Single But Engaged ✔️

11: Sweetie, you were jealous over such a small thing?

That laugh – it was still fresh in my head from when I first heard it about an hour ago. And now, here it was again.

I traced its source to my side. And sure enough, I found myself staring at an older woman sporting a face-splitting grin, her arms outstretched, with Kara and Emma beside her – Aunt Tilly.   

A second later, and I was being pulled into those outstretched arms, her voice chirpy as she said, “we finally meet!”

Given her raging enthusiasm, anyone who saw us would probably assume we were longtime online best friends, who were now seeing each other for the first time.

Hence, I found myself trying to match at least some of her enthusiasm, with my lips moving in a smile as I said, “hi. You must be Aunt Tilly.”

“Yes,” she cried, looking quite thrilled at my knowledge of her. “Oh, you’re really as sweet as Kara said. You’ve been asking about me?”

Well, look at that little dose of enthusiasm I mustered coming back to bite me in the ass. But it was too late for ‘I should have known.’ 

And now, I could only nod.

Hey, silent lying was at least better than an audible one. 

Aunt Tilly though, was now beaming brighter than before – if that was even possible. “I love you already. Don’t worry, I promise that before I leave, we’ll spend a lot of time together.” She finished with her signature laugh.

Ok, I think I’ll just go back to hoping for that hurricane storm to come sweep me away. Because let’s face it – that’s the only hope of escape I had from this.

To Aunt Tilly however, I offered a smile which I was certain was a little teary-eyed. 

Thankfully, her attention was soon turned towards someone else. “Aiden.”

“Aunt Tilly.”

She eyed him for a second or two before reaching for him between a cheerful exclamation of: “oh get in here!”

Although I don’t think he had much of a choice in the matter given as she was already squishing him in her arms.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she mused between laughs – or at least that’s what they were supposed to be. But the reality wasn’t quite the same, as was clear from Aiden’s traumatized face. 

But the words that left his lips were: “me too.”

Of course, that earned another of those sounds from her. “But you apparently didn’t miss me enough to tell me about your relationship with Aria. You’ve been hiding her from us using the whole ‘friends’ story.”

But it was another voice that piped up with: “oh it’s like a friends to lovers kind of story. How exciting! You have to tell us about it. When did you realize you were in love? What did you do then?” Yeah, that was Anika the interrogator. 

Her eyes were practically shining, expressing her eagerness to get the scoop. Well, I knew what I was eager to do – throw her off a cliff.

Thanks to her, Kara was now letting out a pleased gasp. “That’s true. You two haven’t told us the story of how you started dating.”

“There really isn’t much to tell,” Aiden was now saying, tittering slightly – with me echoing the sound as I added, “yeah, it’s really nothing exciting.”

If you removed the last part, that was pretty much the truth – it was really nothing. There was no friends to lovers story, because there were no lovers here, just two lying friends!