Page 77 of Once Bitten, Twice Fried
“Swipe right if you like books and tea.”Julie groaned and put her phone in her pocket. Clearly, she was just making it worse for herself. She knew that she was aimlessly swiping through all of these profiles in the hopes that someone who was exactly like Zoe in every way would magically appear and they could live forever in bliss. Julie stood up from the park bench and started pondering working through all her lunch breaks so she wouldn’t have any idle time. As she reached her office’s door, she admitted she was too francophone to ever deny herself a break from work, and sighed again.
She’d had her heart broken before. She knew that it was always tough, but ultimately, it was only a matter of time. She just had to ride it out for a few months, then the pain would dull and after a year it would start to become a distant memory, like a fading scar. She’d managed to do it ten years ago because of the exact same girl; it wasn’t impossible to do it again. She just needed Zoe to never reappear and rip this wound open again.
Around 5 pm, after Julie had done more work than any other day in her life, her phone buzzed with a message.
It was from Yasmine.
Julie did a double take and opened it. For over a week, the latest message from her best friend had been “I’m sorry. I’ll explain everything soon, don’t worry.” That message had not stopped Julie from worrying, nor from being vaguely annoyed that nobody important to her felt the need to tell her anything any more. But her only feeling now as she read this new message was relief. Yasmine was asking her if she could drop by Julie’shouse this evening. She owed her an explanation and a bottle of wine.
Julie answered: “Let me think about it.” Then texted immediately afterwards: “Of course you can drop by, I want to know everything!”
Yasmine texted back immediately. “I was just asking in case you had another friend who ran away at the altar who also had to explain it to you.”
“I do, but I just cancelled with her because I’m more involved in your story.” Julie had missed their banter.
“Your loss, I bet her story’s better. Around 8?”
“Works for me. Don’t run off again.”
As much as Julie’s love life was in shambles, at least she hadn’t run away from her own wedding. Yasmine was probably putting on a brave face but Julie knew her too well to know that joking around was Yasmine’s way to deflect her feelings.
* * *
Yasmine had arrived at 8 on the dot, two bottles of wine in hand. Julie kissed her awkwardly on the cheek, trying to be polite and act like everything was normal as she welcomed her in. She took the bottles of wine and set them on her coffee table, then both of them perched uncomfortably on the edge of her couch. They were both so tense and awkward, like Julie had invited a stranger over instead of her best friend who had crashed on this very couch countless times.
“So, how are you?” She asked, smiling uncomfortably. Instead of answering, Yas just smiled back, equally uncomfortably.
“You know what? Let’s just go ahead and open one of these bottles. I think we need it,” Julie suggested after a moment. Yasmine chuckled, and a bit of the tension trickled out of theroom. While Yasmine started to work with the corkscrew, Julie jumped up and grabbed two glasses. She returned and her friend filled the glasses immediately. Her hands shook as she poured, splashing a few drops of red wine onto the table.
“Shit.” Yasmine grimaced. “Sorry about that.”
“No worries, I’ll clean it up.” Julie turned around to grab a box of tissues and mopped up the errant drops.
Yasmine was licking off wine from her fingers. Was she trembling from the anxiety of telling Julie about what happened? Julie would never judge Yasmine about anything like that. She’d even help her hide a body if she needed to. Julie could tell that Yasmine needed some support to broach the topic but she didn’t know where to start.
“So-”
“I-”
Right at the moment Julie opened her mouth, Yasmine interrupted.
“Oh sorry, go ahead.”
“No, no you go ahead!”
They looked at each other and Julie couldn’t help but grin. At least, the absurdity of the situation wasn’t lost on them.
“OK.” Julie breathed. If she was ready to hide a body with Yasmine, she had to not be scared talking about her friends’ feelings. “Yas, what happened last week?”
Yasmine smiled and closed her eyes. “You’re gonna judge me.”
“I would never.”
“Yes you would.”
“You know me Yas, I’d never judge you.”
“You judge my taste in movies all the time.”
