I made a face. “Really? You’re going to do work like this?”
She rubbed her face again, nodding. “I need to try and figure out if there’s something hip and marketable about Ghana so I can make all the kids excited about buying Ghanaian diamonds for their O-M-G perfect engagements. I’ve got this weekend to figure out what it is and write it up.”
That, I could do something about. “Want some help?”
She looked at me like there was a light shining down from the heavens upon my head. “You look so different I keep forgetting you know all this stuff,” she said. “Yes, please, for the love of god, help me with this awful project.” I walked Sarah back out into the living room to get started on the research.
Gemma showed up shortly after seven with two bottles of champagne, a bag full of munchies, and her book full of unreal numbers. “Hey, guys!” she said as she dumped everything on the table. “Since it’s a Friday and we’re not out at the pub for once, I figured we could make a night of it right here, what do you say?”
We all looked up at her from our screens, and no one answered her for a second.
“That sounds like a great idea!” Bree said, but she was clearly just being supportive.
Gemma shot Sarah and me some serious side-eyes, and strode off into the kitchen, returning with some glasses. She cracked open the champagne to a celebratory pop and filled our glasses one by one with the smoking bottle. Bree watched nervously while Gemma filled up Sarah’s glass, but when Sarah didn’t drink from it, she relaxed a little. “Min’s going to buy me a Lamborghini if I ace my next Maths test,” she told Gemma, shooting me a cheeky smirk.
Gemma blinked at her for a second, and then turned to me and pretended to whisper, “So we’re aiming for a ‘B’ right?”
Sarah’s eyes were on her screen. “If you ace the test, you can have my car, Bree.” We all looked at her. She was trying to conceal a grin. “Let’s be serious: she’s very sweet, but I’m not sharing the road with someone who can’t see over the steering wheel. She’d be accidentally writing off the whole suburb.”
Bree looked scandalised. “My mum drives and she’s shorter than me!”
I leant over to her and patted her shoulder. “It’s okay, Bree, ignore them.” I paused. “We’ll buy you a booster seat, and then you can intentionally write Sarah off.”
“All this is doing is making me very determined to get my Lamborghini,” Bree warned us primly, and then got back to studying with Gemma as she ploughed into her second glass of champagne.
It wasn’t until Gemma had finished that glass that she realised none of us had drunk our first. She frowned. “You guys aren’t drinking?”
“I need to concentrate, and Min is busy,” Bree told Gemma before I could answer.
Gemma scoffed. “Fine, Sare will keep me company, won’t you, Sare?” She leant forward and pushed Sarah’s glass a little closer to her. “Bottoms up! It’s that expensive French stuff you love!”
“In a sec,” Sarah promised Gemma, and then tapped the computer she and I were looking at. “Some of us need to figure out what’s cool in Ghana. If we’re drunk, everything will be cool in Ghana, so, you know…”
We all settled back to what we were doing, and Gemma slowly worked her way through half the bottle of champagne in front of her. I was about ready to go put on another layer under my hoodie at the same time as Gemma’s jumper came off. In the process, she knocked the rest of the open bottle across the table, blushed a deep red, and we all had to quickly rescue our stuff from it while she clumsily tried to mop it up. I didn’t think half a bottle of champagne was really enough alcohol to have caused that mishap, but she stood up and put her hands on her hips anyway. “I think that’s my cue to head off,” she said, gathering up her books and bags of uneaten munchies. “Will you be okay with the rest of the exercises?” she asked Bree.
Bree didn’t look very confident. “Can you maybe check them over the weekend?”
“I’ll drop past for lunch on Sunday…?” she looked up at Sarah for confirmation that it was okay, and Sarah nodded, mid-yawn. Gemma watched her for a moment and then looked down at the full glass Sarah had in front of her. Her eyes were veiled. “Do you… drink something different these days?” she wondered, trying to sound casual as she picked up the second unopened bottle of champagne from the table. “You used to love this label at uni, didn’t you? I thought it might be kind of fun to drive across town and buy it especially, so we could drink it and study together just like old times.”
