CHAPTER 8 #2
The synth beats of ‘SexyBack’ pulse through the room.
William isn’t a half-bad singer, when he gets close enough to the microphone to be heard.
Bee certainly doesn’t think so, shimmying and throwing her hands up and around from her seat.
She is a particular fan of the many, many body rolls.
Although I don’t want to be judgmental, and have no right to be given that my karaoke experience is precisely two songs long, this isn’t really the crowd-pumping song I expected it to be.
There’s a lot of lyric-less music in between each exhortation to get our sexy on, and while the music spends thirty-odd seconds running down at the end, William sits down to a congratulatory kiss from Bee who, bolstered by her man’s performance, gets up shouting, ‘My turn!’
Her selection of ‘Barbie Girl’ is pretty on-brand. She wore pink for weeks when the movie came out. She even has a knock-off of that Chanel necklace Margot Robbie wore in the movie.
Bee has always been a natural dancer, or maybe she’s just good at making it look natural, which may be the same thing.
Her moves are fluid, boneless, and she tosses her head back with the serenity that comes from knowing your body is appealing to everyone who looks at it.
William is definitely appealed. He can’t appeal his eyes off her.
(If my dad was the kind of guy who made dad jokes, he would like that one.) He even joins in as her Ken at the right moment, getting up to grind on her. Ahh, ahh, ahh yeah.
‘Oh, I’m having so much fun!’ Bee yells into the microphone, causing feedback to emit.
‘Well, Barbie, we’re just getting started,’ William replies in a deep, rumbling voice.
There’s a collective sigh. Even the room itself seems to sag. The weird first-date energy has left the building and karaoke has worked its magic.
Bee and I sit together on the couch cackling as William and Arthur slug through ‘Dead or Alive’.
I really question William’s choice of ‘It Wasn’t Me’.
Is it the sketchy subject matter or the wildly inappropriate fake accent in the rap?
Bee is consistent in her breathy pop vibes (one could argue that Britney’s ‘Everytime’ is a bit of a mood killer, though), while I’m a jukebox who lets Arthur choose the songs.
He has a little too much fun with it. The MC Hammer probably isn’t necessary.
I manage to wrangle Bee into a mostly mumbled rendition of ‘Untouched’ (our brains can’t quite match up with our mouths by that point, but we mostly remember the routine we did for the Year 11 talent show), but all four of us are unstoppable once the Celine Dion comes out.
There is a direct correlation between how full the little glass table is of empty jugs and shot glasses and the increased quality of our performances.
The waiters have for some reason stopped clearing the empties as they bring in new jugs.
The table is a lake of spillage that drips onto the floor, with jugs and glasses floating gently across the surface.
But we don’t care because we are international pop stars.
‘Would you sing with me, Bianca?’ William asks, extending his hand to her where she sits. She giggles and takes it.
Their rendition of ‘I’m Too Sexy’ is straight-up indecent.
This can’t be done in public. In my vodka haze, I chuckle at the thought of security guards watching the CCTV and blushing at William and Bee crawling on the filthy floor towards one another, before the microphones are abandoned and they just start making out.
That gunk is going to be hard to wash out of their knees.
‘Okay!’ Arthur yells over the music. ‘Why don’t you two get some air?
Some water?’ He pulls on the back of both of their tops.
They are silent but compliant as they leave, only a hint of shame in their posture.
Arthur grins at me, eyes slightly glazed but his whole face lit up with joy, then grabs the nearest microphone to start a dramatic performance of ‘Go the Distance’.
Walking into a karaoke room is like falling into a vortex.
Is it midnight? Is it three in the afternoon?
I imagine it would be a massive mind-fuck to come here during the day, because the concept of time doesn’t exist. It has been both five hours and five minutes.
Did Arthur extend the time without us knowing?
But also, how is there not enough time for the list of tracks that remain to be tackled?
The back of my throat burns. I’m going to pay for it tomorrow. I don’t care.
