Page 39 of Be With Us: An Urban Foursome Love Story

For a little while they held each other in the kitchen, embracing and squeezing each other, until Cassian pulled back and spoke.

‘I'm guided by you. If you want to keep trying then we will, if you want to stop, we stop, if you want to pause and think, we pause and think, but right now our curry is getting cold, so let's eat.’

Emilia smiled.

‘Thank you.’

*

Fifteen minutes later, they were scraping their plates and watching evening television, sat side by side. Emilia was cross legged, her plate on her knees with half of her attention on the programme they were watching and the other half still processing and replaying her kiss with Amy.

Cassian was yawning and leaning back on the couch and Emilia was chomping on her last piece of poppadom when her phone buzzed and a second later, the sound of bird song drifted softly through the room.

She froze like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming car.

Cassian looked over at her, then at the phone and frowned.

‘What's wrong?’ he said.

She was rooted to the couch, too nervous to get up and read the message. It could only have been from Amy, she had set that message tone herself.

She bit her lip and unsteadily stood up, a nauseating feeling of trepidation rooted firmly in the pit of her stomach, making her feel sick. She walked over to the phone as Cassian watched, and picked it up.

The message was from Amy, but it was obscured until she pressed her finger against the reader. She took a deep breath and read.

Hi, it's Amy. I'm sorry I took off earlier. I was just a bit overwhelmed. We had such a great time with you, both of you. I really like you. So does Mark. Can we see you both again? Spa day? The Aurora? Saturday? No pressure XxxX

Emilia smiled and breathed in so much and so deeply, Cassian thought she might pass out. Then she laughed, and wiped a small tear away from her eye.

‘What is it?’ said Cassian. ‘What does it say?’

‘See for yourself,’ she said, passing him the phone.

He read it, then read it again and half frowned, half smiled.

Emilia reached in to take her phone back. ‘What do you think it means?’

‘I don't know,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I want to speculate.’

‘But she says I really like you, not let’s just be friends, surely that means something?’

‘I think she's being careful,’ he said, after some consideration.

‘And she says both of you, and so does Mark,’ Emilia’s excitement was palpable.

‘Don't overreact,’ he said. ‘They might have just decided we’re worth being friends with anyway. Which is really nice, but not what you want.’

‘But you didn’t hear what she was saying earlier, and look at the sign off,’ she said, pointing to the message again. ‘Four kisses? Two big, two small? Come on, that's intentional, that's like a hidden message or something. You don't accidentally type that.’

‘Or her hand slipped? Or she hasn't put much thought into it?’ said Cassian, trying to temper his increasingly hyped up and overexcited wife. ‘We don't know for sure. Can we even make this weekend?’

‘Whatever is in the calendar is cancelled,’ she said, still fretting. ‘What do you even wear to a spa? Shit, what do I text back? Oh fuck I have to text her back. I am so shit at dating.’

She laughed again, but it was happy excitable laughter.

‘Don't text back straight away,’ said Cassian.

‘Oh sod off, I'm not eighteen and playing hard to get,’ she said.

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