She deleted not just the video, but the entire conversation, then turned her phone off.
* * *
Present Day
Cheryl tried not to think about the past. To not wake up and immediately wonder if the best of her life was behind her and she’d never make anything of herself. But as she walked down Lonsdale Street to McDonald’s, she decided to just let it rip.
“It’s over, baby,” she told herself. “You missed. You made the wrong choices at the wrong times and everything’s ruined. You’re broke and you have lung cancer, and your mum will have to move into a shitty nursing home because you can’t be a stripper and encourage men who aren’t Patrick Normal to think you’ll fuck them. Instead, you’ve wrecked your whole life and all you can do is sit in it.”
She’d bailed on her interview for the Men’s Gallery. Taken one look at the big scary entrance and ran. She’d text the manager to apologise, but first, she was getting a strawberry sundae.
People kept staring as she walked, but considering her too-tight dress, full face of make up, and high heels, that wasn’t surprising. She ordered her sundae and sat in a booth to eat, though she barely tasted a thing.
I know things will get worse someday, but please God don’t let it be today.
But what was the point of thinking that way? Living that way? As though there was some invisible piano over her head and her dumb thoughts could keep it up there? Hadn’t she already decided it was over? That she’d reached her limits and would surrender to whatever came next? If she was done trying to try, what would she do?
Ask Mara Hardiman for a job.
It had been on her mind since the flight from Wellington. Thoughts of Mara’s sports initiative for underprivileged girls and whether she could use her relationship with Eden to swing a role she was wildly unqualified for. To finally ask someone for help.
No, she thought. So what if it’s my dream and I need a job? It’s too embarrassing.
But why? If she’d been willing to strip for strangers, why should she care if Mara Hardiman thought she was a brown-nose? What if, for once in her goddamn life, she just did what she felt like doing about something that wasn’t getting drunk or having casual sex? What if she let herself aim higher?
Then she’d be with Patrick.
If she didn’t have to worry, she’d be Patrick Normal’s girlfriend.
She stared into her sundae like it contained all the secrets of the universe. How could she have been so stupid? She’d done him wrong in Wellington. She could have asked him to come back to Melbourne with her. Honestly communicated her feelings the way they were always saying to do on Pinterest. He didn’t know how bad her mum’s health was, and he definitely didn’t know she was broken, because she’d kept that from him like she had with so much else.
He’d obviously wanted to help her, but he’d been stressed and coming down off MDMA. Yes, he’d choked, but he’d also been confused about what had happened with her mum and understandably worried about pissing off his sponsors. As she sat alone in her plastic booth, Cheryl knew she’d been guilty of asking him to read her mind and then getting mad at him for not doing it. She’d given him none of the grace she’d expected in return.
Her fingers itched to pull out her phone and call him, but she couldn’t. She’d deleted his number for the same reason she’d moved out and refused to go into the office for handover—in the self-destructive hope it might hurt him the way he’d hurt her. The way she’d hurt herself. She’d always hated how her mum hid herself from the world, but she’d done the same thing. Ran scared and blamed everyone else for the results.
And here she was, alone in McDonald’s at midday, watching businessmen and teenagers and junkies and parents buying cheap burgers and fries.
She and Patrick were meant to be together.
That’s what had always scared her about them—the feeling of inevitability she’d tried so hard to ignore.
Knowing that she’d end up with this impossibly young, impossibly talented man. Knowing it from the moment he’d made her laugh in that German hotel room, quoting Event Horizon and agreeing to be her horror movie buddy.
If she’d been brave, they’d have gotten together when she came back to Melbourne after Eden’s European tour. But she hadn’t wanted to be brave. Not when she and Patrick could be sexually awkward best friends. Not when she didn’t have to risk her heart.
Licking strawberry sauce off her spoon, she was struck by a sudden lightness. Time suddenly felt very precious sitting in McDonald’s, like gold running through her veins. It wasn’t too late. She could bring this thing back around. Her heart began to beat uncomfortably fast, and she knew what she needed to do. She pulled her phone from her bag and called the number she’d gotten when she and Mara had arranged a baby shower for Eden.
She answered on the second ring. “Hi, Cheryl! How are you?”
Mara’s voice was so friendly Cheryl almost started crying. But instead of saying ‘on the verge of tears’ she asked Mara if her underprivileged girls’ program needed someone to run their social media.
“We do!” Mara said, sounding genuinely excited. “Would you be interested?”
“Yes. Oh my God, yes!”
“Amazing.” Mara paused. “This is a little awkward, but I was hoping to hire people with, ah, lived experience of economic hardship. I grew up poor and I find that when you don’t come from a similar background, people can be patronising without meaning to. I don’t want to pry, but whoever I bring on needs to understand what it’s like for the girls we’ll be working with.”
“Oh.” Cheryl almost barfed sundae onto the table. She’d spent her entire life lying in conversations like these ones. Pretending she and her mum were comfortable even when they could barely afford to eat. “What… what would you like to know?”
