Bonus story : More than just colleagues : Part 27 : Dinner

The restaurant Patrick had chosen was a few streets away from the depot. As they approached, they spotted Emma waiting outside, phone in hand. She looked up when she saw them coming and slipped it into her bag.

Lucas raised a hand.

"We're here."

Emma smiled, then looked from one to the next as they reached her. Their clothes still showed signs of the day's work, and the exhaustion was clear on their faces.

"You look exhausted."

"Long day," Patrick said.

"Very long..." Karim added.

"We finished earlier than expected," Aldric said.

Lucas turned to him.

"You should probably mention that we still worked almost ten hours."

Emma smiled.

"Come eat before you start giving me the full report on the sidewalk."

They went inside and were shown to a table at the back of the restaurant. Patrick took the seat closest to the aisle, Karim sat to his right, Lucas chose the chair across from them, while Emma sat beside Aldric. The waiter brought over the menus and set them down in front of them.

Lucas opened his immediately.

"I'm hungry enough to order two meals."

"You say that every time," Karim said.

"Because I'm always hungry..."

"You barely ever finish dessert."

Lucas raised a finger.

"Those are two completely separate issues..."

When the waiter returned, Patrick ordered grilled meat, Karim chose a fish dish, Lucas went for a burger, Emma ordered pasta, and Aldric asked for chicken with vegetables and rice.

Once they had ordered, the menus were stacked at the end of the table. Lucas set his phone beside his glass, stared at it for a few seconds, then turned it face down.

"I still want to go back to what you said earlier," Lucas said.

"What?" Patrick asked.

"When I said we were getting good."

"We were already good."

"Yeah, but today we were really good."

Patrick picked up his glass.

"Fine. Today we were really good."

"Thank you."

"Was it really that impressive?" Emma asked.

"The volume was particularly high, but we completed the job without incident," Aldric said.

Lucas pointed at him.

"Translation: we were excellent."

"Lucas translation," Karim said.

Emma asked for a few details, and for the next several minutes they talked about the move. Patrick explained how they had organized the work across three floors, Karim told her about the enormous bookcase they had been forced to take apart, and Lucas kept exaggerating the weight of the desk until Aldric corrected him.

"It probably weighed no more than a hundred and sixty kilograms."

"You say that like a hundred and sixty kilos is reasonable..."

"For a piece of furniture that size, it is."

The conversation eventually moved away from work. Lucas looked at Patrick with a grin.

"Remember the first time we went for drinks?"

Patrick nodded.

"What I remember most is Aldric looking at everyone like he was about to interrogate us..."

Aldric frowned.

"I was not looking at you in that manner."

Karim picked up his glass.

"A little."

Emma smiled.

"I saw the photo. Very much so."

Lucas leaned toward her.

"You know what's funny? I think he talked less that entire evening than he did in ten minutes today."

"That is possible," Aldric said.

"You're actually admitting it?" Lucas asked.

"I knew the group less well at the time."

Lucas placed a hand over his heart.

"The group. Listen to him."

Aldric looked at him.

"What?"

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"Nothing..."

The waiter brought over a pitcher of water and some bread. Aldric picked up the pitcher and filled Emma's glass, then Karim's. Patrick slid his own closer without interrupting the conversation, and Aldric filled that one as well. Lucas immediately held his glass out toward him.

"Since you're serving everyone..."

Aldric poured him some water before filling his own glass. The conversation, which had started with their day at work, gradually shifted to Aldric's first few weeks with the team and the habits he had picked up since then.

Lucas turned to Emma.

"And then we made the mistake of adding him to the WhatsApp group..."

"Your idea," Patrick said.

"Excellent idea..."

"You made fun of him for days because of his first messages," Karim said.

"Educational."

"Your teaching methods were questionable," Aldric said.

Emma burst out laughing.

"See? Before, he would've asked why we were laughing..."

"That's true," Patrick said.

"Do you remember the first message?" Lucas asked.

Emma looked at Aldric.

"The famous 'I confirm that I am alive'?"

"I remember it."

Lucas put both hands on the table.

"That message is going down in history."

"Why?"

Lucas stared at him, mouth open, before Emma burst out laughing.

"He's doing it on purpose now..."

Aldric smiled as Lucas stared at him.

"You did that on purpose."

"Perhaps..."

The waiter brought their food, and the conversation stopped just long enough for everyone to settle their plates. Emma took a piece of bread, broke it in half, and placed one half beside her plate.

Lucas took a bite of his burger.

"Really good. Thanks, Patrick."

Patrick tried his meat before nodding.

"Yeah, not bad."

Karim tried his fish as well.

"I like mine too."

Aldric looked up.

"No. Don't start..." Lucas said.

"I was not planning to say anything."

Emma laughed softly, and they continued eating for a few minutes before Lucas brought up another story.

"But my apartment is still the best one."

Karim looked up from his plate.

"The cleaning?"

"No. The fact that you still refuse to admit it was perfectly livable."

Patrick took another bite before answering.

"Because it wasn't."

"We couldn't even see your couch..." Emma said.

