“Yeah, it’s completely plagiarised from something Sarah did for my birthday,” I whispered, “but I still think Bree will love it. The problem is I’ve been up until 2am every night trying to meet graphics deadlines for the Frost contract, so I haven’t finished organising all the finer details. I need your help.”
“What would you like me to do?”
“Well, Sarah and Gemma need time to go back to Sarah’s place and set up, but I can’t go too, because if I tried to go home separately from Bree after her graduation, she’d either get really suspicious or get upset because she’d think I was angry with her,” I explained. “So I need you to take us back in your car and drive the really, really long way home. Do you think you can come up with some reason that needs to happen and get her to agree to it?”
He inclined his head. “Consider it done.”
I sighed with relief. “Thanks, you’re a lifesaver,” I told him, giving him another brief hug. “I had no idea what excuse I was going to give for Sarah, Gemma and Rob needing to go without us.”
He gave me his default smile, and then turned his attention to the Principal as he finished his speech and started to call up students to receive their certificates.
That smile worried me a bit, and I watched him for a minute or two. I still had this niggling worry that he wasn’t really okay with tutoring Bree, but that he felt like it would be rude for him not to offer to help given he had his master’s in Psych. And what if he felt like I was just using him for a lift home?
I caught myself stressing about it and mentally forehead-smacked. Come on, Min, I told myself. That smile could easily just have been because he was thinking about what he’s going to say to her to get her in his car.
I wasn’t going to solve anything by dwelling on it right now anyway, so I listened to the Principal, too.
Bree was low down on the list of students, and was practically self-combusting from anticipation by the time she was finally called up. I took lots of photos of her receiving her placeholder certificate—including one of her posing for a selfie with the Principal on stage even though the students had been specifically told not to take their phones up—and then afterwards she and several other girls started to take a whole lot of photos of each other with their certificates.
I’d been so busy watching Bree and appreciating how beautiful she looked tonight in her new dress, that I didn’t notice Sarah approaching Henry and me. “God, look at you two,” she said, feigning disgust. “You look like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. You’ve even got the same suit on.”
I frowned at her, and then looked down at myself and across at Henry. She was right. At least I hadn’t decided to wear one of his old paisley ties, too; it would have been nearly identical to the one he was wearing. We glanced sheepishly at each other and laughed.
“What can I say, Min has excellent taste in clothes,” Henry said as he greeted Sarah, stepping in briefly to give her a very professional cheek-kiss and a quick once-over. “You look fabulous as well. How far along are you now?”
“24 weeks,” Sarah told him. “Which leaves me a pithy 13 weeks to figure out how to be a mother.”
He laughed. “Well, if you manage with children as well as you manage with your team at Frost, you’re going to do great.”
He couldn’t have possibly complimented her in a better way. “Thank you!” she said, a hand absently resting on her stomach. It was the first time I’d seen her do that. “To be honest, I’m probably going to be delegating a lot of the hands-on stuff to Rob, though…”
Henry looked unfazed. “All the best managers do.”
Sarah stared at him for a second with an exaggerated look of adoration, and then linked arms with him, turning around and saying jokingly to Rob as he walked up, “Okay, sorry, but Henry is totally my new date for the rest of tonight.” She escorted him out of the gym, saying as they left, “You are such a suck-up.”
Rob didn’t look intimidated by Henry in the slightest and just turned to Gemma. “Looks like you’re my new date then,” he said amiably and offered his arm.
“Story of my life,” Gemma said dryly as she took it. “I have this wild fantasy that one day I’ll be something other than the consolation prize.”
As I followed them outside, I asked about what Sarah had said. “‘Delegating the hands-on stuff to you’? So you decided to stay home with the baby after all?”
He shrugged and looked at me over his shoulder. “Well, Sares got a big pay hike with her new gig which means we’ve got a buffer now, so why not? Waterbank isn’t going to reopen anytime soon—fuck knows what’s going on up there—and someone needs to stay home with our little one. Who better to than her daddy?”
