“You look so different!” Sarah said as she held me at arm’s length, looking me up and down. It was too late to stop her. It was too late to do anything about what she’d seen, so I just stood there, panicking. “Sorry for chasing you up the road, but I didn’t want to yell out at some random person if it wasn’t you. Wow, though. Bit of a difference from you in corporate getup…”

There was an implicit question in that and instead of answering it, I wanted to just turn around and run home. It was too late for that, too, wasn’t it? She’d seen me in these clothes, and it was probably really obvious what look I was going for. Fuck. Fuck, I hoped she wouldn’t tell anyone at work. Why did she have to find out now? Like this?

“I’m in the middle of doing some graphics for Pink and I just ducked out to grab some dinner,” I stammered, conveniently neglecting to explain why I looked like this specifically, “and there’s a little pizza place up further…”

She groaned. “You were going to buy pizza?” When I nodded, she shook her head at herself, looking a bit disappointed. “Hah, I should have known it was too good to be true. You aren’t here to hang out with me,” she said. “Well, you’re going to anyway. By some fantastic coincidence, this place has table service open until one. You can just keep me company until the girls arrive later.” She gestured for me to follow her.

I stayed put. When she raised her eyebrows at me, I held my arms out to indicate what I was wearing. “Sarah, I can’t go in like this.”

She didn’t sound too concerned. “Uh, it’s a pub? Pubs don’t have dress codes. As long as you’re wearing actual clothes, no one’s going to throw you out.”

I opened my mouth and took a breath, but I ended up just releasing it. I didn’t want anyone from work to see me like this. I didn’t want any possible way anyone in marketing or, most importantly, any possible way Henry could find out about this. Sarah… well, Sarah, herself, she was maybe okay. She hadn’t told anyone about Bree, after all. But she was still from work, and I worried about mixing her in with this stuff.

When I didn’t say anything, her frown deepened. She was onto me. “The dress code isn’t what you meant, is it?” I shook my head. She pressed her bright red lips together for a second, looking intently at me. It seemed like she was having trouble figuring out what she wanted to say, too. Finally she took a tentative step towards me. “Can I just do something for a second? It won’t hurt.”

I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t think she’d do anything inappropriate. She wasn’t Bree. “Okay…” I said hesitantly.

She glanced over her shoulder toward the pub to make sure no one was watching us, and then stepped in closer to me. Taking the hem of my hoodie, she pulled it gently downward. The fabric pulled flat against my body and it was very, very clear I’d done something to my breasts. There was no point in pushing her away now, she’d seen what was going on. I braced myself to be really ashamed by it; I was usually hugely uncomfortable with anything to do with them. It didn’t happen this time, though. I mean, I was worried about what she was going to think, but I didn’t feel self-conscious about my lack of chest. With the thick material the hoodie was made out of, the bandages weren’t visible, either. It looked like there had been nothing there to begin with.

Her eyes widened and she released my jumper. “Wow,” she said as she stood back with her jaw open for a second. She closed it quickly, though. “Wow. Okay.”

She didn’t ask, but I knew what her question was. “It’s complicated.”

Her eyes were still wide open. “Yeah, apparently,” she said, considering what she’d just seen.

I looked down at the ground and nodded. Fuck. Well, she knew now. At least now she’d understand why I wasn’t going to come inside with her. “Yeah, so,” I said, “I’m going to go and get that pizza I was after.”

She snapped out of her surprise and stepped in front of me when I went to leave. “No you’re fucking not,” she said. It was jarring to hear her swear; she didn’t do it that often. “You’re not getting away this time, not now.” I opened my mouth to contradict her, and she interrupted me. “I don’t care what you’re going to say, your argument is void. It’s pitch black in there and I promise you no one will recognise you, seriously. I almost didn’t, and I wouldn’t have if you’d never shown me that painting you did of yourself.”

“Sarah, I–”

“Nope,” she said shortly, leaning on one hip and crossing her bare arms. “I have bought you lunch almost every day, and every day for the past two weeks I’ve been doing all that menial crap for you. Now, I may not be as young and cute and blonde as that little friend you’ve got on the side, but if she can refuse to take no for an answer from you, I certainly deserve to do the same.” I just stood there gaping at her as she added, “You said she’d carry you out of work if she wasn’t so small? Well, I’m bigger, and I swear to god I’ll carry you in there myself if you try to keep making excuses. It’s dark in there, Min, and you can not just leave me hanging now after the whole ‘it’s complicated’ thing.”

There… wasn’t much I could say to that. She was clearly not going to let me get away, and she was right, anyway. She had been doing a lot of stuff for me, and I had run out on her last time we’d eaten. Fuck. Fuck! Now I felt bad, too. She’d been really great the last few weeks.

I looked past her at the pub. There was a gauntlet of people along the walls to get into it, though. “Are you sure no one will recognise me?”

She snorted. “Uh, yeah. You look like a–” she winced, “well…”

I looked back down at her. “A guy? You can say it, it’s okay.”

She sighed with relief. “Yeah, even with the whole,” she indicated my chest with a wave of her hand, “I wasn’t sure if you’d be insulted if I said that. But seriously, Min, actually it’s kind of creepy how my boss now looks like an eighteen year old boy.” Her eyes were wide again. “Like, really creepy. Although you and that schoolgirl kind of makes more sense, now.”

I was not following that topic anywhere. “My ponytail doesn’t give me away?”

She considered it for a moment. “It actually just looks like a really bad fashion decision,” she said, leaning around me to get another look at it. “Like you’re some kid who’s trying really hard to be cool and mature.”

“Great,” I said flatly. “Because I was worried people weren’t going to be able to judge me, after all.”

That made her laugh. “I think you’ve just about run out of excuses. Let’s eat, I’m basically dying of a combination of starvation and curiosity.” she said, and then took a few steps towards the pub. I didn’t move. “What now?” she asked.

“Didn’t you offer to carry me in, before?” I said in a complete deadpan. “Because I’m not going to walk if I don’t really have to.”

She groaned, waiting for me as I caught up to her anyway and we continued to the pub. “I think I’ve done enough for you this week,” she said, looking sideways up at me. “Go on. Get in there and let’s get dinner.”

No one paid any attention to us as we passed them. Sarah got a couple of second glances because she looked good, but otherwise we could have been any two people off the street walking into the pub.

When we’d stepped inside, I quickly realised Sarah wasn’t kidding about the place being dark. It was nightclub dark, but there weren’t any laser lights to break it up. Several groups of people were sitting in little booths that lined the walls, laughing, chatting and drinking, but whether or not they were Frost employees, I had no idea. That was because, unless we got right up close to people, there wasn’t enough light to see the details of their faces at all.

Sarah led me over to a corner booth that had a ‘Reserved’ placard on it. She brushed it aside, explaining, “The guy who owns this places always does that for us. We’ve been coming here for like seven years.”

No sooner had she said that and we’d sat down, a greasy middle-aged guy leaned over the bar. “Sarah!” he called halfway across the floor, instead of actually coming over to our table. There was no music yet, but because there were so many people inside it was still difficult to hear him. “You want food?”

It was an interesting way of taking our order, that was for sure. “Some table service…” I said to Sarah with a smirk, and she kicked me underneath it.

“Potato wedges,” she yelled back. “A huge bowl with lots of sour cream and at least something resembling a salad.” She looked at me, and I shrugged. I was almost too nervous to feel like food anymore. Turning back to the guy, she shouted, “Times two. And a bottle of something bubbly.”

He gave us the thumbs up, and then disappeared behind the bar into what I presume was a kitchen, throwing a passing glance at a television mounted in the corner of the room. There was some sort of sports game playing on it.

“Min,” Sarah said to get my attention. I looked back at her, and she was leaning forward across the table, watching me intently. When I didn’t say anything, she prompted. “Come on, I’m dying here. This is the part where you tell me what’s going on with you. Is this the ‘personal thing’ you were talking about the other day?”

“It used to be a personal thing,” I said, and then glanced around us. And I’d kind of like to keep it that way, I thought. “What time did you say your friends were coming again?”

“Not for ages,” she said dismissively. “Their time management skills leave a lot to be desired. So, this… thing, are you…” She stopped and made a face. “Sorry if I screw up, I don’t know any of the words for this stuff. So, the point is to look like a guy, right?” I nodded, and she leant back in the booth, staring at me. “Is this just like some secret hobby, or…?”

If only. “Hah. I wish it was that simple.” She had her eyes fixed on me with an intensity which said, ‘elaborate’, so I did. “I meant, it’s secret in that I don’t want anyone to know. I wish it didn’t have to be, but it does.”

“What needs to be though? What is ‘this’ and ‘it’? I won’t tell anyone.”

Before I even considered explaining I spent a few seconds checking around us again to make absolutely certain no one could hear. It took me several more to gather enough strength to actually say exactly what was going on for me in so many words. “I don’t feel comfortable as a girl.”

I don’t know if Sarah had expected me to be so succinct, or if she just hadn’t expected that to be the issue or what, but she looked really stunned. She sat back in the booth, staring at me. She didn’t say anything straight away, either. “This is such a trip out,” she said eventually. “You’re so incredibly girly at work, even more girly than I am. You’re always immaculately dressed, with pearls and earrings and stockings and even though you’re six-foot-a-thousand, you still always wear really nice heels…”

I sighed deeply, and shrugged. “It takes me twenty minutes to get into my dress every morning. I hate it.”

She spent a few seconds letting that settle. “Fuck,” she said, swearing again. “So, you think you’d be better off as a guy, then?

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t really know what’s going on, to be honest. I just know what feels right and what doesn’t.” I paused. “You’re only the second person who knows.”

She still looked spun out. “Henry?” I shook my head. “Bree?” When I nodded, she needed to think about what that meant, too. “Fuck, Min… I mean, I kind of wondered about that painting, but I had no idea it would be something like this.”

“That’s kind of the way I’d prefer it, to be honest,” I said. “I don’t want this to go around Frost.”

She made a noise. “Yeah, you really don’t,” she said, and then looked more troubled the more she thought about it. “Wow, yeah, you really don’t. Can you imagine what—Ah, here we go…” She was looking across at the bar and getting distracted by approaching food.

The greasy man walked out from behind it with a tray in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. He plonked it all down on the table in front of us. “Bon Appetit,” he said in a really broad Australian accent, and then instead of pouring the wine or laying the food out nicely in front of us, he swaggered back behind the bar, sat on a barstool and stared upwards at the game on TV.

“Classy place,” I commented as I tried to force myself to eat a potato wedge.

Sarah went straight for the wine, filling my glass to the brim and then pouring one for herself. “Eh, he always lets me eat for free because I drunkenly kissed him on his birthday like five years ago. Actual guests get reasonable service, but me and my friends are just part of the furniture so he’s stopped bothering.”

“So much for buying you dinner,” I said with a tense smile as I accepted my wine glass from her. “I’ll just have to pick up the bar tab, instead.”

She pointed a potato wedge at me. “You’ll be sorry you said that.”

“Didn’t you say you were a lightweight? I think I’m getting a great deal, here. Free food and all I need to do is get you trashed on a couple of glasses of sparkling.”

She indulgently poured her sour cream all over her wedges. “A couple? I’ll be on the floor after one.”

“Even better. I’ll help you out of here looking like I scored the hottest girl in the place.” She stared at me for a second, and I faltered, remember what we’d been talking about. “Uh, I didn’t mean–”

She broke into a laugh. “It’s okay. I was just messing with you. But since we’re playing a long game of truth with you: I believe we were up to ‘Bree’.”

“We were?” I cringed a little. “What about her?”

“Come on, she’s basically a cut and paste job from one of those ‘Bid-on-my-virginity-dot-com’ sites, school uniform and all. She’s got the puppies out all over her Facebook page, and she was about ready to jump you in the street when I met her.Tell me with a completely straight face that you’ve never slept with her.”

I opened my mouth to say exactly that, and then remembered waking up next to her earlier in the week. Technically, that was sleeping right?

I paused for too long apparently. “I knew it!” Sarah announced, holding her hands up in the air. “I totally knew it! Oh my god, Min, you are unbelievable!”

I put my face in my hands for a second. “It’s not what you think, and she is not like that,” I said. “She does show skin, sure, but she’s just so sweet, she’s not like that!” I realised how all of that sounded, and so just to make it perfectly clear to Sarah, I looked up at her from my hands and said, “I’ve slept beside her. Not with her. Because she’s a ‘she’ and we’re just friends and I have a boyfriend.”

Sarah stopped cheering, but she still looked pretty smug. She gestured at my torso. “Yeah, but you look like a ‘he’ and you feel like you might be a ‘he’ so I’m actually not sure what’s more gay: you sleeping with Bree or you sleeping with Henry.”

“Sarah, I’m straight,” I said, pretending to cry into my hands.

“Again,” she said, making a ‘tada’ motion at me and how I looked. “You being in the situation that you are, what does that even mean?” She reached across the table and gave me a solid pat on the shoulder. “Sorry to give you the third degree but your mysterious behaviour over the past few weeks has been driving me absolutely crazy. Here, drink your wine.” She pushed the glass towards me again. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”

I obediently drank deeply from it. “Put that in a contract so I can sue you if you don’t deliver,” I told her, giving up.

She sat back against the padded spine of the booth, eating another few wedges and washing them down with more wine as she watched me thoughtfully.

After she’d finished them, she said,“You know, when I thought you might be fun to drink with, I just had this sort of vague idea that you might have a wild streak. Understatement of the year: at the rate we’re going you might as well tell me you’re a dominatrix or a wizard or a spy or something. I suddenly feel like I don’t know the first thing about you.”

I laughed darkly. “Yeah, well, join the club.”

“Count me in,” she said, and then shrugged, holding her glass up in the air as if she was making a toast at a wedding. “Whatever, Min, I couldn’t care less what you end up as. Working at Frost is hell on earth most of the time, especially with the bastards in marketing. But these past two weeks haven’t been like that at all. It’s been great. Working with you is stacks of fun. I don’t even care what project I’m on: I wouldn’t want to work with anyone else but you.”

My chest clenched; it felt so good to hear that. Just so good, and I think I might have teared up a little if the wine hadn’t been starting to get to me. Sarah was great about this stuff, why hadn’t I just told her in the first place?

“Thank you,” I said, meaning it. “And I do have something to tell you.”

She put her glass down, all serious again. “You do?”

I nodded, looking with exaggerated drama at my wedges, and then up at her. “Sarah, I’m a wizard.”

She threw a wedge at me, and, predictably, she missed. “You’re a dag,” she said as we kept eating, “that’s what you are.”

I was comfortable around her; too comfortable, in fact. The bottle that her owner friend had got us was sparkling wine, and while I was perfectly able to hold normal wine, sparkling just went straight to my head. I’d finished my third big glass of it when Sarah whistled at the owner and got us another one.

“We’ve got to stop,” I said as she filled my wine glass to the brim for the fourth time. “I’m never going to get any work done. I need to get home at some point and get through the last couple of hundred images.” I wasn’t slurring yet, but I wasn’t too far away from it.

Sarah took a big swig from the bottle and then poured her own glass full. “Yeah, sounds fascinating,” she said sarcastically. “Or you could stay here with me and get completely wasted. They clear the floor and play bad music after one. I’m a terrible dancer, it will be really entertaining.”

I laughed once, and had been about to inform her that I was also a top contender for the World’s Worst Dancer title, when someone said something behind me. It took me a few seconds to realise it was to us, and by that time there were two gorgeous women looming over the booth. As if that wasn’t intimidating enough just in itself, it reminded me of high school when some of the girls would surround me after class. If I hadn’t been so very drunk at that moment, I think I might have actually tried to get away.

“Hey, Sarah, don’t you already have a boyfriend?” one of them asked her light-heartedly, and then gave her a bit of a clumsy shove. We weren’t the only ones who were drunk, apparently. I couldn’t tell if the girl was being nasty or not – did she actually think I was a guy, or was she having a go at me?

Sarah looked at me with alarm, and then glanced at the screen of her phone. “Crap!” she said. “What time is it? I completely forgot you guys were coming!” She held a hand out towards me. “It’s okay, though, they’re totally cool…”

These were her work friends? I inhaled sharply and looked back up at them; the two of them did share Sarah’s grade of good looks, dress sense and the I-kind-of-know-I’m-hot self-confidence, but I didn’t recognise either of them. Maybe they were other friends of hers?

At Sarah’s and my panicked expression, they both laughed. “Busted!” the shorter one declared and then held her hand out to me to shake as she spoke to Sarah. “Are you going to introduce us to your toyboy? He’s cute.”

‘Toyboy’? ‘Cute’?

Instead of taking the girl’s hand, I looked back at Sarah.

“I’m really sorry, but seriously, it’s okay,” she promised me. “They won’t care.”

“Won’t care about what?” the taller one asked Sarah as I looked back at the hand in front of me. “What’s going on?”

There wasn’t anything else I could do, really, so I shook the hand being held at me for a second. “Min,” I somehow managed. I hoped she couldn’t feel how sweaty my palm was.

The girl attached to the hand looked stunned for a second and then squinted at me. “Min? As in, ‘Sarah’s Boss Min’? ‘Min Lee’ Min? No way!” Wait, she was from Frost? I looked harder at her again, but in the low light I couldn’t tell if I recognised her or not.

“That’s her…” Sarah confirmed, sounding pained. At ‘her’, both heads turned back towards me with surprise. That was very telling. They had thought I was a guy, after all, and wow, it was actually a relief. They were probably just being flirty before rather than trying to insult me.

Sarah presented me with a gesture. “Everyone, this is Min. Min, this is Liz,” she pointed at the tall blonde, “and Gemma,” she said, pointing at the shorter brunette.

The girl who had gone to shake my hand had been Gemma. “You’re a chick?” Her eyes kept flicking between my flat chest and my face. She sounded genuinely surprised. “Are you sure? Because, like, wow.”

That is a very good question, I thought, but I just forced a smile. I still wasn’t sure about them.

Liz shoved her. “Don’t be fucking rude, Gem,” she said. “And can you sit down? These heels are killing me.”

I shuffled along the seat to the back of the small circular booth so that they could both fit next to me.

Liz was already talking as they sat down. “Sorry we’re late, by the way,” she said to Sarah. “My husband did his knee in last weekend’s game and the way he’s carrying on about it you’d think that he’d lost the whole leg. Gemma was over at eleven and he was all like, ‘But who’s going to change the heat pack?’ and ‘what happens when the boys come around and I can’t get to the door?’, and I’m like, ‘Geez, Chris, I’m not your slave, tell them to come around the back or something…’. We were seriously waiting for him to stop crying like a toddler and we didn’t get out the door until half-past twelve…”

Sarah was starting to relax, even if I wasn’t. “That’s okay, Min’s been keeping me company,” she said. “And I guess Chris isn’t coming then?”

Liz shook her head. “Not tonight. None of the boys are, they’re all going back to my place.” She gave us all a very pointed look. “And by the way, if anyone asks, we actually just went and had a quiet late night dinner somewhere for someone’s birthday. Chris would kill me if he knew I was just going out on the town without him. He’s such a sook.”

Sarah laughed. “Got it,” she said. “And by the way, if anyone at work asks, you never met Min, either.”

Both the other girls looked at me, and a very loud ‘why’ hung in the air. No one answered it, though.

Gemma shrugged, and Liz said, “Uh, okay?”

“It’s a pleasure not meeting you,” I said with a slight grin, before I’d given it any thought. Internally, I winced. Really, Min? I asked myself, you want to be an idiot around Sarah’s work friends?

The two girls didn’t seem to think I was an idiot, though. They laughed a little and the hesitant, polite smiles they’d been giving me relaxed into regular ones. Apparently that stupid comment was enough to make me fair game to talk to, as well.

Gemma flipped her hair over her shoulder a little self-consciously, I thought, which made me self-conscious again, too. “So how long have you been working at Frost?” she asked.

“About five years,” I said. “Which is coincidentally also how long I’ve been addicted to energy drinks and takeaway food.”

They laughed. “I hear you,” Gemma said. “There’s a twenty-four hour Subway two doors from my house and I think they actually stay open after midnight because of me.” She considered me for a moment, “Marketing, yeah?” I nodded, and then she forehead-slapped and laughed a bit nervously. “Sorry, that’s a stupid question, fuck, I’m drunk. Of course Marketing if you’re Sarah’s boss… anyway, I don’t think I’ve seen you around?”

Sarah and I glanced at each other. “She looks a bit different at work,” Sarah said carefully.

Liz laughed and leant out from behind Gemma to say to me, “We all do. As if I could wear this into a Risk meeting with Diane Frost.” She held her arms out so I could see how tiny her dress was. Actually, Gemma’s was pretty small as well, and all three of them had their hair back off their faces. Sarah looked really different with hers back, maybe that’s why I didn’t recognise them?

Gemma adjusted her dress a little. It looked really tight. “Now, on the other hand, if the meeting was with Sean Frost…”

“—Then you’d probably need to be dressed more like me to get his attention,” I said before I thought it through, adding for extra embarrassment, “I realise I need to work a lot on my guns, though.”

They all stared at me for a second and then burst out laughing. “Oh my God, though,” Liz said, leaning forward on the table again. “You’re so right. What’s going on with him and that manager from Marketing? They’re always together. Do you think they’re…”

Sarah looked smug. “I was telling Min the other day that I’d put big money on that.”

Liz took the wine bottle from the table beside Sarah and drank from it. “Well, I’m sure Chris would go in on that. Since he stopped being allowed to bet on games he’ll bet on just about anything else.”

I must have looked a bit confused, because Gemma leant towards me and explained, “Liz’s husband plays for the Waratahs, and you’re not allowed to bet on the league if you’re playing in it.”

Sarah managed to get the bottle back off Liz and poured herself another wine. “Also, he’s really hot,” she said, “and Liz totally doesn’t appreciate him.”

Liz made a face. “Because he’s a jealous fuck, that’s why. He’s lucky he’s so cute.”

Gemma gave them both a dirty look. “Shut up, both of you. You know who I share my bed with?” she asked, waiting for a second, and then answered pointedly, “My cat.”

I shrugged and said ‘quietly’ to Gemma, “To be fair your cat is probably less hairy than Rob.” I made sure it was loud enough for Sarah to hear.

Sarah did hear it and threw a scrunched up serviette at me. “Quiet, you!” she told me, but looked all rosy-cheeked at the mention of Rob.

I ducked behind Gemma to avoid the serviette, laughing. When I sat up again, Gemma was giving me this measured look. There was curiosity in it. “Are you married?” she asked, and it seemed just a little bit out of place. “Kids?”

“Neither,” I said, because Henry and I weren’t married and I didn’t really want to bring him into any of this. Across from me, Sarah raised her eyebrows when I didn’t elaborate. Gemma looked like she wanted to say something else, but talked herself out of it.

Because I felt like the two girls were okay with me, and because I was fucking drunk and Gemma called me ‘cute’ before she’d realised I was female, I looked down at her and said with a low voice and a charming grin, “Was that the answer you were hoping for?”

No sooner had the words left my lips, I could have buried my head in my hands. Min, I scolded myself, what are you doing? I was about to actually apologise for being fucking inappropriate, but before I’d done that, Gemma had put her own hands to her cheeks. Even in this low light, I could see she was blushing fiercely.

Sarah looked between us, a smile growing on her face. “I think this calls for more alcohol,” she said, and tried to wave over the owner. He was busy watching the game, though, and didn’t see us.

Liz put her hand on Gemma’s back. “Not for Gem, though, I think she’s had enough,” she said, looking very, very amused by what had just happened.

‘Gem’ managed to compose herself. “No, actually, alcohol sounds pretty good right now,” she said, a little too embarrassed to make eye-contact with me again. “Lots of alcohol.”

Sarah wasn’t having any luck with the owner and I couldn’t decide if I was horrified by what I’d done or not, so I half-stood, hampered by the table. “I’ll go over and get it,” I said, and then looked at Gemma and Liz who were blocking my way out of the booth. They shuffled along the seat, getting out so I could as well.

I don’t think either of them had realised how tall I was until I stood up beside them. Gemma looked up my body with the same surprise that Bree had had when I’d first met her. Unlike Bree, though, she didn’t say anything. She actually didn’t need to, because I could tell from her reaction that ‘tall’ was something that worked for her. Before I could talk myself out of it, I winked at her and sent her into another deep blush.

Liz laughed at Gemma’s red cheeks, clapping her on the shoulders and steering her to sit back in the booth again.

I watched them for a second as Gemma pulled herself back together and Liz and Sarah started chatting again. I did that to her, I thought as I watched Gemma, remembering her playfully describing me as ‘cute’. It was really difficult for me to accept, when I thought about it. Not only were the two girls completely okay with how I looked and dressed, they were so okay about it that they were letting me tease them based on their reaction to it.

Sarah had said they would be fine, but I still couldn’t believe it. I’d been so sure no one would ever talk to me again if they found out, but there were three people here who didn’t even care. It was surreal, and I felt… wow, really drunk. And I was just standing there staring at the three of them with my jaw open like a total idiot. Hadn’t I been about to do something?

Trying not to look as drunk as I felt, I went to go and grab that other bottle I’d been after from the owner.

“Are you over eighteen?” he asked me a little suspiciously, but he was smiling. He’d seen me with Sarah, so I didn’t think he’d really cause me any trouble. “How old are you?”

“Twelve,” I said flatly, looking down towards him because I was taller. “And a half.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, okay, I get it,” he said, easing the cork out of another bottle of sparkling and passing it over the counter.

I accepted the bottle from him, glad he hadn’t made me show my ID because then I’d have a lot of explaining to do. I pointed at the glasses hanging in the racks above his head. “Can I take a couple of these?”

He’d already turned back towards his rugby game, and waved his hand dismissively at me. “Yeah, yeah.”

I grabbed a couple and then headed back to the table, pretty impressed with the beautifully straight line I was walking in. I felt drunk, but at least I didn’t look it.

Back at the table, I practically got a hero’s welcome. “Yes!” Liz announced, letting me pour her a glass. Gemma, I played with a little. She asked me to stop when I got to what was probably one standard drink, but I pretended not to hear her and kept pouring.

She nearly snatched her glass out from underneath the bottle. “That’s enough! That’s enough!” she begged me, giggling.

I pretended to be very innocent. “I thought you said you needed lots of alcohol?” I asked her, and then flashed her a grin. “I’m just getting you drunk like you wanted.”

She stared at me for a second, and then looked away while the other two girls laughed.

Sarah stood up so I could get in behind her, giving me a secret little smirk as I slipped past. I didn’t really think about why I hadn’t just sat in front of her instead, until I realised that she’d done it on purpose to make sure that I sat next to Gemma. I mock-glared at her while I gave her wine a top-up. She took the glass and drank from it, looking pretty pleased with herself.

Liz filled me in on what I’d missed. “Gemma has a conspiracy theory about Sean Frost,” she told me, with exaggerated seriousness.

Gemma smacked her good-naturedly. “It’s not a conspiracy theory,” she said, turning back towards me. “It’s just a theory, and, actually, I think it has merit.”

Since we were all apparently humouring her theory, I nodded with the same sense of exaggerated seriousness and pretended to give her my rapt attention. I didn’t have to pretend, really, but she still smacked my arm, too. “I mean it!” she said, laughing. “You know his wife is Belinda O’Dougherty, right?” I nodded. “Okay, think about it. She’s a supermodel, but–”

Sarah had gone to check her phone and in the middle of Gemma starting to explain, she said in the top of her vocal range, “Oh my god what?” She was looking at her phone.

