That one summer

Aurora

I went to Lina's apartment directly and before I could ring her bell the door opened up. All three of them were already in their PJs and a teasing smile on their face. Lina pulled me in, "Tell us everything!"

I walked towards Lina's walk-in closet. She had transformed the guest bedroom into a beautiful big closet. "Geez, let me at least change out of this first." All three of us have kept a few outfits at each other's places and it comes in handy on occasions like these.

Juniper slumped on the sofa, "Ugh, fine! But you can't delay the inevitable."

I changed out of my work clothes, washed my face, and tied my hair up into a bun. Doing all the tasks at a supersonic speed was difficult but if I delayed even a little, these girls would come banging on the door.

I stepped out of the closet to find all three of them standing right outside with a mug of tea in each of their hands, "Creepy much?"

Lina handed me a glass of Banana and Honey smoothie, "We were too excited to sit down."

I took the glass from her and sidestepped towards the balcony. Lina was the only one who had a balcony attached to her apartment and I loved sitting out there. "Will you all please sit down?"

As they sat down, I narrated the whole day and all three of them were eyes wide similar to preschool kids hearing a Disney story for the first time.

Ev was the first one to speak up, "That is some swoony stunt."

Juniper nodded in agreement, "Even I would not stop smiling if someone did that for me."

Lina turned towards Juniper, "Ask your man to do it then." Juniper had been with Austin for about five years now and she had mentioned a couple of times that she had started feeling distant lately.

"We have not spoken in a week now." Juniper casually drank her tea after mentioning that.

I looked at her with concern, "Are you okay?" We had met Austin only a couple of times in the last five years, Lina and I did not have a good feeling about it but Juniper had shut us down saying he is just an introvert. They had met at Uni and Austin had moved to Manchester right after that.

"I am fine, and you are changing the topic."

"I am not changing the topic, there is nothing else to it." I tried to maintain a straight face.

All three of them raised glasses in unison, "I call bullshit!"

I pointed my finger toward all three of them, "You guys are insane"

Ev wagged her head, "My job is literally to catch a lie." Ev is a Family lawyer and the biggest part of her job is figuring out who is lying before she takes a case on.

"There is nothing much to it." And thankfully my parents called me then.

"I need to take these, see you all tomorrow!"

Lina called out as I was grabbing my things, "You are hiding something."

Juniper was the next one, "You know you can tell us anything right?"

I was at the door and turned around towards them at the balcony and smiled "I am well aware of that."

I dropped a text to my mum saying I would call them in five minutes. I climbed on the elevator and my thoughts went straight to Orion.

The way he cares about the tiniest things, the way he smiles, and how he is not afraid of letting me know that he wants to spend time with me. When the girls asked me what else, I almost said that I had fears that when I let myself go, Orion would turn around and say it was all pretend. Because that is how we had started off.