“Rum,” the old-timer replies.
“Cool, come get a Bundy and?—”
“You’re a liar, Desmond O’Malley!” Aggie hollers from the kitchen window. “I haven’t forgotten you drank half a bottle of Bombay in ’97 and seduced me under that pine tree at Lander’s Bush! Or that you married that tart Gwen a month later!”
Des closes his eyes, a pained look on his face. “Gin.”
“Okay then.” Ada jumps off the bar, fishes a pre-mixed G&T out of the fridge, and hands it to him. “Get home safe.”
“Bye, Aggie,” Des calls hopefully toward the kitchen.
“Sod off!”
Ada and I wait until the door closes behind Des before swivelling to face each other.
“Oh my God!” I whisper-squeal. “The tension! The romance! You know, for Aggie?”
“Idoknow! Go, Des!”
We shimmy our shoulders back and forth in honour of our coworker’s sexual conquest.
“What are you girls doing?” Aggie barks from the kitchen hole.
“Nothing!”
“Can’t believe you smashed Des, Aggie.”
“Bugger off, Adalasia,” Aggie growls. “This photo thing happening or what?”
“It is,” I say, with a suppressed laugh. “Come out, and I’ll make you a White Russian.”
“Thanks, love. And justwheredo you think you’re going, Davis Sanderson?”
I turn to see Davis frozen in the act of sneaking his hoodie from where he stashed it under the bar. My mood flatlines. He must be trying to avoid me. Then his eyes find mine. “Are you sure you want mehere, Cee?”
Who gives you what you want?
That’s a question I don’t want to—can’t—answer. But I can answer the other one.
“Stay,” I say, reaching for my cocktail shaker like it’s a lifeline. “Have a drink and take pictures. It’ll be fun.”
A smile tugs at the corner of Davis’s lips. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
It is, but I don’t say so. I just smile back.
8
Ada
“Decided what to upload next?” Krissy asks, wiping down the booth closest to mine.
I’m tucked away in my playpen with a straight 1806 in hand, scrolling through pictures to upload to Stabbies’s social media accounts. I’ve conducted a week of relentless posting since our photoshoot, and despite it happening at the end of a hell shift, we got some great content. Davis, Krissy, and Cameron joking around mid-drink-pouring-chaos, Aggie flambéing a 1 a.m crepe, and some now very popular videos of Cece carrying two jugs of beer, her arms squeezed to her sides so her cleavage is dialled all the way up to eleven.
“You can’t post that one,” she’d yelled at me Tuesday morning while I was lying hungover in her bed.
“Ah, it’s fine,” I told her. “Just close your eyes and think of Will Sharpe.”
She scrunched her face, then went for a shower without saying anything. A response I always interpret as tacit agreement to carry on doing whatever it is I’m doing.