Gemma and Liz both turned back at her, surprised, Sean Frost and his wife forgotten. Sarah held her phone at them and they stood a bit off the seat so they could lean towards the screen. I could see it from here, and it was a blurry photo of two people I didn’t know pashing.

“Oh my fucking god,” Liz said as they both sat down again. “I knew he was into her. I knew it. I told you they’d end up together.”

When Gemma sat down again, she was a lot closer to me than she had been before, a lot closer. So close, in fact, that her leg was pressed against mine from knee to hip. In that short dress, her skin was warm against my jeans. I normally hated people sitting close to me. Henry frequently joked about the size of my ‘personal space bubble’; once, he’d even stood on the other side of the room and pretended to knock on it. I didn’t hate it right now, though. Not at all.

I half-listened to the three of them all gossip about this new couple while I was watching Gemma. Was she doing it on purpose, I wondered? Or was she just quite drunk and not coordinated enough to care what part of the seat she was on?

“Sorry, Min,” Sarah said, startling me a little. I looked up at her and away from Gemma. “Whether or not two people you’ve never met are going to hook up and get married is probably the last thing you care about.”

I made sure I kept a completely straight face. “Actually, I care very deeply about it.” They all gave me weird looks. I waited for a couple of seconds, and then explained, “Well, what do I actually market for a living?” I grinned as they all groaned and rolled their eyes at me.I pointed a finger at them. “Who’s hooking up and getting married is critically important to me. Someone’s got to buy stupidly expensive diamonds.”

Sarah locked her phone and put it back in her handbag. “Yeah, that’s what we were doing,” she said, “we weren’t gossiping, we were doing demographics research. I’m totally using that.”

Liz took a sip of her wine. “Research yourself,” she told Sarah, “You’re next.”

I looked down at Gemma beside me. “What about you?” I asked her, and I think her cheeks went a little pink again.

“What about me?” she asked.

“How does your cat feel about diamonds?”

She laughed, giving me this somewhat embarrassed smile as she glanced up at me. We held eye-contact for a little too long, and then both panicked and looked away. I would have probably been a lot more freaked out if I hadn’t been drunk, but even though my blood alcohol level was approaching 1:1, I was still scared to look back at her. What was I doing?

While I was trying to figure that out and pretend I was focusing on what Sarah was saying to Liz, Gemma put her hand on the inside of my knee. It was an innocent enough gesture, but, wow, I felt it. So much so that I couldn’t breathe for a second, and it was exactly at a time that I wanted to. A lot.

She left her hand there, too, and I was acutely aware of all the tiny movements her thumb was making as it moved in slow circles on my jeans. With a sense of dread that would have been much more pronounced if I’d been sober, I realised what all of this meant, and it wasn’t just that I was having fun teasing her.

Fuck, I thought, fuck. I’m attracted to her. She’s a girl, and I’m attracted to her. As if that wasn’t a dangerous enough thought on its own, the absolute worst part of it was that my next one was, ‘so this is what it feels like’.

“Weren’t you in the middle of telling us your thing about Sean?” Liz asked Gemma.

“Huh? Oh!” she said, sounding a bit distracted herself. She hardly looked at me as she spoke this time, but her hand was still on my thigh. “Okay, so.” She tried to compose herself – should I have been that delighted that she wasn’t composed? – and then asked, “…wait, where was I?”

 

“Belinda O’Dougherty,” I prompted, a bit breathless.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Anyway, she’s this huge supermodel and she wasn’t famous before she and Sean hooked up, right? And now she’s super famous and in everything with her baby and her big, pregnant belly…” Gemma paused. “I think it’s a Katie Holmes-Tom Cruise-type of deal. I reckon Sean’s not even as in love with her at all, I think she’s just this really respectable wife for a billionaire mining magnate and in return he helped her with her career.”

We all sat back and considered that, and I found it such an interesting theory that I totally forgot Gemma had her hand on my thigh.

It was possible she was right, I supposed, but Sean had looked genuinely enchanted when he’d brought up his ‘beautiful’ wife with me. I hadn’t prompted him, either. And Henry had never mentioned thinking their marriage was a fraud. It seemed like the sort of thing Henry would pick up on, especially given how much he hated Sean.

“Think about it,” Gemma continued. “He’s always with that beefcake marketing director and everyone knows they’re totally giving it to each other, and he couldn’t just go and be this big gay marketing billionaire. That’s bad for business, even now, so he made some arrangement with Belinda. I mean, have you ever even seen them together?”

“Henry has,” I said automatically, without thinking. “He went to their baby shower last weekend. He says she’s really nice.”

Gemma’s brow lowered for a second. “Who’s Henry?”

My stomach dropped; whoops. I shrunk a bit in the seat. “My boyfriend…”

The expression on her face… “Boyfriend?” she looked over at Sarah for confirmation I wasn’t messing with her.

“Yup,” Sarah said, and then gave me a weird look, like ‘why would you say anything?’

Gemma took her hand off my thigh and sat back, quiet for a few moments. Her disappointment was actually palpable. I felt stupid, like I should apologise for not telling her sooner.

“You’re straight?” Liz asked me, like she’d just found out everything she’d ever believed was a lie. “Okay, I’m sorry for just being out there like this but, seriously: what?”

I remembered Gemma’s hand on my thigh. Apparently not, I thought, and then panicked. “It’s fine,” I said, and then it all just suddenly caught up with me and even the several litres of alcohol wasn’t a match for my adrenaline. “I think I’m going to go get some fresh air for a second,” I said, fanning myself momentarily with the drinks menu. “I’ve had a bit much. Sorry.”

A fucking oracle as always, Sarah grabbed my wrist as I climbed awkwardly over her to get out of the booth. “Don’t leave yet,” she told me sternly. I nodded, and then made a beeline for the hallway.

The beer garden was closed, but there was a quaint little brick courtyard filled up with cleaning equipment and crates that was unlocked. I slipped out into it, staggering and knocking over a pile of crates in the process. Rather than just picking them up, I sat on them.

Fuck.

I wanted to just ignore the fact I’d been really attracted to Gemma. I actually spent a few seconds chalking it up to too much alcohol and how much I’d enjoyed making her blush, but that hadn’t had anything to do with what I’d felt. And I didn’t just like it on an emotional level the way I generally did with Henry, either. I’d felt it. Under my hand, in my stomach, and – I winced – well, everywhere you would ordinarily expect to feel something like that.

At least I wasn’t having a full on panic attack over it; I’d had too much alcohol for that. Even with all this dumped on me, I felt far too relaxed. Kind of good, actually, I really liked when I’d drunk enough to reach that point that I could close my eyes and just kind of drift away on my thoughts… I’d have to make sure I drank bucket loads of water before I went to bed, though, or I wouldn’t feel like getting out of it. Then Bree would be stuck with me tomorrow while I slept in and felt sorry for myself. Although, maybe if I was lucky, she’d just get into bed with me…

I opened my eyes wide again.

“Hey…” a voice said from the doorway and I had to try and conceal how startled I was.

I looked over, and Gemma was leaning on the door frame. Because there was light coming from the kitchen window, I could see her much better out here than I could inside. I’d actually pegged her colouring a bit wrong; I’d thought she was a dark brunette, but now I could see red highlights in her hair and a dusting of freckles across her face. It was gorgeous. She was gorgeous. I felt nervous again.

“Hi,” I said, and then looked around me at all the fallen crates. “Just in case you were wondering, they were already like this, I swear.”

She chuckled. “Sarah said you had a habit of taking off, so I thought I’d just come looking for you and try to convince you not to.”

I laughed once. “Good luck,” I said, and then patted the crate beside me. I pointed up at the gap of sky a couple of levels above the courtyard. It was completely overcast. “Want to stargaze with me?”

She came over and sat next to me, wobbling a little on her heels. She was at least as drunk as I was. Maybe because of that, she didn’t say anything straight away, and I was too fucking nervous about her sitting that close to me to think properly myself.

She did speak eventually. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to, you know…” she gestured vaguely at my knee. “Don’t leave because I can’t keep my hands to myself.”

I shook my head tightly. “I should have told you earlier.”

She laughed nervously, shifting on the crate. Her nervousness was actually really gorgeous, too, and I would have been much more affected by that if I wasn’t terrified about the fact that we were both out here alone. I was actually shaking a little, but I managed not to make it obvious.

“It’s just…well, it’s a bit of a surprise for me, I don’t normally go for girls, but it’s like you’re–”

“–it’s fine,” I interrupted her, completely fucking agreeing with her. I didn’t want to talk about it, though. It was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I’d barely come to terms with the other stuff that was going on for me, and now this. In case she was going to try again, I repeated, “It’s fine.”

“Is it?” she asked, and there was something more about that question. I was terrified of looking at her – almost to the point of feeling a bit ill – but I did anyway. Once I did, it was too late to look away.

She was watching me so attentively, her eyes dipping between my face and my body. I don’t know what she found so interesting about it, and while I was trying to figure that out, she looped a hand around the back of my neck under my ponytail and pulled me down to kiss her. I froze.

Her lips were so soft, much softer than the ones I was used to. I was so completely shocked that I just kissed back out of reflex, but when the blades of our tongues touched she made this noise at the back of her throat… Fuck. I felt it somewhere deep inside me. That wasn’t alcohol.

For just a second I started to wrap my arms around her, but instead of Henry’s big, strong body, she was this smaller, softer version. Alarm bells were going off everywhere in my head, but I could hardly pay attention to them because of how wasted I was. What I could pay attention to was how she felt against me, right up against me, pressing up into me and kissing me and touching my neck and god, that dress was so short and her thighs looked so good and okay, no, I needed to stop, fuck, I needed to stop, this needed to stop!

I pulled back far more forcefully than I’d intended. I was breathing heavily, and I had no idea if it was from panic or the fact I’d been about to get really into that. “I can’t, I can’t do this,” I said, and it sounded like a plea.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, looking horrified at herself. “Shit, Min, I’m wasted, I’m really sorry!”

I stood up, because I couldn’t be trusted to sit next to her for a second longer. “It’s not your fault,” I said, losing the fight against how much I was shaking. I went to change how I was standing to hide it, and instead of succeeding I nearly fell backwards over another set of crates.

She tried to help me stand up, but I couldn’t let her touch me anymore. “This isn’t your fault,” I told her, taking a step away from her. “I actually am going to ‘run off’ again. But it’s not your fault, okay? You’re gorgeous. I can’t stay here tonight or I’m going to do something I’ll regret.”

She was still looking really angry with herself. “Okay,” she said, nodding. “I get it.”

I mirrored her nod, still breathing heavily, and then went straight for the exit. I could just text Sarah later; from what she’d told Gemma it sounded like she knew I was going to leave, anyway.

I walked briskly out onto the street, thinking I was probably right just to try and make my way home unassisted. Actually, though, I wasn’t really that sure how I made it home. I managed somehow, and I didn’t get robbed, or murdered or hit by a car despite the fact I was all over the place. It took me five or six swipes with my keycard to get the door to open, and when I went to go put on something cooler than a hoodie, I saw I had Gemma’s lipstick smeared all around my mouth. I’d walked out of the pub and home like this?

I propped myself upright against the wardrobe, staring at my reflection. Now that I was home and everything was normal again, I could hardly believe what had happened. If it wasn’t for the lipstick, I might have seriously wondered if I had been so out of it that I’d been hallucinating.

Once I’d washed my face, I sat back down in front of my laptop, in my drunken haze determined that the solution to feeling like everything was completely out of control was to finish reviewing the graphics. At the very least it would mean that I wouldn’t have to do it when Bree was over tomorrow and I could just relax and have fun with her.

I couldn’t concentrate on photos of landscapes, though, I could only think two thoughts: how amazing it had felt to be really attracted to someone, and how fucked up it was that I was feeling that way about a girl.

I was stuck on the see-saw of those two thoughts for god knows how long, until I caught sight of a photo that actually mattered on the other side of the room: me and Henry in Queensland together.

Henry. I squeezed my eyes closed for a moment.

Yeah, ‘conscious’ wasn’t going to work for me right now, I decided, standing up and weaving haphazardly across my apartment towards my bed. With any luck I’d just pass out and wake up remembering absolutely nothing that had just happened.

---

***

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Fuck, my head. I wasn’t even properly awake yet and it was killing me. With my eyes still closed, I put a palm against one of my cheeks. My face felt hot, and that was in direct comparison to the fact the rest of me was shiver-cold.

Where was my doona?

I felt around the mattress for it, expecting that I’d probably kicked it off at some point. But when my hand landed on something solid, warm and breathing I had one of those panicked moments where I really worried about what I’d done while I was drunk. Had Henry come over last night after all? I didn’t think I’d–

–shit, Bree.

Despite my splitting headache, I sat bolt upright in bed, twisting towards the something. It was her; her curls were spilt out all over the second pillow and she had both the doona and the extra blanket coiled around her. I could only see below the knee on one of her legs, but it looked bare. I gaped at her, feeling the panic set in.

Fuck, had we–? I stared open-mouthed at her as she stirred, yawning. Fuck. Fuck! Had I gotten so completely wasted that I’d ended up sleeping with a girl?

Even as I was asking myself that, though, I had a patchy memory of pretending to smother her with the doona as I’d tucked her in on the couch. Yeah, I was pretty sure she’d fallen asleep on the couch and I’d staggered in here and passed out by myself. God, that was a relief.

I lay carefully back down again, staring up at the ceiling and laughing at myself. As bits and pieces of the night started to slowly come back to me, it became very clear nothing like that had happened. Before we’d gone to bed separately, Bree had made me watch three or four episodes of oh my god the best TV show on earth – which, by the way, was far from actually being the best TV show on earth – and we’d been sitting across the couch from each other.

That didn’t answer the question about what she was doing in my bed, though.

Her eyes fluttered open. “Good morning,” she said sleepily.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’re not where I left you,” I observed.

She scrunched up her nose. “The couch was hurting my neck,” she said. “And then I came in here, and you had this whole ginormous bed and you were only using, like, the very edge of it.”

“So, naturally, that was a sign you needed to hop in.”

“I was very careful when I climbed over you,” she told me. “And then even though I was really cold I slept all the way over here so I didn’t wake you up.” She adjusted the doona while she was speaking, and I could see the blue of my hoodie above it, which further explained why I was so cold. I must have given it to her at some point, because I was just in a t-shirt and jeans.

I looked back across the pillow at her in my bed, wearing my clothes. I didn’t know why I was so surprised, though. Of course she was randomly in my bed: this was Bree we were talking about. Personal space was completely optional to her. I started to laugh but I just ended up in a long, pained groan with my hands over my face.

“Fuck, Bree…” I said, rubbing my sore eyes. At least she was happy again, though, and that was what counted. Remembering those red, puffy eyes and that tragic little voice… “Well, better in here than on the streets of Sydney, I guess.”

She snorted. “And way more fun. And don’t try and pretend you didn’t have fun last night, because, look…”

She half-sat up and felt around inside the doona, rescuing her phone. After a few seconds of waiting for something to open on it, she held the screen towards me. I could hear the tinny buzzing of bad speakers and someone laughing quietly. When I squinted at the screen, it was me. A video of me. I’d obviously tripped and fallen on the rug because I was on all fours, laughing forever about it instead of actually getting up. Bree was giggling so hysterically from behind the camera you could hear her struggling to breathe.

At least my face wasn’t really in the video. I would have deleted it anyway, but before I could touch the trash can icon on the screen, Bree snatched it out of my reach.

“You’d better delete that,” I told her.

She gave me a pixie grin. “No way,” she said, and then played it again to herself.

I gave up, rolling onto my back and yawning, half-watching her beside me.

There were obviously some missing parts of last night; I didn’t remember her taking that video at all. I strained to remember what we’d done before we’d watched that TV show; I think I’d spent about twenty minutes or so trying to do some work. Bree had come up behind me and had proceeded to tell me that it was stupid to call pink diamonds pink when they weren’t. I’d Google-imaged some 1P-category pink diamonds to prove they were pink, but then we’d ended up having a brief argument over whether her school tie was pink or coral. Obviously it was coral and the fact she vehemently declared it wasn’t drove me crazy to the point of wanting to strangle her, because who was the schoolgirl and who did professional design work for the marketing department of a Fortune 500 company here? Obviously I knew what I was doing which was probably partially why Jason and Diane had chosen me for… Wait, didn’t Jason say something about…

I sat upright again. Shit! I had that meeting before work this morning with Diane and Jason!

“Oh my God!” I checked the clock on my phone and then clambered off the mattress, head pounding. “I have a meeting this morning I forgot about!”

I staggered into the bathroom to wash my face, wrestling some hardcore nausea. This was one serious hangover; I felt like I really needed the whole day to sleep it off. However, taking sick days at Frost was code for ‘never promote me’, and, on top of that, I really couldn’t waste a single day on this project. I didn’t have the time. Speaking of time, fuck, I was going to be late for this meeting!

Bree was only just getting out of bed when I rushed back in there. As soon as she stepped out of the doona, all I saw beneath the hoodie was skin. I stopped. Was she serious? “Bree, are you not wearing pants?” I asked her with the wardrobe open almost as far as my jaw was. “Were you in bed beside me and not wearing pants?”

She shrugged. “I’m wearing undies,” she said, like that made it perfectly fine. “And your jumper is kind of long anyway.”

I put my palm to my forehead and groaned as she shut the bathroom door behind her. Bree!

Despite the fact I was in a huge hurry, I still struggled to get my fucking dress on. I kept telling myself it was ridiculous of me to be this hung up on fabric, and it was the same fabric that people made men’s suits out of. No matter how much I deconstructed it, though, it didn’t make it any easier. And actually, the only thing that ended up getting me into it was hearing Bree turn off the water in the shower and worrying that she’d see my breasts in this godawful lacy bra if I didn’t put the damn thing on.

I rushed putting on my makeup and I rushed my hair and in the end I had us out of the door at a reasonable hour. I didn’t have time to take her to the train station, though, so I parted ways with her under the George Street overpass, pushing my Opal card and a few small notes into her hand.

She was laughing as she stuffed them into the front pocket of her bag. “Min, you look so hungover,” she said. “I bet you have a terrible headache.”

I wondered if the heavy sunglasses I was wearing gave it away. “Not at all,” I said flatly. “I feel fantastic.”

“Oh, yeah?” She grabbed my hand and pulled me downwards, trying to say really loudly next to my ear, “Then I guess you won’t mind if I do this!”

She was lucky I’d taken some serious painkillers, because even on them I felt like blood was going to start pouring out of my ear after she’d shouted in it. I shook her off. “I hate you.”

She looked delighted, still giggling. “No you don’t, you’re smiling.”

I tried to do something about my smile. “I do. I actually hate you. It’s why I watched that terrible TV show with you for hours last night and why I bought you that bracelet.” My smile had crept back by the time I’d finished that sentence, but Bree’s had dropped right off her face as soon as I’d said ‘bracelet’.

I glanced down at her wrist; it was bare. “You’re not wearing it,” I noted. Maybe she didn’t like it?

Bree made a face. “I can’t wear jewellery with my school uniform,” she said, glossing over the fact her uniform skirt was so short it could cameo in a B-grade porno. “So I left it at home.”

Well, that made sense: she wasn’t wearing any other jewellery, either. My old high school had been just as strict and randomly hypocritical. And, speaking of school, I checked my phone–shit. I had ten minutes to be in the office and she was going to miss her train.

“Okay.” I looked her up and down. “Well, as much as I’d love to have my ears shouted in all day, I have to run. Are you staying over tonight, too?” My weather app said it was going to be a really nice night, so I figured that maybe we could watch more of that terrible show of hers out on the balcony over some dinner.

She looked down at her feet and shook her head. “Nah, Mum doesn’t work nights on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday.”

“Oh,” I said. No dinner and TV on the balcony, then. “Well maybe Saturday?” She nodded, still looking at the ground. I didn’t want to make her sad again, but… I couldn’t help but ask. “Are you going to be okay until then?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.”

I winced. I wanted more assurance than that, but I also really, really needed to not be any later for this meeting than I already was. “I hope that’s true, Bree,” I said, and then cupped her cheek for a second. “Okay, I really have to go.”

She nodded, and then smiled a half-hearted goodbye at me, turning and walking towards the pedestrian crossing. I waited until she waved at me from the other side of the road before I spun and rushed uphill towards Frost, trying as hard as possible not to think about how much my head hurt or how sick I felt.

It was eight-thirty when I got into the office, and Jason was waiting for me by the door of Oslo with his arms crossed. He did not look pleased.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I said, jogging past him into the office and dropping my bag into my bottom drawer. “I’m not feeling that great, but I’m ready.”

“The one day that you’re not here before six…” he said, shaking his head at me. “Well, at least you look sick. Maybe we won’t both get caned.”

I wasn’t sure what hurt more: my head or being told off by my boss, but the strong painkillers I’d taken weren’t touching either of those things. I was starting to worry that I was going to get in trouble again, but Diane’s assistant was only just handing her a jumbo latte as we went into her office, and her computer hadn’t even finished booting up.

“Thanks,” Diane told her assistant, and then sat down and gestured hospitably towards the chairs opposite her desk. “Good morning, take a seat.”

Jason sat down easily, and I slowly lowered myself into the chair beside him, my head throbbing so much from running that my vision was pulsing in sync with it. And my stomach… I had a horrible image of myself just throwing up all over Diane’s desk. Oh, god, there wasn’t anything worse I could do. Why did I drink so much last night when it was Bree who really needed the distraction? Why? Why did I do this to myself?

“Min.” I looked up at Diane as she spoke to me. It must have been apparent how bad I felt, because she frowned. “Are you not feeling too well?”

“I’m fine,” I lied, palms sweating. “Probably just a virus. I’ll get over it.”

She watched me for a moment. “Hmm,” she said, giving me the smallest possible smile. “Good thing you’re all the way over there, then. Anyway, if you could provide with me an update on the project, that would be fantastic. Jason’s given me some details, but he is in charge of fourteen other teams, so I’d rather hear it from you.”

Thinking straight enough to relay our progress was actually a bit of a challenge, but I thought I sounded coherent and professional enough just to pass as someone who was a bit sick. I went over the project so far, explaining the decisions we’d made at each point and what was still left to be done.

She nodded slowly as she listened to me, occasionally asking me questions. Eventually, she said, “Well, that all sounds on track. Russia is an excellent choice, and if you’re selling to Vladivostok, it’s quite likely we’ll get some demand out of Beijing, too.”

I hadn’t even thought about future expansions, but I obviously wasn’t going to tell Diane that. I pretended it had been part of the decision all along. “Strategically, it’s a good place to position ourselves.”

Diane looked satisfied by that. “A solid plan,” she said. “How’s information security?”

“Terrible,” Jason butted in, abandoning his professional vocabulary again. “Mini has that Arab kid in her team, and he doesn’t understand the meaning of ‘encryption’.”

I flinched as he said that, and I think Diane noticed. She didn’t say as much though, focusing on the rest of his complaint as she directed me with a frown. “Why aren’t you dealing with this?”

“I spoke to John yesterday and I haven’t received any unencrypted emails since,” I assured her, sounding far more confident than I felt. “But yes, he needed to be told several times.”

She didn’t look pleased. “Watch him,” she said. “There will be trouble if my brother finds out where we’re planning on setting up in Western Australia.”

“Understood,” I told her.

“And,” she said, remembering something and pointing at me. “I saw you two together last week. Why was that?”

My eyebrows went up. “I’ve bumped into him a few times,” I said. “We talked a bit, but it was purely small talk.”

Jason scoffed. “It’s never small talk with that man,” he said coarsely. “Excuse my language, Diane. But Mini, he’s a fucking asshole.”

Diane didn’t look shocked or angry, and she didn’t ask him to watch his language, either.

It was the strangest fucking conversation, I swear. I was listening to the guy who was joking around with Sean at every possible opportunity – and maybe doing more than that with him – calling him a ‘fucking asshole’. Suspect choice of wording aside, it didn’t really seem like the way you’d expect someone to describe a person they got along that well with. And, Diane? Diane was Sean’s sister, the very essence of decorumand still she was happy for her employees to call him derogatory names. I was beginning to think that maybe Henry and Alice were the only balanced siblings on the planet. What the hell was going on in people’s families? I just couldn’t imagine how siblings could end up so much at odds. Like, Mum and I didn’t get along at all and sometimes it felt like ten thousand kilometres wasn’t enough, but she was still my mother.

It was all incredibly screwed up, and I wondered if Sean knew the way they were talking about him. Hell, I wondered if Diane knew how close Sean and Jason appeared to be and that they might even be involved with each other.

“I’ll be careful with what I say to Sean,” I promised them, and apparently that marked the end of the meeting.

Family feud aside I thought it went quite well, and while I was congratulating myself for not throwing up on Diane’s table as we left, Diane stopped me as soon as Jason was gone. “Min,” she said, briefly closing the door beside us. “Mind if we have a word?”

That wasn’t actually a question, so of course I nodded.

She was watching me with a very measured gaze. It unsettled me even though she was so much shorter. “How do you like working in marketing, Min?”

“I love my job,” I said with practised ease.

She nodded, and then appeared to very carefully choose her words. “Marketing is a bit of an anomaly in most large companies,” she began, somewhat cryptically. “The skillset required to excel in it generally differs from that of other departments. Take Aaron, for example,” she said, referring to the one of the older ‘fatherly’ leads I’d previously had. I’d hated him; he’d spoken down to me and treated me like a secretary. “He’s a fantastic networker. We’d lose a huge web of contacts if he were to leave us. And Gerard, he’s another fantastic member of our team.” I didn’t like working with that man, either. He had the tendency to freely laugh at other people’s expense.

She reeled off a whole list of names, and I began to see a pattern; all the people she was naming and complimenting were fucks. Actual fucks, there wasn’t a name on the list that I’d want to be put in a team with. “And, of course, Jason is the best closer this department’s ever had. He’s a real asset to Frost International.”

She paused, letting that sink in. “When I’m hiring for this department, I’m often presented with the difficult choice of hiring the type of employee I might choose for another area of the business, and someone who’s going to shake hands and seal the deal, so to speak. This can make marketing teams operate a little less smoothly at times. However, what matters is that we get signatures on those dotted lines. If we can’t sell our products, we don’t have a business.”

I nodded, not following her one hundred percent.

“So,” she said. “Occasionally I’m required to overlook certain behaviours I see in order to ensure that I still get those signatures and we still have a very healthy, very profitable business. Working closely with very strong marketers like Jason, I imagine you’ve discovered you have to do the same. I trust this hasn’t been a problem for you?”

…I finally understood what she meant, and it left a really bad taste in my mouth. It must have been triggered by that ‘Arab’ comment she’d seen me react to earlier.

She was asking me a trick question, though. Of course Jason’s complete lack of regard for people was a problem – he was a manager for chrissake – but I knew actually saying as much would give my career the kiss of death. So I looked right back at her and forced a calm smile. “I have no trouble working with Jason,” I said through my teeth. “I’ve been working in marketing for five years, after all.”

She smiled faintly and nodded. “That is a very good point,” she said, visibly relaxing. “And good to hear, too: you’re doing some great work on this project. It would be a shame if you decided to transfer out for something minor. Anyway,” she opened the door again and stood aside politely so I had room to step through it, “thanks for your work. I look forward to attenting functions in Russia and seeing women wearing our merchandise.”

She showed me out and I stood by the door for a second.

Under all the compliments and explanations of how marketing departments functioned, there was something sinister in there. I didn’t think she was threatening me exactly, but I didn’t like it. It was one thing to just kind of know I needed to put up with Jason, and quite another to be told my career in marketing was over if I didn’t.

