“Yeah, at parties.”
“No. All the time. You smoked last night. I can smell it in your hair.”
She shrieked, clapping her hands to her head.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said loudly. “It’s fine.”
“It’s so unhealthy!”
“So’s getting a bunch of head knocks playing footy. I do that all the time.”
Cheryl shifted backward out of his lap and stood, pointing an accusing finger in his face. “I can’t believe you knew I smoked last night! You never said anything!”
“Because it doesn’t matter. I see lots of things about you that you don’t want me to see.”
“What do you mean? What ‘things?’”
“You spend real money on that stupid dragon game you play on your phone, and you go to the cheesecake place near your work and buy a whole one and eat it in, like, two days.”
“How?” she howled.
“Because I’m around your place a lot and I have basic comprehension! KitKat, I’m not telling you this to be an asshole. I’m telling you because you’re so goddamn hard on yourself and you don’t have to be.”
“Yes, I do! Otherwise, how will I stop smoking and playing pointless phone games and eating cheesecakes by myself?”
Patrick blew out a hard breath. “You’re smart and funny. You’re fun and you try so fucking hard to be good. You don’t need to try harder.”
“Yes, I do!”
“You don’t.” Patrick cupped her waist. “Remember when we watched the Adam Goodes documentary and I cried my eyes out, but you joined the Indigenous Desert Alliance? The world hurts you and all you do is try harder. Every way you can. Too much.”
She looked away, stupidly close to tears. This was exactly what she didn’t want. More feelings. More complications. Yet when Patrick tugged on her arm and she let herself be reeled back to face him, his gaze swept right through her. “You think you owe the world perfection, KitKat, but all you owe the world is yourself.”
“You think that. Because all you’ve seen is me pretending to be perfect.”
“So let me prove you wrong. Be mine.”
“I need more time.”
“Why?”
To make things perfect. “I just… do.”
“Right.” Patrick pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I’m ringing my mum.”
“What!?” she said in a panic. “Why?”
“Because I’m gonna tell her how I feel about you and that I want to ask you out.”
The thought of pretty, patient Dr Normal finding out about them sent adrenaline shooting through her. She tried to snatch the phone away but Patrick raised his arm, rendering her attack useless.
“Patrick! I will murder you!”
“You won’t, because I’m offering the deal of the century.”
She kept grabbing for the phone, fruitlessly. “What?”
“If my mum is rude about the two of us dating, if she’s weird about your age at all, I’ll never bother you again,” he said calmly. “I won’t ask for a commitment. We can go back to how it was. Me and you being mates, sex whenever you feel like it.”
