Chapter 8
Ada
“Decided what to upload next?” Krissy asks, wiping down the booth closest to mine.
“You can’t post that one,” she’d yelled at me Tuesday morning while I was lying hungover in her bed.
“Ah, it’s fine,” I told her. “Just close your eyes and think of Will Sharpe.”
She scrunched her face, then went for a shower without saying anything. A response I always interpret as tacit agreement to carry on doing whatever it is I’m doing.
“Something starring Cece’s ass, probably,” I say to Krissy, scanning my schedule. “Unless you want to film a pint-pour? The internet’s weirdly obsessed with cascading liquids.”
Krissy smirks. “I know what the internet’s really obsessed with…”
I roll my eyes. She means the video of me, braless, in Cece’s tiniest Afterglow singlet, shaking a martini. Shockingly, its popularity has nothing to do with James Bond’s preferred cocktail.
I want Stabbies to get huge online, but that’s hardly why I posted my boobs on main. I’ve followed every guy in me and Cece’s year at Pukekohe High, and their interest in my ‘bartending skills’ is unbelievable. If you were born yesterday.
Still, even I’m stunned by how thirsty some of my ex-classmates are being.
During school, I was considered an exotic novelty at best. Now, half the dudes on my revenge list are in my DMs. Say what you will about the Kardashians, but they definitely swung the beauty needle toward dark-haired curve machines.
Not that I’m especially flattered by my new fan club.
Pukekohe guys would fuck a toilet if you put a bra on it.
Still, none of my targets have come to visit me at Stabbies yet.
They’re playing it cool. Despite what I told Krissy, I probably should have posted another video of me tonight.
Shields are best made of what you already have.
Same goes for weapons. And if titty-shaking is what’s gonna bring all the dogs to the yard, I’ll shake all night.
Unfortunately, my antics have attracted canines I didn’t expect. Tristan Taylor of ‘Cece’s brother’ fame messaged me when my martini video hit fifteen thousand likes:
Long time no see, Addy. How you doing?
I’d be better if he fell in a hole, but I didn’t say that.
I just blocked him and went back to pretending he didn’t exist. I’m attempting the same strategy with Jake Graves-Holland, but less effectively.
I stashed his Euterpe card in my luggage, but I keep pulling it out and staring at it.
Same with the Virginia Woolf novel. He hearted a bunch of Stabbies content, but not my martini video.
I know because I scrolled through the likes for eighty-one humiliating minutes checking.
…Which might be why I got drunk last night, unblocked him, and sent him a picture of my tits.
A second later I had a pin drop to his Herne Bay address:
Those better be in my face in the next twenty minutes, or there’ll be trouble, Renaldo.
I deleted the app and threw my phone across the bar, so now I guess I’m in trouble. Not that I need Jake to tell me that.
I don’t know why I’m so hung up on him. No one who does that corny, book-buying shit hasn’t done it a million times before. Jake’s a pro rugby player for fuck’s sake. He’s probably been with a dozen girls since me.
Men want what they can’t have, and they project what they can’t have onto what they don’t know.
Models. Strippers. Chicks they never talked to at school.
I can be unknowable and unhaveable… for, like, four hours.
Then I’ll get wasted, start yelling about Nannerl Mozart, and the illusion will be broken.
“Men go to bed with Gilda but wake up with me,” Rita Hayworth once said. But I’m no Rita Hayworth. Just a neurodivergent band dork who vapes like a chimney and can’t maintain eye contact without half a dozen drinks inside her. Whatever Jake thinks he sees in me, it isn’t real.
I taste a bloody tang and realise I’m biting the inside of my cheek.
I unclench my jaw and disinfect with tequila, scrolling my photo library until I find a cute shot of Cece and Davis.
She’s mixing an Angel’s Milk mojito, and he’s smiling at her like she just invented blowjobs.
How does Cece not realise they’re perfect for each other?
My plan to get her and Davis fucking is going about as well as my sex-revenge.
Maybe a photo of them looking adorable, and the subsequent ‘couple?’ comments, will push the boat out and turn Will Sharpe into a distant memory.
“Whaddya think?” I say, turning my phone to Krissy. “Cece and Davis, two hot people who look hot together in a bar that barely gets anyone killed.”
“It’s great! You should be a professional… whatever you’re doing right now. You’re so good at this social media stuff.”
“Thanks.” I attempt a smile, and the second Krissy turns away, it slides off my face. I am good at social media stuff. I’m good at plenty of things. But I was only ever great at the flute.
