rolled over and grabbed it quickly, automatically accepting the call without looking.
“Hi, Nicki!”
A silence greeted her, and Zoe frowned, adjusting it against her ear.
“Can you hear me?”
“It’s Tom calling. You know, the guy you’re about to marry?” Tom chuckled. “How’s it going, love? Haven’t heard from you in days.” Zoe could hear the kitchen hood growling in the background and the sizzling of a pan. Tom was cooking dinner.
“Oh, Tom! I’m so sorry darling, I’d just texted Nicki so I thought she was calling me back.” She sat up, trying to get her brain to catch up with the fact that she was suddenly awake andtalking to her fiance instead of her assistant. “I’m doing fine! Exhausted, though. The hen do was really fun but, god I’m way too old for this.”
“Aren’t we all?“ Some clunking sounds followed by swearing. Zoe shook her head fondly, but a bit exasperated. Tom always had far too much energy to do just one thing at a time. She wasn’t sure she’d ever had a phone call with him where he wasn’t multitasking. “What were you girls up to?”
“We did a pub crawl in Brussels on Friday night, and yesterday we headed up to the Belgian coast..”
“Sounds like fun. And today?”
“Today we cleaned the beach house we rented.”
Tom whistled. “Such party girls!” He exclaimed with a laugh.
“Believe me, we partied plenty on Friday and Saturday. The cleaning was the only part that I felt age-appropriate for.”
Tom gave a loud burst of laughter, and Zoe remembered why she fell in love with this man.
“You can organise your entire hen do around cleaning if you want.”
“At least I wouldn’t be exhausted.” Zoe rubbed her face. “I’m already dozing off and it’s not even 8 pm.”
“Did you partythathard?”
Oh god. Zoe couldn’t really tell her fiancé, could she? That she was mainly tired because her best friend from college told her she had a crush on her and it made Zoe too restless to fall asleep? Why was she feeling so wrong about it, anyway? It wasn’t really as if anything had happened between her and Julie. It was just an innocent conversation they’d had on the beach. Late at night. Where Zoe had also admitted she’d had a thing for Julie. Zoe’s heart was racing. She hadn’t thought about all the implications of all this. Her brain had somehow only focused on the part where Julie confessed her crush to her.
“Hello? Did the line cut or something?” Tom was repeating himself.
