CHAPTER 19
The dancefloor is the perfect mix of old and young—and in this context, I classify myself as young.
I’m surrounded by grey moustaches and Miranda Priestly haircuts on bodies that are dancing like Looney Tunes characters.
Tyler’s dad gives me an aggressive thumbs-up, which quickly morphs into the robot.
Remi’s mum is doing a forceful double fist-pump, which she unfortunately doesn’t realise is the universal sign for humping.
An old guy with a bow tie dips his wife so deep they both lose balance and fall in a sweaty heap on the floor. Everyone around them cheers.
It’s the perfect place to forget. I bounce from friend to friend, from parent to parent.
I haven’t seen these people in forever, so everyone wants to hug me mid-dance.
Nicola, who in my mind will always be the hilarious vet student who once sheep-drenched us with apple vodka before a particularly unruly toga party, loops her arm around my shoulders.
Linked up with Remi and all the other girls, we form a tangled, wobbling circle.
Nicola’s parents smother me in a sweaty sausage-arm embrace.
The boys hoist me onto their shoulders when ‘Sweet Caroline’ comes on and I distract them by pointing out the actual Caroline (my first-year table-dancing soul sister) who’s eating pickles at the grazing table.
Suddenly, another masterstroke from the DJ: ‘Uptown Funk’. It’s pumping through the speakers; the bass is rattling our eardrums. I’m wishing I knew how to moonwalk when Remi appears in front of me like a sparkling angel. ‘You ready?’ she cries.
‘I was born ready!’
Remi squats, I squat, and in perfect synchronisation, we thrust our shoulders and raise our arms above our heads, commencing what has forever been known as The Mating Dance.
We spirit-finger, we shuffle, we pop-lock-and-drop, we spin, we rebalance …
and then comes the crescendo: the part where we have to stare each other down without laughing while doing our most energetic moves.
Remi looks deep into my soul and starts humping the air.
‘Stop!’ I gasp, falling into her chest. It hasn’t even been two seconds and torrents of laughter are rocketing through me already. ‘Remi, that’s cheating! Did you and your mum plan that?!’
Remi’s arms collapse around me and she laughs into my hair. ‘Dude! It just came naturally. Humping is in our genes, obviously. But far out, I haven’t pop-locked-and-dropped in about a decade. I thought my knees were going to fail.’
I pull back and wipe a tear from my eye. ‘You should have seen your face!’
I try to steady my features so I can imitate her stone-cold stare-down, but my cheeks won’t relax and this just makes me laugh harder.
‘Oh, Remulus,’ I finally sigh, pulling her off the dancefloor with me.
‘You need to quit dermatology and become a professional dancer. Your skills are so wasted in the treatment room.’
‘Yeah, but I can get us free Botox.’
‘Oh man, are we at that stage?’
‘We’re growing up, baby!’ yells Remi over the cheers that have erupted for John Farnham. This DJ is on fire. ‘Drink?’
‘Drink!’ I agree.
All night white-shirted waiters have been circling the room, refilling champagne glasses, so the bar is only for the truly committed (aka those who can’t wait for a serendipitous refill).
‘Two champagnes, please,’ says Remi.
‘Remulus, I don’t want this night to end.’
‘Neither.’ Remi lays her head on my shoulder. ‘It’s been ages since we’ve properly hung out.’
‘I know. I suck. I’m the worst friend.’
‘No, you’re the best friend. You just have a shit job.’
‘But I love my job.’
‘You’re a messed-up woman.’
I groan. ‘You don’t know the least of it.’
‘So what’s the go with you and Archie?’ asks Remi, reaching across the bar to grab the two flutes of champagne.
‘Nothing,’ I reply.
Remi passes me a glass. ‘Yeah, okay,’ she says with a conspicuously elevated eye-roll.
‘What?!’
Remi bites her lip and her eyes gleam mischievously. ‘When you walked in together there was a definite vibe.’
‘Oh my god, there was not.’
Remi raises her eyebrows.
‘There was not! Maybe you’re mistaking it for a hate vibe? There were probably pretty obvious hate vibes.’ Ugh, I can feel them seeping out of my pores now. That man is so presumptuous with his little smirky smiles.
Remi lifts her glass to inspect the bubbles. ‘I don’t get why you’re so obsessed with hating him.’
I take a giant gulp of my champagne. There are many reasons why I hate Archie but listing them would be too tedious. Thankfully, the God of all DJs is on my side. He’s gone fully old school: Tina Arena—‘Sorrento Moon’. Could there be any better song in history? The unbiased answer is no.
‘Dance?’ I ask, tipping back another mouthful of champagne.
‘Dance,’ Remi agrees.
