LIKE A BUCKETof ice-cold water, Bee’s voice wakes me up before the sun. ‘Gertie! Gertie! Gertie!’ Apparently excitement trumps her own rules about my name.
She runs in and bounces onto my bed, somehow not spilling the tea she has in each hand. She watches, smiling, as I wrench myself out from the safety of the covers and sit against the headboard, then hands me one of the cups.
‘Just once I’d like to wake up when my body has had enough sleep,’ I mutter into the cup. ‘Morning, Bee!’ I say louder. ‘You look happy.’
‘So, I met this guy…’ It is all things coy and shy. But the ellipses say, ‘Ask me more.’
Into the lip of my teacup again: ‘Wow, and so soon after the dude from the gym too.’
Bee looks confused. ‘What?’
‘Tell me about him!’
‘Oh my God, Gertrude. He isinsanelyperfect. He said he saw me across the room, checking things off my clipboard and knew he had to come over. Because a girl like me deserves to be dancing, not waiting tables.’ Bee looks away dreamily so she misses my eye roll at the image of hereverwaiting a table. I don’t even want to think about what one has to do todeserve waiting tablesbecause that might open some doors I can’t close.
Bee opens her eyes. ‘So, he got me a glass of bubbly—said that if anyone from work asked about it, he’d talk to them. He’s in the finance department at the league…’ Ha! Take that, asshole friend! ‘…he was basically the client, so it was totally above board. And we could just talk aboutanything.’ Bee never really needs me to respond much during the opening gambit. I sit back and drink my tea, nodding absentmindedly. ‘When he led me to the dancefloor…Gertrude, I kid you not, my heart almost stopped. He was theperfectheight for me in those heels—Itoldyou they were the perfect mid-rise! Then he took me to the after party, but we got hungry, so we sat outside a little place in Richmond eating pizza from the box. I was cold, and he gave me his jacket, and then he waited for my Uber with me. And he gave me just the softest kiss on the cheek.’ That actually sounds quite lovely. It would make a pretty nice story in a wedding speech. Maybe I underestimated Finance Bro. Although his taste in friends…A pink flag at the very least.
‘You didn’t go home with him?’
Bee smiles. ‘No, he said he wants to take me out. Do it properly. So I wrote my number on a napkin from the pizza place and gave…No!’ Her smile fades to anguish. She runs out of the room. Her still-half-full, now all-over-the-carpet teacuplies pathetically on its side where it was flung from her hands. I can hear her shouting ‘No!’ over and over again. It becomes louder as she runs back clutching a men’s jacket to her chest.
‘I wrote out my number for him while we were waiting for the pizza—and then he gave me his jacket!’ She reaches into the pocket, pulling out a napkin, and collapses onto the bed. Tears pool in her eyes. ‘How could this happen to me?’
It is easier to problem-solve than it is to attempt an answer because then I might accidentally ask why the fuck they didn’t use theirphonesto exchange numbers like normal people. ‘Did you get his last name?’
‘No, only his first. Oh my God, and his smile! I’ll never see that smile again!’ She flings herself over onto her stomach and covers her face.
I grab my phone off the bedside table and start typing. Okay, so his name is William, which I know thanks to his asshole of a mate, and he works in finance at the AFL. This actually isn’t going to be that hard. After a few minutes of silence, Bee looks up to notice me on my phone.
‘Are youserious, Gertrude? I just lost my chance with the guy who could have beenmy husband, and you’re just scrolling?’
I turn the phone screen around to show Bee. ‘His name is William James. He lives in South Yarra in that big fancy building they filmedReal Housewivesin. He plays pickleball on Wednesdays and really loves the Monday two-for-one burgers.’ She snatches the phone out of my hands and starts scrolling. Confirming I am not bullshitting her, she squeals, runs back out of the room and presumably gets her own phone to follow and message him. From the other room, she shouts, ‘You’re awizard! How did you do that?’
I shrug even though she can’t see it. ‘Searched William on the AFL LinkedIn, found a few that weren’t right, but there were a few hidden results. So I signed up for Premium so I could see the hidden ones, and there he was, clear as day in his black-and-white corporate headshot. Took a stab at searching his name on Instagram, but fuck he has the most generic white-man name of all time. So I searched the follows of the AFL Insta and here we are.’
Bee appears back in the door, typing furiously on her phone. She is bouncing on her feet, the joy she can’t contain in her body leaking out through her toes. Her happiness makes me smile. Bee looks up. ‘Thanks Gertrude; you’re the best,’ she says. Then she walks away again, this time yelling, ‘Shotgun first shower!’ So I will literally be getting ice-cold water dumped on me this morning—but it’s kind of worth it.
Soy sauce. Fish sauce. Rice wine vinegar. Sugar. Lime. Chilli. Teaspoons, tablespoons, cups that fit neatly one into the next. I love the simplicity of following a recipe. Tell me what to do and I can create nearly anything. Ask me to wing it and you get burnt sludge. I am pumped to try these vermicelli bowls with chicken. Sure, the products I needed ended up costing way more than buying the same thing from the Vietnamese place around the corner…but what’s thirty dollars per serving compared to the pride of enjoying something I made with my own two hands?
‘Honey! I’m home!’ Bee comes in, her office dress magically unwrinkled, carrying a stapled brown paper bag. ‘I broughtdinner! I went to the Vietnamese place and…’ Bee notices the ingredients covering the kitchen bench and starts laughing. ‘Oh, whoops! Great minds!’ Then she starts unpacking the bag. ‘Did you want to grab some plates?’
I turn off the stove.
We sit down at our small Ikea table, my one furniture contribution—apparently I don’t have a good eye for textures, which is true if ‘eye’ is a synonym for ‘budget’—and sip gin and tonics while we eat the infinitely cheaper and probably tastier restaurant salads.
I have to ask. ‘So, what’s the occasion?’
Bee looks innocent. ‘Do I need an occasion to bring home surprise takeaway to my bestie and housemate on her weekday day off?’
‘You definitely don’t, and I encourage you to do so whenever you like. But you don’t have nothing-face. You have something-face.’
‘I can’t believe you can see anything on my face. Although, as it happens, and completely unrelated, I do have a question to ask you.’
I smirk. Being right is a drug.
Bee ignores me (fair) and takes a big sip of her drink, the lime wedge bumping her nose. ‘So, I slid into William’s DMs, and he wasthrilledI managed to find him.’ Oh,youmanaged it? But I don’t say that. ‘Anyway, we made a date for this Saturday.’
‘Okay, but what does this have to do with me? I’m working on Saturday.’
