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… Julia woke up after hearing some voices coming from the living room. She rolled over while holding her pillow in an effort to go back to sleep, but soon the voices seemed to get louder. After a brief struggle, she reluctantly opened her eyes and noticed that the curtains shone with a subtle hint of light, indicating the sun had risen. She turned on the bedside lamp and looked at her watch which was adjusted to the local time in Venice; it was slightly past five o'clock in the morning.
Lifting her blanket and getting out of the bed, she put on her slippers and tied her hair in a bun as she walked to the living room to locate the source of the noise.
The lights in the living room were not on, and the curtains leading to the balcony were also tightly drawn. The brightly shining TV was the only source of light in the room and also the source of the noise which had awoken her from her slumber.
Elisabeth was sitting cross-legged on the couch with a bag of potato chips in her hands while staring at the TV intently. Suddenly, a small crackling noise came from her mouth.
"Liz, why are you up so early?" Julia walked over to sit down beside Elisabeth and pulled the blanket on the couch to cover her body.
Elisabeth swallowed the snacks in her mouth, and then whispered, "I… couldn't sleep at all. I think I'm experiencing insomnia."
Julia leaned against Elisabeth and asked, confused, "Insomnia, why?"Immediately afterwards, Julia suddenly remembered something and asked with an incredulous look on her face, "It's not... because of what I said last night, right? I was just joking. You didn't think I was serious, did you?"
Elisabeth remained quiet for a few moments before she quietly asked, "Julia, do you think that bastard has been secretly seducing me?"
Julia blinked her eyes in quick succession after hearing Elisabeth's words and burst out into laughter.
"Liz, you stayed up all night thinking about... Eric?" Despite the dim lighting in the room, the flush on Elisabeth's face, caused by Julia's remark, was quite visible. She lightly slapped her friend in dissatisfaction and asked, "How can you joke around? I am asking you a very serious question."
Julia had somehow managed to quell her laughter, but seeing the embarrassed look on Elisabeth's face, the corners of her mouth stretched again and she fell into another round of hysterical laughter.
"Hey! I... I'm getting angry!"
Elisabeth was about to leave in anger, but Julia quickly held her back and finally replied to her earlier query, "Impossible, you don't know that guy at all."
Elisabeth saw that Julia had finally stopped laughing so she sat back down. However, hearing Julia's reply, she protested, "Do you understand him?"
"I don't understand him completely," Julia shook her head, but she continued, "But I know one thing."
"What?" Elisabeth shook Julia's arm and impatiently asked, "Quickly tell me."
Julia realized that her friend was not in a mood for games so she quickly replied, "He has always been very arrogant and direct when interacting with women. If he wants you, he won't bother to waste time seducing you, he is more likely to drag you into a room and press you down under him on the bed."
Julia involuntarily recalled the night when she had been with Eric, and unknowingly felt a fire rising in her heart.
Elisabeth's tiny mouth had opened slightly due to her shock. She quickly said, "He won't dare do such a thing to me, or my father will definitely ruin him."
"Perhaps," Julia replied, noncommitally.
But inwardly, Julia was unsure about Elisabeth's self-confidence. With Eric's current wealth and status, if he truly did sleep with her, perhaps old Rupert Murdoch would be jovial, instead of angry. For News Corporation, which is still weak in the fields of film and television, Eric is the perfect partner. Nothing would be better than Eric becoming a part of the Murdoch family.
Elisabeth didn't sense the doubt in Julia's voice, and asked, "So, he is not interested in me, right?"
"Of course not," Julia shook her head with a smile.
Elisabeth breathed a long sigh of relief, as if a heavy load had been unloaded from her shoulder. However, after a few moments, she mumbled in dissatisfaction, "How can he not be interested in me? Am I not pretty enough?"
"Hahaha..." Julia suddenly began laughing.
Elisabeth also realized the error in her words. Seeing Julia who was laughing at her, she stretched out her little hand and pinched in anger.
"Oh, don't, don't pinch," Julia quickly begged for mercy, took a few deep breaths, and said, "I suddenly remembered something that guy once told me."
Before Elisabeth could speak, Julia quickly said, "He said that a woman is a very troublesome creature. When you approach her, she will ridicule you and sneer at you. When you stay away from her, she will complain about you. This sentence is really too apt for you, hahaha."