‘Until Tyler appears and I have to third-wheel.’
‘Hon, don’t stress,’ Remi reassures me. ‘Between you and me, I’ve always considered Tyler the third wheel.’
★
Normally I’m a one-drink-an-hour gal. The kind of drinker who can still drive you home and remind you to have a Hydralyte before bed.
The kind of drinker who still makes it to spin class the next morning.
Sometimes, however, particularly when I’m with the uni crowd, the units of time in which I consume my drinks seem to condense.
Dramatically. And it’s not just me. When we get together, we’re all the same. I’m hoping we grow out of it soon.
Remi and Tyler have been levitating all night.
Every time a good song comes on, they are hoisted onto a pair of shoulders so they can dance at ceiling-level while we all wave our arms around them, as though preparing for their logical next move: crowd-surfing.
It’s like they’re our sacrifices to the God of Great DJs.
And to be honest, if they were, the God of Great DJs would be stoked, because Remi and Tyler are possibly the best people ever—apart from my sister and brother and dad, of course, and all my other uni girlfriends, but yes, at this present moment, I would say Remi and Tyler might be the best two humans in history.
In fact, I need to tell them this. Right now. Yes! Right now!
I stagger towards them through the melee of bodies. ‘Guys I lovesssss youse,’ I cry, grabbing them both in a headlock. They smell like champagne. Or maybe that’s me?
Remi swings her head back and cackles. ‘We loves youse too, Camilla Parker Bowles!’
Haha, yes! I haven’t heard that nickname in forever. I throw my head back to chortle with her, and as we swing our heads back to upright, our faces smash together with a sickening crunch.
‘Jesus!’ I cry.
‘Shit!’ yelps Remi. ‘You’re bleeding!’
I lift my hands to my face and register the warm blood seeping from my left nostril. ‘I’ll nip to the bathroom!’ I yell over the music.
I dart through the crowd, clamping the bridge of my nose.
Nothing like a head injury to sharpen your senses.
The adrenaline instantly wipes the fuzziness from between my temples, restoring my twenty-twenty vision and rebooting the crisis-management server in my brain.
The blood is pooling in my hand and I can feel it trickling down my wrist towards my elbow, so I start jogging. Lucky I’m so swift on these heels.
The bathroom is at the end of a corridor towards the back of the building.
I cup my spare hand around my elbow so the excess blood doesn’t drip onto the carpet and push my shoulder against the door, forcing my way into a white-tiled room with an eighties-style floral frieze.
In one corner of the overly large space is a toilet, and in the other there’s a giant white wicker basket full of fake tree branches with LED lights on their tips.
The sink sits in a long laminate bench that runs along the length of the wall opposite the door, under a giant poster that says Life’s a Beach.
I can’t tell if it’s the crappiest excuse for a powder room in an otherwise super upmarket clubhouse, or some kind of post-modern interior decorating genius.
The sounds of the dancefloor are muffled by the closed door and the air is cooler in here too. I kick off my heels and shove my face over the sink to scrub off the blood. Rivulets of reddened water swirl down the plughole. There’s so much blood, I’m not sure if Remi headbutted me or decapitated me.
A loud knock rattles the door.
‘Occupied!’ I yell. My nose is still under the running water.
‘Millsy, it’s me.’
‘Oh.’ I twist the tap off and grab a bunch of paper towels to shove around my nose, which is a completely useless exercise—I can already feel the blood dampening the paper. ‘What are you doing here?’
Archie opens the door and sticks his head through. ‘I’ve had a few head knocks before. I thought I could help.’
At my defeated shrug, he walks inside, closing the door behind him.
‘Life’s a beach, hey?’ he says.
I narrow my eyes. ‘That would have been awful even if it wasn’t directly plagiarised from the wall.’
Archie smiles. ‘Let me see how bad it is.’
‘Is the amount of blood not a clear indication?’
‘Hmmm.’ Archie frowns at the wad of bloodied paper I’m holding against my nose. He pulls a paper towel from the dispenser, rips it in half and starts rolling it into a cigarette shape. ‘Use this.’
‘Huh?’
He taps me softly on the nose.
‘Oh, I get it.’ Biting my lip in concentration, I take the rolled-up paper from him, remove the paper towels from my nose, and then gently slide his creation into my left nostril.
I move my hand away and bob my head to see if it will fall out, but no.
It fits perfectly. It is a very odd, Cinderella-esque moment.
‘See?’ asks Archie. ‘Good, right?’
His face is so earnest I have to laugh. ‘Thanks Archibald, but I can hardly go back out to the dancefloor with paper towel up my nose.’
Archie smiles. ‘So we wait.’