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EMILIA
Emilia was not a punctual person, so it surprised her when she rocked up at the diner in town later that day and was the first one of her friendship group there. They’d booked the backroom for privacy—Esperance was tiny and the grapevine was strong—and to get out of their respective houses. She was looking forward to seeing everyone, especially now that the fog around her had lifted. The diner, with its mish mash of furniture and baby blue walls, with Brayden behind the counter flirting away with sixty-year-old Elsie Rivers, felt like home. She had been so glad that Brayden had taken over after the previous owner, Jeb, had passed away and it hadn’t gone to some out-of-towner. Or worse, some franchise. She waved and smiled at Spencer before heading into the backroom, where she waited about ten minutes before her friends started showing up.
“Emilia, no way!” Mia said from the doorway, looking at her in complete shock. “How did you get here before me?”
“I dunno, Mia,” she laughed. “Maybe cause I don’t have a hot IT systems dude at home to distract me?” It warmed her heart to see her cousin blush. There was such a glow to her, and it made Emilia happy to see.
“You’re feeling better,” Mia’s voice had softened as they hugged in greeting. It was a statement, not a question and Emilia couldn’t help but give her a kiss on the cheek.
“I am. Thanks for putting up with me.”
“Always. Emilia, I have—”
“Hello! Oh no way is Emilia here before me,” Hannah said as she entered the room. And so it went as all seven of Emilia’s closest friends arrived. They had gone to high school together, the only girls in their class of thirty. What had been unavoidable-they’d needed each other to survive-was now unshakeable.
“Okay,” Annie said after they’d all ordered their drinks. “What’s news?”
“Yeah Emilia,” Maya said. “What’s news?”
“Huh? Why me?”
“Oh, come on,” Mia said, smiling. “Obviously I told everyone about you and Cameron canoodling in the kitchen this afternoon.”
“We weren’t canoodling!” Emilia protested, while Sammy made kissing noises next to her.
“As if! You guys, they canoodled so hard, she had duck face for like fifteen minutes.”
“On a side note,” Brooke said. “I don’t think people use the word canoodling enough.”
“At the risk of confirming the librarian stereotype, I have to agree, along with thousands of other spectacular words, like ‘copulation’ and ‘intercourse’, eh, Emilia?”
“Oh stop you guys,” but she was laughing so hard her stomach hurt. “Fancy Annie just whipping out synonyms for sex. She’s going to be smarter than the rest of us forever.”
“Always was, always will be,” Poppy said. “But can we get back to Emilia, I’ve been out of the loop and I don’t like it.”
“Should have helped us move then,” Hannah had always been the unapologetic one.
“Should have moved on a day my bakery was closed, then,” Poppy smirked.
“Touché,” Hannah raised her glass at her friend with a grin. “Anyway, Emilia, you have the floor. We’ll stop making sex jokes now.”
“Pfft, whatever!” They all remained silent as she caught them up on everything that had been happening with her; from applying to college, to the rejection, to meeting Cam and what he’d said about her passions. She talked for forty-five minutes, with only slight interruptions and by the end of it, the feeling of guilt she’d been carrying with her for being envious of her friends had eased. They didn’t judge her.
“And now I’m back at the center this Saturday, and I still kinda can’t believe it.”
“Okay,” Sammy’s soft voice seemed loud in the silence that followed Emilia’s retelling. “So are you dating him now or what? I’m confused.”
“I think I am, yeah. I was maybe a bit rash in deciding not to, you know?”
“I don’t think you were,” Mia said and reached over to hold her hand. “I think you were going through it, and while I hate that you went through it alone, I don’t think self-preservation is ever rash.”
“But she’s not going through it anymore,” Hannah said in a sing-song voice.
“Okay, hold up,” Annie said and seven pairs of eyes looked at her. “So we’ve established that Emilia is dating this Cam guy, and that he’s sweet and he gets her depths and he definitely ‘got’ them quicker than the other men she’s dated, but what do we actually know about him?”
“You mean apart from the fact that he’s also hot, loaded and perceptive?” Maya asked. “Geez Annie, what kind of high bar doyouset?”
Everyone around the table laughed, Annie included. “I just don’t want you getting hurt,” and there was a sadness in her eyes as she looked at Emilia, reminding everyone of the fact that out of all of them, Annie knew the most about being hurt by someone.
