A Story of Their Lives

Chapter 4

It's been half a year since I started working again after the freeze, still staying with Alice and Nathan. My sister gave birth to a beautiful baby boy and now neither of us could have a whole night of sleep.

"Sometimes I want to go into the freeze and return when he is a bit older," Alice said half-jokingly.

She was helping me prepare my birthday dinner. I was turning twenty-seven and felt old. Surely, most people usually know what they want by this age? Alice was already engaged to Nathan when she was twenty-seven.

"So, who is coming for dinner?" Nathan asked.

"Well, my friend Isaline is coming, she has just arrived from Italy. I haven't seen her physically ever since I woke up. But we had video calls."

"Oh, is Clara coming?" Alice asked. "I remember that girl was never fond of me."

"Clara can be impatient with people," I laughed. "She's still in the cold sleep. Waking up in almost five years. Some of my co-workers are joining though. Camille... As a matter of fact, we stopped talking to each other a long time ago."

"Did something happen?"

"Not really, the conversation died out and neither of us cared enough to check in with each other."

"You know, I think I've seen her recently... She is a COO at that huge fintech company."

"Nice, good for her," I said, honestly feeling a bit jealous.

Nathan cooked the most amazing dinner and Alice put up lovely decorations, while I ran to the French patisserie to get a cake – that's all my once-younger-now-older sister trusted me with. I brought it right before Isaline arrived with her Italian boyfriend. She was glowing. And so tanned.

"Oh my god, I am so happy to finally see you, sweetie," Isaline said with a higher-pitched voice than her normal one. I always hated when she called me sweetie, but she was only trying to be nice. "I brought some Tuscany wine, it's fantastic. This is Lorenzo. He is from a small village close to Rome."

"Nice to meet you! I brought some tiramisu for dessert," he said, smiling charmingly.

"It's his grandmother's recipe. Every Italian grandmother has her own recipe, you know," commented Isaline. "Very excited for you to try it."

"How lovely, thank you. Please, come in."

The rest of the guests arrived together, bringing wine as well. Isaline analysed the bottle with a look of an expert, concluding that "it's fine, I guess", and I saw Alice jokingly rolling her eyes behind her.

"We recently did a road trip around Cinque Terre, do you know Cinque Terre? Unbelievably amazing. I took a masterclass in making pesto from scratch and it's actually very easy."

"Is it?" I asked, stuffing myself with perfectly baked salmon, courtesy of Nathan.

"Oh yes, you know most Italian cuisine is very simple."

Alice whispered to me that she would drink each time Isaline mentioned Italy.

"So, Isaline, what do you do for work?" she asked.

"I do wedding photography. Self-employed and enjoying every minute at work."

My co-workers and I looked at each other. We were all perfectly aware of the fact that the only moment we enjoyed at work was turning our laptops off at the end of the day.

"How about you, any plans now that you're awake and reintegrated into our society?" Isaline asked me. I was not ready to discuss my plans or rather the lack of them.

"Well, you know..." I said after a short pause. The silence felt heavy, everyone seemed to expect something interesting from me. My brain was frantically trying to come up with something that could compete with the self-employed paradise in Italy. "Probably... I'm gonna go for another freeze," I said spontaneously. The realization only hit me at that moment, even though the idea had been forming in my head for months. "Five more years."

"Five more years??" asked Alice, raising her voice. "You never even mentioned it!" she was clearly getting angry, and Nathan gently squeezed her hand.

Isaline slowly nodded, not saying anything. Lorenzo was cheerfully eating a brownie baked by Alice, either ignoring or misinterpreting the situation. It was stupid of me to drop the news in the middle of the dinner like that.

"They will fire you. You can't postpone the contract twice in a row," finally said Olly, one of my co-workers.

"That'll be ok. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find another job in five years."

"You might lack the skillset that will be required at that time."

"It'll be fine," I replied in a more assertive tone.

We were cleaning up the kitchen, and Nathan was loading the dishwasher. Alice was angrily wiping the table.

"You could've discussed it with me at least. I deserve to know in advance that I'm being abandoned again to deal with my life alone."

"I'm sorry. I just can't..." I couldn't come up with an intelligible answer.

"It's alright," she exhaled loudly. "I got used to it. My family is sort of there, but I can never rely on them to hang around for too long."

I hugged Alice and we sat in silence for a bit.

"I'm going to miss you."