Seeing Elisabeth was about to attack her again, Julia quickly stopped her friend and said, "Ok, stop, Liz, while it's still dark, let's sleep for a while. Otherwise you will be tired throughout the day, um... I'm going to bed."
Elisabeth immediately grabbed Julia, who was getting up, and said, "No, you can't leave me alone."
Julia was pulled back on the couch by Elisabeth. She helplessly asked, "Then what do you want?"
"Let's go for a run? Anyway, it's already dawn outside."
Julia immediately rejected the proposal, "It's too early right now and there are likely not many people on the road. Italy is the birthplace of the Mafia; who knows what the public order situation is like here. Maybe we're out running and sacks come out of nowhere and then we will be in for a terrible time. "
Although Julia was just making things up, Elisabeth, thinking about her friend's words, was genuinely scared and quickly replied, "Then... let's watch TV. Anyway, I can't sleep."
After she finished speaking, she quickly put the remote control in Julia's hands.
"Okay, okay, you really look like a kid."
Julia said and helplessly took the remote control.
An Italian soap opera was playing on the TV, but Julia couldn't understand it, so she changed the channel.
After changing several channels in a row, a burst of cheerful canned laughter sounded on the track, and Julia stopped herself from changing the channel.
After hearing a few lines of dialogue, Elisabeth immediately said, "It's my TV station."
Julia also recognized the Fox TV logo, so she put the remote control down.
The scene on the TV is inside a coffee shop. A group of friends are discussing how the wife of a character named Ross has suddenly become a lesbian. After a few funny lines, Julia and Elisabeth were hooked. Suddenly, the character named Phoebe attempted to remove the bad aura from Ross's head and made the two girls laugh out loud.
"Wow, it's so funny! How come I've never seen it before?" Elisabeth asked, slapping her thighs in laughter.
Julia was also laughing, but she quickly responded, "It should be the prime time in America. This is probably the show's pilot, otherwise, we would have surely heard of such a hilarious sitcom before."
Elisabeth nodded in agreement, "Yeah, I'll write down the name so we can keep watching in the future."
While the two were talking, Ross on the TV said to his sister Monica, "I don't want to be single. I just want to be married again."
As soon as his voice fell, the sound of footsteps sounded. Soon, the door of the coffee shop was pushed open and a bride in a wedding dress walked in, causing everyone to look at Ross with surprise.
Immediately, Chandler waved his hand expectantly to the door and said loudly, "And I just want a million dollars!"
This time, of course 'the wish' was not fulfilled.
"Hahaha, it's… it's so funny," Elisabeth held her stomach and began to guffaw. After a few moments, she raised her head and glanced at Julia next to her, only to find that her eyes were open wide in shock.
"Hey, Julia, what's the matter with you?" Elisabeth poked at Julia's waist with her finger.
Julia pointed to the TV screen and said, "Look, that... the bride in the wedding dress is Jennifer Aniston."
Elisabeth looked back at the screen and casually nodded, "Yeah, she's a beautiful girl, but what's the matter?"
"You... you don't remember, Liz?" Julia quickly spoke, "Jennifer Aniston, she is that guy's girlfriend. In other words, this show is the one that he directed some time ago."
Elisabeth's eyes slowly opened wider, recalling a few shots in Running Out of Time, there was indeed a scene that had the show running on a TV, "Friends?"
Julia nodded slightly. She usually kept an eye out for news related to Eric. Therefore, when Eric began to promote the show, she memorized its name.
Elisabeth looked at Julia for a few moments before pouting her tiny mouth in dissatisfaction and said, "Why is he everywhere?!"
Julia also smiled and said, "If I recall correctly... it seems that today is indeed the date when the pilot episode of Friends is set to air."
***
Because of the new information they learnt, although the two girls smiled from time to time, they did not laugh as much as they had in the beginning, but their eyes also never left the TV screen, even when the commercial break took place they didn't change channels.
Near the end of the second episode, Rachel, played by Jennifer Aniston, called her ex-bridesmaid to "wish" her that the child born to her ex-fiancé would be ugly and bald like its dad.
Elisabeth quickly said, "This woman is so cheap. I don't like her.