Call My Bluff | NaNoWriMo

Chapter Eighteen | Monkey

"Are you trying to torture me?" I complain to Henry. We are still in the parked car, knowing that Ava and James are close by. We are on our way to some random restaurant with them. Ava did text the details even though I hope she would not. They parked not too far away for us. This is my last time complaining before showtime.

"If I wanted to torture you, I would've jumped into that prick's car." Henry refers to James offering to drive us there which Henry shut down quickly. I wish he had shut down the date as quickly too.

"You asked for this," I grumble. Henry is already on the other side of the car, opening the door for me, while I am still grabbing my bag from the floor. That is the actual last comment I get to make since Ava is already here with James.

"How romantic," Ava says to us about Henry opening the door. James and Ava are watching as I get out of the car, while Henry holds his hand out for me to hold. He locks the car.

"Henry treats me well," I reply. It's the truth. He always makes my tea just the way I want it.

"James, you need to take notes," Ava teases. Henry holds my hand while I walk next to Ava. James is walking on the other side of Ava, with Ava holding onto his arm.

"You're too fast for me to keep up. One day I'll manage to open the door." They laugh at some inside joke while Henry and I exchange a look. My look says 'I don't want to be here' while his is 'what the fuck?'. Both valid.

The restaurant is a short walk away and James made reservations so we are seated almost instantly. We are seated upstairs under the veranda. I open the menu to choose a drink. I am definitely going to need something a little strong than a cocktail to get me through this lunch. It's a good thing that Henry is driving.

"Order whatever drink you want, I got you," Henry whispers to me when he sees I'm looking at the shots. Not the most appropriate drink for a lunch so I chose to go with a cocktail with two shots of vodka instead of one.

"So Henry, tell me more about what you do?" Ava asks. Henry is sitting across from Ava again and I am sitting across from James. It's safer to look at Henry so I shift the chair slightly to face him instead.

"I am a programmer, nothing too interesting here." Henry is lying. He is an amazing programmer. He came up with some sort of program that a bunch of audit firms purchased from him. The software allows the clients and audit firms to share information in an easy and secure way so that the whole team has access instead of emails being forwarded left, right and centre. He is always updating it and right now he's working on something else too. Sometimes he asks me to use his programs so he can make it as user-friendly as possible.

"So you can hack facebook?" I don't know how we got here.

"He's not a hacker, Ava."

"Anyone can hack Facebook thanks to the internet," Henry adds. I think of all the reddit posts where there is someone who gets into their partner's social media and finds out that they are cheating on them. He's right, all you need is the internet and you are good to go.

"Should I be worried about my Facebook?" James jokes. He seems more like himself as he's lost the attitude he had this morning. Maybe he was testing Henry out per Ava's request.

"Too late for that. I know what cat video you liked last night at 3.02 am," Ava claims. We laugh at the idea and the tension slowly leaves my body. The waiter arrives at this point to take our order. We decide to order both drinks and food at the same time.

We move onto safer topics like the weather and the wedding day plans. Ava's contagious excitement has us all ready to count down the minutes until the big day. They are just spending time ironing out minor details and meeting with vendors to confirm things for their big day. Everything is going surprisingly well.