We had to hang around for Bree to finish up with her friends before she came to meet us by the front gates. When she got back, she spent a few moments very visibly trying to gather some courage before she said, “Min,” in a deferent I’m-about-to-ask-you-something voice, “Priya’s whole family is going to dinner at some amazing restaurant tonight, and I was thinking it would be really nice for us all to go out together afterwards? It doesn’t even need to be somewhere we have to spend money. Maybe we could just walk along Darling Harbour like old times? It just kind of sucks to do nothing for my graduation.”
Oh, god. I was bursting to tell her what I had planned for tonight, but I couldn’t. “We need to get your study timeline sorted out,” I said, and then gestured at the others. “And everyone has work tomorrow.” ‘Everyone’ looked suitably innocent.
She considered their doubtful expressions and then sighed deeply, looking crestfallen. “I know,” she said, the disappointment audible in her voice. “I just thought I’d ask anyway…”
I hugged her, dying inside. I had a new appreciation for how difficult it must have been for her to keep Sarah’s surprise birthday party for me a secret.
As we all split off to get into our separate cars, Henry pulled me aside. He looked uncomfortable, and it wasn’t until he spoke that I realised it wasn’t genuine. “I know it’s pretty cramped with everyone in Rob’s ute,” he said, surreptitiously checking to make sure Bree was listening, too. “My Lexus is much bigger, and it’s a long drive back by myself. I know I’m not as much fun as Sarah, but would you and Bree like to keep me company anyway?”
It was an absolute bullseye. Bree looked like her heart was going to break for him, and when I glanced down at her, pretending to check it was okay, I could see she was completely sold.
“Hmm,” I said at him anyway. “Leather seats and climate control or Rob’s lap and a broken window? Tough choice.”
“I’ll tell the others!” Bree assured us, and then zipped off to do that.
As soon as she was gone, I gave Henry a hard look. “You do realise a fairy dies every time you use your powers for evil, right?”
He gave me a charming smile. “She’s going to love the surprise, and it will be nice to have your company.” We all climbed into our respective cars.
Bree had been deeply immersed—or so I thought—in choosing a filter for the photos she’d just taken before she uploaded them, but when we turned out onto the road she looked up and out of the car for a few seconds, frowning. “Um, why are we going this way?” she asked Henry. “Trust me, the other way’s much faster.”
Henry and I glanced at each other. We had our work cut out for us. Henry looked at her in the rearview mirror. “I’m just more familiar with Anzac Parade, that’s all,” he said pleasantly. “It won’t be faster if we get lost.”
Bree eyed the GPS on Henry’s dash sceptically, but didn’t say anything.
He noticed. “But if you know a quicker way, would you like to direct me?”
She brightened. “Sure! But you’ll need to chuck a U-ey at the end of the street.”
Henry did the world’s slowest and most careful U-turn, and then drove back in the direction we’d come from. As we passed Eastern Beaches again, Rob’s ute was in the queue to turn out of the carpark. We drove past him.
Shit. I glanced at Henry, who looked entirely unaffected. “That’s right,” he was saying to Bree, “you’re from the Eastern Suburbs, aren’t you? I should have just asked you for directions to start off with. Are you going to move back here again once Sarah has her baby?”
Bree laughed darkly. “Sure, if we win the lottery.”
“We’re far more likely to need to rent someone’s garage in the far Western Suburbs,” I added, exaggerating our financial position a little. “I’m not going to be able to do contracts for Frost all the time because of uni, and I’ll be paying off my credit card for a while.”
“Well, I don’t live in the Western Suburbs, but I have a very nice garage,” Henry told us with a completely straight face. “Very spacious. It even has a concrete floor. I hear the industrial look is in vogue now.”
I laughed at that. “Yeah, wouldn’t that be the ultimate schadenfreude? Having your semi-employed ex and the girl he cheated on you with living in your garage while you have an entire three-bedroom house and a world class job?”
