Page 51 of Once Bitten, Twice Fried
“I never understood how you could crash at Julie’s place so often. She snores so loudly.”
“I never noticed.” Of course Zoe had noticed. But she’d always found Julie’s snores to be kind of cute. She wasn’t going to say that to Yasmine, though. “Anyway, what about this lake?”
Yasmine went silent. She bit the inside of her cheek. “Zoe, can I be super honest with you?”
Zoe’s heart skipped a beat.
“Yes, sure. What’s going on?” Had Yasmine noticed something between Julie and her?
“I know that sometimes I’m like this very bossy girl and I can come across as very intense…”
Where was she going with this? Zoe was confused.
Yasmine sighed. “I’m just… tired.”
“What?”
“I know that you have a great thing going on, and sometimes I’m a little jealous.” Yasmine had a distant smile on her face.
Jealous? Was she jealous of her relationship with Julie? Was Yasmine also into Julie? Zoe felt like a jackhammer was pounding in her chest.
“Yasmine… I’m pretty sure there’s nothing to be jealous about. I think she also loves you just as much.” Zoe swallowed. What if she’d misread everything since the beginning? What if all of this weird tension from Julie was because Julie was crushed that Yasmine was getting married? Maybe something had even happened between them, and Zoe was just caught in the fallout. After all, so much could’ve happened in ten years.
“She loves me?” Yasmine frowned. “What are you talking about?”
The jackhammer stopped.
“What arewetalking about?”
“I’m talking about your wedding with Tom. It seems to be going great. You were saying such nice things about it at the hen do. And I’m a bit jealous because he seems so involved.”
Of course. How had she misunderstood that? Zoe wanted to slap herself. Hopefully Yasmine wasn’t going to insist on knowing who she was talking about. She spoke quickly before that could happen.
“Ah yes. Tom is very involved.” Zoe had almost forgotten about the phone call from earlier. Now all the negative feelings were flowing back. “He’s even a bit too involved, sometimes.”
Yasmine gave her a puzzled look. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just…” Zoe gritted her teeth. “I shouldn’t talk about it. I’m just a bit annoyed at him and it wouldn’t be fair.”
“If you can’t complain about your fiancé with your other soon-to-be-married friend, who can you complain to?” Yasmine took Zoe’s arm in hers.
Zoe sighed. “Fine. He booked the catering service without telling me or asking me.”
“Wait, what?” Yasmine stopped in her tracks. “But… You’re a professional chef.”
“I know! That’s what I told him but he‘wanted to save me the hassle’.Then he complained about me not being involved enough because I’m on a work trip.”
“Oh girl. I’m so sorry.” Yasmine said in a grimace.
“What about you?” Zoe asked, looking down at her feet.
“Where do I even begin?” Yasmine took her arm away and rubbed her chin. “Adam likes shiny things. He had a big proposal for me. We were out for dinner, just the two of us, when suddenly he got down on one knee. I said yes, and then the other patrons got up and all started playing instruments. It turns out they were an orchestra that he’d hired for the occasion. It was all very romantic.” Yasmine smiled at the memory. “And… that was about it. That was more than a year ago and ever since, he hasn’tdone anything more than that for the wedding. Whenever I even ask him for an opinion, he just says that whatever I say goes, because I’m his princess.”
“You don’t like that? You seem like you’re doing a pretty good job.”
“I like it. But I’d rather go taste cake with my fiancé than with his personal assistant or Julie, you know? He’s been on tour for a year.”
Zoe smiled. “I understand. Tom’s the same. He’s always busy with work. I’ve been waiting for him to have some time off for a year now and he never did. Now he has some and suddenly he wants to organise everything when I’m busy.”