Sarah finished her yawn and shook her head dismissively. “Honestly, I’m still sick, Gem. Save it for next weekend.”
Gemma managed a smile. “Okay,” she said, resolving to be happy with that answer. “I’ll bring it around then.”
I escorted Gemma to the door while Bree was tidying up all her own stuff. “You’re not driving, I hope.”
She chuckled and shook her head. “No, I thought I’d be helping you guys drink both of these into the early hours of the morning,” she said, sighing at the full bottle in her hands. “I’m walking.”
I made a noise. “Alone at nine on a Friday night? No, you’re not. I’ll drive you,” I told her, and turned to go and grab my keys, but she stopped me.
“It’s okay, I rent a place really close by.” She cut me off when I tried to protest, concealing a smile. “It’s okay, Min.” She opened her arms, and I stepped into them to give her a hug.
“Be safe,” I told her as I stepped back and opened the door for her. She nodded, and then jogged down the stairs.
I watched her leave for a few seconds, worrying about my decision to give in and let her go home alone, and then closed the door. I was going to latch it, too, but then I realised that Rob’s boots weren’t beside it and his closet-sized man cave was dark and quiet. He wasn’t home yet.
Sarah went straight to bed without him anyway, mumbling something about Ghana still being there in the morning.
Bree was frowning about it all as we got ready for bed ourselves later. “Not that it isn’t always heaps of fun with you guys, but everyone’s being really weird,” she complained as she stripped so she could put her pyjamas on.
“I know what you mean,” I told her, checking my phone one last time for a message from Henry before I left it on my bedside table. There wasn’t one. I pulled on my own PJ pants and hurried under the doona. “Don’t worry, though. It’ll be over after Monday.”
“Will it?” Bree wondered, hopping under the blankets and cuddling up to me. “Because I think Rob will still be upset about it afterwards.”
She must have been thinking about it while we were lying there, because just as I was falling asleep, she spoke up again. “I’m sad for Rob that Sarah isn’t keeping her baby,” she decided. “But it’s also kind of good, because it’s so much fun staying here with you guys, and it would suck if we had to stop.”
I was half-asleep. “Why would Sarah not let you stay over if she had a baby?”
“It’s not that she wouldn’t let us stay over sometimes,” she said. “I mean, I’d probably babysit for her and stuff, but Rob’s man cave is tiny, isn’t it? You couldn’t fit a cot and a change table in there, let alone a whole bed for an adult. So, yeah. They’d probably need this room.”
I opened my eyes, frowning. Wow, I hadn’t even considered that angle. It made me feel uneasy for a second. Oh well, I thought after a moment, dismissing that distant what-if. I had actual stuff I needed to worry about now: like the fact it was the middle of June and I was no closer to figuring out what the hell I was going to tell Mum about Henry and me.
TEN
Rob didn’t come home until Sunday night, and when he poked his head through the back door, it looked like he had half of Sydney’s topsoil on his face and clothes. Judging by the bags under his eyes, I suspected he hadn’t spent much of the weekend sleeping either.
I paused my game and twisted on the couch towards him. “She’s in bed,” I told him, figuring he was checking for Sarah.
“And Bree went home.”
He nodded, slowly wandering in and hovering restlessly by the door. “Is Sares aggro at me for taking off for a little while?” I shook my head. He sighed, his face crumpling momentarily. “Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not going to be a dad yet,” he said, and then slunk off into the bathroom, presumably to have a shower.
I watched him disappear, resuming my game and continuing to play until the couch buckled and he returned to come and sit next to me. He smelt like soap.
“What games you got?” he asked, not looking at me.
We spent a few minutes browsing my library, and then I passed him the second controller and we played a few different multiplayers. I was about to make him an account so he could use the console by himself when he gestured at the TV.
“’HENLY’,” he read aloud from the account selection screen. “Is that, like, the Asian spelling of Henry or something?”