“Exactly,” he said. “I’m already planning how my future girlfriend and I will sit on the back porch drinking champagne and cackling at you.”
“Well, as long as you both don’t mind being kept awake late at night by the sound of regretful sobbing as I cry over what a huge mistake I made when I left you.”
In the mirror, I could see Bree’s brow was crinkled. “Guys, I know you’re joking,” she said uncertainly, “but it’s hard for me to tell how much you’re joking because sometimes it’s also a bit true and you’re stressing me out!”
I reached behind the seat and touched her knee. “Sorry, we are joking,” I promised, and then sobered and answered Henry properly. “We’ll probably just get a studio or a one-bedroom place as close to my uni as we can afford, unless Bree gets into uni as well, and then we’ll need to take that into account too.”
Henry looked at her in the rearview mirror again. “So you did decide to go to uni after all?”
Bree made a hesitant noise, and then scrunched up her whole face and shrugged. “Depends how good my ATAR is and if it’s high enough to get in somewhere decent.” She didn’t look very convinced that would happen. “But I kind of don’t know if I want to jump straight into uni anyway. I’d have to study like I’ve been studying with you guys for another three or four years, and that’s like…” She shook her head. “Do I really want to do that? There’s not really anything that I’m desperate to study.”
“You enjoy cooking,” Henry pointed out. “Perhaps instead of uni, you might be interested in doing an apprenticeship and becoming a chef?”
“No, I already looked into that,” Bree said, “and your whole apprenticeship is basically being screamed at by an old guy for three years until you do everything right, and then you have to scream at other people when you’re a chef, and I really don’t want to be anywhere that people are yelling at each other all the time.”
“Fair enough,” Henry conceded. “Well, you like helping people, would you consider community service or welfare?”
From the tone of Bree’s voice, apparently not. “No, because if someone told me a sad story I would literally just start crying, and then we’d both be crying and that wouldn’t be very professional.”
That was a good point. “We’ll think of something,” I told them both.
Bree sighed. “You guys are lucky,” she lamented, flopping back against the seat. “You’re both really good at the things you’re passionate about so it’s really clear what you need to do with your lives. I totally love art, but I’ll never be an artist.”
I was just thinking that maybe there was some sort of parallel design or decorating career somewhere in that statement, when Bree sat up straight and made a loud exclamation. “Oh my god, where are we? Why are we in Mascot? We’re nearly at the airport!”
Henry glanced towards me; his eyes were twinkling. “Sorry, I thought you were going to direct me!” he told Bree innocently. “I figured you’d just tell me when I needed to turn!”
She jammed her eyes shut. “Fuck, I got totally distracted. I’m so sorry! Okay, you have to turn around here because the tollway is in the other direction.”
Henry didn’t need to pull any more stunts to make sure we got home a lot later than the others; he just drove cautiously and calmly—like always—and kept Bree talking by making her go over the material she’d gotten wrong on the Psych practice exam.
By the time we got back to Sarah’s and pulled in behind Rob’s ute, it was well past when the others would have arrived home. I hoped it was long enough.
Bree was still chatting away as we walked up the back stairs, when she stopped suddenly, nearly causing me to collide with her. “The back light’s off,” she observed. It was a loaded comment, because the last time Sarah had left the back light off was for my surprise party. She was holding her breath.
This was fucking killing me. I was desperate to tell her, but we’d gotten this far without her guessing, and I wasn’t going to blow it at the last minute. I managed to say casually, “The moths are making the sensor play up again, I heard Sarah complaining about it last night.” That was actually also true, which Bree clearly acknowledged.
She watched me for a moment while I made a special effort to act naturally. Beside me, Henry was frowning down at emails on his phone and apparently only half-listening.
She exhaled at length and slumped, continuing up the stairs. The disappointment on her face was like a knife to the heart, I swear. I was seriously going to need therapy after this. We only had a few seconds to go, though.