‘I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun!’ I shout at Arthur. He grins in response and turns to the screen. It looks like he’s swiping and moving things around. Then he turns back to me as an acoustic guitar intro starts.
Oh my god it’s Enrique, and Arthur’s holding out a hand to me.
He’s asking me would I dance if he asked and our fingers intertwine and…
yes. Yes, I would. I definitely haven’t spent any time considering it, but his hand feels warmer than I imagined.
Stronger. He tugs me a little bit closer every time he goes for a high note that he never quite hits.
Because you can’t just half-ass Enrique, I’m learning. Enrique demands your full commitment. And so you give your full commitment. I pull Arthur’s hand back just as hard. Throw my head back to belt out my own pitchy moan.
But then there’s the quiet part. We’re singing at a whisper. Words of love, words of passion. They are words, I know, just words. Not long ago we were singing about wet-ass pussies. Just more words.
But he is looking at me. Won’t stop staring at me. And he’s not smiling anymore. Words can’t just be words when his eyes look like that. If I didn’t know better, I would think he means what he is singing.
It really is a lot of very intense eye contact. Especially while telling me he just wants to hold me. He could do anything he wanted to me with those hands.
Not that I’m any better. Eye contact is for two people, and it won’t be me who breaks it. I might even be squeezing his hand back harder, like it’s the only thing tethering me to reality.
We’re nearly nose to nose now, sweat pooling between our hands and my skin itches like my body is trying to burst out of it. For some reason I’m only able to take short breaths between each line. Perhaps it’s poor breathing technique, but I don’t think so.
We sing the final words.
Then oppressive silence. But our hands are still clasped, held to his damp T-shirt.
I can feel his heart racing beneath his heaving chest, same rhythm as mine.
And he still hasn’t looked away. He looks like he wants to say something, but it gets stuck in the back of his throat.
I want to know what he’s thinking, crawl inside his mind and take a look around.
No, I don’t want to know what he’s thinking. What is he thinking?
The room shatters with the opening to ‘Shake It Off’. Turning towards the door, giving me a reason to move my hand, I say, way too loud, ‘Oh! I wonder where the other two have got to!’ And then I race out without looking back.
Ah. The light in the hallway is blinding but the silence, the rush of cold air, is heaven as I go ostensibly in search of Bee and William but really just move further and further from that cursed room.
The hall is empty aside from a waiter carrying a tray of half-empty pink drinks and the dregs of several espresso martinis.
I duck around the corner to find the couple in question pushed up against the wall next to the bathroom.
A bit too much tongue for my taste, but each to their own. They do not notice me.
Should I interrupt them?
No, let them go.
Oh, now it’s weird. I’ve been standing watching them for at least thirty seconds now, which is about twenty-five seconds too long.
I turn to leave. A retching sound stops me. When I turn back, William is alone with a swinging bathroom door. Then he notices me and points to the bathroom. ‘Did you want to take care of that?’ he asks. I nod and go in.
There is just enough time to overthink what had happened—not happened, nothing happened—with Arthur as I hold Bee’s hair back.
‘This is so gross,’ Bee cries into the toilet bowl, the last word being flooded by another wave of vomit. At least we’ve been drinking clear spirits…it could have been way worse.
Splash some water on her face. Pop a few mints to mask the stench on her tongue.
I wipe the eyeliner from beneath her eyes and tie her ratty hair back into a bun.
William isn’t in the hallway when we come out.
Back in the room, the volume has been turned all the way down.
William is on one end of the couch on his phone.
Arthur is at the other finishing a beer.
He looks up when we enter. William does not.
‘It’s time to go,’ I say, gesturing towards a spaced-out Bee. Arthur nods and starts to gather our jackets. ‘Make sure she has her phone, please. I am not trekking back here tomorrow to get it.’ Again.
We do not share a ride back with the guys. As our car pulls up next to us, the goodbyes between the four of us consist only of awkward waves. My hand misses his as they swipe through the air at each other.
