Coffee and Love

And The Show Goes On

“You said he rejected you!” Lauren growled. “Making out in the streets of London is not rejection!”

“I’m confused.” Jess pursed her lips and put a comforting hand on Lauren’s back. “Who is he?”

“I’m Phil, nice to meet you.” Phil said, awkwardly stepping away from me.

“Are you that YouTube guy everyone loves?” Jess asked before turning to me “Is this the YouTube guy you’re obsessed with? Why are you making out with him? Why did I not know you had a boy to make out with?”

“She’s been lying her ass off. That’s why.” Lauren snapped. “And yes. He’s the YouTube guy.”

“Alright, why exactly are you mad, Lauren? I thought you wanted Nikki to get a boyfriend. You were just talking the other day about how her business over love motto is stupid and hiding her true feelings or some other shit like that.” Jess sighed, failing to hide the exasperation in her voice.

“I did. I do. But-“Lauren sputtered

“But what? Now she gets a boy and you’re angry? That’s confusing as hell.” Jess rolled her eyes.

“Jess, she’s been lying to everyone!” Lauren shouted “She told us Phil rejected her because she was too young. She made me feel bad for her!”

“So? You and I hid ours at first. Friends are a really heavy stress on a new relationship.” Jess reminded her girlfriend.

“We didn’t lie!” Lauren huffed.

“We didn’t tell the truth either.” Jess chided. “Now take a chill pill and let Nikki apologize without you blowing up on her.” Jess’s blue eyes settled on me expectantly. “Go on.”

“Thanks…I think.” I said, taking a cautious step towards Lauren. “Look, I never really meant to hide it from you. I didn’t really plan to hide it from anyone honestly. It’s just, when Gia and Sam left the note for Phil I was angry and as punishment I made them think they ruined my chance with Phil. Really though, they’re the reason we’re kind of dating.”

“Kind of? You were making out in front of your apartment!” Lauren hissed.

“We haven’t labeled it yet.” I explained. “You know I don’t like labels. SO right now it’s basically just we’ve gone on a few dates, we flirt a lot, and there’s kissing involved.” I ignored Lauren as she made a noise at the term kissing. “It’s complicated and I was going to tell everyone once we figured out where we were going with it.”

“Did you think we were going to ruin it or something?” Lauren asked, her voice hurt.

“No! Oh my god, no, of course not. You guys would never do that. God, no, I have more faith in you than that. It was just easier to keep up the secret.” I shrugged “Please, don’t take offense. It had nothing to do with you guys.”

It was silent for a long moment as Lauren just stared at us. Finally she wrapped her arms around me in a hug. “Are you happy?” she whispered in my ear.

“Yes.” I answered without thinking.

“Then I guess it’s all worth it.” Lauren stepped back, her brown eyes fixing on Phil. “Now, Philip, if you hurt my friend in any way you will have to go through me.”

“And me.” Jess added smoothly.

“And the other two up in the apartment, so be smart with your actions.” Lauren warned.

Phil nodded slowly, his blue eyes showing both amusement and fear. “TTrust me, I have no intentions of hurting Nikki. Honestly, she’s probably going to be the one to hurt me. That’s how it works.”

“And this took a depressing turn.” I kissed Phil’s cheek. “The others are going to be down soon. The real question is, do we tell them?”

“No.” all three of my companions said in unison. 

I blinked in shock “Lauren, you were just on my ass about lying!”

“To me.” Lauren laughed “You said you did it to punish Sam and Gia, so keep it up.” Jess nodded in agreement, linking arms with Lauren.

“And Dan will never stop bugging me if he finds out I lied about you rejecting me.” Phil shrugged “Let’s wait and see how long it takes them to put it together.”

“Just be more careful about where you suck face.” Lauren rolled her eyes. “I never want to see that again.”

“See what?” Dan asked, walking out of the building with Sam and Gia.

“There was a couple making out over there. It was disgusting.” Lauren huffed. “Are we ready to go?”

“OH, yeah, the pubs not far from here. Just a warning, we’ll probably run into a few subscribers. It happens a lot more now a days. They kind of stalk us.” Dan admitted, leading the pack down the road.

I noted that Sam moved up to the front, talking to Dan extremely animatedly as they walked. “Phil, what do you think-“

“Yes, OTP.” Phil laughed, wrapping an arm around my shoulder before thinking twice and settling for just walking beside me. “I know my mate and that is his ‘I’m smitten with this girl’ face.”

“Well, I know Sam and that hair fiddling is ‘this boy is amazing’. I say they start dating within the next week.” I watched Sam look at Dan then quickly away as he glanced at her. “Next five days.”

“Next three.” Phil contradicted. “I’d bet five pounds.”

“No. Nope, not betting money I don’t understand.” I shook my head. “You’ll just have to settle for bragging rights.”

“So, what were you two doing outside?” Gia asked, dropping away from the group to join Phil and me.

“Talked about videos and our subscribers. I was telling Phil how ours are so sweet, even if there’s not a lot of them.”

“Are you guys ready for what will happen if our baking video gets posted? You’re going to get noticed, and it might not all be nice. Our fans can get a little…aggressive.” Phil looked down at us. “I’d hate for it to hurt you guys.”

“We have thick skins.” I assured him.

“Besides, we do YouTube for fun. We don’t care about being famous or anything like that. We’re just having fun and trying to make people laugh. We’re trying to be positive in this world of negativity. Anyone who wants to be a negative Nancy can suck it.” Gia said with a little stomp of her foot and a proud hair toss.

The second we got close to the pub to girls came running over excitedly. “You’re Dan and Phil!” they gushed. “Can we have some pictures?”

“Phil, picture.” Dan waved him over.

I watched as they snapped pictures, the girls glowing with happiness. “What are you guys out doing?” one of them asked, batting her green eyes at Phil, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“We’re showing our American friends around.” Dan explained.

“Oh.” The green eyes settled on us, her pink lips turning up in disgust. “How do you know them?” she asked.

“Nikki’s the BBC Radio One intern.” Phil said, ruffling my hair so she knew who I was. Dan frowned at the girl while she glared over at us. “Phil, why don’t you go on and take the girls in?” Phil nodded and held the door open as we filed in.

“Are you dating her?” I overheard the girl ask Dan. “Because you can do better. She’s not pretty.”

“Oh, I think she’s quite beautiful.” Phil interrupted the girl. By this time I had stopped just inside the pub, listening to the girl’s response.

“Are you dating her, Phil?” the girl asked.

“I’d be lucky if I was. Have a nice night, girls.” Phil said, ushering Dan inside. He looked at me in the doorway and laughed “it’s not polite to eavesdrop, Little Intern.”

“Oh just kiss or something already.” Dan groaned, stomping past us to our group’s table.

“Or something.” Phil winked at me and motioned me forward.