That, on top of the Sean-Diane stuff, the Sean-Jason stuff and the fact happy families seemed to be a fictional construct in Australia was just making my terrible headache even worse. Ugh. I sighed, starting to walk around the corner to Oslo. I’d need to ask Henry what he thought about all of that.

I walked back in the office to find Sarah already seated at her desk. “You are here,” she said, and had started to stay something else, but she cut it short and laughed. “Whoa, someone didn’t get any sleep last night. Did Henry stay over?”

“Nope,” I told her. “I was out fighting evil.”

I did not want to tell her that it was Bree who had stayed and because of Bree I looked like this, because knowing her, she’d take it the wrong way. It was difficult to take it the right way, actually, especially given that we’d ended up in bed together. I didn’t want to have to explain to her that Bree needed to be held to different behavioural standards than normal people.

She laughed. “Looks like evil won,” she said, and handed me a Red Bull. “I have Panadol if you want some, too.”

I shook my head, and then winced as the movement made it throb. “Diane says our project is going well and she congratulates us,” I told her instead, changing the subject.

Recognition passed across her face. “Oh, that’s right, that’s where you were,” she said. “And hey, go us! You should buy us lunch to celebrate.”

She was probably right. “I should, shouldn’t I? Maybe I’ll go down at lunch and buy Chinese from the place around the corner for us all or something.” Just talking about food made me feel ill, I didn’t relish the idea of having to deal with the smell of it.

“Looking forward to it,” she said, and then she watched me intently for a few seconds. “So,” she began in a playful voice. “I noticed you didn’t delete your Facebook last night as promised, so I sent you and your friend an invite for Friday.”

She did what? I leant back in my chair and sighed at her. “You’re lucky I’m way too sick to bother doing all the paperwork required to fire you.”

“There’s more…” she said, and then turned her laptop toward me. She had Facebook chat up, so I leaned towards the screen.

Sarah had hit up Bree on Facebook last night about the invite, and when she’d told Bree where the venue was, Bree had replied, “wow thats really close to here”.

Sarah looked smug. “Close to ‘here’, Min,” she said. “Not ‘close to Min’s’.” She closed Facebook while I was glaring at her. Why had she asked about Henry if she knew who was with me last night? “Anyway, I was actually thinking that stunt I pulled with Henry in getting you out of the office might also work with Bree. But she was pretty hesitant and wouldn’t accept the invite on your behalf.”

That made me smile a little. If Bree was angling herself towards more quasi-expensive jewellery, it was working. “Good,” I said. “At least I know who’s on my side and who isn’t.” I gave her a sideways look. “Anyway, I think I actually agreed to come drinking with you when the project is done. You don’t even need to pull any stunts. And you don’t need to go using Facebook to check up on the location of my friends or invite me to stuff, either.”

She shrugged as we both reluctantly got ready to start working. “Maybe not, but it’s more fun this way.” She grinned at me and then turned back to her screen.

I swung my chair back towards my own. I had trouble focusing on work because of how crap I felt, though. I might have ducked into the bathrooms to put a wet towel on the back of my neck for a bit, but there were giant mirrors facing the basins in there. I was pretty sure seeing myself in a dress and plastered in makeup had zero chance of making me feel any better, so I ended up deciding just to push through how sick I felt.

Moscow had gotten back to me to set up a video conference at 4pm which meant that I needed to hurriedly book meeting rooms and equipment and find an interpreter. Jason insisted that the stream shouldn’t run on the main network, and it turned out to be a nightmare trying to get wireless coverage from Oslo reaching down to the meeting rooms.

Because of all that hassle, I didn’t get to see Henry. About half an hour before the video conference started and while I was sitting in the meeting room with Jason and worrying myself half-to-death that I wasn’t ready to set up a pitch, Henry texted me.

“The suspense is killing me,” it read. “Is Bree okay? Are you okay?”

I looked up; Jason was busy on his tablet and wasn’t paying any attention to me, so I texted back, “Yeah, it’s something with her brother, she didn’t say what but at least it’s not physical.” I wasn’t sure what else to tell him and whether or not I should say she’d run out, but I knew what else I wouldn’t be telling him: ‘Bree and I got drunk together, she slept over and we ended up in the same bed. Also she wasn’t wearing pants when I woke up.’ Oh, and the part where I was dressed up as a guy the whole time, too. I shouldn’t forget to mention that.

I squeezed my eyes shut and groaned. I’d better just change the subject. “Actually I have some other stuff I need to discuss with you. I’ll probably need to sleep tonight but do you want to come over tomorrow?”

“No can do,” he sent back, “tomorrow I have to fly down to Melbourne and help interview graduates again. Frost had so many applications this year that they almost need to hire more HR staff to chew through them all. Sunday is looking good. Want to catch up then? Maybe we could do something a bit more romantic than usual and go and see a movie. I’m thinking Horror. Nothing more romantic than Horror.”

I chuckled, and then smothered it when I remembered who was in the room with me. “Sounds great. Come over after lunch.” After I’d sent that, I put my phone away and got straight back to stressing I would fuck up this meeting.

I had expected Jason to run the teleconference, but when I’d asked him what he’d planned to say, he said he hadn’t planned to say anything because it was my meeting. “It’s just a first contact meeting,” he’d said, checking NRL scores on his tablet. “Aside from actually insulting them, there’s probably not that much you can stuff up.”

“But you’re here,” I’d observed.

He grinned. “In case you stuff up anyway.”

I didn’t stuff it up, though, the interpreter arrived on time and Moscow called in a few minutes later. The three people I ended up talking to on screen were a guy who was obviously the boss – he introduced himself to me as the contact I’d emailed – a female personal assistant who looked about Bree’s age and another guy who didn’t say much.

I explained in as little detail as possible about the products we were planning on selling and timeframes around the construction and operation of the mine. All three of them listened carefully until I was finished. Then, my contact and the other guy with him had a brief quiet discussion, too quiet for the interpreter to get much of it. When they were done, I asked, “So, can you think of any companies or people I should approach who might be interested? And if so, are you able to introduce us?”

The quiet guy finally spoke. “You know of Sasha Burov?” he asked me in English.

“Of course I know about him,” I said immediately. His name had come up repeatedly during scoping, it would be remiss of me to not know who he was. “He’s one of the top diamond brokers in Eastern Russia. He buys for those intricate Korzhakov collections and that Russian-Italian designer,” I thought for a second. “’Poletti-Pisani’, I think it is? There are a whole host of even Western celebrities that commission jewellery from those collections.”

The quiet man looked very impressed. He nodded once. “I am him,” he said simply. “You can speak with my assistant here. Make me the appointment, book tickets. Frost International will put me in a nice hotel, I think, give me a good view of Sydney while I am there.” He smiled, showing two rows of perfect teeth. “I look forward to meeting you. Perhaps we can do some business.” He shook hands with my contact and then stood up out of frame and walked off.

Jason had looked up with surprise in the middle of that whole exchange, and then across at me. I must have had much the same expression. Had I just accidentally booked a sales pitch on my first contact?

I hurriedly checked dates with the young assistant, penned in Mr. Burov for after Easter and then ended the call and dismissed the interpreter.

For a minute or two Jason and I just sat back in our chairs. Had that just happened? Had I really just booked a sales pitch on my first contact?

“How the fuck did you do that,” Jason said, lapsing back into his habit of swearing. I shook my head. He blew a stream of air through his lips. “I need a cigarette.” He stood up. “Fuck. Good work, Mini. Very nicely done,” he said, but his congratulations seemed more of an afterthought to his surprise.

I followed him upstairs, and went back with him to his office to lock up the tablet. His office wasn’t empty, though: Sean Frost was seated in his chair, playing with a set of perpetual motion balls Jason had on his desk. Sean had obviously been waiting for Jason.

“Don’t you do any actual work?” Jason asked him as he took my tablet from me and locked it with his in the filing cabinet.

“Jason, Min,” Sean greeted us cordially, standing up. “If I’m not mistaken, supporting and socialising with my employees is part of my role?” He grinned. “Cigarette?”

“You fucking bet,” Jason said, grabbing a packet of them out of his jacket. “Ms. Genius right here just scored us a pitch.”

Sean looked over at me and smiled. It was really warm and genuine. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “I hear good things about her. Congratulations, Min.”

I was still completely spun out about what had just happened, but wow,that felt good. The other co-CEO congratulating me, too? I could hardly believe it. I could actually hardly believe the whole last hour. I beamed at him.

Jason didn’t look quite as sold on me. “Yeah, you hear good things from her boyfriend, right?” He laughed. “If he wants to get any ever again he’s kind of obliged to say she’s fantastic.” Instead of inviting him to shove it, I laughed appropriately like Diane would have wanted me to as they walked out together.

They kept joking all the way to the balcony, and I watched them for just a second, wondering if Sean knew the things Jason said about him behind his back. Jason lit Sean’s cigarette again, and Sean leaned into the lighter. I watched as Jason grinned broadly at him; there was something predatory about it. If they weren’t sleeping together, Jason was certainly acting like he wanted them to be. Why, though? Was he just trying to cover all his bases by cosying up to both CEOs? He worked pretty closely with Diane, and I remembered Diane saying he was the only other person she’d trusted with regard to the project.

I made a face. Whatever, I wasn’t going to learn much by standing here and staring at them. I also really couldn’t be bothered with the sort of teasing I’d get if anyone else in the department caught me staring at two attractive men.

I had better things to be thinking about, anyway. Like the fact I’d booked a sales pitch on my first contact. I might actually have skipped back into Oslo, if not for these goddamn heels.

Since my team were all probably going to work through the evening and I was fucking ecstatic that I’d somehow managed to fluke a sales pitch, I shouted them to dinner, too, in order to congratulate them. Hell, I’d shout them to as many meals as they wanted as long as we kept pushing along at the pace we were tracking at. I hadn’t even spoken to Vladivostok yet.

While we were preparing for that meeting the following day I bought food for everyone again, and later I found Sarah with her head in her hands over a half-finished rice and black bean stirfry. “This project is going to really put me off Chinese takeaway,” she said, and then tried to soldier through the rest of it as she copy-pasted me some stats.

Unfortunately, when I did have my meeting with Vladivostok on Thursday, it didn’t go quite as spectacularly. I did get a few names and a few numbers to follow up on, however, and my team spent all the rest of that day doing research on those people. Meanwhile, I went and read up as much as I could on this Sasha Burov to try and decide what sort of material we should develop for him. I thought over what he’d said, ‘Give me a good view of Sydney’. Maybe he didn’t get down to Australia very often? That might be something I could use in the marketing materials.

I went home on Thursday night and watched about four hours of Tourism Australia commercials and some related documentaries. Bree even sent me a few links on Deviant Art to the ones her extended family in Europe really liked when I told her what I was doing. And, as soon as I was sure Moscow was open on Friday, I called in to speak to Sasha Burov’s assistant in order to ask about the last time he’d been down here. She had to double-check, but she actually thought it might have been more than a decade.

That settled it, I thought, lacing my fingers behind my head and spinning around in my office chair. I was going to exploit my country’s natural beauty to get his name on that dotted line.

I spent most of Friday evening tabbing through thousands and thousands of images of Australian landscapes; I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to use or how I wanted to use it, but usually in this sort of circumstance I would just come across something and get an idea. There didn’t seem to be any reason to work late in the office if I was just looking at photo collections, though, so I went home and spent hours using up my bandwidth on high res landscapes, dressed comfortably in clothes that didn’t make me feel like everything sucked.

Around midnight, my stomach started to grumble. It was annoying, because I only had a few hundred photos left on this particular site and I didn’t want to leave it half-finished before bed. I tried to keep working anyway, but I kept being distracted by how hungry I was so I decided I’d just duck down to the late night pizza place on Cumberland. It would take me ten minutes and then I could probably keep going for another hour or two.

I went into my bedroom and opened my wardrobe, automatically going to get the same dress I’d worn all day so I could change into it before I left.

However, when I picked it up, I had that familiar wave of resentment. I didn’t want to put it on again. I’d have to put on stockings and a bra, and makeup… It was almost enough to drive me back to the fridge to just eat the crusty old birthday cake that was still there. I really felt like pizza, and why the hell should I have to forgo it just because I couldn’t face putting on any of my girly clothes again? I’d done my time in them this week.

Stop being ridiculous and put the damn thing on, I told myself as I looked down at the innocent fabric in my hands. It’s not rocket science, Min, just take off your comfy clothes, put one leg into it, followed by the other and zip it up. That’s all you have to do.

I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t spend one more second today dressed like something I wasn’t.

I left the dress in the wardrobe and closed the door to the reflection of me in my jeans and hoodie. It was a relief, especially since I’d decided to try the bandages on again this evening. I probably didn’t really need to wear them with anything except those tight button-up shirts, but I’d put them on earlier anyway, just to see what they looked like. They were actually quite uncomfortable; maybe I was wearing them wrong. Still, they weren’t as uncomfortable as heels had been when I’d first started to wear those, and they did make my chest look completely flat. I turned sideways for a moment and held my hoodie against my stomach, admiring the smooth plane between my collarbones and my hips.

Fuck it, I thought, I’ll just wear this down to the shop. It had been a complete non-event yesterday when I had been running around after Bree in this, and it was the middle of the night now. No one was going to see.

I did put my hood up as I went through the lobby, though, because I was still a bit worried the staff would recognise me. And while I was sure they saw some pretty dodgy stuff come in and out of the hotel, I didn’t want to be anyone’s ‘Hey, you’ll never guess what I saw at work today’ story.

It was beginning to get a bit chilly outside; the breeze was pleasant, though, even this late at night. If it was nice weather again tomorrow, maybe Bree and I could sit out on the balcony after all. I’d made a pact with Bree over text message that for every episode of her TV show we watched, she’d have to watch one of my cartoons. She’d pinkie-sworn, so it was settled. We could relax with the balcony door open, eat junk food and watch stuff. Sounded like a great Saturday, to be honest. Just like the last one I’d had with her.

Walking around in the dark like this reminded me of when she’d run out, though. I hoped again that nothing had happened to her while she’d been home last couple of days. Maybe I should buy her something to cheer her up just in case? Not jewellery, though, something she didn’t have to take off or put away.

I was so busy trying to decide what an appropriate Cheer Up Bree present was, that I didn’t notice someone staring at me from the other side of the street. When I did notice, I didn’t want to stop and turn my head around towards them because I was worried I’d get drawn into a conversation. I still wasn’t convinced I sounded like a guy, and I really didn’t want to find out how people would react to the discrepancy. I had enough fucking trouble dealing with it myself.

I’d hoped she’d give up if I just kept walking, but she didn’t. She followed me all the way up the street, jogging as I walked faster. I could see her silhouette out of the very corner of my eye, and I could hear her heels clopping on the pavement.

It was completely irrational because I was much bigger than she was, but I was actually scared what would happen if she caught up to me.

Ahead of us, there was a pub on the corner and people were sitting along the walls of it, drinking and laughing. I exhaled. Maybe I was wrong; maybe she was just rushing to meet someone in there.

My relief didn’t last very long though, because she crossed the street to get to me and reached up to pull my hood back, laughing. But as I faced her, for some reason absolutely certain I was about to cop a torrent of abuse like in high school, a familiar voice caught me really off-guard by saying,“Min! I knew it! It is you!”

I recognised that voice well before there was enough light for me to see who it was. You’d hope I would; I spent enough time at work. My stomach bottomed out as the silhouette stepped into the light. I saw her big grin before the rest of her features, and that her long hair was braided for once instead of loose around her shoulders. She was wearing significantly less than she did at work; no wonder I hadn’t recognised her.

Now, I did. While I was frozen solid to the pavement, she grabbed my forearms – as touchy-feely as she always was – and looked delighted. “Fuck, you actually came, I can’t believe it! This is insane!”

“Sarah?” I rasped, because it was all I could manage.

Shit.

 

I woke up to the sound of someone opening and closing the cupboards in my kitchen. Yawning, I felt around my bedside table for my phone and held in front of my face, half-blinding myself. 6:02AM. Bree was very awake for six o’clock in the morning. Weren’t teenagers supposed to be impossible to get up before midday?

Just as I was trying to decide if it was too early to get out of bed or not, my bedroom door swung open and a silhouette with very fluffy hair appeared. “You have no food,” she announced, not telling me anything I didn’t know. “I had this really nice idea where I was going to make you breakfast and have it ready for you when you woke up but the only thing you have in your pantry is this one single pickle and the most plastic-looking two minute noodles in the world. The cake is the only thing in your fridge. You don’t even have milk anywhere, just, like, four hundred thousand bottles of red wine.”

“Good morning, Bree,” I said pointedly in my croaky morning voice. “How did you sleep?”

“Okay,” she said, still lecturing me, “and you sound like a guy, now, too. I’ve discovered the reason you look like some skinny teenage guy when you don’t try not to is because you hardly ever eat. If you didn’t have your hair, like, down around your face like that no one would think you weren’t one.” She paused, touching her own messy hair. “Also, can I have a shower? I look like a pom-pom.”

It was too early to deal with her, so I washed my face quickly and then got dressed while she was having that shower. Since I couldn’t wear my tailored pants two days in a row, I ended up needing to brave a skirt with stockings. Thirty-four years, three-hundred and sixty-four days to retirement, I thought, sighing heavily. I toyed with the idea of putting my hair back – especially after what Bree had said – but ‘guy’ really wasn’t the impression I was trying to give people at work. 

When Bree finally emerged from the bathroom, she’d done a pretty good job of fixing her hair and smoothing her uniform and it wasn’t at all obvious she’d crashed on someone’s couch overnight. “Can I just leave my undies in your washing?” she asked. “It’s a bit weird to carry them around.”

Was she serious? Her skirt barely made it halfway down her thighs. “Bree, you can’t go out like that without any!”

She looked at me for a second and then laughed. “I have spares,” she said. “But oh my god!”

She continued to laugh about that while she was watching me do my makeup, and then all the way downstairs. I had automatically started walking to work when I realised I couldn’t send Bree to school without having eaten. It was really too late to sit down anywhere, though.

“Would a muffin and a coffee be okay for breakfast?” I asked her as we passed a café.

“Sure!” she said, and ended up talking the barista into making her a ham-and-cheese jaffle, instead. She ate it with an expression of total contentment as I walked her to Circular Quay to catch a train out. We’d just missed one, so we sat and watched the ferries dump hordes of business people in suits onto the Quay.

“You should wear a suit to work,” Bree said, offering a wedge of her jaffle to me. “That would be so awesome.”

Yeah, in my dreams. “Hah,” I said as I had a small bite and then gave it back to her. “World peace would be awesome, too.” I half-heard an announcement over the speaker system. “Hey, isn’t that your train?”

She nodded, dusting her hands as she stood up. “Thanks.”

Her hair was a bit damp, and if I ruffled it I’d probably make it frizzy for the rest of the day, so I didn’t. “You’re welcome,” I said. “Come on, you’ve only got a couple of minutes, you’d better go up.”

I walked her up to the barriers and she just stood there, glancing up at me and looking uneasy.

“You’ve got to go to school,” I told her. When she didn’t say anything to that, something occurred to me as I watched people hold their Opal cards next to the readers. “You do have enough money on your card, right?”

She didn’t say anything, so the answer was obviously no. And she wasn’t going to tell me, I thought, looking around us at all the ticket inspectors making sure everyone was tapping on. How the hell was she planning on getting to school?

I leafed through my purse for my Opal card which I hardly ever used, took her hand, and placed it in her palm. “Here. It’s full-fare, but I don’t think anyone will notice.” As I was closing my purse, I caught sight of the blue-green of a couple of ten dollar notes, as well. “Do you have lunch?” Again, no answer. I made a short noise and put one of the tens in her palm with the card.

She was being uncharacteristically quiet again, and I led her aside from the barriers so we wouldn’t get any anyone’s way. “Bree, is everything okay?”

She nodded, looking down at the note and the card in her palm.

What was going on for her? It couldn’t be that her parents had no money, because Cloverfield was a pretty expensive school and Bree, while being very sweet, did not seem like the type of person who’d be there on a scholarship. I wanted to ask her, and I suppose I probably would have been entitled to because I was spending heaps of money on her, but I also kind of wanted her to want to tell me on her own terms.

“It’s not fair,” she said quietly.

I frowned a little. “What isn’t?” Putting a hand underneath hers, I closed her fingers around the card and the ten. “If you’re worried about the money, don’t be. It’s not a problem.”

“Yet,” she said. “It will be.”

It was on the tip of my tongue: ‘what’s going on, Bree?’ I couldn’t say it, though. What if it was something awful and really private I was forcing her to tell me in public? I just put a gentle hand on her back and lead her up to the barricade. She tapped my card and went through.

I raised my hand a bit hesitantly and waved at her, and she smiled for a second and waved back. There was something haunted about it, though. It seemed forced, but she’d turned and gone to climbing stairs before I was sure. I watched until she’d reached the the platform, trying to imagine what the problem could possibly be.

When people started to give me frustrated looks and push past me, I realised I couldn’t just stand there against the barriers because I was half-blocking one of them. I stepped aside, looking one last time up the stairs just to make absolutely certain Bree wasn’t coming back down them before heading off to work.

Something is seriously up with that girl, I thought, focusing on the pavement in front of me to avoid catching sight of my reflection in shop windows as I passed them.

The beautiful cake was evidence Bree hadn’t been kicked out of home and that her parents still obviously loved her. She didn’t have bruises or anything on her and she didn’t seem to have any hangups about her body at all so it couldn’t be… anything more serious than that, could it? I didn’t feel like that made sense, but maybe I should ask Henry about it. Yes, I thought as I walked into the lobby of Frost and pressed the lift button, I’d have to ask Henry what he thought. He always knew this stuff.

I was the first one in the office, again. Sitting down at my laptop, I fished around in my handbag for the USB and then flipped it between my fingers while I was waiting for my system to boot up. Bree had dragged me to that expensive restaurant and made me pay, and she hadn’t seemed to have any issues with that. I supposed she had been getting progressively more uncomfortable with the money I was spending since then, but I thought I had been making it perfectly clear it was fine? Actually, to be perfectly honest, part of me kind of enjoyed it. Spending money was a complete non-event to me, and I’d never had anyone to spend money on before. I liked that something so simple meant so much to her. It felt like I was cheating at friendship, somehow. Seeing that gratitude on her face when I’d bought her the bracelet was a great feeling.

Why wasn’t it fair then? Goddamnit, what was going on with her?

This was driving me nuts. Was I overreacting? I had to text her. I took my phone out of my bag and spend at least five minutes trying to figure out what to say, in the end settling on, “Are you going to be okay? I’m worried.”

She took longer to reply than usual. “thats because ur a stressball lol btw i hardly have any credit left”

I groaned. “Avoid the fucking question, why don’t you, Bree!” I said at the phone, and then put it away. She clearly didn’t want to talk about it, and while I was dying to know, it wasn’t my place. Unfortunately, the fact she hadn’t answered whether she was going to be okay or not seemed very important and I ended up staring at Michelangelo underneath my monitor rather than the timeline on it.

Predictably, Sarah was next through the door. She stopped in the doorway and looked at me. We watched each other for a few seconds, and then she burst out laughing and went and put her bag in her drawer.

Bree, I thought, remembering when I’d said goodbye to Sarah yesterday. “Sorry about last night,” I said mildly. “Bree is…” I searched for a good adjective, but I didn’t find one. “Well, you saw what she’s like.”

Sarah was still laughing away. “I actually have a confession,” she told me, turning her laptop on and spending ten seconds trying to get her USB into one of the slots. She printed something out and then walked over and dumped it on my keyboard. “I’m a bad person.”

I picked it up; it was a marketing analytics report from social media. Facebook, this time. Only instead of analysing a demographic, it was just analysing a single person. “’Briana Dejanovic’,” I read, pretty sure I was pronouncing it wrong. Was this… I looked up at Sarah. “Bree?”

Sarah looked very guilty. “I shouldn’t have, I know. Her profile’s public, though, and I have all those really powerful search and analytic tools…”

I probably would have been a whole lot angrier if I wasn’t really, really interested in what was on the report. It might help me figure out what was up for Bree and if everything was okay.

I pretended to glare at her. “Using your powers for evil?” She nodded meekly, and that made me laugh. “How the hell did you find her, though? I wouldn’t have told you her surname, because I didn’t even know it.”

Sarah looked like she couldn’t believe that. “She was all over you and you don’t even know her surname?” At my expression she held up her hands, bracelets jingling. “I didn’t mean anything by that, by the way. You two just seem too close to not know those kind of details.”

There were a lot of details I didn’t know about Bree, but I still enjoyed her company. I shrugged at Sarah. “I met her online and it didn’t seem important. So how did you find her profile?”

Sarah leaned over and flipped to a print-out of her ‘about’ page. It was pretty bare, but did have her school listed. “It was actually a no-brainer, I didn’t even have to filter by themes until I got her. I just tabbed through photos of kids in her school and stopped when I saw curls.” She stood up, taking a couple of pages with her. Then, clearing her throat dramatically, she spoke in the same voice she’d use to deliver a series of analytics in a project meeting.

“Briana Dejanovic, 411 friends, 86% of them further than 25km from her hometown and current location which are both listed as Sydney. Her follows are unremarkable, really, nothing we wouldn’t expect from the demographic. Her friends-of-friends is in the tens of thousands so she has excellent reach with her posts, and there are some,” Sarah glanced up at me, “very interesting topics on her recently liked list. Overall an interesting analytical exercise but unfortunately through examining her status updates, clicks and click-throughs the likelihood of her being interested in purchasing a pink diamond or any other Frost merchandise is very low.”

I was too worried about this ‘recently liked’ list and what I’d seen on Bree’s phone last night to laugh very hard at Sarah pretending to do a consumer analysis for Bree. Fuck, I hoped Bree hadn’t liked any of those gender-related blogs she’d been reading, because together with the things Bree had said last night, I wouldn’t have put it past Sarah to guess. I didn’t want to rouse her suspicion, though, so I just asked innocently, “’Recently liked’?”

Sarah showed me the list. There were a couple of pop stars, Girls’ Generation again, and, unfortunately, some sort of queer blog with a big rainbow flag as its display picture. It was buried in amongst her other likes, though, so I just pretended not to notice it. “She likes Korean pop music?” I asked dryly. “That is concerning.”

Sarah looked wholly unconvinced, but didn’t say anything. “Move over,” she said, glancing nervously over at the door. “I have to show you this girl’s Facebook page.”

She reached across me and opened up Facebook in my browser, logging in as one of Frost’s analytics usernames and then going to Bree’s page.

Bree’s display picture was a pretty unremarkable selfie, but as soon as Sarah clicked on the ‘Photos of Briana’ header, fuck, I had to look over myself to check the door was shut. Bree had probably… dozens of photos of herself there, and while none of them were actively pornographic or showing anything beyond a lot of thigh or a lot of cleavage, the positions she was in and the expressions she had on her face… Jesus.

Sarah and I scrolled through them with our jaws open.

“Yup,” Sarah told me as we reached the end, her eyes as wide as saucers, “it’s still just as shocking the second time around.”

The last one was Bree with the two top buttons of her school uniform undone so you could see deep into her cleavage. She’d angled the camera accordingly and was pretending to bite her lip, like she was inviting the person behind the camera to reach out and touch her. Fortunately it was a selfie so there was no one behind the camera, but it was so sexual that I found it incredibly fucking uncomfortable to look at and had to click ‘back’.

