CHAPTER 10 #2
Brunch is an infinitely better choice, and Arthur even gives me some of his bacon, which is true friendship. He looks very serious while chewing his French toast. ‘Bacon is the best food group.’
I laugh. ‘You know what? I think you’re right.’
‘You’ll find I often am.’
‘Oh, fuck off. You just tried to get me to ride a bike. You have no standing here.’
‘If you’d just kept an open mind. Spin is known to increase cardiovascular health and lower your blood pressure…’
My glare stops him. ‘Do not try the hard sell on me, buddy. We can circle back to the synergies later. If it’s so incredibly good, I take it you have a membership?’
‘No,’ he says, unashamed of the hypocrisy. ‘I’m a yoga guy. Run sometimes.’
I let out a childish whine. ‘Why didn’t you take me to a yoga class, then?’
‘Next time.’ He shoves a large piece of bacon and toast in his mouth, and I watch him struggle to get it under control.
Sometimes I don’t think before I speak, which is why I ask, ‘Does that mean you’re super bendy?’ And he nearly spits out the half-chewed mouthful. He takes a long drink of water to buy himself some time and I watch his throat work as he gulps it down in rhythmic waves.
‘I didn’t mean for that to sound so inappropriately sexual,’ I say. I’m not entirely sure how else it could sound, though. ‘What…got you into yoga?’
He chuckles at my backtrack. ‘I am actually quite bendy. You should see me do the limbo.’ Yes. I would like to see that. ‘My older twin sisters are really into it, and it’s basically the only way I can see them both regularly and at the same time.’
‘I didn’t know you had siblings.’ I kind of say it to myself because how fucked up is it that he knows my deepest, darkest insecurities, but I don’t know his basic life information?
‘I didn’t tell you,’ he says simply.
‘I didn’t ask,’ I frown.
‘We don’t need to know everything about each other all at once. We’ve still got loads to learn about you.’ He needs to stop saying profound things when I can see bits of chewed egg in his mouth. It really ruins the effect.
I tilt my head, considering him. ‘You know, I can see it now. Youngest only boy. Two older sisters who were basically two additional mothers. I bet you grew up footloose and fancy free.’ He laughs.
‘I don’t know about that. They used to pay me to do their house jobs until I learned that they were stooging me and only paying me ten per cent of the pocket money they got for the jobs. Joke’s on them, though. Jeanne couldn’t use an iron until she was twenty-three.’
‘Well, that just shows good entrepreneurial spirit.’
‘My father said roughly the same thing. Then he offered me the jobs direct at double what I was making before because he argued that he was losing money on the middlewomen.’
‘But he was still paying you less than what he paid each of them individually?’
‘It took me another year to figure that out and renegotiate. But what about you?’ he asks.
‘What about me?’ I can guarantee that supply-side economics and salary negotiation played no part in my childhood. I am very good, however, at deciding when to hit and when to stay in a game of blackjack.
‘Siblings?’
‘I’m an only child,’ I say. Deliberately casual. Super chill. ‘What was it like growing up with twins and not being one of them?’ If he notices my deflection, he’s polite enough not to comment.
Apparently, it’s not at all like I imagined because while older sisters are one thing, older twin sisters are a whole other situation.
Arthur refers to Morgana and Jeanne as ‘agents of chaos’, but his smile as he says it means he really loves them.
Aside from savvy financial dealings, they leaned a little too hard into being named after historical witches (a carryover from their mum’s flirtation with Wicca in the eighties) and used him on a rotating basis for spell practice (‘They were good at making me fly’), potions practice (‘Only one trip to the ED’) and as a cat (‘That was actually quite nice’).
Maybe it’s the look of horror on my face, but he rushes to assure me that he found ways to get his own back (‘Which became much easier once I turned fifteen and started growing’).
He opens his phone and shows me a picture of them at a Halloween party, he in a shark onesie flanked by two identical witches in black hats and long lacy dresses.
Oh. When he leans over to show me the photo, our knees brush under the table.
But when he takes his phone back, he doesn’t take the knee with him.
Our knees are just touching under the table now.
Should I tell him? No, of course he already knows.
