While waiting for the food, the five of us decide to do a little tournament in that wacky racing game my sister and I are so fond of. As we didn’t have enough controllers for all of us, we had to use a rotation system so that we could all play an equal amount. In the end, the finale was between me and Max, who’d beaten Sam the round before due to a slight error in Sam’s steering.

“Sorry, Ami, I wanted the final game to be between the two of us.” Sam leaned into me and put up her pouty face.

“It’s okay Sam, you did your best.” I give her a kiss. “Now I just need to avenge you.”

“My heroine.” She kisses me back.

Meanwhile Max is laughing like an evil villain. “Bold of you to assume you’ll win this match, Amicia. But I have my own honour to defend.” She winks at Carol. “Can’t lose in front of my ladyfriend now, can I?”

“That makes two of us.” I grin and set up the last race. The course the randomizer picks turns out to be one of the most challenging ones in the game.

“Ah, a worthy battlefield.”

I nod. “Let’s begin.”

The two of us stay neck to neck for the first couple of rounds, with both of us almost flying off the track a couple of times, but we always managed to recover just in time.

“This is surprisingly tense.” Hailey comments on our race.

“Completely different from our race.” Carol agrees.

“That’s because we both suck.” Hailey laughs.

Sam says nothing and is just silently watching our race but I could tell she was rooting for me as she almost ducked out of the sofa when I nearly crashed.

Max was trying her very best but I had one thing going for me, she wasn’t as cunning and savage as my sister was, so when she made her move in the second to last round, I’d seen it coming from miles away.

The course we were on had a very narrow section, barely enough for two cars to drive side by side. One slight inaccuracy in your steering would send you off the course to be reset on it by a floating monster a couple of seconds later. In a race at this level, that surely meant having to give up first place.

So Max’s plan was obvious, she was going to give my car a shunt, right when we entered this section of the track, however she didn’t count on me slamming the breaks, hitting the back side of her car and performing the classic pit-stop manoeuvre you’d see in those action movies. With her car spinning wildly out of control, she couldn’t hope to recover in time and was set flying off track.

“Nooooo!” Max cried out.

“You’ve been weighed and have been found wanting.” I shot out a one-liner which made Sam, Hailey and Carol burst out in laughter.

“Wow, that was just brutal.” Hailey whistles.

While Max did manage to regain a couple of seconds on my lead, mostly because of one of those dastardly blue pineapples, the rest of the race was trivial - nothing she could do would give her the win.

I cross the finish line triumphantly and once Max crosses it ten seconds behind me she puts her hand on my shoulder and congratulates me. “Good job Amicia. Grats on the win.”

“Thanks.” I smile. “Better luck next time.”

“You bet.”

We don’t have time to settle back down into the sofa as the delivery person rings our doorbell just when I shut off the game.

Sam answers the door and pays for the food plus a nice tip and puts the box of food on the dinner table. “Is it me or does this look like more food than we ordered?”

“Asian take-away always is more than you can really eat in one go.” Max rubs her hands in anticipation. “Let’s see if this is any good shall we.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Everyone moves over to the table and helps unpacking the food.

“Uhm, I think this is your order, Ami and Sam.” Hailey gives us two big boxes.

“Looks about right.” Sam nods and hands over one of the boxes to me so I can divide the food over our plates.

“It smells really good.” I comment, as the smell of spices tickled my nose and my tastebuds. “Especially this Goi Kun.”

Sam laughs. “Gỏi cuốn, but yeah, I expected you to like that a lot.”

By the time Sam finishes her sentence I already was chomping down on one of the shrimp rolls. “It tawstes gweat too!”

“Ami…”

“You shouwld twy one too Sam.” I take a shrimp roll and put it in her mouth. ‘See, tawsty.”

Sam chews on it for a couple of seconds before swallowing. “Yeah, it’s pretty good.” She smiles.

When we are all seated, with most of the packing paper stashed inside the box the delivery came from, we all start eating and silence fills the room. Always a good sign.

“Don’t you want some music while we eat?” I ask the group.

“I don’t mind the silence, we never put on music at my house.” Hailey comments while taking a bite from her food.

“mje awwaws wisten two wuusic.” Carol says.

“Sorry?” Hailey looks over at her friend. “I didn’t understand a word of what you just said.”

Carol swallows her spring roll. “We always listen to music at our place when we eat. Silence feels awkward.”

“Now that you say that, it makes sense.”

“What does?”

“Well you talk way too much so that’s probably why, isn’t it?” Hailey teases.

“Hey! Rude!”

Max laughs and replies to my question. “For me it depends. When I’m home alone I turn on the music so it doesn’t feel so lonely. My parents only put on the radio for dinner when it’s their favourite radio show on Saturday.”

“And you know how we do it at my house.” Sam winks.

“Okay, I just wanted to make sure everyone was fine with it.” I smile.

“It’s already cozy enough with the five of us, we don’t need music to fill our existential emptiness now.”

Everyone looks at Max. “Wow, that was terribly gloomy coming from you, Max.” Sam comments.

“Eh, I felt like a deep comment was needed.” She shrugs and continues her food.

“Okay, Ami, I changed my mind, we do need some music now.” Hailey states before putting another scoop of food in her mouth. Carol aggressively nods along with this statement.

Me, Sam and Max start laughing.

When dinner was almost over I got a message from my sister asking me how the evening was going and afterwards immediately decided to call me.

“You know you could just have waited for a text, right?” I laugh at my sister.

“Eh, I decided that this would be faster. So, how’s it going? Got your food already?”

“Yeah, we are almost done eating. We had some fun doing a tournament in that racing game beforehand.”

“Oh, who won?”

“Me, of course.”

“Good job sis! I wouldn’t expect anything else! So how’s the food?”

“It’s really nice.” The rest of the table nods along with my evaluation. “The rest enjoys their food too.”

“Great, now me and Nikki still need to order from there so we can judge too.”

“Speaking about Nikki, where is she?”

“She went to the bathroom, had to redo her make-up.”

“Did something happen?” Sam asks.

“Yeah, but probably not what you’re thinking.” My sis giggles. “You see, there was this stuck up person from work who was being a bit of a bully to one of the others and as karma would have it, five minutes later her heel snapped off her shoe and she fell face first into one of the cakes of the buffet. We kinda lost it and started crying while laughing. But I don’t wear make-up.”

“Wow, that’s something.” Sam chuckles.

“And is Hilda there too?” I ask.

“Yeah, I’m right here.” I hear Hilda’s voice over the telephone.

“She was the talk of the party, the only one not dressed up for the occasion at all, just wearing her faux leather jacket as usual.”

“I mean, there wasn’t really a dress code… anyway, I hope you are having a fun night over there.”

“Thanks Hilda.”

“I’m going to hang up now, the company president is going to give a speech now, and even though I’m not really interested in what he’s going to say I should probably at least fake interest. Bye bye!”

“Bye!”

And with that my sister hangs up.

“Your sister really doesn’t give a lot of fucks, does she?” Max starts laughing.

“That’s just who she is.” I shrug.

“And that Hilda person sounds like the kind of person I like too.”

“Yeah, she’s nice.” Sam nods.

“So, what are we going to do for the rest of the evening?” Carol asks. “After having cleaned up everything.”

“We can play some board games if you want to.” I nod towards the closet where all our games are situated.

“Oh, that sounds fun.”

-Although I wouldn’t mind taking a nap on Sam’s lap, either… -