The next day I can’t tell if Bee doesn’t actually remember how the evening ended (or began…or middled), but in the intervening hours and perhaps with the cleansing powers of the shower, she has rewritten it inside her head.
‘Last night was so much fun!’ she says over a late breakfast and coffee. (I have work later; Bee does not. I have lost my voice, and everything is coming out with a croak; Bee has not.) ‘You definitely got up and about.’ I did. ‘It must be so great not to care how you come off in public.’
I take a bite of my toast. She continues. ‘I’m a bit pissed off with Arthur, though. How did he not remember that William has stage fright? He had a very traumatic experience playing a lamb in his Year 6 musical.’
‘That sounds unpleasant.’ This is a lie. It sounds hilarious, and I make a note to ask Arthur for details…or maybe a video.
‘It was,’ she says like she was there. ‘Poor boy. Arthur is such a shit-stirrer. I think he’s jealous of William and likes to make little digs here and there to feel better about himself.’
That doesn’t sound right to me, but I don’t say anything.
‘But I was so proud of William for being the bigger man and stepping out of his comfort zone to perform. Wasn’t he good?’
‘He was! Who knew he could roll his hips like that?’
Bee smiles behind her coffee cup. ‘I did.’
‘So, maybe the experiment of Arthur organising your dates was a bit of a fail?’ I’m trying not to sound too hopeful because I’d like to go find an off-grid house in the woods just to never have to look Arthur in those overly expressive, incapable of playing it close to the chest eyes.
‘Hmm…maybe?’
‘Aren’t we, like, cramping your romantic style or something? It was cute for the first few goes, but…’ I trail off to let Bee fill in the gaps.
There’s a sly smile on her face. She puts down the coffee and folds her hands in front of her on the table to make way for proper business chat.
‘Actually, I’ve been thinking about that.
You and Arthur seem to get along well, yeah?
’ I’m not sure what Bee’s criteria for getting along well might be.
Yes, we are friends who occasionally text and are working towards a common goal.
But we also stared creepily into one another’s eyes while singing a heavily charged romantic duet before awkwardly saying goodbye and not speaking about it at all after.
Bee doesn’t know about that last part. And never will.
She leans in, a clear sign of conspiratorial girl chat.
‘Between you and me, he’s the one who insisted to William that we keep the doubles going.
’ Then she leans back. ‘William and I discussed it, and we think it’s a totally natural fit.
You get along, you’re both friends of ours.
Makes everything very simple.’ I can really only marvel at how tepid Bee’s ire towards Arthur is.
It has passed in the time it took for the idea of pairing off the chaperones to enter her head.
Oh, shit.
Oh, shit. It’s happening again. How have I allowed this to happen again? No, it’s fine. It isn’t happening. We’ve discussed this. He specifically told me that we would avoid the fake-dating scenario.
But then, is that why what didn’t happen last night had happened? Was he making a move to become my happenstance boyfriend while our friends carry on? I’m a pretty safe bet, from his perspective. Maybe he thought I’d give him a grateful blowjob.
That’s ungenerous and a completely factless assertion. He deserves better than that.
Unless I imagined anything coming from his end, in which case from his perspective I threw myself at him and he humoured me to save me from embarrassment. But why be so nice? Oh, right. Because I’m a charity case who basically forced him.
All right, there is no way in hell that I am ever going to go anywhere near Arthur in a romantic and/or sexual manner.
There will not even be a whiff of Eau de Fake Dating.
A line has been drawn. A strictly platonic line keeping us much more than a foot apart.
A line that will prevent incidental or not-so incidental touching.
Bee doesn’t wait for an answer, but presumably my consent (and Arthur’s) to this next step in our relationship isn’t required.
‘Oh my god, did I tell you that William bought my favourite body wash and face wash to keep at his house for when I’m there? Like, he just saw what was here when he stayed here and then just went and bought it. Isn’t that the sweetest thing?’
‘Absolutely! The sweetest.’
‘I think it’s really serious.’
‘I think so too. I’m happy for you, Bee.’
‘I’m happy for me too!’