While it was fun eating hamburgers and other greasy stuff with my girlfriends and friends, good times sadly could not last forever. Especially while watching Em and Ria enjoy their burgers so much, time just flew by. Before we knew it, it was already time to go back home and to go our own ways for now. Alessia dropped the three of us off back at my house, driving Claire a little bit further by herself so Claire didn’t have to take the bus all the way back. Claire did say she had a lot of fun today, apart from her wallet almost being stolen, that is.

As for Ria and Em, they didn’t stay very long afterwards either. The days were still very short and Em didn’t want to make her mom wait all alone for too long as Em's dad was away on a business trip again. And Ria needed to make sure she was home in time to get ready for a dinner her parents had planned with some important people, as usual.

I gave them all plenty of loving hugs and kisses before they left, though. It’s but the polite thing to do, isn’t it?

-About a week and a half later-

I somehow ended up back at where my story began, at the friterie around the corner. Em, Ria and Alessia were over at my house to help me move over to the new house. But apparently moving stuff is a very tiring and hunger making business.

“Are you really moving out, Aurora?” Karla, the lady from the snack bar, asked.

“Yep, I am.” I gave her a nod as I waited for my order.

“Does that mean you aren’t going to visit anymore?”

“Of course I will, I can’t just not go to the best snack bar in the entire city, right?”

Karla laughed while she tossed up some fries. “Good, we were already getting a bit nervous that you’d leave and never turn back.”

“I’d never, furthermore, your daughter still has some of my study books. Speaking about which, did she pass the exams? Those happened not that long ago, right?”

“We are still waiting for results but she has a good feeling about it.” She answered while packing up all the snacks in the typical not quite white paper.

“That’s good to hear. So then she just needs to finish the year and next year I’ll be able to meet her at school.”

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed.” She put everything in two paper bags and handed them over to me. I’d already paid, so there was no need for me to get my wallet. “There you go.”

“Thanks.” I smiled. “See you next time.” I wanted to wave but I had both of my hands occupied.

“Good luck with moving!”

Another customer held the door open for me so I could easily walk out. That’s the thing about friterie’s, there’s always some kind of camaraderie between the costumers, doesn’t really matter what walk of life you come from.

I walked back down the road to my soon-to-be ex-house. It was a cold day, but there was no wind so that definitely helped.

Alessia was just bringing over a box to her car as I approached. “Door’s open, you just need to push against it.” She said, barely being able to look over the box she was carrying.

“Don’t stay out for too long, otherwise it’ll get cold. And microwaved fries are heresy.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Alessia put the box in the back seat of her car and slammed her door closed. “We wouldn’t be able to microwave it anyway, as we already put that in the moving truck.”

I chuckled. “Great, no heresy will be committed today.” I pushed the door open and walked towards the living room. All the big furniture was gone already, I’d donated most of it to the second hand store, but they needed to come back later today to pack up the furniture from the last couple of rooms.

Which made my living room feel very very empty. Luckily, however, we don’t really need a table for fries and accompanying snacks.

“Rora! Food!” Ria happily ran over to me after putting some books in one of the moving boxes.

“What are you most excited for, me or the food?”

“Hmmm…” Ria scratched her cheek. “Do I need to answer that?”

“Ouch, that hurts.”

Ria giggled and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“Of course she’d take the food.” Em chuckled and walked over to me as well, holding her phone. “Look, Viktor just sent a picture of Shima.”

“Oh? Is she already out of her carrier?” A bit earlier, Viktor had come over to already move Shima over to the new house before much of the moving happened. Cats really don’t like the ruckus so I was happy he offered to do that.

“Yeah, he put her in one of the bedrooms and he’s sitting with her. He also put her feeder and some water there.” Em showed me the pictures that Viktor had sent. There was a video with them too of Shima exploring the room. She looked surprisingly at ease.

“As much as I sometimes like to mess with Viktor, he is a pretty cool dude.” I nodded happily as Em showed Ria the pictures as well.

“We should get him something to thank him for helping. And for Alessia too.” Em proposed.

“Ah, you really don’t need to get me anything.” Alessia waved that offer away. “I’m just happy I can help my daughter and heir apparent.” She smirked.

I rolled my eyes. “Sure you don’t want anything?”

“I can get most things myself, so it’s fine… maybe some roses would look pretty good on the castle’s dinner table, though….”

“There you go.” I laughed, “And what about Viktor? What would he like?”

“I’m pretty sure he would love anything that doesn’t involve softball bats.” She laughed as she started helping Em unpack our lunch.

“Ah, speaking about which, I still need to pack those.”

“I already did.” Em replied.

“When?”

“Just when you were gone.” Em pointed to the box behind me. “They are in that one. Don’t worry, I packed them with great care. Together with all your other softball stuff.”

“Wow, thanks babe.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“Hehe, no problem.”

We unpacked everything and due to the lack of a table and plates we just ate our food at the kitchen counter with the quite sturdy plastic forks that got provided by the friterie. Not that I needed any for bitterballen, but when fries get combined with sauce, it is pretty useful not to get your hands all sauced up.

“Do you think we can get everything done today?” Ria asked. “There’s not that much left, right?”

“I think we can definitely move everything over. Unpacking it all again is a different matter, though. But I want to have things completely done before Friday.” Friday was Christmas eve and as we had been invited by Em’s mom. I wanted to be as carefree as possible.

Ria nodded and put some fries in her mouth before she suddenly stopped and looked at me, her eyes wide open. “Rora! You don’t have a Christmas tree at your house yet.”

“Oh yeah. That’s true.” I nodded matter-of-factly.

“You really need to buy one!”

“I mean, can’t we skip this year? We have been invited by Ilse anyway, right?”

Em giggled. “That’s not going to convince Ria, you should know that by now.”

“Exactly!” Ria continued. “Rora we really need to go and buy one! I want to set up the tree together with you and Em!”

“Awh. See, now you have to.” Em gave Ria a quick peck on the cheek. “Otherwise, she’s going to be sad.”

As if they had rehearsed it together, Ria put on her kitten eyes. In the meantime, Alessia was just eating and enjoying the show.

“Alright. But first I want to get everything to the new house, okay? After that, we’ll go to the store to find one.”

“Yay!”

I smiled and looked at Em, giving her a sly wink. Unbeknownst to Ria, Em and I had bought her a computer, and we were already planning to do a whole Christmas thing all along with just the three of us the day after we came back from Em’s. Ria’s adamance on getting a Christmas tree had just solidified the fact that it would be a great surprise for her to find the gift wrapped under the tree… well… more like behind or next to the tree because the computer was pretty darn big.

To be honest, I could really not wait to see her reaction to that, and I knew for a fact that Em couldn’t wait for it either.

However, that all had to wait until it was actually time to celebrate Christmas, and before that could happen… I still needed to clean out the room that I was trying so desperately to avoid… It was a dreadful task, but I had to get past it to move on with my life. With my girlfriends… Maybe if I just focused on that, that’d give me the power to go through it without too much pain.