It was my therapy. My outlet. The one thing that made me feel completely free and totally in control at the same time. Until I met Name Forever Redacted.
When we first got together, he told me it was my music that made him fall for me.
But slowly, it became clear that wasn’t true.
My rehearsals went too long. My orchestra friends were fake.
My compositions were pretentious. Every note that came out of my mouth and through my flute was wrong.
One day, I realised there were no more compliments where NFR was concerned, only criticisms, and my Autistic brain—ever the dutiful student when it came to being loved—had memorised every one.
I couldn’t win, so I stopped playing the flute.
First at concerts, then rehearsals, then altogether.
I take another slug of tequila and count backwards.
Fifteen months since my last performance.
Eleven since I last held my flute. Just thinking about going upstairs and touching it makes me nauseous.
The silence that started in Name Forever Redacted’s apartment followed me to Auckland, and it feels permanent.
I tell anyone who asks, and there aren’t that many, that I’m ‘on hiatus.’ The truth is, I don’t love music anymore.
I can barely stand it. And what good is a musician who can’t stand music?
The closest I came to wanting to play was that brief flicker when Jake showed up at Stabbies, and it vanished the second he left.
I take a long drag on my vape, the tragic understudy for the ten-thousand-dollar wind instrument gathering dust under Cece’s spare bed. I started sucking the douche-kazoo around the same time I put down the flute. I clearly have an oral fixation. It would be funny if it weren’t so depressing.
I can’t make myself play the flute. I can’t convince Cece to date someone who doesn’t suck. I can’t stop vibrating myself to the memory of Jake Graves-Holland fingering me in a rideshare. What can I do?
Not quit drinking, apparently. My tequila’s gone, so I head for the bar.
“Hey!” Cece says when she sees me. “You’ll never guess what happened!”
I settle onto a bar stool. It’s too much to hope she’s realised Davis is the love of her life and is already pregnant with his child. “What’s up?”
“Have you checked Instagram lately?”
Not since last night and the ‘Jake naked boobs’ mistake, but I was going to have to when I post the Davis and Cece picture anyway. “Gimme a sec.”
She pours me a Cuervo as I redownload the app. My stomach gives an annoying flutter as I enter my password. I ignore my loaded inbox and head straight for the Stabbies account.
“Hey! We’re up three thousand followers! Is that what you meant?”
“No. I mean, that’s amazing, but I meant Will Sharpe commented on my beer picture! He said the bar looks awesome!”
Cece falling for Davis was always a long shot, but this is a real kick in the guts. I reach for my phone to check said beer picture. “A bot-level comment from a dweeb? Huzzah!”
Cece gasps. “How can you even say that? It proves Will’s interested in my business!”
I love Cece too much to respond, No, darling, it proves he radiates massive ‘I think being a landlord is a real job’ energy. Though viewing Will Sharpe’s actual comment only further validates my theory:
Bar looks pretty good. Congrats, Cee.
Pretty good? Shut the fuck up, Will. You sell third-rate cars for a living. And you’re a nutsack.
I set down my phone and watch Cece stack the industrial dishwasher, her cheeks pink and eyes dreamy. I half expect cartoon bluebirds to fly through the window and start helping.
“Cecelia,” I say after a healthy swallow of tequila. “What do you actually like about Will Sharpe?”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I said. Why him? Even after all this time? Why now?”
Her face goes soft. “Oh, he’s so sweet and funny, and he loves nature.”
I burst out laughing. “You hate nature.”
“I do not! I love the outdoors!”
“Wine tours don’t count, my guy.”
Cece isn’t listening. She’s gazing into the middle distance like she’s in The Sound of Music.
“I know exactly when I fell for Will. Back at school,” she breathes. “I just never told you because… well… you didn’t know Will like I do.”
And hopefully I never have to, because he’s about to unexpectedly choke on a chicken wing and die. Still, I want to hear this Will Sharpe story more than I want to insult the prick. “So, what happened?”
She fidgets with a dishcloth, twisting it around her fingers. “Do you really want to know?”
“Of course.” Maybe she found out Will’s hung like a donkey or something that makes sense…
“So, I was fourteen. It was before you came to school and my Mum and Dad were away, so Tristan—”
Long time no see, Addy. How you doing?
“—threw a party at our house, and all the popular people were hanging out downstairs, but Tristan—”
Long time no see, Addy. HOW YOU DOING?