Found it! [ girlxgirl ]

||FORTY-FOUR||

-"How did you know we were here?" Rose asks, crossing her arms and leaning backwards on the round seat.

-"I was stalking Avery on Instagram when I saw a picture of all of you here." She says in all her smugness. "I wanted to meet Emma, so I decided to drop by. Best case scenario, I would find you all here and have a drink with you."

-"And worst case scenario?" Sarah asks.

-"I would be at a bar, drinking and dancing." She laughs. "Guys, you look way too serious for a group of friends who've been drinking all night. Let's toast."

She raises her glass but no one follows her. After a few seconds, Avery lifts her beer making me roll my eyes so hard that I feel a pang on my head.

Not wanting to let my girlfriend and her ex have a private toast right in front of me, I also lift my beer. The others follow us and the glasses click. I chug down almost all of my beer.

-"Emma." She calls out my name. "How did you manage to get her attention?"

Everyone glances at me and I'm not sure how am I supposed to talk with her without sounding too amiable or too aggressive. I kind of want my tone to be somewhere halfway between those too.

-"We bumped into each other at a dinner nearby." Avery answers before I could. "As I told you before, Sophia."

-"Oh right." She nods and keeps looking at me. "I just want to get to know her, Avery. Can I? Can she talk to me?"

-"I can." I jump into the conversation that seemed to be happening around me.

-"We're going to the dancefloor now, but we'll be back in a while." Alessa winks at me and stands up. She silently orders everyone but me, Avery, and Sophia to follow her.

-"What is it that you want to talk, exactly?" I ask her, nonchalantly.

-"Just want to hear it from you! How did you meet and so on...."

-"As Avery said, we bumped into each other one night, in the beginning of the second semester last year. Then she added me on Facebook. We kept talking and meeting, and all that." Avery grabs my hands over the table, intertwining our fingers.

-"So you two have been together since then? That's a record, Avery!" She says, accusingly.

-"Not since then. We didn't officially get together until the beginning of this year." I say, not feeling the need to hide anything.

-"Oh...Why not?"

-"Sophia!" Avery warns her, but I reassure her that I'm okay by squeezing her hand.

-"I was stupid and naive. I saw the amazing girl I had right in front of me, but I still let her escape. I still regret than until this day. Maybe you can relate?" I narrow my eyes and enter a staring contest with her.

-"I do, actually. You give me hope, you know. If it wasn't too late for you than it may not be too late for me." A crooked smile forms in her face.

-"Sophia, enough. That's not funny." Avery warns her again. This time I cannot assure her that I'm okay because I was taken aback with her reply.

-"I'm just messing with her, Avery. Why were you stupid, Emma?" Sophia keeps the conversation going. "Let me guess: you were not gay? You were not ready for a commitment? You saw Avery as an experiment while you're in the USA? All of the above?"

-"Sophia!" Avery yells this time. "What are you doing? What do you want from this?"

-" I want to test her breaking point. I want to see if she's playing you, Avery!" She leans back on her seat and crosses her arms. "You told me she's not from here, so what does that mean for you? When she's done with her little experience in a foreign country she'll go back home and you'll be left behind? She'll become straight again, get married, have with kids, and you're just the girl that made her time here a little more...what? Fun? Bearable?"