Upside Down(8)

“Didn’t mean to interrupt,” the guy said. He took his hand off her arse to wave it. “Keep doing what you’re doing. We don’t mind. We thought this room was empty.”

“We weren’t doing anything,” I said quickly.

“Excuse me,” Merry said, sliding in around the drunk couple. She held three bottles of water. “Sorry, it took forever to get served. They’re really busy.”

I’d never been happier to see her. “Oh, thank God.” I grabbed her arm and turned her back toward the door. “We need to leave. I called him my Headphones Guy to his perfect fucking face.”

Merry shot Hennessy a look and held out a bottle of water for him. He took it, still smiling, though somewhat confused. Then Merry looked up at me as I dragged her to the door. “To his face?”

“What was I supposed to do? You left me unsupervised!” I stopped at the couple who were still standing in the doorway, and only just then I realised what the guy had meant when he said they thought the room was empty… “Oh praise baby motherfucking Jesus, I hope you have antibacterial wipes.”

Now Merry was hauling me out through the crowded pub. I yelled back at the couple, hoping they’d hear, “At least wipe it down afterwards, we have meetings in there!”

We burst through the crowd onto the street and Merry looked up at me and sighed. “What else did you say?”

“What didn’t I say?” I answered. “I was a mess, crying all over him because of the whole asexual thing, thank you very much. Then I was nervous and we both know how well that ends. And I think I might have told him that he was my Headphones Guy, that he had a perfect face and a perfect name, because who the fuck calls their kid Hennessy, and now he thinks I’m a raving lunatic because you. Left. Me. Un. Supervised.”

Merry cracked her bottle of water, took a long drink, sighed, then hooked her arm around my elbow. “He really is very good looking,” she said as we began the walk back to my flat. “I can see why you’ve been crushing on him forever.”

I took a swig of my water. “Fucking hell, I wish this was wine. Where is Jesus when you need him?”

Merry hummed a happy sound. “I’m proud of you for going tonight. It wasn’t easy, but you did it, and you faced it head on.”

“I cried like a motherfucking baby.”

“Because you realised it’s okay,” she replied. “And it is.”

“Can we not talk about it right now,” I mumbled. “I need to get my head around a few things, I think. And see what makes sense when the dust settles.”

“Sure thing. Is Angus home tonight?” she asked.

Angus was my flatmate. And if people thought I was weird, then Angus was a one-man what-the-fuck show. Maybe that was why we lived together so well. In three years, there’d never been one issue between us. He worked as a painter, and I think all those fumes had left some irreparable damage because he was dopey as fuck. But he paid his rent, his share of the utilities, bought his own food, didn’t eat mine, and he respected boundaries. He was also a shameless bisexual flirt but was so bad at it and so clueless about it that it was almost sad, in a Shakespearean Comedy of Errors kind of way. The easiest way to describe him was as Hugh Grant’s flatmate in Notting Hill, only Australian instead of Welsh, because everyone replied with “Oh” and a smile and a nod. And it was a true and fair comparison. They looked nothing alike but were still basically the same, and he would even sometimes parade the flat in his tighty-whities while he was waiting on something in the dryer. He’d once harboured great fondness for Merry, in a futile attempt at wooing her. She’d explained to him she was a lesbian, and he said that was perfect because he was bisexual, and she’d then had to explain that wasn’t how any of that worked at all. I’d almost needed to draw Angus a diagram to clarify that one, and in the end, I still don’t think he understood. So, and this was said with great affection, he wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box. But, he was polite and kind and had the biggest heart in the world, and he was possibly one of the greatest guys I’d ever met. I’d even probably call him one of my best friends. I didn’t have many, so that was quite a statement.

“Yes, I think so.”

“Should we see if he wants some pizza?” Merry asked.

“I think it’s safe to assume that’d be a yes.”

So, two wood-fired pizzas later, we went back to my flat and met a very enthusiastic and grateful Angus. He was bingeing Orange is the New Black on Netflix, so we joined him on the floor, ate pizza, drank a few beers, and I tried really hard to forget my night.

“You’ll never guess who was running the meeting,” Merry said, throwing me holus-bolus under the bus.

I groaned and Angus’ whole face brightened. “Joel Edgerton!”

“What?” Merry asked, somewhat startled. “No. It wasn’t Joel Edgerton.”

He tried again. “Clover Moore.”

Merry squinted at him, then obviously remembered how she phrased it. She’d asked him to guess. “No,” she said. “The Mayor of Sydney was busy. It was Jordan’s Headphones Guy. You know, the guy on the bus that he’s mooned over for six months?”

Angus slow-turned to me, with a comically surprised expression. “Nooooo.”