“Oh, my god,” I breathed, putting my face in my hands for a second. Even with my eyes closed I could see the echo of that cleavage on my retinas. “Why would anyone put photos like that on the internet? Is she trying to get stalked?” That seemed a pretty ironic question to be asking about Bree, Stalker Extraordinaire.

Sarah shrugged, leaning back in her chair, clearly finding my reaction very entertaining. “Well, I suppose she has got a great rack so she probably just wants to boast about it.” When I looked at her, she shrugged. “What? Objectively speaking, she has. I can say that, can’t I?”

I groaned and put my face back in my hands again. “Oh my god…”

“Also, and I’m not drawing any conclusions, really,” Sarah said, giving me adequate time to prepare for more Bree, “but this,” she flipped through the pages and showed me a status update. “I found it on her friends-of-friends.”

I read through it. Someone had replied to a status last night with ‘GAY‘, and then Bree had gone to town on him about how offensive that was, complete with all caps and zero punctuation. My first thought was she’d probably just been reading a whole lot of those queer blogs I’d found on her phone and was just playing white knight, but then I remembered that whole ‘straighter’ thing in the shopping centre yesterday. Could she be…

I didn’t even finish that thought because I was already panicking that maybe she was into me. Then I was telling myself off, because it was stupidly narcissistic to think that just because a girl was gay and I was also currently a girl that she’d be into me. Especially because I kind of wasn’t a proper girl, and especially given that Bree’s assessment when I was dressed like a girl was ‘weird’. Bree probably didn’t even really think of me as a peer, so that would mean we were safe, wouldn’t it? Although, going over everything that had happened in the last few weeks didn’t provide me with much comfort. Especially with what Sarah was implying.

Sarah patted me on the back, a mischievous glint in her eye. “Happy reading,” she said. “I’m going to get us some caffeine.”

While she was doing that, I flipped through some of the other pages looking to see if I could find actual confirmation that Bree was gay. In the process I found out a series of things I’d never ask Bree directly: that her parents were still married and appeared to still live together because there were a number of recent photos of them together in the same house. Her brother’s name was Andrej and he and Courtney had posted about the same number of suggestive photos Bree had except with each other. That was almost as bad. There was one photo where they almost looked like they were fucking and I got to the stage where I was actually asking existential questions to the universe about why anyone would ever voluntarily show that to people. There were no photos of Bree in any sort of suggestive fashion with other girls, but there weren’t any with any boys, either. And in all the photos of her and her family, everyone was smiling. Even Bree. Despite all of that, there was nothing else gay or queer or anything on her Facebook.

I was probably making a big deal out of nothing. She was probably just being a nice person and standing up for that section of the community.

I paused. ‘That section of the community’, I thought, remembering my body issues. I was potentially secretly in that section of the community, wasn’t I? ‘LBG’…’LBT’… Whatever it was. I couldn’t remember the acronym, but I was certain there was a ‘T’ for ‘trans’ in there, somewhere. So maybe Bree was just standing up for me in the event that I did turn out to be? But then, Bree had specifically been defending the term ‘gay’, and I wasn’t gay. Although… if I was supposed to be a guy, and I was with Henry, did that mean I was secretly gay?

I sat back and just stared out the window towards the Western Suburbs, completely spun out. I felt like I’d just been told I was adopted or something, and everything I’d thought I knew about myself was bullshit. Fuck, this was a headache, what the hell did anything mean anymore? I didn’t even know where to start on this one. Bree’s suggestion of running away to Canada was sounding great right now.

I think I may have torn out half my hair by the time Sarah came back with my Red Bull. She laughed at my expression as I accepted it from her and opened it.

“I think I hate you a little bit,” I told her as I took a sip. She had no idea about the can of worms she’d just opened. “Did you do this to my Facebook, too?”

She grinned. “There’s nothing interesting on yours.”

I sighed heavily and took one last cursory look at Bree’s profile before I closed the page. I had the print-outs, I could pour over them later for evidence about what was going on with her. “I’m beginning to understand why you hate social media.”

“Facebook’s evil, I told you,” she said, which was very interesting to hear out of the mouth of a social media marketing specialist. “I’d delete my account but then I’d never get invited out. Speaking of which,” she said, “the girls are all going for drinks at that pub in The Rocks on Friday. Should I send you and your exhibitionist friend an invite?”

“Probably not worth it,” I said, closing the browser. “I’m going to go home and delete my account tonight.”

I’d swivelled back to face my monitor and I could feel her staring at the side of my head. When I glanced at her, she asked, “Okay, so you didn’t know her surname, which kind of means you don’t really know her that well, but she gets to take you out just like that? She doesn’t even have to sic Henry on you?” She was smiling, but I could tell she wasn’t just teasing me. I started to worry I was hurting her feelings, but then she added. “Like, is it a great rack you look for in a friend? Because, hello.”

She stuck her chest out, and I nearly spat Red Bull all over my monitor. While I was reaching for a tissue and my eyes were watering, she added, “Not that I want to nag you. I’m just wondering.”

I winced, blotting my nose. “I know how it looks, but it’s not personal.” When she kept listening, I sighed. “Sarah, seriously, though, you keep trying to get me out of here. Why? What makes you so sure that I’m the type of fun you expect me to be?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “Looking at you, you’re this serious workaholic. But I know you play video games, prank your poor unsuspecting co-workers, you have this killer sense of humour and you hang out with wild schoolgirls.” She crossed her arms as she considered me. “All is not what it seems. So I compiled the evidence, analysed it, and all signs point to you being stacks of fun.”

All isn’t what it seems, Sarah, I thought, but I disagreed that it meant I was ‘stacks of fun’. I probably would enjoy myself, though. Particularly if alcohol was involved. “Well, then, prepare for the incredible excitement of watching me sit and silently drink wine,” I told her. “I’ll definitely go drinking with you on the day we close this. Mainly to shut you up, though.” I winked at her.

Sarah nodded once and looked victorious. “Good,” she said. “Just out of curiosity, though, how did that girl do it so easily?”

I exhaled audibly. That was a good question. “She’d have physically carried me out of here if she was strong enough, and I’m not exaggerating. ‘No’ wasn’t an answer she was going to accept.”

Sarah nodded slowly. “I can’t wait to get you really drunk,” she said cryptically, and then turned back to her spreadsheet, ending the conversation by doing some actual work. I followed her example.

As soon as the rest of my team got in, I needed to have a quiet word with John about him sending me unencrypted emails. The discomfort of telling someone off – especially watching the humiliation on his bright red face – was enough to distract me from Bree and the vortex of chaos surrounding her. Furthermore, Jason stuck his head in before lunch and told me that Diane wanted to speak briefly with me and him tomorrow morning before work.

While I was screaming internally and absolutely certain it was to do with that unencrypted email, Sarah gave me a look that basically said, ‘You’re our next CEO, right?’. I scoffed at her.

Jason had also approved my emails to the contacts he’d recommended, and so I spent an hour or two making sure I was completely happy with the vague wording and sent them off. Vladivostok got back to me quickly and teed up a teleconference for later in the week, but I’d have to wait overnight for Moscow.

It was productive day, but Sarah had been in and out of consumer profiling meetings for her other team which meant I had no one to bring me lunch and I hadn’t eaten all day.

I was starving by dinner. Like, to the point where I was considering drinking milk and/or eating sugar directly out of the kitchenette. When I was finally done with the requirements doc and Henry sent me an SMS, I was about ready to start going on the half-dead plant on my table.

“Want company tonight?” he’d texted. “I thought maybe we could go out for dinner, somewhere quiet and low key. What do you say?”

I was waiting for my laptop to shut down as I texted him back. It would actually be a great opportunity to pick his brains about Bree, and I was so hungry I would have said yes to just about any suggestion as long as it involved food. “I am DYING of hunger. I will literally eat ANYTHING as long as you can give it to me quickly.”

Of course, I shouldn’t have left an opening for him. “I’m assuming that doesn’t mean what I hope it does…?”

I groaned. I caught myself thinking ‘Men!’, but then had a sudden thought about how I felt about myself. Was I differentiating myself from them after all? It was such a strange, disorienting feeling. I just seriously had no idea what I was supposed to be. I was much too hungry to think further on it now, though. “Nope, it doesn’t mean you can give that to me,” I texted back. “Not unless you can serve it sliced in a baguette with mayonnaise and chips on the side, that is.”

“…Ouch. I’ll be downstairs in five.”

I stuffed all of Bree’s Facebook analytics into my handbag, and headed downstairs to meet him.

Henry had picked a boutique Japanese restaurant in The Rocks; it was a tiny little place I had no idea about despite living about three streets away. There were only a couple of people already seated when we walked in, and so the waitress was able to show us to a table straight away. She put the menus in front of us as we sat down. “Drinks?”

“A glass each of house white and red,” Henry said, and then added, “if you want to hang around for a couple of seconds, I’m pretty sure my girlfriend wants to order straight away.” He grinned at me.

I literally picked the first thing on the menu, and as soon as the waitress was gone I started to undo my handbag. “Not that you’re not wonderful anyway, but I actually have an ulterior motive for going to dinner with you,” I said, heaping together all the Facebook analytics print-outs.

“I should have known being wonderful wasn’t enough for you,” he told me with a completely straight face.

“Yeah, some shrink you are,” I said and then showed him all the Facebook analytics, explaining everything I was worried about with Bree. The waitress came back with our wine halfway through it and gave me a really strange look about all the paper I’d spread everywhere.

When I was finished, Henry sat back with the wine in one hand – there was nowhere on the table to put it – and squinted at me. “So what are you actually asking me?” he said, “Because I’m getting a lot more about you than I am about Bree just at this moment.”

I wasn’t interested in hearing about how crazy he thought I was. “I really don’t know what to think,” I said. “But I’m kind of worried something terrible is happening. You don’t think anything… really bad is happening to her?” When he waited for me to elaborate, I added, “You know, do you think anyone’s abusing her?”

Henry’s eyebrows went right up, and he took a big mouthful of wine. “Wow,” he said, and then had another one. “Wow, that’s a heavy topic for a light dinner.” He spent a few seconds thinking over his answer. “To be honest, Min, unless you’re going to show me photos of bruises, I’m not going to be able to tell you anything without speaking with her one-on-one in a therapeutic setting.” I leaned back in my chair and made a face. He winced. “I’m sorry, I know that’s not the answer you’re looking for.”

It really wasn’t. “You don’t have any idea at all? Not even a, ‘Well, that’s unlikely’?”

He shook his head. “If I knew the answer I’d just tell you.”

I frowned back down at the print-outs, and then gathered them all up and shoved them back into my handbag. While I was doing that, he commented, “But you’ve gone to a lot of effort to not just ask her what’s happening in her life. Why is that? What are you afraid of?”

Wow, he always cut straight through things. I put my bag under the table, thinking. “What I’m going to do if she says yes,” I said, and then made a face. “And that I’m going to feel like absolute shit for spending two weeks trying to avoid her.”

He chuckled. “I’m not going to remind you what my initial advice about Bree was.”

“Good. Because then I’d have to punch you.”

The chuckle turned into an outright laugh for a second or two. “Anyway, you shouldn’t feel that bad if it does turn out to be something serious, because since those initial meetings you’ve been a good friend to her.”

“That’s true,” I said, remembering the last few days. “And I’ve spent a tonne of money on her, too, I don’t think I’ve got anything to feel bad about.”

That caught his attention, but he was careful to be mild about it. “Just out of curiosity, how much have you spent on her?”

I immediately felt self-conscious. It didn’t look that great, did it, buying a gold bracelet for someone I’d met three weeks ago? I glossed over that part. “Oh, you know. Money for food, taxis to get back to her friend’s…”

He nodded, accepting that. I felt awful about not telling him about the bracelet, but I didn’t want him to think Bree was just using me for my money. She wasn’t like that.

He put his wine glass on the table. “Well, it just sounds like you’re being a good friend,” he said, “whatever’s going on for her. And judging by what happened over the weekend, she’s being a good friend to you, too.”

I really wanted to keep discussing Bree to try and figure everything out, but shortly after that, the waitress brought our dinner. I stopped talking to inhale mine in under three minutes, but Henry dawdled over his as usual, chatting about his sister who was pregnant again. She was younger than him and already had three children.

“I guess I’m lucky she went and married a Chinese guy,” Henry said. “Or I’d probably lose my place as star child of the family.” He remembered something and laughed. “You should have seen Mum’s face when Alice was first pregnant. She didn’t know whether to be overjoyed she was going to be a grandma, or horrified that the child was going to be half-Chinese.”

I rolled my eyes. “You think your mum’s traditional? When I first moved to Sydney, on every single phone call, Mum would always say, ‘Don’t date white men, and don’t date Chinese men, and make sure he’s Christian. Not Anglican, though’.” I paused, looking around us. “Actually, she’d probably be horrified we’re eating in a Japanese restaurant, too.”

Henry nodded once. “Note to self: next time I visit your mother, pretend I’ve converted to Christianity and don’t mention how much I like sushi. Got it.”

I was laughing with him, but in the back of my mind I was still acutely aware of what I was saying. My mum was traditional. If she knew what I was thinking about my body these days and how I wished I could change myself… fuck. At least she was thousands of kilometres away and had to look after grandma so she couldn’t suddenly show up at my home and accidentally catch me trying to look like I wanted to.

It was dark when we’d finished our dinner and went to leave the restaurant. “Mind if I stay over?” Henry asked me. “I’m probably over the limit to drive back to the bay tonight.”

I pressed my lips together. “I need to do some more work on the project,” I said, remembering Diane’s insistence Henry not be exposed to it. “Which means I’m probably going to need to lock you in the bedroom or something.”

He grinned sideways at me. “That’d be okay…”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Alone.”

He tilted his head. “Knew there was a catch. That’s fine. I need to finish the book I’m reading, anyway.”

We walked back to my building through a road in The Rocks, and it bordered a park lined with palm trees. The street lights were a gentle orange, and they cast a sort of tropical light on the gardens of the townhouses on the other side of the road. We could have been walking up a street in any nice part of Sydney, except here every single car parked along the road was gold-plate prestige. Behind us, the Sydney Harbour Bridge loomed over the houses.

Henry had his hands in his pockets as we walked, smiling at the streetscape. “This is a nice area, isn’t it? Very cosmopolitan, but there’s something quiet and suburban about it, too.”

My favourite thing about it was its complete lack of reflective surfaces, but I didn’t say as much.

When we got back to my building and stepped into the lift, Henry’s hand was idly stroking my lower back. He didn’t usually inadvertently touch me, and he was generally pretty upfront about just asking for it if he wanted sex. I wondered about that hand.

I didn’t wonder very long about it, though, because when the doors slid open on my floor and Henry stepped out of the lift, he stopped suddenly and I nearly walked straight into him. Over his shoulder, I could see a familiar shape seated against my door. She didn’t see us straight away, though, because she had her eyes closed and headphones in her ears.

“That’s Bree, isn’t it?” Henry asked in a really philosophical tone.

I groaned audibly as I walked out of the lift behind him. “That’s her.”

I wanted to be annoyed at her for again showing up whenever she felt like it, but I was too relieved that she wasn’t at home with whatever was going on there. Especially after all the possibilities I’d been discussing with Henry.

Then, she opened her eyes and looked up at us. I had expected her face to light up like it always did when she saw me, but she didn’t. Instead, her eyes were swimming and she looked really upset. My stomach dropped. What had happened?

“Wow, okay,” Henry said quickly. “I think that might be my cue to leave.” He kissed my cheek.

“Fuck,” I said, closing my eyes for a second. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Henry.”

He nodded. “It’s okay. I’ll take a taxi home, we can talk tomorrow.” He then glanced back at Bree and said quietly to me as he stepped back into the lift, “Good luck.”

Bree hauled herself off the floor, but she didn’t come running up to me like she usually did. Instead, she waited for me to walk up to her. When I got to her, she just swallowed and looked up at me. “I’m sorry,” she said in a tiny little voice. “I ruined your evening with Henry.”

I sighed; Bree. “Not really,” I said. “I was just going to come home and do work. Come on. Come in and tell me what happened.”

I let us both in, and literally as soon as I’d closed the door, she had her arms around me. I braced myself against the wall so I didn’t fall over. I was still wearing my heels, and I tried to awkwardly kick them off while she hugged me.

“I’m sorry,” she said again into my blouse. “I’m sorry…”

I put a hand behind her head. It was so, so strange to think that this was the same girl posting all those awfully sexual photos of herself on the internet. Fuck. What could turn that giggling, energetic, frighteningly extroverted girl into this? It must be something awful. God, I felt sick about that. I felt sick. I was scared about what she was going to tell me.

“Bree, what happened?” She shook her head. I wasn’t sure if that meant ‘no’ as in I’m not telling you, or ‘no’ as in nothing. “Seriously, you look really upset.”

She pulled away from me for a moment, and she was a mess. “Can I have a tissue?”

“Yeah,” I said, and led her into the bedroom, grabbing one from the bedside table and handing it to her.

She sat down on my mattress, blowing her nose and then staring at the scrunched tissue in her palm. She looked absolutely miserable. It actually hurt to look at her like this. “Can I do anything to help?” I asked. “Anything?”

“You should change,” she said, as if I’d never asked her anything.

I did feel uncomfortable like this, but honestly, it could wait. Everything could wait. I sat there silently beside her for a little while, hoping she would spontaneously tell me. She didn’t. Maybe Henry was right when he’d said, ‘You’re doing a lot to avoid asking her’. Maybe I should just do it. Not knowing and having to imagine all the awful things that might be happening to her would be far more fucking agonising than whatever she could say. It took me a minute or so to work myself up to it.

I took a breath. “Is someone hurting you?” I wasn’t even sure how to ask it. “Or, is someone, like…”

“No,” she said almost angrily, jamming her eyes shut and spilling fresh tears down her cheeks. “No, no one’s beating me up,” she said. “Or doing anything like that. But it would be fucking easier if someone was, because as soon as I say ‘no, I’m not being abused’ people are like, ‘oh, well, it can’t be that bad, then’ and they treat me like I’m overreacting.”

It would be easier if she were being abused? Did she really mean that? “Overreacting to what?”

She closed up again, and shook her head. “It’s fucking stupid. You’ll be angry, it’s so stupid. You can’t do anything about it anyway, no one can. I should just be happy I’m not living in some terrorist war-zone or something.”

Well, clearly it isn’t stupid, I thought, because you’re here bawling your eyes out on my bed. “Bree,” I said. “I’ve been worrying about you all day. Seriously, all day. I was sitting at my desk this morning trying to figure out what the hell is going on with you. I know it’s your business and you don’t have to tell me, but it’s driving me fucking nuts not knowing,” I said. “Especially when you show up here, like, distraught and then expect me to be content just watching you cry and not being able to help.”

She took a deep breath, gently scrunching the tissue in her hands. She’s going to tell me finally, I thought.

I was wrong. “I’m sorry,” she repeated again, and then came more tears. “I shouldn’t have come here, I just,” she took a ragged breath, “I just—you always make me feel better. But now you feel worse.”

“Watching you cry and not knowing why…” I shook my head and put a hand on her back. “It sucks, Bree.”

She leant into my hand. “Did you really worry about me all day?” she asked. I nodded at her and her face crumpled up. “I told myself, ‘when you meet her, be really nice, because she has this really hardcore job and she works like a million hours…’” She swallowed. “And now I’m just making it worse.”

“Bree…”

There was something in her eyes as she looked up at me. “Okay,” she forced out of her mouth, but her jaw was so tight she could hardly move it. “Okay, but it’s a long story, so you should have your shower and get changed first.”

“And then you’ll tell me?”

She could barely speak, so she just nodded.

I touched her cheek and sighed. “Okay,” I said, releasing a long, measured breath. “Okay. Go grab yourself a slice of cake or something while you’re waiting. Carbs are supposed to cheer people up. I’ll be really quick.”

I was as fast as I could be in the shower; I didn’t need to wash my hair tonight anyway, so I just got rid of all of my makeup. At least I couldn’t focus too much on how jarring it was to see myself topless, because I was too worried about what Bree was going to say. What if it was something really, really awful that was happening to her, even though she said it wasn’t? She’d lied to me before, maybe she was lying to me now. Fuck, I hoped it wasn’t that, I did. But what if it was?

I threw on the hoodie and jeans, and then walked out into the living room, expecting to see Bree on the couch, maybe eating her cake.

She wasn’t there, though.

“Bree?” I called, checking the kitchen, the balcony – I even ducked back into my bedroom and made sure she wasn’t curled up in the doona somewhere.

Walking back into the living room, I realised how silent it was. It was at that point that I saw she’d left my Opal card and some small change on the kitchen bench.

She’d left. Fuck, she’d left. And she had no money, no means of getting home and it was fucking dark outside. I took a breath. Shit. Shit! Why the hell would she do this?

I rushed over to my handbag and picked up my phone, hurriedly fumbling around with it and calling her number. She rejected the call, and when I tried against she rejected that one, too. Fuck! Now, on top of what was going on at home, she was wandering around the laneways in Sydney at night in that tiny skirt with no way of getting anywhere safe.

I leaned against the kitchen counter for a second. I’d only been five, maybe ten minutes in the shower. She can’t have gotten that far, and she was probably going towards the train station. I’d stepped into my old sneakers and rushed out the door before I’d even thought about it, and only realised when I saw myself in the mirrors in the lift that I was still dressed like a guy.

I stared at my reflection. I wasn’t just dressed like a guy, I was dressed up as a guy. I didn’t have time to go back home and change, though. If she was close by the hotel I could still catch her.

I put the hood over my head and belted through the lobby as fast as I could, hoping none of the staff would recognise me.

It was dark outside, and the laneways that lead towards the station weren’t actually that well-lit. I half-walked, half-jogged along them, looking for her. Aside from the odd person walking back home from work and one very concerning group of suspicious-looking teenagers, there was hardly anyone out. It was the perfect environment for someone to pull over in their car next to a sweet little blond girl and pretend to offer her a ride home.

While I was imagining all manner of fucked-up scenarios, I recognised her silhouette down the end of one of the lanes. God, the relief. She was in one piece and thank god she hadn’t done something stupid like trying to hitch-hike home. “Bree!”

She stopped walking and turned back towards me as I jogged up to her. I hugged her briefly, and then stood back, holding her shoulders. “Bree, what the fuck? Just – what the fuck?” I hugged her again, and she let me, just standing passively in place. “Why did you do that? Are you trying to get yourself mugged or killed?”

She shook her head slowly. It was like all the energy I usually expected of her had been sucked out and she was just this shell of herself. “I didn’t want to make everything worse for you and just be another thing you have to stress about,” she said. “So I left.”

“…thereby causing me to fucking stress about you!” I pointed out. “It’s too late to just disappear, Bree, I’m already stressing. If you wanted me not to, you never should have dragged me to dinner.” I stood up, and went to run my hand through my hair, again forgetting it was long. Thank god she was okay, but how the fuck was I this tied up in what was going on for her? I may have been casually messaging her on Deviant Art for ages, but I’d only met her three weeks ago, and seriously, I’d only really been close to her this week. One week!

“Why?” I kind of asked the universe.

She thought I was talking to her. “I’m sorry.”

I took her by the shoulders for second. “You drive me fucking crazy,” I said. “You are fucking crazy. But, please, please, don’t ever do anything like this again. You’ll kill me.”

I released her and stood back, taking a deep breath. I didn’t know what else to say, either about her running out like that or whatever was going on at her home. If she wasn’t going to tell me, she wasn’t going to tell me. And it was driving me fucking crazy with worry but I guessed I’d just have to deal with it.

“Come on,” I said, giving up. I took her arm the same way she’d taken mine dozens of times when we’d been walking around Sydney. “Come back to my place. You can’t go anywhere at this time of night. Maybe you can call Courtney or something and talk to her instead, if you don’t want to tell me.”

She sucked air through her teeth. “Yeah, right. She’s fucking in love with him,” she said quietly.

I stopped in my tracks and looked down at her, my jaw open. Her brother?

Bree didn’t look up at me. I didn’t want to push her, and it took her some time to be able to say anything else. “It’s really complicated,” she said. “Like, really. When I start thinking about how I would explain it to you, everything’s just so fucking unfair and I can’t even breathe. It’s just so fucked up. I don’t want to tell you because it sounds like it’s nothing, but it’s not. It’s really not. I don’t even want to think about it.”

I wished I had Henry’s ability to cut through everything and just ask the right questions, but I didn’t. I just wanted to know if she was safe. “Is he… doing anything to you?”

She deflated. “Not in the ways people actually care about.”

I watched her for a moment, and then exhaled. I just couldn’t imagine what sort of person could want to hurt Bree— other than nameless, faceless kidnappers, that is. But her own brother? Henry was so fiercely protective of his sister. I wondered what sort of person wasn’t. Who would hurt someone like Bree?

At least now I had some idea why talking about it was difficult for her. “Come on,” I said, starting to walk. “You’re eighteen now. Let me show you why ‘four hundred thousand bottles of red wine’ in the cupboard is better than having milk in the fridge.”

She took my arm, and I think she might even have smiled a little when I quoted her. I flashed her a lopsided one of my own, and lead her home.

 

After a full weekend of dressing exactly how I felt comfortable, I wasn’t prepared for how difficult it actually was to face my work clothes on Monday morning. I hadn’t even thought about it because I’d been putting them on for five years, but now here I was, standing with my wardrobe open, taking ten minutes to talk myself into putting on a proper bra. I’d never liked bras, but I guess I’d always just figured they were an unavoidable part of being female. Now, it was like a switch had been flipped. I was looking at this lacy black bra in my hands asking myself, ‘why the hell would I wear this?’.

When I’d finally managed to get it on and get a blouse over it, looking at the shape of my breasts in the mirror was a really strange, uncomfortable feeling. I felt exposed. I felt like people could see something I didn’t want them to and I really had to spend a good minute or two not taking everything off so I could just put the crop-top on underneath. All my summer work blouses were floaty and thin anyway so even with the tight crop-top you’d be able to see I had breasts.

The skirts were a different matter. I did actually own a pair of work pants, but they were tailored to give me the illusion of curvy hips. Mum had had them made for me and I’d only kept them because I was terrified one day she’d demand to see me in them. I’d never liked them, but I put them on anyway and then inspected myself. Not surprisingly, they gave me curvy hips. I made a face at my reflection; I preferred the way my hoodie narrowed me out. Still, I couldn’t manage stockings today, so pants it was.

Then I did my makeup, slipped on a pair of heels and rushed out the door.

I made slower progress than usual to work because I’d run out of band-aids and without stockings I kept reopening my blisters. Furthermore, all the reflective surfaces I normally needed to brave on the way to work seemed to have multiplied over the weekend. Looking at myself from every angle like this was depressing, I hated it. Whatever I ended up privately deciding I was, it definitely wouldn’t be this.

It was early when I got to work and none of my team were in yet, but I could see the light on in Jason’s office so I thought I’d stick my head in there.

“Sorry to bother you,” I said, knocking on his open door as I entered. “Did you get a chance to have a look at the Pink docs?”

Jason turned his attention from the screen to me, and gave me a very obvious once-over. If I thought I was going to be able to forget about my body today, boy, was I wrong.

“Mini in pants,” he said, ignoring my question. “I didn’t even know you owned pants, I don’t think I’ve seen you in anything except a skirt in five years. Must be hard to find pants long enough with those legs, hey?” He laughed at himself.

There probably wasn’t anything else this man could possibly do that could make me dislike him more than I already did. “I felt like a change,” I said pleasantly, instead of telling him he was a fucking prick and suggesting alternate places he could shove his observations. “So, did you get a chance to read the framework and what we’ve done with the requirements so far?”

