Chapter 1 #2
I smile and wave. Aggie’s been the head cook at Stabbies for decades, and all the customers love her.
She’s middle-aged, butternut orange, wears miniskirts, fishnet stockings, and more leopard print than leopards.
I’ve grown to adore her, too, but she specialises in the kind of mince-heavy pub fare that makes my guts knot.
I know if I don’t get up in the next two minutes, she’ll plunk a huge plate of shepherd's pie in front of me.
“You’re getting too skinny,” she’ll accuse. “Don’t wanna lose that fantastic arse. Men love a girl with a nice round arse.”
Men aside (who cares what they love? As far as I can tell, it’s just sports betting and lies), I don’t have much of an appetite these days. Being constantly hungover and vaping does that to a gal.
As Aggie’s kitchen banging intensifies, I get to my feet with a groan.
I look okay for a ghost in a shell, but I feel like a busted mannequin.
My days of being a Pilates junkie are so far away it’s laughable.
I wander into the main bar, tequila bottle in hand and find Cece pouring a Guinness.
Davis is by the door, arms folded, watching Cece pour a Guinness.
He gives me a dirty look and points to a tiny corner booth—Ada’s playpen, as Cece dubbed it—and his message is crystal clear: sit down, shut up, and I won’t chuck you out for DIY bottle service.
I give him a salute and tuck myself away. I’d never tell Davis, but I’m glad he works here. With him around, I can drink and daydream the night away, knowing none of the punters will creep on me, lest he throw them through a window.
The crowd’s gotten younger since I was in the kitchen.
Not underage, but young enough to make me tired.
I don’t remember what it was like to have the energy to dance around a jukebox or give the stripper pole a few tentative spins.
I don’t remember what it was like to be excited to go out with your girlfriends on a Friday, no matter the place.
I guess that urge dissolved sometime in the past five years, just like my passion for exercise, orchestra and everything else.
I lean out of my seat and check on Cece.
She’s still behind the bar in her blue peasant blouse, and her smile looks real enough—if you don’t know her.
If you do know her, you’ll see the pinch between her brows.
I can guess what she’s thinking about: money.
Paying wages. Bar upkeep. Liquor prices increasing while she’s forced to keep drink prices the same, lest everyone sulk off to the other fifty dive bars spanning the city.
Even though said bars water down their liquor more than I water down my personality in public.
Stabbies’ door swings wide, bringing in a rush of cool air and raucous male laughter.
Suddenly, it’s lads galore. Big, tall ones in matching unicorn headbands.
My stomach clenches. It’s either a rugby night out or a bachelor party.
Or both. I reach for my vape like it’s an emergency latch and drag, blowing a quick gust into the floor.
Youths are one thing. Rugby dudes and ‘bachelors’ are a whole other kettle of fuck.
Even Davis doesn’t have the arm-power to keep them off their bullshit.
I watch as a huge redhead strides toward the bar, his drunk-ass face the same colour as his hair. “Oi, Big Dog, wadda’we gettin’?”
My blood goes cold. I know that guy. I know his voice. I know his hair. A memory slams into my brain like a locker door closing. Jeremy Applethorpe, one big hand between me and the metal protecting my books and binders. “Hey, new girl, you ever stick that flute up your pussy and play it after?”
Jeremy Applethorpe is here. In Cece’s bar.
And he’s not the only one. Behind him is Henry Bellinger, who twanged my bra strap like he was playing the guitar.
Beside him is Xavier McColl, who was perpetually interested in asking whether I fingered myself at night.
Following him are Hayden Tawera, and Fletcher Dean, and Bradley Wilson and—
“D’you like the taste of fish, Renaldo?”
“Oi, Jugsy? You got a licence to carry those things?”
“I bet her dad’s Al Qaeda. Ask her if he did 9/11.”
“I heard the psycho new girl was crying in the toilets so long Mrs. White had to go in and make sure she wasn’t slitting her wrists.”
I collapse, the cushioned booth the only thing keeping me from the floor as things I’d long squashed away surge up and over me like the waves beating the coast a mile away. These boys, these ‘bachelors,’ are from Pukekohe and for two miserable years, so was I.
Auckland isn’t just some place I’m visiting.
New Zealand isn’t just where my best friend is from.
I was fifteen when my dad got a professorship at the Manukau Institute of Technology, and it was ‘arrivederci’ to a lifetime of friends and family in Melbourne and ‘bonjourno’ to being the only wog teen on the entire North Island.
I was promptly enrolled at Pukekohe High, where I was inevitably bullied for my accent, flute-playing, big boobs, general aesthetic, and what would later go on to be diagnosed as lady-Autism.
I had one shining light in the dark: A casual gig at the newsagency, where I could escape the endless cycle of bullying, babysitting, and flute practice.
It’s where I met Cece. But home was hell, and school was worse.
I counted the days until I could leave for university.
Sometimes, when I couldn’t escape the boiling spotlight of humiliation to save myself, I counted hours. But I did escape.
I became a musician. I made a ridiculous amount of money being a musician. I had a flat in Paris, a crew of music-nerd friends, a hot British boyfriend, and a best friend back home I could call when I needed her. It should have been a happy ending.
But that’s the thing about happy endings.
Unless you’re dead, they don’t exist. It’s always the start of a new story.
In mine, the hot British boyfriend turns out to be a psychopath, and ruins the dip-shit flute-player’s career and life, and the flute-player calls her best friend sobbing and pleading for a way out.
The best friend says, Come live with me in New Zealand.
The flute-player says, Besides you, everyone I hate lives in New Zealand.
Best friend swears, No, everyone you hate is still rotting away in Pukekohe, or some other backwater that might as well be Mars.
But here they are. My former classmates. In Auckland. Alive and well and drinking beer fifteen feet away.
My palms sting. I glance down and realise I’m digging my lavender SNS-coated nails into my skin.
Across the bar, Cece’s shouts of surprise bring me to my feet.
I don’t want to run. Nothing about these men scares me now. No, the emotion electrifying every atom of my body, energising me so completely I’m surprised the booth hasn’t burst into flames, is rage.