I winced. “Um, kind of,” I said. “It’s more of a joke, though. ’R’ and ‘L’ are the same character in Korean and his parents say his name like that.” I grinned remembering. “Also, ‘L-e-e’ sounds like ‘L-y’ so he just went with ‘Henly’, he uses it for everything.”
Rob checked out the account. “Wow. He has a lot of trophies.”
I smirked. “I have more. Way more. He’s never been able to beat me.”
Rob laughed. “Must have been hilarious watching him try!”
I smiled. It was, and every time I beat him again, I used to smugly force him to bow down on the floor and declare me the ultimate champion. As revenge, when I was off on business once, he’d snuck into my hotel room to desecrate my games shrine by putting all the titles out of alphabetical order. There was a Post-it note with “NOW WHO'S THE BOSS?” stuck to my screen.
My smile fell away as I looked across at Rob. “Yeah,” I told him. “It was great.”
I made Rob’s account for him and then stretched. It was late. “I’m probably going to head off to bed.”
He nodded, looking down at the controller. As I stood up, however, he stopped me. “Um…” I turned to look at him. “Is Sarah still going to get the…?” He trailed off, sounding cautiously hopeful.
I gave him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, Rob,” I said as he sighed down at his controller again. “You could go with her tomorrow when she gets it done, if you like?”
He shook his head. “She says the nurse won’t let the partner in if they think he has different ideas about what should happen, so, yeah…” He shrugged. “Besides, Sares didn’t really ask me. And you know what she’s like. She’ll go off at me if I just rock up.” He looked back up at me. “Are you taking her again?” I nodded, and he mirrored it. “Okay. You’ll make sure she’s okay, yeah?”
I chuckled; Sarah would hate to know two people were talking this way about her. “Yeah, of course.”
“Thanks,” he said as I headed off to my room.
Sarah’s appointment at Dr Marie was in the evening after work, and Sarah’s day must have been pretty stressful beforehand because she was a ball of fucking tension when she got into my car. She wanted to talk through her project at a hundred miles an hour all the way to the clinic and she didn’t stop as I was parking my car, either.
“Okay, forget Ghana. Be honest, Min, is Bree pissed off at me?” Sarah asked suddenly from the passenger seat as I turned off the engine. I opened my mouth to reply and she put her hand on my arm to stop me. “Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I’m too stressed out.” She withdrew her hand and sat back against the seat, exhaling. Then she squinted and looked at me again. “No, actually, I do. Is she? She was weird all weekend.”
I stared across at her. As far as I was aware, we’d been mid-conversation about the project report we’d co-written over the weekend; it was fine, but her dick Project Lead had handed it back to her to re-write some sections. The next logical step was to discuss which sections, so I had not expected the sudden 180 into a conversation about Bree. “Um. Why would Bree be—”
“—No! Stop. This is ridiculous. I’m being ridiculous. Of course she’s not, she wouldn’t keep trying to force-feed me ginger tea for nausea if she wanted me to suffer.” She turned to me, gave me a critical glare, and then shoved me. “Listen to me! You’re contagious: I never worry about stupid crap like that. Do you think I should re-write that intro, though? Because I swear to god it’s like the best intro I’ve ever done.”
I blinked. “Um, okay: back to Ghana,” I said, and then chuckled. “Honestly? I would change a few words, maybe just alter a couple of sentences, and give it back to him and say you worked on it all night. He’s wasting your time.”
Sarah gestured at me. “See? This is why you were an awesome lead.”
I privately disagreed. “Seriously, though, Sarah, you’ve got more important stuff to worry about than some power-tripping Lead’s stupid demands.”
Her jaw tightened. “I know,” she said, and that was a cue for her to check her watch. “6:53,” she read aloud, her lips pressed in a tight line. “They told me to buzz in at 7pm.” She shifted restlessly in her seat.
I reached over and squeezed her hand reassuringly. “You can call up and cancel the appointment, Sarah. You don’t have to go in.”
She didn’t look very reassured. “I know.”