His laugh tapered off and he nodded. “I did, it’s not too bad,” he leaned back in his chair, considering me. “I like your reasoning, Russia looks like a good direction and there’s definitely a market for ridiculously expensive jewellery over there. The upper class is just drenched in oil and mineral money. Did you know Minerals have trade partners in Vladivostok and Moscow?” I shook my head. “Speak to Frost Energy about getting some leads for buy-ins there. I’ll forward you an email from the guy you need to meet with. He’ll probably know people who know people. Be discreet when you set up meetings, though, don’t put any details in writing.” At my nod, he remembered something and added, “And for fuck’s sake do something about that kid in your team.” He sounded annoyed. “What’s his name? Ali?Mohammad?”

He had to be fucking kidding me. “It’s ‘John’,” I said, discovering there were actually things Jason could do to make me dislike him more.

“Yeah, whatever,” he said dismissively. “Anyway, he sent that last component unencrypted and that’s just not good enough.”

I winced. I hadn’t noticed, but it didn’t surprise me. It was frustrating that Jason had been the one to pick up on that, though, because I’d rather have been on top of that issue myself. “Will do.”

As I was leaving, he stopped me. “Oh, and Mini?” I turned back toward him. I couldn’t tell if he was going to say something serious or not. “You did a great job of turning the project around on the weekend. But let’s make sure we stay on track, yeah?”

I kept expecting him to finish off with a snide jab at me, but he didn’t. He just went back to whatever he’d been doing before I’d called in on him. That actually just made me angrier, because the fact that he’d complimented me made me felt really proud. I shouldn’t enjoy getting the approval of pricks like Jason, but apparently I did. Bastard.

I’d gone back into Oslo and sat at my desk, conflicted as to whether I wanted to be angry at Jason or relieved that the project was on track again. In the end, my relief won out.

My meltdown last week apparently hadn’t ruined everything for us after all. We were making good time if Jason thought we were up to the point of scoping contacts; contacts were just one step away from setting up pitches, and that meant we might actually have signatures right after Easter. There was a good chance I could avoid fucking this up if I could just keep my head together and make good use of my time.

There were no clocks in this office – on purpose, I think, so we couldn’t gaze at them and lament all the hours of our lives we were losing – so I took my phone out of my handbag to check what time it was. If it was before eight-thirty I could probably go downstairs and buy Henry some sort of pastry to thank him for being wonderful. As I glanced at the time I noticed I’d gotten a text message.

Bree, I thought, feeling even better. I opened it. “so ive picked like the top 3 places id go if i had to run away….have u been to new zealand canada or sweden???”

I grinned. I had actually been to Canada a number of times on business, but I’d never been able to see any of it because I’d spent the whole time working. I didn’t think that was her point, though. “I take it your birthday went well, then?”

“i saved u some cake. can i bring it over before it goes gross??? 🙂 🙂 🙂 ”

I sat back in my chair. I really needed to focus on my work, but since it had been her eighteenth and she was hinting at it not having been so great… well, I supposed I could make an exception, maybe just an hour or so. She’d been over on the weekend and I’d still managed to get everything done, after all. “Okay, but I won’t be home until after six, and an hour at the max because I’ll still have a lot of work.”

“did u buy me that present yet??? 🙂 🙂 🙂 ”

I groaned. Did she think I just sat around looking for stuff to do? “I haven’t had time to, and if you want to come over tonight I won’t have had time to, either.”

“Must be a pretty interesting conversation,” a woman’s voice said from behind me. She sounded like she was smiling. “’Morning, Min.”

The suddenness of it got my adrenaline pumping; I hadn’t noticed anyone come in. It was just Sarah. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me!” For a moment I was relieved, and then I remembered I’d run out on her and Rob on Friday.

She slung her handbag off her shoulder into her drawer, looking kind of smug. “Why, what were you afraid I’d see you doing?” she said, grinning at me. “Something naughty? You look guilty enough.”

I blushed, which was stupid, because I wasn’t doing anything naughty. “Yeah, nothing naughtier than making birthday plans with friends,” I said. “God, and you interrupted us just as she was about to describe her cake to me!”

Sarah had a big smile on her face as she rummaged around in her bag for her purse. “Hah! I’m guessing you’re feeling better, then? You didn’t look great when you got up from the table on Friday.”

That. The memory of it didn’t make me feel that great, either. I hoped I looked as apologetic as I felt. “Yeah, I’m sorry I disappeared on everyone like that,” I said. “I was feeling pretty crap.”

She shrugged. “Rob wasn’t great either, actually. If anyone’s sorry it should be me for choosing a place that made everyone sick!” I felt bad about letting her believe that, but there weren’t many other options. “You can choose somewhere next time,” she said, finding her purse and then standing up. “And by the way, Rob loves you. He was bothering me all weekend before he flew out to invite you over for games and I had to explain to him that some of us have work to do.”

I laughed at that. “We can do that next time he’s down, I guess. He’s great.”

She immediately dissolved into a mushy smile. “Isn’t he just? I don’t think I’ve ever met a nicer man. I get that he’s not Einstein, but it doesn’t matter. He’s everything else.” She remembered something and cringed. “Also, by the way, sorry for basically making out in front of you. I keep forgetting how bad I am on alcohol.”

I was still snickering at the Einstein comment. “It’s okay. I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure it was just the food that made me sick.”

“I did wonder,” she said, grinning again. “But I didn’t think we were that disgusting! He wasn’t groping me or anything.”

At the mention of groping my eyes darted downward on her. I wished they hadn’t, because her curves were all deliberately on display and looking at them made me self-conscious. She was clearly so comfortable with who she was and that was in stark fucking contrast to how I felt. Fuck, she was so lucky. She probably didn’t even know how lucky she was. I liked her, though, so I couldn’t really resent her for it.

Unfortunately, she caught me looking and craned her neck downward. “Don’t tell me I’ve put this top on inside out again.”

I think I might have gone a bit red. “No, I was just looking at what you’re wearing.”

Her eyes went straight to my body, and she seemed to think she understood. “Oh, because you’re wearing pants for once? Yeah,” she looked down at her own pants. “I can’t be bothered with stockings most of the time. I like how sexy they make me feel but I always seem to catch them on stuff and rip them.”

Sexy was something I’d never felt in stockings, not a single day in the five years I’d been wearing them. I’d never felt even slightly sexy in these clothes. The thought of needing to wear them every day until I retired was exhausting. Thirty-five more years of feeling unsexy and weird. The foreverness of that number was so depressing.

She had her hands on her hips and was watching me a little too closely. When I realised, it made me nervous. “Min, is something up? I didn’t really want to say anything, but you’ve been kind of off-colour since I came in.”

I had no intention of telling her; she was the only person I actually liked at Frost aside from Henry. Oh, and speaking of him, I’d actually been on my way downstairs before I’d gotten Bree’s message and Sarah had rocked up.

“Just stressed out, I think,” I said dismissively, and reached into my bottom drawer to grab my purse. “I’m going to go downstairs and buy something sweet for Henry. You want a coffee?”

She didn’t press me for an answer, which I appreciated. “Okay,” she said, still giving me a bit of a sceptical look. “I was just going to get an energy drink, but I’ll come for the walk.”

I ended up buying Henry a custard danish, and when I went to visit him in HR, Sean Frost was sitting on the edge of Henry’s desk playing with a gun-shaped stressball I’d bought Henry a couple of years ago. Henry was trying his best to look calm and professional, but I didn’t miss the pinch at the corners of his mouth. When he spotted me in the office, he looked markedly relieved. “Min!”

Sean looked up at me, too, and flashed me a friendly smile. I nodded politely at him. “I hope I haven’t interrupted anything. The door was open.”

Sean shook his head. “No, you’re fine. I’m about to head off anyway.”

Henry seemed just about ready to push Sean out of the door himself. “Pants,” he commented as I walked around the table to him, leaning back in his chair for a moment to inspect them. “You look lovely, they really suit you. Change is as good as a holiday, right?”

Those compliments made me uneasy. I didn’t feel like they suited me, I didn’t want to look ‘lovely’, and if he only knew the type of changes I wanted to make… He was just being nice, though. Like he always was. Sarah wasn’t the only one with a great boyfriend. On that note, I handed him the paper bag with the danish in it. “I bought you some breakfast,” I said. “I know it’s not low-fat muesli, but it’s better than nothing, right?”

He chuckled. “Thank you,” he said, accepting it and peeking inside. “Ooh! Now that’s definitely more interesting than muesli. Thanks for thinking of me, Min.” He smiled up at me and patted my hand. That smile… fuck, he was wonderful. He was so wonderful. I could never tell him about me, never, because watching that smile be replaced by something else entirely would just kill me.

I let my hand linger on his, wanting to tell him just how great he was, but Sean was still sitting across from us and it would probably be inappropriate. I just smiled back at Henry for a moment instead, and then nodded politely at Sean again when I went to leave.

Just as I was going, Sean said, “Actually, I need to duck upstairs for a couple of minutes,” and hopped off the desk. He threw the stressball at Henry, who caught it automatically and then set it carefully back down where it belonged on his desk. Sean was already walking towards me. “Want some company?”

I didn’t mind – he was the co-CEO of Frost International for Chrissake – but over behind Sean I could see Henry looking like he was going to leap across the room and throttle him. I smiled tightly at Sean anyway and let him lead me out, throwing an apologetic glance over my shoulder at Henry.

Sean moved briskly as we went towards the lifts, but because my legs were longer it wasn’t a problem for me to match his pace. “So how’s that project coming along?” he asked me, just to make conversation. “I hope my sister isn’t riding you too hard.”

“We’re on track,” I said, feeling relieved about being able to say that. “So the hard work is worth it.”

He looked sideways at me as he pressed the button. The doors from the lift I’d used a couple of minutes ago opened. “I suddenly understand why she put you on the team,” he said, I think commenting on my work ethic. “When do you pitch?”

I shook my head as we stepped inside. “No dates yet.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Even with the state election coming up in a couple of weeks? That’s strange.”

I wasn’t sure what he wanted me to say, he knew the project was confidential. “Well, you know what it’s like setting up meetings with people in cabinet.”

He tilted his head. “You’re probably right. I mainly get other people to set this sort of thing up, so I’m not likely to know what I’m talking about.” I must have been looking a little too hard at my reflection, because the next thing he said was, “New pants?”

That surprised me. Had I been that obvious? “Not new, exactly. I just haven’t worn them before.”

He nodded. “And you don’t like them?” I pressed my lips together and he laughed. “I hear you. Try being a CEO and having to spend twenty-four seven in a suit,” he said. “And my wife gets so upset when I crease them, too. I can’t have any fun. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it must be to have to do all of that but also in heels.”

Jesus, he was so right, so right that I just had to laugh. When I stopped, he was smiling at me in the mirrors. It wasn’t flirtatious, I don’t think. My best guess was that he could see how nervous I was in his presence and he was trying to make me relax. It was working. Why the fuck did Henry hate him so much? And Diane, too? He was nice.

As the doors slid open on thirty-six, they opened to two people, Jason and Sarah.

They had been discussing something in front of the vending machine, but stopped when they saw us. Sarah looked pleased to see me, but Jason’s eyes couldn’t have been narrower. He abandoned whatever conversation he’d been having with Sarah to walk over to us as we got out of the lift. “What are you doing with this tool, Min?” he asked, grinning at Sean. “Didn’t Diane tell you he’s bad news?”

Sean didn’t look offended in the slightest. “Not doing a great job of selling me to your employees, Jace,” he fired right back. “What is it you do again?”

“Shitloads of paperwork, mate,” Jason said, freely swearing in front of a CEO. “Paperwork forever. Want a smoke before the meeting?”

Sean patted his chest and hip pockets. They were empty. “I hope you’ve got some.”

As they left, Sean turned around and nodded a goodbye to me. It felt really good to be acknowledged, especially by someone who wasn’t a total prick like Jason.

They swaggered off together like old high school buddies. I might actually have thought that’s what explained their familiarity with each other except I was pretty sure Jason was quite a lot younger than Sean.

I walked up to Sarah, and she handed me one of the Red Bull’s she’d been holding. “What was that about?” she asked me, and I shook my head as we followed them away from the lifts.

Out across the floor on the way back to Oslo, we could see them walk out onto the alcove balcony. They were deep in conversation, laughing and joking around with each other as they lit their cigarettes. At one point Sean flexed – he actually was kind of built – and Jason made some comment we couldn’t hear through the glass. With their muscular, broad shoulders and flat abs, they were both in pretty great shape and the very epitome of ‘man’.

That’s what I wanted to be? That? I frowned at them. I did recall reading on the forums that a lot of the trans men wanted to bulk up, and I personally had absolutely zero desire to have muscles. Did that mean I really wasn’t one? Because I didn’t want to be hairy or have muscles? Then again, Henry wasn’t muscular or particularly hairy, there was nothing unmanly about him. I briefly asked myself if maybe I just wanted to wear men’s clothes and that was all, but as much as I really wished with all my heart for that to be the case, I knew it wasn’t. Women didn’t normally want to make their breasts disappear. Just wearing a suit wouldn’t be enough for me.

“What do you think’s going on with those two?” Sarah asked me thoughtfully, distracting me from my identity crisis. We’d stopped to lean on the wall outside Oslo, which was still empty. It was nearly nine, so I didn’t know where the hell my team was. I’d need to speak to them about that.

I didn’t really understand Sarah’s question, though. Was she asking about how they knew each other? “What do you mean?”

She snorted. “Well, if you believe the rumours about what they do together…” she said, making a circular motion towards them with her drink and grinning.

I made a face and shook my head. “Nah, Sean’s married,” I said, thinking of that smile he’d had on his face when he’d talked about his ‘beautiful’ wife.

Sarah just turned her head to stare at me, and then laughed like she did when I’d said something really funny. “Okay,” she said as she recovered. “Wow, you’re serious. Okay. You want to know something?” I narrowed my eyes at her as she kept going. “I actually kind of thought when I caught you texting this morning that you might be cheating on Henry, and that the danish was maybe a guilt-apology thing even though he didn’t know.”

It took me a second to really process what she’d said to even gape at her. “What? No!”

She laughed tensely. “I know, I know. It’s just kind of obvious something is up with you so I thought maybe that’s what it was. But your whole, ‘no, Sean couldn’t possibly be sleeping with Jason, he’s married‘ blew that theory out of the water.” She paused, looking mildly disgusted with herself. “I did not just use ‘blew’ in the same sentence as that other stuff.”

I was still so spun out by her suggestion I’d cheat on Henry, I couldn’t even think about Sean and Jason. “Henry and I are fine,” I said, and it was true as long as he never found out about the wanting-to-be-a-man thing. And cheating on Henry with Bree? What a suggestion. “The friend I was texting is a girl,” I told her, as if that would obviously put Sarah’s insane theory to rest.

I wasn’t sure it did, though. She just laughed at me, clapped me on the back and clinked her Red Bull against mine. “Okay, Min,” she said, and then started to walk into Oslo, saying over her shoulder. “But I’d be willing to put a grand on those two guys sleeping together. More, even.”

I looked back at them on the balcony. Jason leaned forward to give Sean a light, and perhaps it might have been a little close. Then again, all I knew for sure was that Jason was gay and Sean was married. And even if Jason was into Sean, it didn’t necessarily mean they were sleeping together. I had been getting comfortable with my own assessment, and then I saw Sean make a couple of smoke rings. Jason blew a big puff of smoke through one of them and they both smirked at each other. That was… kind of sexual.

Fuck, I think Sarah’s right, I thought. I worried about that as I followed her into Oslo.

“See?” she asked me knowingly when I closed the door behind me.

I nodded at her, scrunching up my face. “I’m not cheating on Henry, though,” I said. “You’re wrong about that. I’d never do that to him. The person I was texting is actually just a friend.”

She nodded. “I got that far by myself.” She then spent a couple of seconds watching me, obviously wanting to say something else.

I didn’t let her. I was uncomfortable enough about the conversation as it was. “So, speaking of Jason, I had a word with him about the framework this morning,” I said, sitting down at my desk and feeling around in my handbag for the USB. “He thinks Russia was a good choice and is forwarding me some potential leads…”

I watched her roll her eyes at me, but she let me change the subject.

My team trickled in between nine and nine-thirty, and while I was aware they’d been working all weekend, I couldn’t have them think that was a good reason to slack off during the week. Ian, the older guy, actually showed up a full half an hour late and he really should have known better. I called a brief meeting under the pretence of going over the framework, and then said at the end, “And, guys, I understand that you’ve been working all weekend, but this project is only running for a few more weeks. I’m sure I can negotiate some time off for you after contracts are signed, but I really need your full commitment until then so we can make this project successful.” I wasn’t sure they’d really got my point, so I added, “That means showing at up on time at nine o’clock. Or earlier, if possible.”

I could see them collectively nodding, but their eyes were a little glazed and that made me feel like a school teacher. It was awful telling grown men what to do and I wished they wouldn’t make me. And, while they were all clearly taking me seriously, I really felt my femaleness right then in comparison to them and that made me self-conscious. I wondered what they really thought of a chick telling them off, and whether Jason or Sean got different responses from people than I did. And then I wondered if I was being paranoid.

“I took my wife to the doctor this morning.” Ian was more explaining himself than giving me attitude, but I was annoyed anyway because he hadn’t even bothered to call in about it. “She wasn’t feeling well and I was busy with the requirements framework all weekend.”

“Yeah, my partner’s really sick at the moment, too, there’s something going around,” Sarah said easily, knowing full well everyone had seen that she was here on time.

I exhaled, shooting Sarah an appreciative look. She gave me a little smile.

“Also,” I said, remembering Jason’s comment to me and not wanting to single anyone out, “please make sure you always send any info to do with the pitch using the encryption software. That’s very important.”

“I just wish we knew why,” Ian commented as I closed the meeting. “Frost International sells diamonds. This is a diamond pitch. I don’t get it.” I tended to agree with him, but I didn’t think it would be appropriate for me to say anything to that.

After they were sitting at computers working again, Sarah came up to me and put a hand on my arm. “Good job,” she whispered. “That went okay.”

I sighed audibly. “You want to be lead? I’m done.”

She laughed and rubbed my arm. “No, thanks,” she said quickly, and then got straight to business. “Can I borrow your USB for a second? I just want to grab that spreadsheet.”

I was so glad she was on my team, she was a great support. The whole project would have been hell without her, and she kept doing little things like bringing me lunch and offering to run stuff past Jason for me. I hardly needed to get up out of my desk for the entire day, which allowed me to really get some serious work done.

I still had a lot more to do in the evening, but at about quarter to six I figured I’d better leave so I wouldn’t be late for Bree. Deciding I could just work from home later, I packed up and went to grab some band-aids out of the first-aid kit near the lift for my poor feet.

I pulled the box down off the wall and flipped it open on the floor, searching around in it. I’d found them and was grabbing a handful when I caught sight of some packaging with diagrams on it in one of the bigger compartments. I never would normally have paid any attention to it, but the diagram was of how to treat a chest wound and it had a picture of a guy’s chest and elastic bandages all around it.

I stopped what I was doing and picked up the package. It had three elastic bandages and some other stuff in it and I just kept looking at those diagrams on the front. ‘Wrap tightly and press down for adequate compression‘, it read. I could use adequate chest compression, I thought, and there’s no way anyone working at Frost is ever going to end up with a gaping chest wound.

I looked up. No one was watching so I took it out, closed the kit, and mounted it back on the wall. I tucked the package in my bag, not really understanding why I was feeling so goddamn guilty about it. We were allowed to take items out of the first aid kit, OH&S had been very clear about that during orientation. We were just supposed to fill out a whole lot of paperwork when we did. The thing was, there was no way I was ever going to leave any evidence that I’d taken chest compression bandages. How did you explain that? ‘Oh, I just had a small chest wound on the way home and needed to use these?’

While I was waiting for the lift, I opened my bag a little and examined the bandages, squeezing them through the packaging. They felt really firm. I wondered if I’d be able to breathe with them wrapped around me.

“You’re off, too?” Sarah’s voice startled me again. I hurriedly closed my handbag, drawing a sharp breath. From her expression I didn’t think she’d seen what I was looking at, but her timing was a bit suspect. It seemed like she was following me out but, then again, spending too much time with Bree was probably just making me overly suspicious. She came and stood beside me at the lifts. “This is early for you.”

I nodded. “Seeing that friend,” I said as we caught one downstairs together.

She didn’t say anything for half the lift ride, and when she spoke, it was after visibly gathering the courage to. “Look, Min, I didn’t mean to be too nosy this morning,” she said as I touched up my lipstick in the mirrors. “I shouldn’t feel entitled to knowing anything about your private life. I’m sorry about that.”

I put my lipstick away, thinking carefully about how to answer her. Sarah had never shown any sign of being judgemental, and aside from Henry and Bree she was the closest thing I had to a good friend in Sydney. It was just that I couldn’t bring this thing I had about myself to work. I didn’t want to lose her support on the team because it would be hell without her. It was bad enough that she’d nearly seen me with those fucking bandages.

“It’s okay,” I said, anyway. I think I wanted to tell her, but then when I imagined the words actually coming out of my mouth I knew I’d choke on them. I couldn’t pretend it was nothing, though. I wanted to stay friends with her. “You were right about what you said,” I told her. “There is something ‘up with me’. It’s just personal and I just really can’t talk about it. I’m sorry.”

She nodded slowly, and I could see her brain ticking over. “Okay,” she said as we stepped out of the lift and walked through the lobby. “You don’t have to tell me. Maybe we can both go and get drunk together instead.”

Unexpectedly, that made me laugh. “That actually sounds fantastic,” I told her, meaning it. “I’ve always found there’s nothing more therapeutic than drinking myself into a coma.”

She grinned. “You’ll love it: I’m a cheap drunk, too,” she said. “Rob always tells me how much money he’s saving by dating me instead of his last girlfriend.”

“Oh, I’m taking you out, am I?” I asked her as we walked through the revolving door. “Doesn’t the inviter normally pay?”

She grinned. “Yes, but you’re my boss now,” she pointed out. “That’s generally how it goes.”

I was about to joke about that, but as we walked out onto the street, I heard a familiar voice shout, “Min!”

Bree.

Despite having promised me she wouldn’t, she was waiting for me outside work again. She came rushing toward me in her school uniform. Unfortunately, she got halfway to us and realised she’d left her schoolbag on the corner. She stopped, made a face, and then ran back to get it.

I was torn between being pleased to see her and angry at her for breaking her promise again. And, fuck, Sarah was with me!

Rather than disapproving of Bree, Sarah could not have looked more amused. “That’s who you were texting, isn’t it?” I nodded. The look she gave me…

I cringed. “She’s actually very nice.”

Sarah looked back at Bree dragging her full schoolbag toward us and snorted. “Yeah, I bet she’s a lot of things.”

Bree made it up to me and looked like she wanted to hug me around the middle. She didn’t, though. “I’m not sure if I can hug you in those clothes,” she explained, gesturing distastefully at them. “I’ll probably ruin them. Although that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. You look weird.”

I took a sharp breath. Sarah was standing right next to me, and that was far more than I ever wanted her to hear. I looked at Sarah, a little panicked, but I don’t think it was until she’d seen my expression that she thought twice about what Bree was saying. After she’d seen it she was definitely listening very closely.

I wanted to yell at Bree for being so indiscreet, but that would have been even more obvious. So rather than replying to her, I indicated Sarah with a wave of my hand. “Bree, this is Sarah, a friend from work. Sarah, this is Bree.”…a friend from hell, I thought, and winced as I remembered her ‘you look weird’ line and Sarah’s expression.

Bree looked up at Sarah. “Hi,” she said, offering her hand to shake. “You’re Min’s friend, too? You’re really pretty. I like your hair.”

Sarah looked from Bree to me and then burst out laughing. “Thank you!” she said, shaking Bree’s hand. “Cloverfield Ladies’ College, right? I hear that’s a great school, I have a couple of friends who went there.” She paused, looking sideways at me with that same amusement. “A really, really long time ago.” I half-glared at her. “Anyway, I’d better head off. I’ll leave you two to it. See you tomorrow, Min.” She shot me another puzzled glance, and then turned and walked towards the train station, still chuckling to herself.

We watched her go. Shit, I thought, I hope she didn’t figure anything out. God fucking damnit. “Jesus, Bree,” I said to her when Sarah was out of earshot, watching who was walking past us to make sure no one else was listening, either. “I swear to god if you say anything about what you know about me in front of anyone again, I will fucking kill you. This stuff is really private. And you showed up here after saying you wouldn’t, again.”

She pouted. “I didn’t say anything about you wanting to be a guy,” she said, at least making the effort to speak quietly. “And you do look weird.”

“Don’t you think I fucking know that?” I said to her. “But just don’t, okay?”

Bree did at least finally start to look a bit remorseful. “Okay, I get it. I’m sorry I showed up here again,” she said. “I just thought we could go shopping together so you didn’t feel, like, pressured to do it later when you had work to do. And then I just wanted to hug you, and then I realised I couldn’t. It just all came out.” She was giving me those big soulful eyes again.

I sighed at her. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I know,” she said. “But I don’t think your friend knows. She just thinks I’m weird, and I don’t mind what she thinks about me.” She paused. “Also she has really nice hair kind of like Courtney’s. I always wanted hair like that.”

“I like your hair the way it is,” I told her, pulling one of her curls and releasing it. “But if you show up here again and ever fucking talk about what I told you in front of anyone, I swear to god, Bree…”

“Okay, okay,” she said, looking chastised. “I’m hopeless, I get it. Can we just go and eat the cake now? It’s really heavy.”

The cake actually turned out to be almost the whole cake, with only a couple of slices cut out already. She’d been carrying the whole cake inside a Tupperware cake container in her schoolbag. It was clearly home-made, and someone had actually put a lot of effort into delicately icing and decorating it. There were even little marzipan flowers all over the top of it.

“Are you sure your mum is okay with you taking this?” I asked, gently touching one of the pretty little flowers.

“It’s my birthday cake. I’ll eat it with whoever I want,” she said with surprising conviction, but didn’t elaborate. We dropped it off at my place so I could put it in the fridge, sitting down at the table and sharing a slice before we went out again. It was actually a really great cake, but I wasn’t sure how much I could really say about it because Bree was shovelling at it like she hated it.

She’d perked up again by the time we left the house, though. “You’re not going to put on your other clothes?” she asked as I slipped my heels back on. I gave her a look and she scrunched up her nose. “Now that I know what you really look like, I’m never going to get used to you wearing all of this other stuff.”

I ruffled her hair as I passed her. Just very occasionally, she did actually say the right thing. “You and me both,” I said as I grabbed my handbag.

We went to a shopping centre off George Street. Bree was one of those people who always wanted to walk arm-in-arm, and that, coupled with the fact my blisters were killing me and I hadn’t put the band-aids on them yet, made the walk there rather uncomfortable.

“You shouldn’t have worn heels,” Bree told me when I mentioned it. “I never wear heels.”

“Maybe when you’re a big girl mummy will buy you some,” I said, and she shoved me. I laughed. “It’s not the heels that are the problem, I’m used to them. In the last few weeks I’ve just been walking a lot further than I usually do.”

As we passed skate store, Bree stopped suddenly by the window. She had my arm, too, so I nearly fell over. “Look,” she said as I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed me being so ungraceful. “Those look more comfortable than heels.”

She was pointing at a pair of men’s hightop sneakers. The tongue hanging out of them was so puffy it looked like it might need a shot of antibiotics to get the swelling down. “Yes, I’m sure they’d go particularly well with these tailored suit pants,” I said dryly, but Bree had already released my arm and rushed inside.