I pretended to pat myself down for my keys. “Shit.”
“I have mine,” Bree offered miserably, and then fitted them into the door. I watched her slowly open it, and slowly—
The light flew on to the sound of party whistles and party poppers exploding. Bree stopped suddenly again—nearly causing me to collide with her again—her jaw wide open.
Gemma, Sarah and Rob had constructed a multi-level display on the dining table out of thick textbooks, and on each of the levels was a different type of food. There was a little wrapped present on the highest one, and in the centre of the table was a horribly amateur cake that was supposed to look like a graduation cap.
“Surprise,” I said beside her ear.
She closed her jaw and turned to me, for just a second looking at me with such total love and adoration that she gave me butterflies. Then, her brow lowered and she shoved me. “You bastard!” she said, but there was a smile on her face. “Moths! Moths! Really?”
Then, she looked sternly at Henry. He put his hands in a ‘don’t shoot’ position and pointed at me. “I knew nothing about this, I swear,” he said, obviously knowing something about it. She shoved him too, and he laughed and apologised, putting his hand on her back as he did so. It was such a tiny gesture, but it spoke volumes about his feelings towards her. You wouldn’t inadvertently touch someone you disliked that way.
“Surprise!” Sarah repeated, coming forward to the door and towing Bree over to the table. “You didn’t think we were going to let you graduate without having a party for you, did you?” she asked, and then presented the cake. “Tada! Min and I had a go at it. Sorry if we suck, it’s the thought that counts, right?”
Bree’s smile threatened to crack her face as she reached out to delicately touch the black marzipan icing. “You guys made me a cake…” Her voice wavered like she might be about to cry.
Sarah saw it and briefly wrapped her in a big, squishy hug. “You can’t cry yet, you’re not even drunk! Here,” she said, pulling me over, too, “hug your boyfriend, this is all her fault.” She flinched and glanced back at Henry before correcting herself. “Erm, his fault, I mean.”
Sarah dumped Bree on me, and I put an arm around her as I carefully reached over and plucked the little wrapped present from the tallest tower of books. “We all pitched in and got you a little something.” I placed it into her hands.
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Bree stared down at it, breathless, and torn between laughter and tears. Slowly, she pulled off the blue silk ribbon and carefully unwrapped the thick, luxury wrapping paper. Underneath it was a long white leather box, and when she opened it, inside the box on a velveteen cushion was a beautiful silver pen.
“It’s a good luck pen,” I explained to her as she lifted it out of the box and examined the strange texture of it. I put my hand over hers and held it closer to her face. “See that? If you look closer, there’s a good luck charm there, engraved in the silver. I forget exactly what it says, but it’s something like, ‘may you remember every word you read, may the words pour out of you like a flower river’ or something wanky like that. All those little tiny lines there are sentences. If you put it under a strong magnifying glass, you can read it.” I let go of her hand so she could explore it herself. “Not that you’re going to need good luck because you’re going to do great all by yourself—but for that bit of extra confidence in your exams, now you have a magic pen.”
Bree’s eyes were glazed as she ran her fingertips over the surface. The engravings had been bevelled so they twinkled in the light, and as she turned the pen, it sparkled in her hands. “It’s beautiful,” she said, and then she looked up at me, and then across at Gemma and Sarah who were grinning, arm in arm, and over at Rob who toasted her with a mug of pretentious tea, and back at Henry who smiled warmly at her, and then she choked up.
I wrapped my arms around her. “Good luck for your exams,” I told her quietly, kissing the crown of her head.
Sarah blew a party whistle again. “Okay, let’s cut this terrible cake,” she said. “I’m dying to know if Min and I are as hopeless as we felt while we were trying to make this thing.”
We all sat down to eat—we could have drunk, too, since Gemma bought a bottle of champagne, but we all felt too guilty about drinking in front of Sarah and Rob while they were abstaining. Instead, we passed around our phones to select the best photos of Bree’s graduation to upload while we chatted.
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