I shouldn’t draw attention to it, but the longer neither of us subtly moves our knee away the weirder it’ll be when we do.
‘So, will our next outing be a yoga date?’ I ask to distract myself.
‘I reckon we can swing that,’ he says.
‘Bee would be totally into it.’
He pauses, placing his knife and fork together on his empty plate. ‘Maybe you and I can go. Without them.’
Hey gal! It’s my birthday next week, and I’ve
decided to go paintballing tomorrow because
there are no events on, and everyone can
come. You in?
The little voice that lives in the back of my head that sounds like Bee scoffs at the idea of paintball: a bit juvenile, yeah? But it’s getting easier to put that voice on mute when it’s so hard to catch the real thing these days.
Bee and William have apparently discovered the untold benefits of dating by themselves and have been going without me and Arthur more often than not (Spin did, in fact, prove to be good for something).
A new voice has entered the chat, and she can only list the pros.
Pro: someone (Nicole) actually invited me to something.
Pro: this suggests she and I have successfully made the transition from work friends to at least friendly acquaintances, if not outright friends.
Pro: in my mission to say yes more, I have something to actually say yes to (because it’s all well and good to make such a resolution, but it is predicated on someone actually asking the question in the first place.
No, it hasn’t even occurred to me that I could do the asking.
Not a real-world proposition). Pro: even if all aforementioned pros were not a factor, this is an infinitely better option than sitting at home by myself.
Potential con, she whispers. I was asked out of politeness. Evidence suggests that this is unlikely, but not impossible.
Regardless, a response requires the perfect balance of enthusiasm and nonchalance, like this happens to me every day.
That sounds great!
That isn’t a useful text. That’s a wordier equivalent of ‘k’. It’s the thumbs-up emoji of responses.
What time?
And where?
What do I wear to paintball?
Okay, now I look deranged. Quadruple text? Fuck off, Gertrude.
Nicole is kind enough not to comment. Maybe she attributes the bad texting form to my extreme old age—twenty-two and twenty-eight being an absolute chasm at her age.
My house at 8 tomorrow! We have a bus!
Wear something you’re not attached to!! See
you then!!!
Should I be using more exclamation marks?
She already has a bus organised, which could suggest I’m a last-minute invite to fill a spot.
Or did Nicole really decide to do this last minute and just use her ample resources to get what she wants because booking a last-minute birthday on the fly is actually possible when one has said resources?
I don’t really want to know, but have enough self-awareness to realise I am absolutely going to say something unsubtle to someone in an attempt to try to find out how long they’ve known about the event.
Or maybe I could take a leaf out of Nicole’s book and just do life with more exclamation points.
‘Where are you going?’ Bee asks as we pass each other in the hallway, both dressed in activewear.
I don’t want to tell her it’s paintball. ‘Nicole’s birthday party,’ I say.
No response.
‘Nicole from work.’
After a few seconds, she raises an eyebrow. ‘How nice. You’ve certainly been busy with all of them lately.’
In the end I spend most of the day acting like a child high on red cordial, because it’s not even an exaggeration to say it’s one of my favourite days.
It feels like every children’s birthday party—every sleepover, bowling party, makeover party, Macca’s party—that I have never been invited to, much less had of my own, wrapped up in one day.
Nicole has managed to pull together twenty-odd friends.
(Actually on short notice—and I didn’t have to ask; someone laughed at how chaotic Nicole was to set this up last minute.
Apparently it’s a habit. The knowledge allows me to exhale, but then immediately makes me panic again.
I’m in Nicole’s top twenty?) I know about half of them from work.
Stewart hands me a mimosa to enjoy while we wait for the bus to arrive, and I meet Reg’s husband, José.
True to his profession (Pilates instructor) he likes to manoeuvre people into positions as needed.
He also says to me, when I flinch at him getting dangerously close to my butt, ‘I’m not gonna touch you there.
Noooooo way, José.’ I decide I love him.
Stewart gives me a long-winded update of his torrid love life, which has really gotten out of control since the last time he saw me.
I imagine most people would have zoned out halfway through, but I’m too thrilled he wants to tell me, even if it’s just my lack of discouragement that spurs him on.