To my horror, I heard her call out, “Hi!” to the clerk as he looked up at her. “Do you have those men’s ones,” she pointed at the hightops, “in her size?” she pointed at me like what she was asking was perfectly normal. I couldn’t believe it. Way to fucking out me, Bree, I thought, feeling all the colour drain from my face. If I wasn’t so fucking embarrassed I may actually have killed her on the spot.

Fortunately, the clerk clearly wasn’t making assumptions about me at all. In fact, the expression he gave me was much the same one Sarah had. He was assuming Bree was the headcase. “Do you know what her size is?” he asked Bree as I walked up to them. “I’ll have a look.”

“Eleven in women’s,” I told him, and he nodded and went out the back of the store. I looked down at Bree, who was trying her best to give me a really sweet smile. “Bree. Are you actually trying to get me to brutally murder you? Because it’s working.”

She bounced up and down in front of me and grabbed a handful of the fabric at the front of my blouse. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry! They’re just really cool and they’d look great on you! Anyway, no one’s going to know everything just because you’re buying men’s sneakers. They’ll just think you have really big feet and can’t find your size in women’s.”

I ended up walking out of that store with a pair of men’s sneakers and a very sheepish little schoolgirl who was about ten times more excited about them than I was. When she pulled me into another men’s clothes shop, I stopped her. “Aren’t we supposed to be buying you a birthday present?”

She shrugged. “I’m having fun?” she said, and then loaded me up with more button-up shirts than I’d ever seen in my life and pushed me into a change room. I would have been embarrassed about that, too, except the clerks were all giving me secret smiles like they thought I was just patiently putting up with a crazy teenager. Bree saw and didn’t seem to care. “Tell me when I can come in!” she called over the change room door as she pushed it closed.

I stared at myself in the mirror of the door. Well, well, well, I thought at my reflection, we meet again. I tried to ignore it while I tried on the clothes.

I did actually quite like the style of the shirts. That was, until I’d put them on. Bree had insisted I try an ‘M’ instead of the XLs I usually preferred, and they buttoned up perfectly all the way to my chest where they pulled tight across my breasts. Despite the fact my breasts were quite small, they still managed to very effectively ruin the way the shirt looked. I looked ridiculous, and I just had this wave of self-hatred like who the fuck was I kidding trying to look like a guy? I was a fucking girl.

“Can I see?” Bree called when she heard me stop making changing noises.

“No,” I said, and went to take the top off.

“Why not?” she asked through the door. “Is ‘M” too small?”

She ended up convincing me to let her in, and I showed her, expecting her to immediately see my dilemma. She shrugged. “If you, like, hunch they’ll probably just look like pecs?”

The top was short-sleeved and I held out my arms. “With these scrawny things?” I asked, and then groaned. They didn’t look at all like Jason or Sean’s arms at all. “I’m too skinny for people to think I have pecs.”

“You know you can get surgery to remove your boobs, right?” Bree asked, looking at my breasts in the reflection. I wondered how she knew about that. “Maybe you could get that, and then use those chicken-fillet-like things you can put in your bra to pretend you have them at work.”

I laughed once. “Yeah, Henry wouldn’t notice at all.” I reached for the door to let her out. “Okay, I’m taking the shirt off.”

She didn’t go anywhere. “You’ve seen me in a bra,” she reminded me.

I took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and pushed her out the door. “You actually like how yours look, though.”

She giggled. “Well, they’re DDs,” she said as I closed the door and locked it. “What’s not to like? They’re great.”

I could only see her feet under the change room door, and right then she jumped experimentally up and down. I laughed to myself while I took the shirt off, knowing what she was looking at. I hoped her bra was more supportive than the one she was wearing on the weekend, because I could just imagine how she’d have looked if she’d jumped up and down in that and wow I really shouldn’t have been imagining that. Bree did have a great body and she clearly enjoyed showing most of it to people, but there was just this sweet sort of naivety about her which stopped her looking like she was inviting people to touch it. I wondered if anyone had touched it, and then mentally hand-smacked myself. That was none of my business.

I’d gone to put that shirt neatly on the floor to try a bigger one, when I noticed my handbag in the corner and I had a thought. Those compression bandages. I wondered if they’d make the shirt fit? I took the package out of my bag and looked at it again. Well, there was no harm in trying, right?

I slipped of my bra and undid the wrapping.

“What’s that noise?” Bree asked through the door.

“I’m hungry,” I said flatly. “I felt like a packet of chips.” She giggled.

The bandages were actually really good; they were made out of some strange fabric that stuck to itself so I only needed to press it down and it was secure. I had to try a couple of times, though, because the first time I did it I wrapped my chest too tightly and it hurt.

When I was done, I looked at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t sure how I felt about myself from the front because of my hips, but from the side, I was completely flat. Completely. There was no sign at all I had breasts. Just to check I wasn’t imagining things, I put on the shirt that hadn’t quite fit before.

It worked, they were completely gone. That made me smile, so I opened the door to Bree and let her squeeze in. “What do you think?” I said, and presented myself.

Her eyebrows went up. “Wow,” she said, and reached out to touch my newly flat chest, curious about it. Fortunately, she realised at the last minute that it probably wasn’t appropriate and didn’t actually put her hand there. “How did you do that?”

I bent down and handed her the empty bandage wrapper. She took it from me, but didn’t really understand until she saw the diagram. “Oh, that’s a good idea,” she said. “And probably a whole lot easier than just getting a surgeon to hack them off.”

I winced at her choice of wording. “What do you think of the shirt?” I asked. “Should I get it?”

She looked back up at me. Even though I had my breasts taped flat, it was actually really uncomfortable having Bree so openly staring at my chest. I’d have to get over that if I was going to pass as a guy, though, because guys didn’t care about their chests. I caught myself thinking that and made a face. Pass as a guy to who, Min? Who else are you planning on showing this to?

“Yeah, get the shirt,” Bree said as an afterthought. She was looking down at her own breasts and tried to push them against her ribcage with her hands. The result was just a hell of a lot more cleavage around her collarbones. “I could never get mine that flat,” she said, releasing them again, which I was grateful for. Watching her so freely holding them in front of me was a bit awkward. “You’re lucky you don’t want to be a guy and have huge boobs. That would suck. You’d have to get them cut off.”

“Small mercies, I guess,” I said, and then kicked her out so I could change back again.

When I’d put my work clothes back on and opened the door, Bree was all the way up against the mirror at the far end of the fitting room, pulling at her hair. “How do you think I’d look with straight hair like Courtney and Sarah?” she asked me.

“Just as terrifying as you look now,” I said. “But straighter.”

She snorted. “Straighter?” She started to giggle.

That hadn’t come out the way I’d intended it to. I pushed gently as I passed her. “You know what I mean.”

She did, but she found it hilarious anyway, and spent the whole time I was putting the clothes back trailing after me and giggling incessantly. She continued into another clothes shop, and came rushing over to me with a women’s t-shirt which she held up across her front. It read, ‘Looking 4 Prince Charming’. She was laughing too much to say whatever she’d wanted to say about it.

I rolled my eyes at her. “Yeah, yeah, I get it, very funny.”

The last set of shops in the centre were several jewellery stores and a supermarket. We passed by the window of one of them and there were a whole lot of engagement rings.

“Hey,” Bree said, on her tiptoes peering at the rings. “Doesn’t your company sell diamonds? Are there any Frost diamonds here?”

I leaned back to read the shop signage. “Nope.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “You didn’t even look at them,” she accused.

I came up to the display window beside her. “I don’t need to. Frost does prestige diamonds, and this isn’t a prestige store.”

She groaned. “Well, Sor-ry,” she said, clearly still playing with me, but there was an element of something else in her voice. “Not all of us live in super awesome expensive apartments and can just buy awesome prestige diamonds whenever we feel like it.” She walked into the store. “Some of us regular people like regular things.”

I walked in after her while she looked around at all the stuff on display. “Actually, Frost diamonds are probably a bit out of my price range, too,” I corrected her. “The cheapest ones retail for about $20,000, but our most popular selection is in the $100-to-$150,000 price range.”

Not only did Bree gape at me, but the clerk behind the counter who’d overheard us did, too.

“That’s enough for a house,” Bree said, sounding actually kind of distressed about it. “Like, a small house, but a house. You can’t live in a diamond.”

The clerk’s expression was quite funny as well. “Well,” she told us in her professional voice. “We have a lovely selection of jewellery in the 100-to-150 dollar range.” Both Bree and I laughed.

Bree turned her nose up at me. “Okay, you can show me that stuff,” she said to the clerk, and then they chatted about some of the items on display while I stood back and watched, holding my shopping bags.

It was odd talking about the price of Frost merchandise like it was worth actual money, I thought, reflecting on how we normally talked about contracts and units and profit. Discussing it with Bree reminded me that, actually, Frost was raking in enormous amounts of money just from the comparatively small diamond division. Money ‘regular’ people didn’t usually have, and money Bree definitely didn’t have.

I watched her talk animatedly with the clerk as she leaned over the counter. The clerk was even older than me and she was enjoying chatting with Bree, too. Henry was right, the age difference wasn’t actually a problem, but Bree did have a point about money. She wasn’t old enough to have a job that paid anything like mine did. And I didn’t just have a ‘regular’ job, I worked for Frost International. And what was the fucking point of working for someone like Frost and having all this money if all I did was alternate between padding my savings account and sending stuff back to Mum?

I looked at Bree cooing over a gold bracelet with the clerk. Well, it was her eighteenth yesterday, wasn’t it?

I made a gesture to get the clerks attention, and then indicated the bracelet. The clerk smiled ear to ear like she was absolutely delighted and nodded at me.

When the clerk started to take the bracelet away from Bree, Bree stood up straight and looked really confused. “Why are you–?” The clerk glanced at me and Bree turned back towards me. I was just smiling, and Bree’s jaw dropped. “Are you…?” I nodded. She just stared at me for a second. “But it’s real gold,” she said. I pretended to be very impressed and she pointed her finger at me. “Stop that,” she ordered. “This is serious. You’re buying real gold for me?”

“Would you prefer fake gold?”

The clerk snickered as she finished polishing the bracelet. “Would you like it gift-wrapped?” she asked us.

I looked at Bree. She just looked stunned. “I don’t know,” she said.

The clerk seemed to be finding Bree’s whole surprise very sweet. “Would you like to wear it now, instead?”

Bree looked back at her and just stared for a second. “Okay,” she said, and presented her wrist.

The clerk helped her put it on, and then I handed my card over while Bree just stared mutely at her new bracelet.

When we were done and had made it out of the store, Bree kind of just stopped in place beside the wall. “Did that just happen?” she asked me with no trace of humour in her voice.

I smiled and ruffled her curls. “Happy Birthday.”

She was still looking at her wrist. “When I told you to buy me something, I just thought you’d just get me something cheap and silly,” she said, and there was something about her voice. “I never thought you’d actually buy something really awesome for me.”

When she looked up at me, I realised why she sounded so strange. Her eyes were swimming in tears.

Fuck, had I done something wrong? “Bree…?”

Without waiting another second, she threw her arms around my middle. There were people everywhere and I felt a bit uncomfortable about it, but given the circumstances I couldn’t push her away. I put a hand on the back of her head, not really sure what to do. That certainly hadn’t been the reaction I was expecting, and I worried about it.

“Are you okay?” I asked her quietly after a minute or two. She was still hugging me just as tightly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

She took a deep breath and exhaled, warming my stomach. “I’m sorry about crying, it’s really dumb,” she began. “It’s just, like… I thought you might really like a coffee before work so I got up really early so I could get into the city on time to get you one. And then I thought you might like some flowers because I upset you that night and I wanted to say sorry, and flowers are a nice way to say that, right? And I thought maybe you’d like to have some of my birthday cake because it’s really pretty, so I had to wait until Mum went to take the rubbish out so I could sneak it into my bag and show you.” She took a short breath. “It’s just that, you know, I always try to do all these nice things for people…” She looked up at me with those big eyes of hers. “I always try and do nice things for people. But you did something nice back.”

I stroked her hair. So that’s what it was about. “Happy Birthday,” I said again, quietly.

After a minute or so she released me, standing back and gently touching the bracelet. “I’m going to help you,” she announced eventually, after spending some time deep in thought. When it was clear I didn’t know what she meant, she looked around us to make sure no one could hear, and then elaborated. “Like, you want to be a guy? Well, I’ll help.”

I winced. I still wasn’t comfortable hearing her say that, and especially not suddenly with no warning. “I’m not actually sure what I want, and you help already,” I said. “You don’t need to do anything. Just be your crazy self.”

She didn’t look convinced. “But I’m sure I can do more than that,” she said. “There must be something else.”

I laughed bleakly as we started walking again. “If you could spontaneously develop some magical powers, that would be great.”

It was getting to that time of night: the lights around us in some of the stores were beginning to switch off, and here and there roller-doors were being shut.

“I guess you have to go do work,” Bree said in that desolate tone of hers she reserved for when she needed to leave. “And I have to go home.”

“You’re not going to Courtney’s tonight?”

She shook her head as we walked out of the entrance. “My brother’s there. It’s too weird.” She didn’t say anything else. It was dark outside already, and there was a bit of a chill in the air as we headed back home.

When we got upstairs, Bree looked hesitantly at her schoolbag by the door, and then up at me. “Can I just stay for a bit longer? I’ll be really quiet. I have homework to do, anyway.”

I had been ready to refuse, but there was a note of something in her voice. It made me wonder. “Bree, do your parents know where you are?”

She shrugged. “I’ll seriously be really quiet.”

I watched her for a second. There was obviously a reason she didn’t want to answer, and I didn’t want to push her, so I left it. She was eighteen now anyway, and all the evidence pointed to her having had a crap birthday. She enjoyed herself when she was here. “Okay,” I said. “But literally, you will need to be dead quiet. I’ll need to be able to concentrate.”

She brightened. “Really? I can stay?”

I took the bags into my bedroom and went in there to change. “Really. I’m using the table, though. Or I will after I have a quick shower.”

I had my shower and threw on the hoodie and the jeans, and by the time I came out of the bathroom, the doona was missing from my bed. I followed the trail of discarded bedding and found it draped over the spine of my couch and hanging over the front of it. I lifted the end of the make-shift doona-tent near the arm. Bree was lying on her stomach inside it reading something on her phone.

She looked up at me when I peeked in.

“Okay…” I said slowly.

“If I can’t see you I’ll be less tempted to talk to you,” she said very matter of factly, and then went back to reading whatever she had been. “Also, it’s really warm in here.”

I had to laugh. “If you suffocate, I’m feeding you to the flowers,” I told her, and then set myself up at the table to do some research on some of the leads Jason had sent me.

Most of them were literally just contacts in large mining or construction companies in Russia. I couldn’t find any connections to any more consumer-oriented products at all. Leads were leads, though, so I wrote somewhat cryptic emails to a few of them and then stopped short of actually sending them. If I was going to send communication that had anything to do with Pink externally, I’d probably have to clear it with Jason, first, and fuck that young guy John had sent me a link to a webpage about Argyle Diamonds unencrypted again. I put my face in my hands; I wasn’t sure how much clearer I could have made the message about the importance of information security. Well, I couldn’t do anything now, but I’d need to jump right on it tomorrow. Fuck. Why couldn’t people follow simple instructions? I saved the emails onto the USB, shut my laptop and then leaned back in my chair and stretched. That was probably enough for today: bedtime.

That reminded me that Bree was still here. I flopped my arms back down and looked over at the couch; she’d been dead quiet. I decided I should probably thank her for that because it was a bit of a feat of self-discipline for her, so I wandered over and lifted the edged of the doona.

I had opened my mouth to say something, but I stopped when I saw that she’d faceplanted on her phone. It was half-buried between her cheek and the cushion and she was fast asleep. I laughed soundlessly; that explained why she’d been so quiet. I should have known ‘self-discipline’ and ‘Bree’ weren’t two words that belonged in the same sentence.

Carefully excavating her phone, I rolled the doona back to her shoulders so she actually didn’t suffocate, and then I stood back up.

Well, I couldn’t kick her out now, could I? I looked at the clock; half-past eleven. It was probably better if she did stay over rather than going home at this hour. I wondered about her family, though. How the fuck did they not worry about where she was all the time? Unless she was lying to them, that is. Still, my mum would never have let me out so much in my last year of school, regardless of what I’d told her. I knew Aussie parents were a little less hardcore, but I didn’t think they were this lax about where their teenage daughters were.

Kind of hating myself for it, I unlocked her phone to just check she hadn’t received a hundred phone calls from scared family wondering where there daughter was. She hadn’t, there wasn’t a single one. And in fact, the last thing she’d been reading wasn’t actually even homework, it was a blog that called itself The Queer (A)Gender. I sighed at that, and then put the phone down on the coffee table and just looked down at her.

What’s the deal with you, Bree? I thought, bending down so I could tuck her in a little better. That delicate little bracelet was still on her tiny wrist, and it reminded me how small she was which made me worry even more. I hadn’t seen bruises or anything on her torso when she’d had her top off, and I didn’t think it would be something like that, but I still worried. I worried about what was going on for her. Fuck, it was just so easy to worry about this girl.

Still, I had several more pressing issues also competing for brain-space, like not being sure if I definitely wanted to be a guy or not and the fact that when I gave my team instructions it all seemed to go in one ear and out the other. I sighed, turning off the living room light and heading into my bedroom. All of this could wait until tomorrow.

Because I hadn’t gone to bed before ten since I was about eight, I did end up wide awake at three am after all. And because I was awake in the dead of the night and there was nothing else to do, I discovered I had two choices. I could either lie in bed and rehash yesterday over and over again until I felt like just cleaning up all the wine in my cupboard, or I could get up and work solidly on the framework docs and give myself a fighting chance at getting ahead. God, though, it was early and my eyes hurt as I got up and turned on my laptop. Fortunately, I was too tired to focus on anything except who was buying pink diamonds, so when the sun came up my first thought was, ‘Wait a minute, aren’t the days getting shorter?‘ It was seven-thirty, and, actually, I was nearly done with the statement.

I was also kind of hungry, but rather than interrupting my work I opted just to push through it and by ten I had the statement and the target consumers defined. After some deliberation I decided I didn’t have time to stress about whether or not Russia was the right direction; leadership was apparently about sometimes having to make risky decisions so I just needed to call it. After I’d set up the stupid encryption software on my laptop, I emailed the docs through to everyone’s private emails and cc:ed Jason.

I had sat down on my bed with the full intention of ordering room service to shut my stomach up, except somehow I fell asleep and woke up after midday. I sat upright, feeling fucking awful like I always did after daytime naps, and had the misfortune of catching sight of myself in the mirror. I looked like that chick out of The Ring if she’d been cast as a twenty-year old guy instead. I put my hair up so I didn’t look like I was ready to haunt anyone.

Swinging my legs over the edge of the mattress, I just sat there for a few seconds, slowly remembering everything that had happened yesterday. It felt really far away, like I’d dreamt it all. I hadn’t really run out on dinner with Sarah and Rob, had I? And that full-on conversation with Henry? All the adrenaline was gone and, even looking at myself in these clothes, I felt numb. Like I wasn’t awake enough to hate myself yet.

I looked so much like I used to in high school before I started wearing makeup. Without any of it on I seemed younger – a lot younger – I could easily have told people I was twenty, or even maybe eighteen and gotten away with it. I’d definitely get carded if I tried to buy alcohol looking like this. I swallowed. Younger, and, well, guy-er.

‘Bloke in a skirt’, Rob had said, and I’d felt that assessment like a tonne of bricks. I knew why, and for a second, I was scared to even think the question. I forced myself to.

Did I actually want to be a guy? Like really, not just, ‘Yeah, it would be cool’?

In finally just asking myself, I had kind of expected to get a really definite answer. I didn’t have one, and I couldn’t separate those questions from oh god what happens if I really do and Henry and Mum find out. My brain felt like scrambled eggs and as soon as I’d asked myself one question another twenty were waiting to be answered. I settled on, ‘I think so’, and then felt like an idiot for not knowing for sure. The best I could manage was that I liked how I looked in these clothes, I liked how I felt in these clothes, and it was a welcome change from hating myself and my reflection.

I stood up stiffly and got a better look at myself in them. Wow, I could seriously pull off ‘guy’, especially when I tried to. I experimented with different postures and expressions and, feeling a bit disconnected and scientific, analysed the results. I looked quite feminine when I smiled with my teeth – not that I did that very often. Also, the fabric from the t-shirt was brushing on my nipples and when they were hard it was a dead giveaway I was female, too. Men didn’t have nipples like this. I thought about that for a second. I actually used to wear a really tight crop-top to the gym downstairs to stop them from standing out so much. I probably still had it somewhere…

I actually did, and I found it when I burrowed all the way down the back of my underwear drawer. I put it on and put the t-shirt back on over it and my nipples were gone, and actually I looked a lot flatter, too. That felt better, I preferred there being absolutely no sign there was anything on my chest at all.

I wasn’t sure what to do now, though. What did people do when they felt like this?

I went to go get myself a drink of water and fantasised about living alone on a desert island and wearing whatever the fuck I wanted forever and not having to worry about it. I drank half the glass and gave the rest to the evil flowers. Well, I guessed there was no harm in just wearing this stuff around the house, as long as Henry wasn’t around. I kind of had been for years, anyway, I’d just never really understood what the appeal was until yesterday.

Ugh, yesterday. Just thinking the word was exhausting. It did remind me that my team would probably have replied to my email by now, though. I went and sat at my laptop and read through them; my colleagues were all giving me indications of when their components would be done and none of it was before Sunday. Jason had even sent me a one-liner: “I guess my book came in handy after all.”

“You fucking prick,” I said at the screen, conflicted as to whether I should be flattered by the fact he was saying I had good time management, or pissed off by what a snide bastard he was. At least he might give Diane good feedback about me for once; maybe I wouldn’t get demoted to admin after all.

While I was updating the timelines and really struggling to ignore my loud stomach, my phone went off next to me. I checked the screen: Henry. I hesitated before I answered, momentarily panicking about my clothes. Then, I laughed at myself. Min, you idiot, I thought as I answered it. He can’t see you, it’s a telephone call.

I put it to my ear. “Told you I wouldn’t kill myself.”

He made pained noise. “I’d prefer if you wouldn’t joke about that,” he said in his serious voice. “Are you alright, Min? You were in a pretty bad way last night. I hope you slept more than I did.”

I sighed internally; it looked like he wanted to talk again. Leaning back in my chair, I went to run my hand through my hair. It was something I used to do when I was fourteen, and it didn’t work because I had long hair now and it was tied back. My fingers got stuck near my hair-tie and I disentangled them from my hair as I answered. “I slept okay, considering.”

He didn’t say anything straight away, and there was an unspoken question that kind of hung in the air: he wanted to know what had been upsetting me. My immediate fear was that he’d figured it out and just wanted me to say it for confirmation. He had to have some idea, because I’d told him about high school and he did know what Rob had said that had upset me. What if he had guessed? Would he know what do to? Actually, that was a stupid question. He would know exactly what to do, he always did with this stuff. But this wasn’t just some client of his, I was his girlfriend. I could just imagine him politely trying to pretend he wasn’t upset about the fact his girlfriend had some strange desire not to be a girl anymore.

When he eventually spoke, he didn’t ask me what was wrong, he just sounded relieved. “Okay, well, you do sound a lot better. Fuck. You have no idea how many times I wanted to just get in the car and show up at your place just to make sure you were alright.”

It was completely left field, but at the mention of ‘showing up’ I smiled at the memory of Bree waiting for me with those awful flowers. “Don’t forget to figure out what you’re going to lie about to get in.”

“Min.” He didn’t sound pleased, which was actually a bit of a surprise. He usually would jump right into joking around with me. I felt a bit guilty.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “That was kind of inappropriate. It’s okay. I’m okay. I only brought her up because she sent me something terrible before I went to sleep last night.”

There was a pause. “Terrible how? Is she crossing lines again?”

“No, actually,” I said, leaning back towards my laptop and opening Deviant Art. I copied the address and emailed it to him. “Click that,” I said. “She made it to cheer me up.”

I could her him thumping away at the screen of his mobile. “Shit, it says I can’t while I’m on call,” he told me. “I’ll do it in a sec.”

“Okay,” I said, still feeling guilty about joking around when he’d obviously been really worried about me. I would have been so lost without him last night, he’d been wonderful. I didn’t tell him how much I appreciated him often enough. I really should. “Look, Henry…” I began, feeling uncomfortable, “thank you for being there yesterday. I’m sorry I ruined our evening out by having a mini-meltdown.”

He chuckled. It was a quiet, gentle sound. “It’s my turn to sound inappropriate,” he said. “But I can’t hear the word ‘mini’ now without feeling pangs of hatred for everyone who calls you that.” I smiled at that. He sobered. “But, Min, regarding last night… I need to ask you something important. I went home and kept thinking about how you’d brought up killing yourself right out of the blue and just worried that the idea was already in your head. You’ve never mentioned it or joked about it before and it scared me. You’d talk to me about it if you had those thoughts, right?”

At least I could be completely honest when I answered him. “This time you are over-analysing me,” I reassured him. “I don’t have those thoughts. I just thought it was what you meant about not leaving me alone.”

“Okay,” he said, and then laughed a little nervously. “Just don’t you do it and leave me alone, okay?”

Don’t you leave me alone, either, I thought, looking down at the knees of my men’s jeans. God. Please don’t figure out what’s going on for me and just leave. “I won’t, Henry,” was all I said.

Fortunately he changed the subject. “Okay. Speaking of alone, I hope you don’t lock yourself up and work all weekend.”

I glanced at my laptop. “I can’t anyway,” I said. “Because unfortunately I’ve delegated stuff to my team and I have to wait until they send me their components before I can keep going.”

“Good,” he said. “Sean’s wife’s huge baby-shower is tonight, which I totally forgot about until Outlook reminded me this morning, and unfortunately I think I’m obliged to go. Would you like to come? It’s casual dress, apparently, so that’s something.”

I looked down at my t-shirt and jeans. How casual? Casual enough for me to rock up in this? Hah. “Yeah, I think I’ll give it a miss,” I said. “Have fun, though.”

He snorted. “Yes, ‘fun’, that’s definitely one word I associate with Sean Frost. At least his wife is quite nice. Well, you make sure you have fun, too, okay? Call your Melbourne friends or your Mum or see Bree or something. Playing multiplayer for twelve hours straight doesn’t count as social interaction, especially when you mute everyone.”

“Please, I don’t play for twelve hours straight,” I scoffed. “I stop for food. Actually, speaking of which, I’m really hungry now.”

He laughed. “I’ll let you get to that,” he said. “And I’ll listen to this ‘terrible’ thing Bree sent you. Bye, Min. I’m glad you’re okay.”

I didn’t feel very okay, but I did grin at the thought of him listening to Bree’s sound file. “Thanks again, bye.”

After he’d hung up, I decided to have another listen to Bree’s agonising singing so I could imagine what Henry was thinking as he was, too. I clicked the link on my laptop and played it again; god, it was even worse through proper speakers. It was all I could do to not just put my hands over my ears and try and sing over her so I couldn’t hear it. In the end, despite the fact it was making me laugh, I had to stop halfway through. The bridge of the song had some really high notes that Bree was just spectacularly missing and the pain was too great.

After a minute or two, Henry texted me, “Oh, dear.” I laughed. ‘Oh, dear,’ was about right. He followed it up with, “Oh, and thank her for the handbag tip on getting you to restaurants when you next see her. Much appreciated.”

