He pulls the paper out of my hand and scans it. ‘Mmm. But the corn fritters also sound amazing,’ he says, referring back to the menu. ‘I’m a sucker for sriracha.’
‘That does look good.’
‘Should we get them both and split it?’
‘Sure.’
The waiter comes to take our order, another welcome distraction, and then we make more small talk as we wait for the drinks to come because hard conversations are also better done drink in hand, even if it’s just coffee. Now I’ve run out of excuses to drag this out. Impatience radiates off him, like he knows I’m building up to something and is getting tired of the diversions. Clearly he can read me like a poorly written book. He also won’t help me broach the Tough Conversation. He just sits there, lightly smirking. Asshole.
‘You’re probably wondering why I asked you to meet me,’ I say to my coffee.
‘Yeah. I have become unused to any meal where I don’t have to supervise William and Bianca.’
Oh, wrong thing to say, Artie. ‘Of course, because anything to do with me has to come back to Bee, doesn’t it?’
Our food comes, along with the extra plate Arthur suggested, so he has a long time to consider his reply. He begins surgically dividing the corn fritters and placing half onto the plate for me. ‘Is thisstillabout what you texted me about last week?’ he asks as he cuts up the avocado.
‘Of course it is! It’s all I’ve been able to think about! I’ve barely slept in days.’
‘I did think you were looking a little worn around the eyes.’
‘Not helping,’ I snap.
‘Not trying to,’ he replies.
‘I just…can’t talk about this with…her.’ It isn’t my best friend’s fault that I feel this way, I know that. But somehowmylackis all tangled up with Bee’sso muchin my mind, and I don’t think I could even begin to articulate that to her. Bee of all people has no reason to understand this sense of…being nothing.
I mean, if she doesn’t already know. And she can’t know, right? It’s the sort of thing you can’t unsee once you’ve seen it. And if she did know, how could she possibly put up with being friends with such a sad little shadow of a human? Although she is pretty friendly like that, so maybe…Am I her charity case? Not that she’d articulate it that way, but that’s what it would boil down to. Did she ask me to move in just to give mesomething? Anything?
Oh no. The tears are coming. I’m on the verge of tears almost constantly at this point. Arthur clearly doesn’t know what to do with this—but if he thinks our fragile friendship isn’t ready for the kind of trauma dump he’s about to get, too bad, buddy. He has no choice now.
The shift in his tone suggests he at least understands that a measure of sincerity is now required. ‘Talk about what?’ he asks.
‘I think I just realised that you were right but that you also didn’t go far enough. It’s not just that I can’t say no to Bee. It’s that being Bee’s best friend is my only personality trait. I’m a real-life NPC.’
He looks sceptical. ‘Surely you exaggerate.’
‘I literally do not have a personality of my own.’
‘Everyone has a personality of their own.’
‘Maybe most people. But I’m just a mirror, reflecting Bee back to herself and everyone else. I’m a shell that she kindlyfilled up, except it’s all her.’ I also mix metaphors. ‘There was like a little bit in my feet that was me before she did that, but it was the bad parts that sank to the bottom and occasionally floated up and out just to scare small children and cute animals.’
‘See, you keep saying you have no personality, but you really do have a flair for both words and the dramatic.’
‘Not helping.’
‘Not trying to.’ We both almost laugh.
And then I talk. And he listens. It really is the most pathetic one-sided conversation, and I don’t even finish my fritters before he takes my plate back and keeps going, like he needs to refuel to continue listening to me blab. About how I went to uni with Bee, but I never went to the parties for the science faculty but instead tagged along with Bee, so any friends I had were really Bee’s friends, and I was just the plus-one. I’m not in touch with anyone from uni. Then after uni I wasn’t having any luck getting jobs, because science is a very general degree, but I wasn’t passionate enough about anything to go postgrad, so Bee got me the catering job because it would be fun to work together. We’ve never even really worked together that much. Our hours are mostly opposite.
It was meant to be temporary while I figured myself out. Cheeky cash to help me save up to move out. That was over six years ago. And then I just never left because, well, money, and it was just so much easier than going for job after job and getting ghosted after attaching my CV and then filling out a bunch of boxes in the online application with identical information they could easily find if they opened the attachment.
And literallyallof my boyfriends hadsomeconnection to Bee, which was a depressing realisation once I’d gone over my dating history. I thought one or two had been my own thing. And they really had ended very close to the end of Bee’s relationships, so Bee was never the single one, even though I often was. I didn’t go out without Bee, because what would I do? So, I spent so much time in that bloody apartment that I could barely afford, playing games because that was the only time I could get away with that before Bee would drag me away to do something else. But at least I was getting my money’s worth on the rent.
Maybe Bee is doing me a kindness because she knows I have nothing interesting to say.
And that is an absolutely sobering realisation to have in a kitschy fake-rustic cafe on a non-descript Sunday.