“You can even make it for another day if you think you just need some more—”
“—Min,” she said, interrupting me with a tired eye roll. “I know.” Then she made a face. “Sorry, I get that you’re being supportive. I’m just…” She exhaled. “I bet I go in there and the whole thing is a total non-event where I take a pill and then it’s all over, it was just a crap couple of weeks.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just kept squeezing her hand.
After another couple of seconds, she looked at her watch and groaned. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, this is it. Wish me luck, Toyboy. See you in an hour or so.”
I managed a smile. “It’s going to be fine.”
“Famous last words,” she said with exaggerated drama on the way out of the car. I watched in the rearview mirror as she walked across the car park to the lift. After she’d stepped into it, I hopped out of the car myself.
I figured I’d just wander around the city a bit and then, on the off-chance I’d manage to feed it to Sarah after the appointment, buy some light takeaway for us for dinner.
There weren’t too many places still open on a Monday night aside from bars and restaurants, but I wandered up the road towards George Street anyway. I figured one of the larger malls might still have some shops open. I ended up being wrong, but I did get the opportunity to spend some quality time practically slobbering all over the windows at EB Games, making a few notes of titles I thought I might like to buy later. When it started to push the 45-minute mark, I decided I should probably start heading back in case Sarah got out early.
There was a restaurant I’d been to a couple of times open on the way back—Henry had taken me there years ago, I recognised it immediately—and, after several false starts, I decided that I’d grab some takeaway from it. I ordered a couple of things from the counter and looked around me. It had changed a bit since I’d last been here; they’d repainted it trendier colours and switched out the furnishings, and now it looked like the kind of place you’d bring someone to impress them, instead of the cosy family restaurant it used to be.
I had a bit of a wait while they were making our dinner, and since I wasn’t sure what the traffic was going to be like on the way home, I figured I’d just duck into the toilet.
The restaurant wasn’t big enough to have a disabled toilet; it just had two doors, M and W. After a second of deliberation I decided it was dark enough and my jacket was big enough to risk ‘M’. I still found it difficult to push the door open, though. I don’t know what I expected in a little place like this; inside, there wasn’t a gang of men with their flies open, all waiting to out me as an imposter, there wasn’t even a urinal. It was a b
it of an anticlimax, actually. There were two cubicles – probably just like the women’s—so I went into the free one and shut the door.
I’m in the men’s toilets, I thought, and felt nothing. My next thought was, Min, you’re an idiot, of course you’re in the men’s toilets.
That made me wonder about Bree’s comment about me not being in-between at all, but being on a trajectory towards full trans-man-dom, where I would take testosterone, have all of the surgeries, and end up well and truly ruining my mother’s life.
There’s no way I can tell her about any of this, I thought, and then worried about the fact I only had a month to figure out how I was going to make sure I didn’t have to. If she thought I was marrying Henry, she’d leave me alone. If I could even just get him to make one phone call to her…
After a little while I realised I’d been sitting there for ages, and so I finished up and opened the cubicle door to wash my hands and leave. There was someone standing at the mirror fixing his tie, and I tried to keep my face turned away in case I looked at all feminine.
I didn’t even make it to the hand basins when the other guy took a sharp breath. My pulse jumped. Shit, I thought, he’s onto me!
He had his back to me because he was facing the mirror, and I glanced up at it to gauge the damage. As I did, my heart stopped. The person in it was so unexpected that I almost didn’t believe it. “Henry?”
He gaped at me. “Min,” he said, frozen mid-tie straightening. For a second his face lit up, and then it wavered.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him, dimly aware that my surprised voice was probably identifiably female.
“Um,” he said, and turned to look pointedly back at the cubicle and then at me. “How much detail would you like?”
I laughed, feeling a rush of affection for him. I loved how sarcastic he was. “How are you?” I asked, taking a step towards him and looking him up and down; he was wearing a very nice American cut suit with one of his horrible paisley ties, but at least it matched his shirt today. He was also freshly shaven with a new haircut. “You look fantastic!”
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