Chapter 9
9
“ You agreed to do what ?” said Nathalie.
It was the middle of the week, a few days after the V because he wasn’t on Facebook, Renee couldn’t even stalk him online. It was, Nathalie declared, becoming an unhealthy obsession.
“It’s time to get over him,” she decreed. “We need to cleanse your spirit.”
She officiated at the ceremony, watching sternly as Renee burnt photos of herself and Ket Siong together, printed off from her phone for the purpose.
“This is crazy. Why am I doing this?” Renee grumbled, but Nathalie was justified by the results. Three weeks later Derek Lim had asked Renee out, and they’d ended up dating for almost two years. They’d only broken up in the end because Derek wanted to further his studies in New York and neither of them was up for a long-distance relationship.
“I can’t believe you got me to do that,” said Renee now, shaking her head.
“I thought it worked. But clearly it has not,” said Nathalie. “Because not only has Ket returned, you took him home and slept with him—”
“Shh!” Renee glanced around the café. Her Instagram follower base was mostly Southeast Asian, but there were times people recognised her in public, even in London. She said, in a low voice, “You’re always saying a rebound is the best way to get over an ex.”
“Not a rebound with your first love! Your first love who dumped you in the worst way possible!”
“I thought you’d approve. It’s a flex, if you think about it,” argued Renee. “Twenty-year-old me would be freaking out.”
“Twenty-year-old you would be pinning wedding inspo,” said Nathalie. “No, I do not approve. If you had left it at the hookup—yes, fine. I assume he is hot and not, like, portly with a receding hairline.”
Renee nodded, though she felt she was being a true friend in refraining from pointing out that “portly with a receding hairline” was not an inaccurate description of Nathalie’s husband, with whom Nathalie had as passionate a sex life as two sixty-hour-a-week jobs and a three-year-old allowed for.
“You know how you were saying how beautiful Ket Siong was back then?” Renee smiled reminiscently. “You should see him now.”
Jason was pretty, and worked out in accordance with the demands of his job, but his audience favoured the ethereal look. Ket Siong, too, had been on the slender-brooding-artist side of attractive ten years ago, but that had changed. He’d always been tall; now he was broad in proportion.
“I think he must have gotten into the gym since uni,” added Renee.
“I have changed my mind. He was not beautiful. He was a dick. A poop emoji with hair,” said Nathalie.
But as Renee expected, she couldn’t resist. After a moment she said, “Do you have photos? You didn’t take a selfie with him? Oh, and of course he is not on social media.”
She let out a sigh of thwarted nosiness. “I’ll take your word for it that he is not ugly. That is good, so far as it goes. But this seeing him again, being ‘friends’”—Renee could hear the quotation marks in Nathalie’s voice—“that is much further than it should go. You can’t be friends.”
“Why, because I’m a straight woman and he’s a straight man? Well, a man attracted to women,” Renee amended conscientiously, thinking of Derek. “He might be bisexual.”
“No. Because it’s Ket ,” said Nathalie. She was so cross she downed the remainder of her beetroot latte without even grimacing. She patted her mouth with a napkin, continuing, “He broke your heart! Do you think that’s a good foundation for friendship?”
Renee had known she would come in for a telling-off when Nathalie heard about Ket Siong, but she felt injured. Did Nathalie think she hadn’t changed at all from the naive twenty-year-old who’d had her heart broken?
Sure, thinking about that night with Ket Siong made her giddy and warm and smug. But who wouldn’t feel like that about getting off with a hot guy? It didn’t have to mean anything. It didn’t mean anything. Renee was one hundred percent in control of the situation.
“That was a long time ago,” she said. “We’re both adults now. There’s no reason we can’t decide to let go of all that baggage.”
“Ket only came up with that line about being friends when you said you weren’t up for a relationship,” said Nathalie. “I thought you learnt your lesson about being friends with guys who only want to sleep with you.”
That was a hit. Renee winced. She wasn’t proud of that phase of her late teens and early twenties, before she’d grown out of appreciating the perverse validation of men feeling entitled to her body, and pruned guys like that out of her social circle.
Nathalie pursued her advantage. “Remember all the whining about friend zones?”
“Ket Siong isn’t like that,” said Renee weakly.
“Only because you liked him! And you still have a big old crush on him. Admit it.”
“No, I don’t,” said Renee, but she didn’t sound convinced, even to herself.
