Page 50 of Once Bitten, Twice Fried
“I’m happy that you insisted too. Otherwise my year abroad might have been quite boring.”And maybe I wouldn’t be in this mess today.Zoe thought. She could feel Julie tense up against her hand. Was it because of Zoe’s touch or because of the conversation?
Julie sighed dramatically, and Zoe felt her relax again. “Thanks, Zoe. At leastsomeonehere is nice to me.” She glared at the rest of the table. Leila and Alice had a hard time repressing their smiles.
Yasmine’s phone pinged. She gave a quick look at the screen. “It’s my fiancé. I’d better take it.” She quickly stood up and disappeared inside the house.
Zoe took her hand off Julie as the conversation continued to flow around them. She’d almost forgotten that it was there. There was just something too natural about touching Julie. Zoe would have to be careful about that.
Yasmine reappeared a few minutes later, her laptop open in her hands and a look of consternation on her face. She crossed to her seat at the head of the table and set down the laptop, not paying attention to the puzzled looks from her friends. She let out a big sigh, then looked up and tried to smile.
“Adam has apparently prepared a treasure hunt for all of us. He sent me an email with the instructions.” Yasmine frowned again and scrolled impatiently on her touchpad. “I told him wewere all pretty tired and just wanted to go to bed but he insisted we do this, for some reason.”
Sarah lifted a brow. “Do we really have to do this? What’s the treasure?”
“He said it’s very important.” She clicked on something on her screen. “There we go. We need to be in groups of two. I’m forwarding the instructions to all of you.”
Marion leaned back on her chair. “Ah, Adam. He always has big ideas like this, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, he really does.” Yasmine paused. “What do you girls think? Should we do this or not?”
There was a silence for a moment as they all looked around the table. It was clear that everyone’s plan for the night had been to relax with some wine before wandering up to bed, and nobody had much interest in organised activities. Zoe accidentally caught Julie’s eye, who tilted her head ever so slightly towards Yasmine. Zoe could instantly guess what she was trying to say, even after all these years: that even if Yasmine seemed equally unenthusiastic, everyone turning down her fiance’s idea would put a massive damper on the mood and ruin Yasmine’s night. Zoe admitted that Julie had a point - they were all here for Yasmine, after all - and gave the tiniest nod of agreement. Immediately Julie broke the silence by slapping her hands on the table energetically.
“Let’s do it. I could use some digestive walking.” Julie said brightly. It was like she was trying to infuse the air with her positivity, and it seemed to be working.
Zoe took a breath to chime in, then stopped herself. She’d been about to volunteer to be Julie’s teammate. That was a terrible idea. Why was she like this? Fortunately, Alice saved her by piping up.
“I’m with Julie,” she said. “I haven’t had the chance to see the grounds yet.”
“Great. Then you two are a team.” Yasmine smiled. She seemed to be in a better mood already.
Leila and Sarah looked at each other then shrugged. “Okay, we’re in as well.”
“Perfect. Marion and Maria? Do you wanna be a team?”
They nodded and scooted their chairs closer together
“Then that leaves me and Zoe.” Yasmine smiled at her. “I’m very tired but I guess this could be fun.”
Chapter 23
“What does it say?”
“I don’t know. Your fiancé’s instructions are not very clear.” Zoe squinted at the list of instructions on her phone, trying to make sense of them. The first clue was something about finding a lake, but she knew there wasn’t so much as a stream on the property. She showed the screen to Yasmine. “Do you think he means an actual lake? Or is it like a swimming pool or something?”
Yasmine lifted her hands up in the air. “I have no idea. Adam has never even been here, so I doubt he knows either. I asked him how he managed to organise a treasure hunt when he’s not even here, and apparently he hired someone to do it.”
Zoe could hear some tension in Yasmine’s words. The attempt to keep her mood up hadn’t lasted long. “You’re not a fan of treasure hunts?”
“The last time I did a treasure hunt, I was twelve.”
“I think we did one in college, didn’t we?.”
“That was a beer hunt and we were all drunk off our faces.” Yasmine was trying to repress a smile. “You had to help Julie walk all night, it was very fun.”
“Oh god. I can still remember her telling me ‘I think they put water in this bottle of vodka.’And then half an hour later, she was stumbling around.” Zoe shook her head at the memory. “She’s really a genius.”
“What happened afterwards?”
“We managed to get back to her place. Then I crashed there.”