Lucas sighed.

"You could see part of it..."

"Approximately twenty percent," Aldric said.

"Did you actually estimate how much of my couch was visible?..."

"Just now."

"You know what's worrying? I believe you..."

The conversation then shifted to the day they had cleaned Lucas's apartment, and Patrick told Emma how Lucas had tried to defend certain piles of belongings by claiming there was an internal logic to them.

Lucas raised a hand.

"There was..."

"You'd been looking for your keys for three days," Karim said.

"That proves nothing..."

"Where did you find them again?" Emma asked.

"Under a shoebox," Patrick said.

Emma burst out laughing.

"You actually remember that?..."

"Yes."

"Traitor..."

While they were talking, Lucas reached over and stole a fry from Patrick's plate, then a second. Patrick let him without reacting, but when Lucas's hand came back a third time, he slid his plate out of reach.

"What?..."

"Order fries next time."

"I have fries."

"Then eat yours."

"Yours look better..."

Patrick shook his head and pulled his plate a little closer. Their plates gradually emptied. Some finished their meals while others ordered dessert or coffee.

The waiter cleared some of the plates. Karim had left about a third of his dessert, a slice of apple pie he'd ordered after insisting he wasn't hungry anymore. Lucas looked at it.

"You gonna finish that?"

Karim shook his head.

Without another word, he pushed the plate toward the middle of the table. Emma took a small bite, Lucas took another, Patrick declined with a shake of his head, and Aldric tried a piece.

The waiter brought Patrick's coffee, and the conversation continued. Emma was now telling them about a client at her agency who had turned down an apartment simply because she didn't like the color of the living room wall.

"She could've repainted it," Patrick said.

"That's what I told her..."

"And?" Karim asked.

"She said she didn't want to start her new life with home renovations."

"I almost understand that," Lucas said.

"Why?" Aldric asked.

"Because sometimes you just want to move in and not have to do anything..."

"Repainting a wall does not require much time."

"Maybe not for you and Patrick..."

The waiter stopped by their table again.

"Would you like anything else?"

Patrick looked at the others before answering.

"Nothing for me."

Karim shook his head, and Emma did the same. Lucas looked over the dessert menu one more time, hesitated for a few seconds, then closed it.

"No."

Finally, the waiter turned to Aldric.

"Nothing, thank you."

"All right. Let me know if you need anything."

"Thank you," Emma said.

The waiter gave them a nod before heading toward another table, leaving them to continue their conversation.

"By the way, I want it officially acknowledged that Karim was hiding his talent..."

Karim sighed.

"We're still talking about that?"

"Yes..."

"He's right," Patrick said.

Emma nodded.

"Absolutely."

Karim looked at Aldric.

"You too?"

"Yes. Your singing was significantly better than ours."

Lucas put a hand on the table.

"Ours? Let me remind you that I scored higher than you."

"By three points."

"I regret teaching you how to be competitive."

"You did not teach me."

"I awakened something."

Emma looked at Aldric.

"And our duet?"

"Eighty-three."

Lucas threw up his hands.

"See! He remembers every score!"

Lucas leaned toward Karim.

"If we go to karaoke again, he's showing up with a strategy."

"I have already identified several ways to improve my score."

The silence lasted only a few seconds before everyone burst out laughing.

"I knew it!..."

Aldric only glanced at the notification because Emma had already continued her story.

"Wait, the best part is that after turning down the apartment because of the wall, she called me back two days later."

"Why?" Lucas asked.

"Because she'd changed her mind," Emma said.

"What had changed in the meantime?"

"Absolutely nothing. The wall was still exactly where it had been."

Lucas burst out laughing.

"So she turns down the apartment because of the wall, thinks about it for two days, and then decides the wall doesn't bother her anymore?"

"Apparently. And that's where it gets even better. She calls me back and casually asks if the apartment is still available."

"Was it?" Karim asked.

"No. Someone had rented it the next day."

"She must've regretted that," Karim said.

"A lot."

"All that over the color of a wall..."

"A decision based on a factor that was not sufficiently important," Aldric said.

"Exactly."

"Now I'm starting to worry. You're getting better and better at understanding Emma's stories..."

"They are not particularly difficult to understand."

"You say that now. Wait until she starts telling you stories about her coworkers."

Emma rolled her eyes.

"My stories are perfectly clear."

"Of course..."

Patrick smiled behind his cup as Karim asked Emma what the client had said when she found out the apartment had already been rented.

In the past, he would have stopped whatever he was doing to read it. Lucas had already moved on to another story. Patrick was correcting him on one detail, Karim insisted that he remembered it differently, and Emma was trying to figure out which of them was telling the truth.

Aldric glanced at the first line of the notification, then at the four people sitting around the table. He raised a hand and closed the window.

"Aldric," Emma said, "you were there that day. Was Patrick right or was Lucas?"

He turned his attention back to her.

"Patrick."

Lucas's eyes widened.

"Traitor!..."

"You asked me what actually happened."

"You could've backed me up..."

Emma smiled and continued her story, only to be interrupted moments later by another protest from Lucas.