Maybe she did have a tiny crush on Ket Siong. It would explain the way her heart skipped whenever she thought about their upcoming non-date.
But even if that was true, it was no big deal. It wasn’t like she was in love with Ket Siong. This was probably just her psyche’s way of distracting her while her ego recovered from the Jason breakup.
“Anyway,” said Renee, “so what if I do? I’m allowed crushes.”
Nathalie shook her head. “Your terrible taste in men…”
“You liked Ket Siong. You kept telling me to go after him, back then!”
“He was so soft-spoken he fooled me,” said Nathalie. “Then he messed you around and I realised he was no different from all the other jerks.”
“We were just kids. We both made mistakes,” said Renee. She remembered what Ket Siong had said. “But we were good as friends. That part worked.”
Nathalie leaned back in her adorable but uncomfortable wooden chair, which looked like it had done duty in a primary school in a previous life. She crossed her arms, dissatisfied. “You will not listen to me.”
“It’s a morning at a museum. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“He could break your heart again. I deal with enough bodily fluids from Thomas, I don’t need you sobbing all over my clothes, too.” Nathalie sighed. “Thomas wiped his nose on my red DVF dress the other day. You know the new one, with the flowers?”
“And the cute flared sleeves,” confirmed Renee, adding, with feeling, “That’s horrific. How much was the dress?”
“Too much,” said Nathalie darkly. “Thomas is lucky he’s so cute.”
Renee considered her options. She wasn’t about to persuade Nathalie that hanging out with Ket Siong was a good idea. But there must be some way to reassure her best friend that her decision-making skills could be trusted—more, at least, than those of a three-year-old with no respect for fashion.
Renee had fallen in love with Ket Siong once before and suffered the consequences. What better inoculation could there be against her developing feelings again? Looked at that way, Ket Siong was the safest guy she could be spending time with right now.
“You don’t need to worry,” she told Nathalie. “I’m not going to break my heart. I didn’t even cry on your shoulder when Jason broke up with me.”
Nathalie sat up. “Yes, why didn’t you? You should have told me. I could have taken you out to get smashed.”
“I was busy,” Renee reminded her. Despite herself, she felt a little smile curve her lips at the recollection of what she’d been busy with.
Her mind threw up an image of Ket Siong from that night: shirtless, looking up at her from between her knees with that breathtaking intensity peculiar to him. Her cheeks warmed.
Nathalie did not miss this. She looked forbidding. Then—even more alarmingly—she brightened.
“When is it you are seeing Ket again?” she said. “Saturday? Great. I’ll come.”
Renee stared. “What?”
“I like Rembrandt. All those cute little old men in hats.” Nathalie started tapping at her phone, pulling up the exhibition web page.
“But you hate museums,” said Renee. “You say it’s like going to an art zoo.”
“Let’s have lunch after,” said Nathalie. “What about Roka? I’ve been craving Japanese. I can book. Is Ket coming, or can we ditch him?”
“Who’s going to look after Thomas?” tried Renee, though she was conscious the note of desperation in her voice was far from dignified.
“He’s got two parents,” said Nathalie, mildly surprised. “Jeroen doesn’t have any plans this weekend.” She pinned Renee with a penetrating look. “There’s no reason I can’t come, is there? I was friends with Ket, too, before he turned out to be a cad. Of course, if it was a date, I would not dream of intruding.”
In spite of Renee’s exasperation, Nathalie’s dogged support warmed her. After all, Nathalie had been friends with Ket Siong, too, originally. Renee tended to forget.
She’d definitely got Nathalie in the breakup, if you could even call it a breakup. It wasn’t like she and Ket Siong had ever actually dated.
She could see why Nathalie was concerned, to be fair. Renee’s record with Ket Siong was not such as to fill her friend with confidence that she wouldn’t get overinvested.
“You become more of a terrible Asian auntie by the day,” said Renee, giving up. “You’ll have to buy your own tickets. Ket Siong’s already booked for the ten-thirty entry.”
Nathalie might fulminate all she liked, but she could be trusted to be civil to Ket Siong in person. And maybe she was right. Having her there would take the meetup further away from any possible date vibes—establish it on the right footing, as a platonic hangout between people who liked each other but had no plans to sleep with each other (again).
“Thank you,” said Nathalie placidly. “I will.”