I groaned. “I don’t think so,” I said at my phone as I closed media player on my laptop to open my browser. “I don’t want to give her any ideas.”

I decided to forgo room service in favour of an enormous cheesy pizza and a garlic bread from up the road, and before I’d ordered, I opened a new tab and was faced with Google.

I stopped for a second. I wanted to search about the whole man-thing, but I didn’t even know the terminology. Was it ‘transsexual’? Wow, okay, no, I was not searching for that. Fuck, I couldn’t even imagine saying that word to Mum, she didn’t even like it when I didn’t match my lipstick with my blouse properly. Whatever, it didn’t matter what it was called because it didn’t change anything. I was only going to be like this at home, anyway. Fuck. Time to drown my sorrows in grease.

After I’d ordered it, though, I had to wait forty-five minutes for them to bring it up. That wasn’t really long enough to get any serious gaming in, and I didn’t really feel like painting.

I stared at my laptop. I could just do that search.

Since I really couldn’t bring myself to type ‘transsexual’, I just typed, ‘I think I want to be a guy’, and hit enter. There were a lot of results from forums and blogs, and I clicked quickly through them. People asking themselves the same question… but they all seemed to be young teenagers. Even people answering their questions were teenagers. They were using the term ‘transgender’ or ‘trans’ which was happily less clinical, but when they started to discuss ‘transitioning’ and ‘coming out’ I could feel my pulse start to race again. Coming out? Fuck that, seriously. Never. When I read the words ‘medical diagnosis’ and ‘surgery’ and then saw some pictures of it that was the final straw – no. Just no. No doctors, no one was examining me or injecting me with anything and no one was cutting into me. I’d rather live in limbo forever than that. I closed the tab and sat back in my chair, taking a few deep breaths.

I was twenty-five, not thirteen like these kids. They all talked about ‘just always knowing they were men’. If that was the case, wouldn’t I have known by now if I was like them? I looked down at my jeans. Apparently not, because here I was wearing men’s clothes and searching the internet about wanting to be one. I had a sudden thought about how Mum would react if I told her and my throat tightened. She’d ship me off to every therapist in the fucking country, and, regardless of how often Henry sang praises to counselling and psychology, just no. I was done with counselling. Henry… fuck. Fuck. What would have happened last night if I hadn’t had him? God, and work. I would be infamous at work, I’d never live it down. It would be worse than high school. No, there wasn’t going to be any ‘coming out’. I was going to wear my fucking uncomfortable, fucking godawful work clothes at work and I could deal with whatever this man-thing was in the privacy of my own home.

I could feel my pulse in my hands, my heart was beating so hard. I was getting so sick of that feeling. Was I going to get like this every time I thought about it? I was going to need a hell of a lot more wine in my cupboard if that was the case. God, it was too hot inside.

I stood up and went out onto the balcony. It actually wasn’t any cooler out there because the sun was directly on it, so I came back inside and just stood restlessly in the centre of my living room. I’d lose all of this if work found out, I thought, looking at my home. I couldn’t stay living here if I left Frost. Thinking about that made me worry about my timelines again, and again I checked to see if anyone had sent me their components but my inbox was empty. I sat and refreshed my mail constantly for about five minutes before I realised that wasn’t going to make work magically appear there.

I was stuck until people emailed me their components; stuck stressing about work, Henry, Mum and whatever the hell was going on in my head.

When my eyes fell on those withered, evil flowers, I remembered what Henry had said and had a bit of an odd thought: I could invite Bree over. She was completely crazy and would definitely give me something else to think about, and I’d also be able to boast to Henry that I’d had human-to-human interaction. I hoped the shock wouldn’t cause him to drop dead on the spot. Plus she’d probably be ecstatic, and the idea of someone getting really excited about seeing me was actually kind of flattering. And, honestly? I’d enjoyed myself last time. She didn’t need to stay that long, either.

I’d picked up my phone to message her, but before I sent one I had second thoughts. Goddamnit, I’d need to change back into those other clothes. Could I be bothered? Maybe I should just watch a couple of TV shows I’d downloaded, instead. I probably shouldn’t be around people now; look at what I’d done last night with Sarah and Rob.

I went and flopped down on my couch with my phone, and just as I’d done so, it vibrated in my hand. There was a notification in the corner of the screen for Deviant Art. Really?

I selected it. It was from Bree. I’d started to think, ‘Great minds think alike’, and then laughed to myself about using the term ‘great mind’ to describe Bree. She probably wasn’t stupid, but ‘ditzy’ was understatement of the century. I opened it.

“uh so dont kill me but im in the city and i kinda thought i could come up and say hello??”

I frowned at the screen, she was asking? That was progress. Well, maybe she could come over for a bit after all; those pizzas were really big. “Okay. How far away are you?”

“ummmmm………..”

There was a knock on my door.

I sat straight up on the couch, my jaw open. Looking up at the clock, I realised it couldn’t be the pizza guy yet, it hadn’t even been half an hour. In case I was wrong, though, I jumped up and rushed over to the door, looking through the peephole, and there was a blue eye staring back at me on the other side of it.

I smothered a startled noise and stood away from the door, putting a steadying hand on my chest. I was about to have a go at her for breaking her promise and just showing up, but she beat me to it.

“I’m sorry…” she said meekly through my door. “I promise if you’d have said no I would have just snuck away!”

I groaned and ran a hand over my face. Min, you’d actually been about to invite her, I had to remind myself, ‘crazy’ is what you wanted, remember? I very nearly opened the door before I realised what I was wearing. I needed to change first. “You’re going to have to wait out there for a sec.”

“Why?”

I sighed at her through the door. “Because I need to hide the body and clean up all these bloodstains,” I said flatly, and then rushed off to my bedroom while she stood giggling in the passageway.

I rushed into my bedroom, pulled off the t-shirt and jeans and just stuffed them into a shelf in the wardrobe. Pulling on a blouse and my skinny jeans, I was just zipping up the fly as I closed the wardrobe door when I saw myself. My legs looked so weird in these stupid tight jeans. I stopped doing them up halfway, groaned, and then opened the door again to look for something else. I eventually gave up and settled on a cotton skirt because I couldn’t leave her out there forever.

I put on as much makeup as I could in a few minutes, and by the time I opened the door, Bree was standing there having a deep and meaningful with the pizza delivery guy, holding the pizza box in her arms.

She looked me up and down with a bit of a strange expression, but then gestured at the delivery guy. “This is Sandeep,” she said. “He’s a qualified dentist but Australia doesn’t recognise his qualifications so he’s delivering pizzas for a living.”

Sandeep gave me a bit of a pained look. I felt for him as I reached over and took a couple of notes out of my purse which was hanging by the door. “Don’t worry about the change,” I told him. I figured he’d earned it for keeping Bree entertained. He nodded and then looked at me with pity as he left.

Bree was still busy frowning at me. “Did you seriously go and spend fifteen minutes getting dressed and putting on makeup to eat pizza with me?” I didn’t know what to say to that. “Because, like, I’m flattered, but that’s really weird?”

I looked down at her. She really couldn’t lecture me on clothing. Being Saturday, she wasn’t in her school uniform, and she’d switched her pleated skirt for what I assume should be described as shorts, but I wasn’t sure there was really enough material to call them that. And not to say she was chubby – because she wasn’t, really, just short – but she wasn’t very slender like I was and her thighs had volume to them. That, in combination with her thin scoop-neck t-shirt, looked almost pornographic. How the fuck did her parents let her leave home like that? I felt uncomfortable just looking at her.

She noticed my line of sight. “Bit different than a Cloverfield uniform, yeah?” She was grinning. “How do I look?” She did a little turn.

Like you’re ready to lap-dance someone. “Older. But not old enough to wear that.”

She laughed. “I still can’t believe you made me wait out here while you put on makeup. That’s so hilarious.” Something occurred to her and she stopped giggling. “Not that you look bad or anything! Although that is kind of heaps of makeup. Can you smell that?” She looked down at the pizza box in her hands. “Oh my god, I can’t believe you invited me over for pizza! Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

She ducked under my arm on the doorframe, kicked off her thongs and then went straight into my kitchen. Chuckling to myself, I followed her in there to find her already banging around in my crockery cupboards. She had one of them open and was apparently planning on splitting our pizza between two plates, but instead of taking them she just kind of looked back at me.

“I can’t reach,” she said, perched on her tiptoes by an open door. “Who puts the big plates all the way back there?”

I gave her a smirk and then reached easily over her head, took two plates, and handed them to her.

“Show off,” she said, grinning, and then went to split the pizza. I leaned back against the counter and watched her trying to separate the slices. She was making a mess of it. “How many pieces you want? Because we can both try to do four each but these pieces are seriously huge and if I eat four of them I’m going to be really sick.”

I observed her take four slices, anyway. “Should I go and get the bucket?”

She handed me my plate which was laden with garlic bread and pizza, looking determined. “It smells really good. I have to try, I promise I’ll stop before I need a bucket. Let’s go and eat on the balcony!” She stopped on the way past to pet the evil flowers and then continued outside. I followed her, giving the flowers a bit of a measured stare as I went past.

She’d only taken a few bites of her pizza before she’d discovered the view. “Wow, I can’t believe you live here!” she said, and then took her phone out of her ‘shorts’ and did a panorama of the city. “Look, you can see the Harbour Bridge.” She pointed at it. I pretended to be surprised and extremely impressed, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “Well, it’s exciting to me, okay? I can see a brick wall through my bedroom window.”

She turned back towards the view and leant her stomach over the balcony. “Whoa, it’s really far down to the ground,” she said. “It makes me dizzy looking.” My grin faded a little; I didn’t like her leaning over the edge like that. I put my pizza slice back on my plate as she peered downwards. “Can you imagine falling off the edge? Like what it would be like sailing through the air and knowing you’re about to die?”

“Why don’t you lean a little further over? Then you won’t have to just imagine what it feels like.” I thought I sounded pretty casual, but Bree looked back at me as if I’d asked her to get down.

“You worried I’m going to fall?” she asked, looking amused. “What am I, like, six?”

“What you are is leaning over the edge of a twenty-sixth floor balcony.”

She watched me thoughtfully for just a fraction of a second, and then her foot slipped from under her and she lurched towards the railing.

Fuck, my heart stopped. I leapt out of my chair with the intention of trying to grab one of her limbs… and then realised that although the movement had been very sudden, it wasn’t something that was likely to propel her over the edge.

Bree stood up straight again and turned so her back was against the rail, giving me a very cheeky grin.

I opened my mouth and then closed it again. She didn’t. “You did that on purpose.”

Her eyes twinkled. “Did I scare you?”

I looked down at myself and then back at my chair. “No, I just suddenly needed to stand up,” I said flatly, and then sat back down in it and took a deep breath. Fuck.

She looked both delighted and pleased with herself, and then came back to the table and sat in front of her pizza. “So, like, not that I’m complaining at all because it’s awesome, but what made you invite me around? Just bored?” She carefully took a big bite.

I swallowed mine. I knew why I wanted her here, but I wasn’t going to tell her why. She didn’t need to know. “It’s all part of my plot to kill you.”

She laughed and said through her mouthful, “Nice try, but I saw you about to rush over and stop me from falling.”

“Of course,” I said. “Your body needs to stay in my apartment so I can feed it to the flowers.”

The next sound she made was alarmingly like choking, but then I realised she was laughing. When she saw me panic again, she just laughed even harder and eventually she needed to put her pizza slice down while she got ahold of herself. “Oh my god,” she said when she did. “You’re so awesome. I have no idea how you say all those things with such a completely straight face, it’s great. Those poor flowers, though,” she leaned back in her chair and looked at them through the open door. “I still feel so sorry for them. It makes me so happy that they found a good home.”

“So what brings you into the city?” I asked her since she’d stopped laughing at me. “Did you have something to do, or is it just really comfortable sitting against my door?”

She made a face. “It’s actually kind of a long story.”

I looked pointedly at my plate. I still had three slices and some garlic bread to go. “Well, I have rations. I can go the distance.”

Her nose was still scrunched up. “Nah. I just had a really shit day and the end of the story was that I wanted to see you.”

Well, I wasn’t going to push her to tell me, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her why she was here. Instead, I held my arms out and looked down at myself. “And now that you can look upon me, is it everything you’d hoped for?”

She giggled again. “Oh my god, you crack me up! I still can’t really believe you let me come over. Like, I know you said you’d be friends with me and stuff but you’re so, like, I don’t know, ‘how dare you talk to me’, that I thought maybe you’d just said it to be nice.” She took another bite of pizza, looking very content. “You know when you imagine something really great and then it actually happens? Yeah.”

I snorted. “All I did was open the door and give you pizza,” I said. “If that’s what you were imagining, you’re really easy to please.”

Something passed over her face for a second. “Yeah, I am.” She actually waited until she’d swallowed before changing the subject. “Anyway, it’s my birthday tomorrow.”

Her birthday tomorr– oh, that’s right. When I’d first met her she had mentioned it was soon. “Happy Birthday for tomorrow,” I said automatically. “If you’d told me earlier I would have put candles on the pizza. You going to do anything special?”

She laughed bleakly, and in the process slopped cheese topping all over her t-shirt. Instead of looking distressed about it, though, she just peered down her front and casually scratched at it. “Some of my family is coming over,” she said, and then put the cheese she’d picked off her top in her mouth. She saw my expression. “What? I’m not wasting good cheese, and it’s not like this tee is gross or anything.”

I opted not to say anything about the cheese. “You’re not going to have a big party for your eighteenth?”

She shook her head. “My parents don’t like me having friends over.”

Something about the way she said that didn’t invite further questions, so I left it. I found it kind of weird that she apparently had strict parents when she went running around Sydney in little more than her underwear. Illustrating that point exactly, while I was watching her, she looked down her front and pulled her t-shirt out so she could inspect it for any remaining cheese. In the process of doing so, she showed me her stomach and the bottom of her bra, and the rest of Sydney far too much cleavage.

Jesus, did that girl have no concept of how she looked? “I can see what you’re spending today doing,” I said neutrally. “Celebrating your last day of childhood dressed in clothes you should have retired when you were five.”

She smirked. “I’m so not a child,” she said, glancing down at her breasts and grinning as she examined the grease stain from the cheese across the front of them. “And these are adult clothes.”

“You can say that again.” I watched her try and blot the stain with some serviettes. “Bree, are you sure that’s the impression you want to give people?”

Bree gave up on her grease stain. “I don’t care what impression people get,” she said easily. “You only live once, and I really like this top, it’s really cute and soft and it lets the air in.”

When she went to take another bite of pizza, I sighed. “You’re going to ruin your ‘cute’ top if you don’t get that grease stain out now,” I said, standing. “Cheese stains are terrible. Come on, I’ll lend you a top and we can soak that one.”

She put her pizza down. “You just want to dress me like a nun,” she accused me, but she followed me inside anyway.

I had only walked into the bedroom to find her a new top to put on so we could treat the t-shirt, but after I’d opened my wardrobe and turned to ask her if she’d mind sleeveless, she’d already whipped her top off and was holding it scrunched in one hand.

Her bra was too small, too, and her big breasts were spilling out of it. “Jesus, Bree!” I said, turning my head sharply away from her. “You could have at least waited until you had something to put on instead!”

She sounded indignant. “It’s not like it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, you’re a girl too!” she said, but as she said that, something occurred to her. In the reflection of the wardrobe, I could see her giving me a really weird look. I chose to ignore it.

I was busy sorting through my tops for something small enough to fit her and yet something she couldn’t accidentally ruin when she spotted something in one of my shelves and finally stopped staring at me. “Cool!” she announced and went for it.

Before I could stop her, she’d pulled out my men’s jeans and was holding them out to admire them. She was so short that the hips of my jeans came up under that pornographic bra of hers. The colour drained out of my face. Even if those jeans had had a big Mars symbol painted across them, they couldn’t have more obviously been from the men’s department.

She didn’t seem to care about that. “Wow, these are way cool. This is more like the stuff I kind of imagined you’d wear. They’re yours, right?” She looked up at me for confirmation.

On the tip of my lips I was about to say, ‘No, they’re my boyfriend’s’, but then I remembered how angry I’d been at her for lying to me. I considered doing it anyway, but I found myself at an impasse. I didn’t say anything, I just felt sick.

“Put them on!” she said, and I could hear the excitement in her voice. “They are so much cooler than that skirt. I don’t know why you dressed up for me, anyway. It’s stupid. I don’t want you to feel like you have to be super formal around me or anything.”

She walked up to me to give me the jeans. I didn’t take them from her. “Actually, I’m pretty comfortable now,” I managed to say. I wasn’t sure how convincing I was, though.

She wasn’t fazed. “Okay, well, do it for me? I want to see how they look. My brother would be so jealous, this is such an awesome brand.”

For just a second I was tempted; what she’d said earlier, the ‘you only live once, and I really like this top’ was fresh in my mind. But then I thought about what I’d Googled, and remembered all the surgery and doctors and psychologists and I… couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I didn’t want anyone to think I was like that, even if maybe I was. I felt like if I put them on it would be like opening a floodgate and just by looking at me she would know. But I couldn’t say anything, I just kind of stood there like a fucking idiot with this topless seventeen year old pushing men’s jeans into my stomach.

After a few moments, she gave up and stood back. She was directing me that really strange stare again, and I didn’t know what to make of it. She probably thought I was a fucking headcase, and she was right. Fuck. Why did I think it was a good idea for me to be around people, again? I needed to go be a hermit in a cave somewhere.

“Min,” she said carefully. Her eyes were dipping between mine and my chest. “I want to say something but I’m scared I’ll say the wrong thing and you’ll be really upset again.”

I felt numb. “Just say it.”

Her brow was actually shaking. “Are you, like, actually a guy? Like, is that your secret?”

I didn’t think I’d heard her right. “What?”

She looked uncomfortable. “You know, like, are you just pretending to be a girl?”

I just stared at her for a second. I didn’t know if she’d guessed or not, but I panicked anyway. “What makes you think that?”

She looked upset as she counted off reasons on her fingers. “Like, okay, on Monday I swear you had boobs. Like not big ones or anything, but definitely boobs, and today…” She looked at my chest; I was still wearing that crop top and it flattened them out. “So maybe you were wearing those chicken-fillet-type things flat girls wear. And you won’t hug me, and it’s like, what are you afraid of me feeling? And then you needed to go and spend like twenty minutes putting on a drag-queen-level makeup before you’d let me in and then I find these boys’ jeans in your cupboard, and you’re totally uncomfortable with me showing any skin and you won’t change in front of me…” She ran out of fingers. “And you’re really tall for girl, and you look so ultra-super girly like those pretty Thai ladyboys who are, like, way more beautiful than female women are…” She looked distressed for a second. “Was that a really awful word to use? ‘Ladyboy’? I never know the right way to say anything. Just pretend I said all of that but I used the right words, okay?”

I didn’t… I didn’t even know where to start. She thought I was physically a boy? Fuck, that would have made life a hell of a lot fucking easier. Female woman? ‘Drag queen’ makeup? God, it all hurt so much that it got to the point where it didn’t.

She took a step back, like she was afraid I was about to yell at her or hit her. “Because it’s okay if you are secretly a guy. I’m not, like, hardcore religious or anything, I don’t mind, I won’t tell anyone!”

It was just so fucking ironic that the only thing I could do was laugh, and that made her look even more scared. Fuck, all I could do was laugh!

“You’re scaring me,” she said, looking tiny. She was still just wearing that bra and those shorts.

I tried to stop laughing. “I’m sorry,” I said, sitting back down on the bed so at least I didn’t tower over her. “No, I’m not ‘actually’ a guy.” After I’d said that I decided it didn’t ring true to me, so I tried to think of a different way to describe it. “I mean, yeah, my body’s the same as yours.” She didn’t look like she believed me, though, because her eyes kept going back to my chest. “I’m not showing you, Bree,” I told her firmly.

“If it’s not true, then why are you being so weird?”

I closed my eyes. “I can’t even begin to tell you. Fuck,” I said, shaking my head. It eventually ended up in my hands.

I felt the bed give as she sat down beside me, and I could see us in the reflection of my wardrobe door. The only other person who’d been on this bed was Henry, and compared to him she was so little. Compared to me she was little. She didn’t give me much time to think about that at all, though, because she had already come up with another theory. “Well, did you, like, used to be a guy?”

I threw my hands up. “Oh my god,” I said, and then I started laughing again. “No. Bree…” I said, just… What do you even say to that? The truth actually seemed far less dramatic than everything she was coming up with. Even still, I couldn’t say it straight away. I was surprised I could even say it at all, since I hadn’t managed to say it to Henry. Henry didn’t often look so close to tears as Bree did now, though. She was hanging on my every word.

“It’s just that I think I’m supposed to be a guy,” I told her. I sounded far more definitive than I felt, though, so I added, “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s difficult to think about.”

There was a long silence. I didn’t look at her, and I didn’t look at the reflection in the wardrobe. I didn’t even know what was going to happen until I felt a pair of arms around my shoulders. “Oh.”

“’Oh’?” I asked her, looking across at her. She had her head on my shoulder and all I could see was a mop of blond curls that smelt like vanilla shampoo.

She looked up. “Well, I wanted to say something nice because I can see you’re really worried about it, but I couldn’t because I don’t see what the big deal is,” she said. “If you want to be a guy, just go for it?”

If only it were that simple. “But how do I ‘just go for it’? My life’s already set up. I can’t just, I don’t know, get some injections and then tell everyone I’m a guy and expect nothing except my voice to change.” And I wasn’t even sure I wanted injections, anyway, because then I’d get hairy and I didn’t like the idea of that at all. Fuck, maybe that meant I didn’t want to be a guy? Or was I just scared of making changes that would mean I wouldn’t be able to put on a skirt and keep pretending to everyone that everything was fine? There were just too many questions to even start to answer them. Where did you start with this stuff?

Bree’s eyes widened as she thought of something. “Are you going to get a dick?”

Those surgery photos, oh my god. My heart sped. “I actually don’t want to think about that now.” Or at all, ever. Instead of dwelling on the pictures I’d seen, I looked across at her next to me. She still had an arm around my shoulder, and she was deep in thought. “How are you okay with this?” I asked her. “It’s so fucked up.”

She looked surprised. “Uh?” she said. “It’s actually kind of interesting, and I told you, I’m not some psycho religious nut or something. If you want to be a guy, then que sera sera? And anyway,” she gestured at the women’s clothes I was wearing. “You looked better in the painting than in these. Not that you’re not a cute girl or anything,” she hurriedly added. “So are you going to put them on?” She put the jeans in my lap.

This time I took them from her, and sighed.

“And take off all that makeup, too,” she instructed me as she sat back. “It’s weird. I don’t like it.”

Bree. “Okay,” I said, and stood with the jeans. I grabbed the big faded t-shirt from the wardrobe and then pointed at it. “Just look in there and see if you can find something that will fit you. Nothing that looks too expensive, please.”

I went into the bathroom and slid the door shut. My reflection stared at me from the mirror.

Well. That wasn’t at all what I imagined would happen when I thought about telling someone; there wasn’t even any hint of disgust or judgement in her. It was actually a bit of an anti-climax. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that everyone would be like she was – fuck, the world would be a pretty scary place if everyone was like Bree – but it was at least a little bit comforting. I changed into the jeans and t-shirt.

Once I was dressed, I filled the handbasin with water, tied my hair back, and just washed all my makeup off. Then, drying my face and neck, I looked up at the mirror again. I wondered what her reaction to this would be. It was very different.

When I went back out into my bedroom, Bree had found my new comfy hoodie and put it on. Hilariously, on her it came down to her knees and the sleeves dangled almost as far. She was lying on my bed in it waiting for me, but she sat up as soon as I walked in. Her face lit up. “Yeah!” she said, leaping up and bouncing over to me, long sleeves flopping everywhere.

I felt a bit self-conscious. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said with conviction, and inspected me from all sides while I just stood there. “Wow, you really look like a guy, especially with your hair back. That’s fucking crazy, because like five minutes ago you were the girliest girl in Australia. Anyway, this is way better. I prefer you like this.”

Me too, I thought, and then stressed about Mum, Henry and work.

“So, like, you want to go for a test drive? We could go shopping or something.”

Fuck, no. “Not going to happen,” I said firmly. “I’m not leaving my home in these.”

She looked a bit disappointed. “Okay,” she said, and then shrugged. “I kind of want to finish my pizza anyway.”

After I’d put talcum powder on her stained t-shirt to soak out the grease, she lead me back out onto the balcony. We sat there and ate and chatted – about what I had no idea because I was running on autopilot – until I’d made my way through two slices and was attempting the third. Bree had barely managed two. “You might need to get that bucket after all,” she joked as she held up the third slice and looked apprehensively at it.

“You could just not eat it,” I pointed out.

She looked at me like I was crazy for suggesting such a thing. “I’m going to do it,” she said stoically. “I am.”

“Good luck, then,” I said and then laughed openly at her expression.

She didn’t end up taking a bite because she put her pizza down to stare at me. “You look really great when you’re not so uptight,” she said, and then out came her phone…

However relaxed I had looked, I stopped looking that way immediately. I threw up my hands in front of my face and looked away from her. “No, Bree,” I told her as she pointed it at me. “No photos, not of this. Please.”

“But I want to show you how good you look now,” she said, sounding a little disappointed. “I think you’d really like it.”

I probably would, but I really didn’t want anyone having any sort of photographic evidence of this. A painting was one thing, actual photos were another, and Bree seemed like the sort of person to make bad choices about who she showed them and where she uploaded them. I couldn’t risk anyone finding out. “Bree, no.”

“I won’t, I won’t, I’m sorry,” she said a little forlornly as she sat back. “I’m sorry.”

When I saw her expression, I winced; you’d think I’d just run over her new baby kitten. Listening to her sing had nothing on how painful it was to look at her when she was upset. I could hardly bear it. I leant across the table and did a ‘gimme’ motion towards her phone. Perhaps I could do something else for her, instead.

Looking surprised, she passed it over to me and I fiddled with it. She watched me. “What are you doing?”

I pressed a button, and then looked up at her and waited.

In the living room, my mobile rang. “Happy Birthday,” I said easily, cancelling the call and handing her phone back to her with a smug grin.

Her disappointment transformed into delight in the space of half a second. She stood up to accept the phone from me. “Did you just put your number in my phone?” she asked, in the same tone as she might ask if daddy just bought her a sports car or her team just won the grand final.

“Don’t text me constantly,” I told her sternly, but there may have been a smile on the corner of my lips. “That’s my work phone, too.”

She wasn’t at the stage where she could listen to instructions yet. “Did you just put your number in my phone?” she asked me again, and then came to dance around me, shrieking. “Oh my god!” I couldn’t not laugh as she literally bounced around my chair. She stopped as suddenly as she started, though, and then looked extremely serious. “I have to hug you now,” she told me gravely.

“You hugged me before,” I pointed out. “That’s your quota for today.”

She swatted my face with an empty sleeve. “I can’t tell whether you’re joking!” she accused me. “It’s stressing me out. Just stand up so I can hug you!”

I rolled my eyes and stood, exaggerating my reluctance. I actually didn’t mind; she’d touched me so much already I think I’d begun to develop an immunity to it. As soon as I was up she flung her arms around my middle and squished the air out of me. I coughed. “You’re really thin,” she said into my ribs, her voice muffled by my t-shirt. “Like, really.”

She couldn’t talk, she was so short I couldn’t even return the hug properly. I had to rest my arms on the back of her shoulders. “That’s a pretty bold statement for someone who’s not even a whole person to make.”

