With disaster narrowly avoided, we placed the last couple of spreaders around the house, giving us plenty of time to also hide the massage gear we’d bought for Em so we could give her a little bit of a surprise as well. It was going to be rather fun to see both of my friends get surprised soon. Definitely looking forward to it.

As Em was not going to be away for much longer, Ria and I spent the rest of the time reading and hanging out with Shima in the ground floor tea-room.

Some time later, before the bell even rang, Ria saw Em pass by the window, putting her book aside immediately and running towards the door.

I chuckled as I followed her along.

Em didn’t even get the opportunity to ring either, as Ria opened up before Em’s hand was hovering over the bell.

“Em Em Em Em!” Ria flew into our girlfriend’s arms.

“Hey there, Ria.” Em giggled. Taking Ria into a big hug, after which she gave her a kiss. “I’m finally here.”

“And we are very glad you are.” I swapped places with Ria and gave Em a long welcome kiss as well. “Who dropped you off?”

“Dad drove me.” She replied. “He stopped around the corner, otherwise he’d have to drive around the entire city before he could turn around.”

“That’s what you get with these circulation plans.” I smiled and closed the door behind Em.

Em started to take off her jacket as we walked towards the kitchen, but she stopped halfway when we passed the door that led to the tearoom. She sniffed a couple of times.

“Wow, it really smells nice here.”

“Rora and I went to go buy some fragrance spreaders!” Ria replied. Skillfully avoiding the part about the massage business.

“You should’ve seen the store owner, Em. She was like a real witch.”

Em tilted her head at me. “A witchy person running a fragrance store… That does kind of make sense, doesn’t it?”

“I know right.” I smiled.

“And she does workshops for making candles too!” Ria added.

“Ooh, I bet my mom would like to join in on that too.”

“That could be fun, an activity with the four of us.”

“Well, we could invite Alessia too, you know. Like, make it a complete moms and daughters kind of thing.” Em replied.

Ria perked up even more. “That sounds so amazing! Let’s definitely do that!”

I chuckled again. “Alright, alright, I’ll ask Alessia one of these days if she’d be up for that. Happy?”

“Very happy.” Em and Ria said together.

Em took her trolley with clothes upstairs to unpack her clothes, with Ria and I following behind her. Shima came along as well and was very interested in rubbing along Em’s legs, luckily she didn’t lose that much hair since it was still winter after all. Although I doubt that Em would really care that much. I got those sticky hair removal rollers anyway and some other useful bobs to take care of rampant cat hair.

“By the way, Helen is coming back the second of January.” Em said while we helped her unpack.

“Is she?”

“Yeah, I got a message while I was in the car with dad.”

“Oh, nice.” My phone was still on my bedside table, so I hadn’t really been around it much today. I probably had gotten a message about that too… Maybe I should keep my phone a bit closer to me, as this was already the second time in a short period where I had missed rather important news.

It also made me wonder when exactly we were going to get news from the interrogation, too.

“Did Helen say anything about Aileen?” Ria asked.

“Uh, not really.” Em shook her head and then smirked. “Why are you asking?”

“Well… I think they would fit rather well together… don’t you?”

“You are not the only one who thinks that, Ria.” I laughed. “I do think they vibe really well.”

“It would be nice to see them get together.” Em agreed. “Maybe I should poke Helen about what she thinks of Aileen when she gets back.”

“Please do share any information you get from her, we both are very interested as well.” I smiled.

Ria clapped her hands happily and nodded. "Yes, please!"

With the gossip behind us and Em’s clothes all unpacked, it was about time to think about some evening dinner, at least for my two girlfriends.

We were in the kitchen on the first floor, while I was putting the clean plates from the dishwasher in the closet, Ria and Em were discussing what to eat while looking in my fridge.

When I had finished emptying the dishwasher, the two of them were still discussing the subject between themselves.

“Auro, can you come for a second?” Em asked.

“Still can’t decide what to eat?”

“No, not really.” Em replied, but both of them shook their heads.

“Hmm, and neither of you have any preferences?”

“Not really.” Ria replied. “It’s a big conundrum, and both of us don’t want to order out today either.”

“Hmm, I see, I see.” I took my phone out, which I had collected from my room, and swiped away the message I’d gotten from Aileen about Helen’s return, turning to my search engine instead. “Let’s see what stuff we can make with what I have in the fridge. Maybe it’ll give something interesting.”

Both Ria and Em came to stand behind me to follow along with what I was doing on my phone. I’d found a site that asked for me to take a picture of the contents of my fridge, which I quickly did before closing the fridge again.

“Do you think that will really work?” Ria asked. “Just by taking a picture.”

“That AI business is getting quite scary, so who knows.” Em nodded, both still staring at the screen of my phone with great interest. I just knew that it took quite a while for it to process.

But then finally I got a list of recipes we could make, with the first one being a provencale prawn soup with pistou.

“That looks interesting.” Em pointed at it.

“What’s a pistou though?” I turned towards Em.

“Uhm, I’m pretty sure it’s a cold sauce that you just add in the warm soup.” She replied. “I’ve not eaten it myself yet.”

“What about you, Ria?”

Ria shook her head. “I haven’t either, but it does look good.”

“So, are we going to try to make this?”

Both Em and Ria gave me a nod.

“Alright, let’s try then and if we don’t like it we can always make some garlic bread to go with it.”

“We can make that anyway, always a great combination with soup.” Em nodded and started to clear out the items I’d stocked in my oven.

“Fair enough.” I laughed.

I quickly printed out the recipe so we could all easily follow the recipe along, and then we divided up the work. The recipe said it would take around an hour of prep time, but I was adamant of trying to cut that with at least fifteen minutes.

It was a fun time working together to put the meal on the table, so much so that I kind of regretted it a bit when we came to the final little parts of our culinary experience. But then again, there’s plenty more recipes we could try in the future and I have heard before that baking together is also a great experience too.

With the garlic bread out of the oven and our provencale prawn soup with pistou served in a deep plate, it was time to sit down and enjoy our creation.

While it could probably use some improvements, it already tasted incredible. It must be something inherent to us humans that when you put something together yourself, it automatically also tastes… different. Maybe it was the taste of a sense of pride and accomplishment? Or maybe Em just did a very very good job of seasoning, that’s also a possibility.

We ate our relatively light dinner with much gusto and put the rest in the fridge for someone, quite possibly Ria, to eat later if they got a bit hungry again. It would taste more than fine after being microwaved.

“Ah, that was so good.” Em stretched her arms and her back.

Ria smiled and walked up to me, whispering into my ear. “Should we give her the present now?”

Em looked at us suspiciously, squinting her eyes. “What are you two whispering about?”

I grinned and nodded. “Mhmm, let’s.” And then stood up from my seat. “Em, Ria and I have a small present for you?”

“Oh?” she blushed a little. “What kind of present?”

“You’ll have to come with us to see.”

Ria had walked towards the door that leads towards the living room. She beckoned Em to come along.

When Em followed, Ria opened the closet where we had stashed the massage equipment, still keeping it out of sight from our girlfriend. “The candles and spreaders aren’t the only things we bought at the store.” She smiled cheekily.

Em’s face flushed a lot redder. “T-that sounds quite lewd, Ria…”

When Em said that, Ria’s face also immediately blew up red. “N-no, it’s nothing like that!”

In the meantime, I was chuckling quite badly at the small misunderstanding that had arisen, though I was blushing a bit as well.

-No, Em, it’s not to be that kind of massage.-