“Shut up,” she said into my ribs. “It’s not my fault. My mum is like four foot ten or something. Besides, I only seem ultra-short because you’re huge.” She looked up, panicking. “I didn’t mean it like that!”

I expected it to hurt, but it didn’t. I just pushed her head back into my stomach to shut her up, anyway. “If you’re not careful I will feed you to the flowers.”

As she giggled into my t-shirt, I was struck for a moment by how normal this all was. We were just joking around like we had been before, and the fact that I now looked like a guy and was wearing guy’s clothes didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter that I had no idea what I wanted to do with what was under my clothes, either. The sky hadn’t fallen in, the world hadn’t stopped turning. Though Bree was hardly Henry, or Mum, or anyone at work, it was still reassuring. I was suddenly really glad she’d lied to me.

“You’re breathing funny,” Bree told me, and I looked down at her.

Probably, I thought, I’m high on pizza and garlic bread. I didn’t joke this time, though, I just tried to decide if I really wanted to explain to her why I was feeling so good. I might as well, I’d come this far, right?

“You’re the first person I’ve told about me.” And instead of being fucking horrified, you’re hugging me.

She hadn’t been expecting me to be serious, and the look she gave me… Wow. “Can today be my birthday instead?” she asked in this tiny little voice. “There’s no way tomorrow can beat this.”

I ruffled her curls and peeled her off me. “Come on, let’s eat ourselves into a stupor and watch bad TV,” I suggested. “If you’re really nice to me I might draw you an actual birthday present.”

“Oh my god, are you serious?” she asked, galloping after me as I took the rest of our pizza inside so I could set up my laptop. “Are you fucking serious? Just tell me what I need to do!”

I set myself up on the floor with the laptop and tablet and while I was scribbling away on it, Bree leaned over the edge of the couch and dropped crumbs all over me and into my hair. I’d drawn a rectangular shape and was choosing colours and levels when she realised what I was painting.

“You’re going to draw an actual present?” she said, giggling. “Like a wrapped present?”

I picked a few colours for the ribbon. “Yup,” I said. “What colour would you like for the wrapping paper?”

She brushed some of the crumbs off the top of my head. “Sorry,” she said sheepishly, and then answered my question. “I don’t care about the wrapping paper, I want to know what’s inside it!”

I held up the tablet so she could see it better. “What do you think’s inside it?”

She gave me a look. “You’re the artist, you tell me!”

I shook my head. “Don’t you know anything about art? It’s all about the viewer’s interpretation,” I joked, and then chuckled as she flopped me with a sleeve again.

“Fine,” she said, rolling onto her back on the couch so her head hung upside-down next to mine. She watched me down over her forehead. “I think you bought me some new clothes.”

I laughed at her, and we went backwards and forwards guessing what might be inside until I’d finished the painting. The suggestions got slowly more and more absurd until Bree was insisting that I was buying her a carpet python.

“That’ll go with the evil flowers,” I told her. “All I need now is a hairless cat and my collection of evil familiars is complete.”

I pulled the laptop onto my actual lap to upload the painting to Deviant Art, when I noticed an unread email icon down the bottom of my screen. It was from one of my team members, and it had an attachment.

My heart sank. I had work to do.

For about ten seconds, I considered not mentioning it and not doing anything about it. I was enjoying myself and didn’t actually want to start working again just yet… but then I remembered yesterday. Yesterday I’d been practically having a breakdown about my workload and how behind we’d been, I didn’t really have the luxury of leaving the docs a couple of hours so I could be silly with Bree.

“I thought you were uploading the painting?” Bree asked me, sitting up.

I took a deep breath and then released it. “I just got an email from someone at the office,” I told her, feeling myself deflate. “I’m going to need to do some work now.”

“Oh…” That girl could put so much emotion in a single syllable. She sounded so disappointed. “I’m going to have to go, aren’t I?”

I nodded slowly. “I’m sorry, Bree. Work is insane at the moment.” I pushed myself up off the ground and put my laptop on the table. “Thanks for coming, though.”

“Thanks for having me,” she said automatically. “And thanks for the pizza and the carpet python in a box.”

I grinned, ducking into the bathroom to see if her t-shirt was doing okay. “If you’d given me more warning I could have bought you a real present,” I called back to her. The talcum powder hadn’t soaked up all the oil yet, and her top probably should be washed properly. I could get room service to do that.

That made her perk up. “Really? You’d buy me something?” she asked me as I went back into the living room.

“Sure,” I said, looking out towards the balcony. “I’ll give your t-shirt back to you next time I see you, it’s not done yet. It’s still light, are you okay to catch the train home? I can always drive you if you’re not.”

She stood up, still in my hoodie. “Yeah, I probably won’t go home straight away,” she said, and then pulled the hoodie off to give it back to me. She wasn’t wearing anything except the bra underneath, and it was still a shock seeing that much of her. I didn’t say anything about it this time, though, I just went and grabbed her the first cotton top I found in my drawer. I handed it to her and she pulled it on, being uncharacteristically quiet. It was so big on her it covered more of her thighs than her ‘shorts’ did.

“Happy Birthday for tomorrow,” I said to her at the door as she put her thongs on. “We can have a drink next time I see you, right?”

“Hah,” she said flatly, and the stood in front of me. “At least you have to see me again,” she told me “You promised to buy me a present and you have my t-shirt. You have to give it back.”

I shot her a half-grin. “Yes, that’s definitely the only reason I’d want to see you again, Bree.”

She actually blushed. “Okay,” she said, giving me a quick hug. “Don’t actually buy me a carpet python, though.”

I laughed. “Got it. It would probably just eat you anyway,” I said as I showed her out and we said our goodbyes.

Once she was gone, I sat down in front of my laptop and just stared at the email. I really didn’t feel like working, but I also didn’t feel like having any more meltdowns over being behind in the project, either. Not with everything else I had going on for me.

I downloaded the component and read through it. It was from that young guy in the team, and the quality of it was terrible. I put my head in my hands for a moment or two. It was going to be a long night.

I got to work early the following morning so that when Sarah arrived, it was to a desk covered in analytics printouts. She stopped in front of them, looked from them to me, and then walked over to my desk and placed a can of Red Bull between my keyboard and my monitor. “Still glad I did it,” she said as she went and sat at her own desk. She sounded like she was grinning.

“You say that now,” I said neutrally as I pretended to be very busy, “until I tell you that I ‘accidentally’ deleted the spreadsheet for those and I need you to re-enter all the data.”

Even after all those years she’d been working with me, she still hadn’t learnt. “Oh my god, Min, are you serious?” She turned back to all of the printouts on her desk with this look of total horror on her face. “I can’t believe you’d seriously do that to me because I asked you to eat food with me and…” She never finished that sentence because apparently I was doing far too good a job at looking completely innocent. “You’re messing with me!” she accused. “And after I bought you a Red Bull, too!”

I shot her a half-smile before I looked back at my screen. “Of course I’m not. I’d never do such a thing. Now get to work,” I said, nodding my head sideways at her printouts. A crumpled-up ball of one of them flew past my face and I gave her an unimpressed look. “Good thing it’s only contracts you pitch.”

I saw one of our teammates who was sitting beside Sarah roll his eyes. I left it, though, because Sarah had started laughing and that made me chuckle.

Since my cover was blown, there was nothing standing between me and the Red Bull. I plucked it from between my keyboard and monitor and I toasted it in the air towards Sarah. “Cheers,” I said, opening it to a very satisfying hiss. “A-plus job at sucking up to the boss. Now I need you to tell me what rich twenty-five to thirty-four year olds on Facebook are saying about diamonds.”

“Yeah, okay, okay,” Sarah said, pushing aside all of the paper to get to her keyboard, still smiling ear to ear. “Hah, Rob is going to love you. Is it Friday yet?”

I wasn’t looking forward to Friday as much as Sarah was, and so when Friday did roll around, I was too worried we hadn’t completed the framework documents to think about much else. Actually, we’d barely even started them. It was only a week into the project and already we were way behind the timelines. I was so worried about it I sought out Jason to have a quick word with him. It was never a pleasant experience; I had to be pretty desperate to bother.

He listened to my concerns while he tried to pick something out of his perfectly white teeth with a fingernail. “Well, ordinarily I’d give it a few weeks,” he said, giving up on his teeth. “But because you’ve only got a few weeks for the full project I’d suggest getting your arse into gear. There’s probably still enough time.” He pointed his finger at me. “But what’s this I hear about you doing Canada’s design?”

I made a face. “I promised them I’d do it before I got committed to Pink. I’ve finished it now, though.”

He didn’t look impressed, and that made my heart sink. “I know hard work is kind of an Asian MO, but maybe you’d have finished the docs by now if you focused on the project we actually assigned you to.”

After I’d been told that, I felt like the most appropriate course of action was to book a ticket back to Melbourne and apply for a job at McDonalds; something I might actually be capable of doing properly. I didn’t, though, and I didn’t even go hide out on the balcony, either. I went back to my desk at Oslo and tried to focus very hard on reviewing the data I’d been given and not think bad thoughts about my lack of skill in project management.

I had been so preoccupied I nearly had a heart attack when Sarah tapped me on the shoulder with a smile on her face. “Your phone,” she said, and pointed towards my drawer. “It’s been going crazy in there for, like, the last fifteen minutes.”

I stared blankly at her for a second, and then looked at my drawer. Just as she’d said, it buzzed. I’d better turn vibrate off. “Sorry, I hope it hasn’t been distracting you.”

She snorted. “Please distract me,” she said, going back to her desk. “I’m watching a terrible Russian TV show that has so much product placement I feel like it’s one big infomercial.” She imitated a Hollywood-style Russian accent, and actually didn’t do too bad a job at it. “’Please, let me present you with enormous pink diamond. Let me to show you where you are buying such this diamond. Let us reflect on this most wonderful store full of diamonds. Look here at store’.”

That made me laugh for once, and when one of our teammates cleared his throat I realised we were probably bothering him. I felt a bit guilty about that, because I’d asked him to finish something today that realistically should have taken two or three days, and here I was, dicking around and annoying everyone. I scrunched up my face; a job at McDonalds was looking pretty appropriate at this point.

I’d gone to open my drawer and take my mobile out to turn the vibrate off when I noticed it was a series of notifications from Deviant Art. I paused for a moment. It had been a couple of days since I’d replied to Bree. I still wasn’t happy about her lying to me, but the more I thought about it, the more I recognised Henry kind of had a point. It wasn’t malicious, and seriously, I wouldn’t have let her in if she hadn’t. I sighed. I shouldn’t defer replying to some fictional point in the future where I wasn’t overworked.

I had literally only just opened up my notes and was tapping out a quick reply when Jason powered through the door with a big fat book in his hand. He stopped when he saw me on my phone, looking directly at it and then laughing.

“I just came in here because I thought you might be more comfortable using some of the timeline templates in this,” he said, holding up the thick book. The title was ‘Essentials of Effective Time Management in Marketing‘. “But maybe you should just read the whole thing.” He dropped it on my desk in front of me, gave me a pointed look, and then left.

Sarah and I glanced at each other, and she rolled her eyes and shook her head about him. It felt like something the naughty students sitting up the back of the room would do to each other if the teacher had told them off.

My other teammates had been surreptitiously watching and of course they didn’t say anything, but they didn’t need to. I knew what they were thinking and I just felt stupid. And it wasn’t as if I could run after Jason and tell him that he just had bad timing and I’d been working really, really solidly.

God, was I kidding myself, though? Was I really working as effectively as I could?

I had spent nearly half an hour earlier in the week printing out all that analytics stuff to arrange artfully on Sarah’s desk. That was definitely time that could have been better spent. And Jason was right about accepting Canada’s design project. Goddamnit, why hadn’t I put my foot down with the arsehole lead from that team? Did I really need his approval? And what the fuck was that ‘good girl’ crap he’d said to me, anyway? I had a brief fantasy where I was a guy and instead of accepting his stupid fucking design project, I just punched him as soon as he opened his mouth and kept walking.

I chuckled to myself about that and then realised what I was laughing at and immediately stopped. Why the hell would I imagine being a guy? I tried to correct myself by imagining it again just with how I looked right now, and the fantasy didn’t have any of the same oomph or satisfaction about it.

I felt really uncomfortable about that, and I didn’t want to think about what it meant. Fuck, I really didn’t have time for this crap. We were so behind, and my team had all probably given up on me and decided I was terrible at my job. I didn’t need to have any more time-consuming personal crises.

I didn’t take a lunch break. I did, however, exceed the recommended maximum number of cans of Red Bull and eat a decrepit muesli bar I found at the very bottom of my handbag.

In the evening, Sarah had to go pick up Rob because he lived somewhere out in suburbia, so she said goodbye a little bit after seven, and reminded me the booking was for eight. My other three teammates all disconnected their laptops from everything and went home with them shortly after that, presumably to continue working there.

I hoped that I’d regained at least some credibility by being the last one to leave. I actually had most of the data by now, and we’d all had a round-table to discuss the strongest leads, and it was really looking like it was going to be Russia. I hadn’t done any sort of business with Russia before, and neither had the rest of the team. It would probably be wise to spend some of the budget on getting a consultant to train us and the sales team on cultural appropriateness. There was also the off-chance that we’d need to go and deliver the pitch in Russia given the tight timeframes for getting people out here. That was kind of cool, at least. Moscow was supposed to be beautiful.

I caught myself. Wait a second, Min. That was if we had stuff done on time and if I didn’t fuck the hell up. And, fuck, I really needed to write the marketing statement tonight. I’d told the team I’d email it to them tomorrow and I hadn’t even started it. I opened a blank file. Shit, shit. I was running out of time.

“Min,” that was Henry’s voice, “there’s this thing called a mobile phone. I think you might even have one.”

I looked up, kind of startled. Henry had his head poked in through the doorway. I briefly wondered what he was doing here instead of just texting me, but then I remembered I’d turned off vibrate on my phone because of Bree’s messages. And now Henry was here, and shit Henry was here. I hissed and hurriedly shut the screen of the laptop. “Henry, you’re not supposed to be in Oslo!” I gestured out behind him. “Diane’s office is just around the corner!” The last fucking thing I needed was to have one of the CEOs unhappy with me, too.

He had his briefcase with him, I could see the corner of it halfway down the door. “I wouldn’t be except you haven’t answered three texts and the phones aren’t connected to this office. We really need to leave now or we’ll be late. It’s seven-fifty.”

I looked back at my screen. I really, really, needed to write that statement. It wouldn’t take more than about half an hour. An hour, at the most. “In a second,” I said. “Sarah knows the pressure we’re under, she’ll understand if I’m late. You just go on without me.”

“…and yet she’s probably already at the restaurant, waiting for us. Come on.” He pushed the door all the way open and stood in the doorway. “You can do the rest over the weekend.”

“Henry,” I said. I could hear the note of desperation in my voice and I hated it. “I will literally be done in about half an hour. You just order me something and I’ll be there on time to eat it.” He didn’t budge. Since there was no one else within earshot, I added, “My team’s already basically given up on me and Jason thinks I’m hopeless. I have to get this done!”

He walked into the room towards me. “Min, by all reports you’re great at your job, so I’m sure you’re just overreacting.” He stopped behind my chair. “Are you actually going to make me drag you there? Because I will try.” Despite saying that, though, he didn’t. He just stood behind me and looked down at me. He always looked quite imposing in a full suit with his jacket on. “Min. Let’s go.”

My heart was racing. “Henry, you don’t understand, I really just need to get this finished, so if you could just give me–”

“Can we help you, Henry?” said a cool voice from the doorway.

We both turned looked over towards it and to my abject horror, Diane Frost was standing there. She wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at Henry, but it didn’t matter. I knew who was going to cop it. “I hope Min explained to you this is a closed office.” When she looked down at me, I felt sick.

“She did, and very clearly, but I’m just trying to drag her out of here for food,” Henry explained, trying to soften her. Fuck, he was good with people; he sounded so lovely. “Taking appropriate breaks is an OH&S issue, after all.”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m sure she appreciates the gesture,” Diane said. “But you still shouldn’t be in here. Political pitches are strictly confidential.”

“You’re right, and I shouldn’t need to have that explained to me, I apologise,” he said easily. He seemed so relaxed, but I could hardly move. I was frozen in place as Henry bent down beside me and opened my drawer. I didn’t actually know what he was doing until I saw him walk out of the room, nodding respectfully at Diane as he passed her. Once he was out in the corridor he held up what was in his hand.

My handbag.

My jaw dropped. I’d told him about what Bree had done, but never in a million years would I have thought he’d take tips from her. He went off towards the lifts with it while I sat there feeling ill.

Diane directed me a very hard stare. “Don’t let him in here,” she said once he was gone. “I don’t care what his excuses are. Did I not make that clear enough for you?”

Apparently not. I felt so stupid. “Of course you did, it won’t happen again.”

She kept glaring through me. “Jason tells me there are some holdups with the documents?”

I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. God, could it get any worse? Of course Jason had told her. I bet he’d told her how I’d been wasting time on my phone, too. “It’s nothing that hard work can’t fix,” I said, probably sounding much more confident than I felt.

She nodded once. “Good,” she said. “Don’t make me regret choosing you to lead this project, will you?”

From the way she said that, I think she already was. And she should regret it, too. If I needed Diane Frost to come in here to tell me how to do my job, I was majorly underperforming.

I watched her leave, feeling sick, so fucking sick. I’d been so excited about this opportunity. I had been looking so forward to impressing her and exceeding her expectations and now… Well, now everything was turning to shit and I still hadn’t finished the fucking framework docs we needed. She should have chosen a more experienced project lead even if they were all loud, egotistical fucks. I wasn’t up to this, but I couldn’t pull out of it now without wrecking my career. I just had to do it and not fuck up any more than I had. Somehow. Fuck, I needed sleep, but I had this stupid dinner.

I really needed to touch up my makeup before I met Sarah’s boyfriend, and, shit, all my makeup was in my handbag and Henry had taken off with it. I didn’t know how far he’d go with it, but if he was making a point he might actually take it all the way to the restaurant.

I hurriedly shut down my laptop and pulled out the USB. I gave my desk a cursory glance to make sure I had definitely shredded everything that showed anything about the project, and then left the room. I could come back tomorrow and grab the computer if I needed it.

After I’d shut Oslo, I jogged all the way to the lifts, but Henry hadn’t even pressed the button. He was just waiting there. “I actually am very sorry about that,” he said as he passed me my handbag. “I hope I didn’t get you into too much trouble.”

I couldn’t think straight, the adrenaline was making everything feel a bit surreal. The bottom line was that I was fucking up, though. Henry couldn’t be blamed for that. “No more trouble than I already got myself in,” I said dismissively. “Fuck, I need alcohol. Lots of alcohol. And then I need to pass out and wake up at three am and keep working.”

Henry nodded once. “Sounds balanced,” he said mildly, and then offered me his hand. “It’ll all be alright, Min.” I looked and it. I felt kind of sweaty and restless, so I shook my head. He nodded again and put it back in his pocket.

When we entered the lift, I stood facing the mirrors to fix my lipstick and my eyeliner and try to do something about my hair. I looked fucking terrible, as usual. Definitely not in form to punch Canada’s project lead.

“How do I look?” I asked Henry, anyway.

He had been watching me with concern and it was a little claustrophobic. “Gorgeous, of course,” he said. “But like someone who could use a holiday. How many annual leave days do you have? I was thinking we could go across to New Zealand for a week or two. There are some great landscapes there…”

I know he was just being nice but especially right now I actually felt a little patronised, like he was suggesting I wasn’t able to cope with my job and that I needed him to help me find ways to relax. “It doesn’t matter, I can’t use them until after this pitch anyway,” I said, and then winced as I remembered Diane’s expression. “Fuck, how the fuck am I screwing this up so badly?”

He put a hand gently on my back. “Min,” he said. “You are fantastic at your job and the CEO would not have hand-picked you for a key project if you weren’t. You’ll work things out, and that mix-up back there was clearly all my fault, anyway. Let’s leave work at work and relax for once? Sarah seems very nice.”

He was right, she was nice, but that didn’t really serve to make me feel better about how I was doing at my job. Once we were out in the fresh air and walking towards the restaurant, though, I did feel a little better. Henry was right, and I had the whole weekend to work solidly on that stupid document. Additionally, Sarah had been really looking forward to this dinner so the least I could do was try and forget work and enjoy it. She was fun, I decided. It would be okay.

The restaurant was just off Darling Harbour and the outdoor dining area had palm trees lit underneath by real torches. All the furniture was heavy, rustic wood, too. It was very atmospheric.

“Hey, guys!” I recognised Sarah’s voice and looked over the sea of tables for her. She was already up and walking briskly over to us. A big, burly man was following her.

He couldn’t have looked any more like a tradie if he tried; he had the shaggy hair, the only-just-barely-dressed-enough-for-dinner look, and a walk that said, ‘I do manual labour for a living and check out my real muscles, eh?’. He had a bit of a pot-belly, too, but because he was already so stocky it didn’t look out of place. His broad smile I recognised from the photos on Sarah’s desk.

Sarah had changed for dinner and she was wearing jeans, boots and a big loose t-shirt that fell perfectly everywhere. Beside him she looked incredibly slender and stylish. “Min!” she said, touching my arm like she usually did and standing aside for her boyfriend as he caught up to her. “This is Rob, Rob, Min Lee, my boss, now!” I flinched as she said that, but took Rob’s hand when he offered it to me to shake. He was taller than me and his hands were as big as dinner plates. I managed a smile at him, regardless of how shit I was feeling.

Henry leaned forward as well and shook Rob’s hand with an incredibly practised, smooth movement. “Henry Lee,” he said.

Rob’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, ‘Lee’ as well? Are you two married already? How long?”

“Since birth,” I said, and was about to explain that it was just a really common name, but Rob clearly took what I’d said literally.

He just kind of squinted at me. “One of those arranged marriages?” Sarah was already trying really hard to smother her amusement beside him. I watched her, thinking that if I’d been in a better mood, I might have played along and see how far I could have taken that ‘arranged marriage’ thing.

Henry ruined it, though. “No, no. ‘Lee’ is just like the South Korean version of ‘Smith’, there’s a lot of us.”

“Oh, right,” Rob said, and then laughed openly. “Sorry, I’m a bit of a dick when it comes to all this cultural stuff. I grew up in far north Queensland. But don’t worry, I didn’t vote for One Nation,” he added as we started to move back to the table. “So what do you do, Henry? You remind me of the guy who hires and fires at the mines.”

That made Henry laugh. “That’s my job in a nutshell,” he said. “I’m guessing you don’t work in an office?”

Rob held the chair out for Sarah; it was actually very, very cute. She looked delighted, accepting it as he sat down beside her. “Is it that obvious?” He grinned at Henry. “I’m a fitter and turner. I work at Frost Energy up in Broome, FIFO at the moment but we’ll see.” He put his arm around Sarah.

Henry deliberately copied Rob’s chivalrous chair-move with me, giving me a little smirk. I accepted it and sat down, but I felt a bit weird. Henry and I didn’t have the sort of relationship where that happened very often and to be honest, I kind of didn’t like it. I wondered how much of that was to do with me being stressed and irritable, though.

Sarah caught my discomfort and I shrugged at her. She didn’t say anything about it, though, she just leaned into Rob’s arm. “Rob has got this amazing place up in Broome,” she gushed to us. “It’s just out of town and it’s practically on the beach. I just spent all my three and a half months of annual leave up there. It’s like a different world, I love it.”

My smile fell. Broome? Sarah’s long-term boyfriend actually owned a house in Broome and wasn’t just up there for work? I panicked for a split second before I remembered that there were no offices out there. I doubted Sarah would be at home in a mine, so Frost International probably wasn’t going to lose her just yet.

While I was stressing about that, Henry was already looking at the wine list and had flipped over to the reds. He didn’t drink red. “I hear Broome has some beautiful natural scenery,” he said, leading the conversation. I knew what he was alluding to and really wished he would stop trying to look after me, even if he was just trying to be a good boyfriend.

However, in doing so he’d apparently asked the right question because he set Rob off. “It’s fucking beautiful, you should see it.” His very broad accent was quite entertaining to listen to. “Like, I grew up in a real leafy area, you know? And out west is completely different. You’re there and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m definitely in Australia’. The colours, man.” He laughed. “Not that I get to see them during the day much, because I’m down the mines underneath monster trucks.”

Hah, that I could relate to. “I hear you,” I said. “I basically haven’t seen daylight since 2007.”

Sarah had the wine list out, too. “Min works a bit too hard,” she explained to Rob, who had been looking confused and like he was about to ask me if I worked in mines, too. Not the sharpest tool in the shed, apparently, but his big open smile made up for it. I decided I quite liked him, despite the fact I wasn’t really in the mood to like anyone.

Henry nodded, smiling briefly at me, “Yes, Min’s work ethic is a little intimidating. Though it’s why she got flown up to Sydney so I can’t complain too much about it! How did you two meet, anyway? At work as well?” He was looking back at the lovebirds.

They both laughed and looked a little sheepish. “You go first,” Sarah suggested, making an ‘after you’ gesture with her perfectly manicured hand.

I could feel Henry looking at me as he opened his mouth to speak, and I couldn’t resist the urge to mess with him. I spoke instead. “I was an impressionable young intern fresh out of university,” I said to them, knowing Henry hated the way I told this story. “I didn’t know anyone in Sydney when they flew me up here, but, boy, did the guy in HR really take care of me.”

Henry laughed nervously. “It didn’t happen quite like that, I’d never use my position to take advantage of anyone,” he said. “Plus, I wasn’t a manager then, and we were friends well before anything happened, anyway.”

It was just too much fun working him up. “But I was up here all by myself… I mean, what would have happened if he’d decided for some reason not to help me? I couldn’t risk it. I had to do whatever he said.”

Henry gave me a measured stare, and I waggled my eyebrows at him. “Excuse me,” he said neutrally to our dinner guests as he turned bright red, and then pretended to strangle me.

They both laughed, and that made me feel a little better. Sarah flagged a waiter from across the patio. “Just as I suspected, it beats our story. I saw Rob at my local and we only made it as far as his car.”

“Yeah, now she’s stuck with me,” he said, sounding chuffed. He hugged her up against his side so he could kiss the crown of her head. He was so strong that her thick chair actually tipped sideways as he did it, it was like watching a Rottweiler trying to cuddle a kitten. He left his arm around her as we all kept chatting.

After we’d ordered our wine and our food and gotten stuck into the complimentary bread, we got into our respective hobbies. Rob was a bit of a sports nut – no surprises there – but since neither Henry nor I were at all interested in sport we had to look for something else to discuss.

Sarah sat up in her chair. “Oh! That’s right!” She fished around in her pockets for her phone. “Min’s like this mad artist. What’s that website where you put your stuff again?”

I had finally managed to start relaxing, but as soon as she said the words ‘Deviant Art’ that all faded. The painting of me as a guy was still the first thing in my gallery. I suddenly had awful visions about what they would both say if they saw it.

Before I could stop him, Henry told her, “’Deviant Art’ dot com.” He smiled at me, obviously not understanding I wasn’t just panicking because I was shy about my art. “It’s ‘Min Lee’ with an extra ‘e’ at the end. She has some amazing landscapes in there.”

Rob was leaning over to look at Sarah’s phone. “You sound pretty proud of her,” he commented to Henry.

Henry beamed at me. “You bet.”

Just you wait until you hear what they have to say about that painting, Henry, I thought, wondering about the possibility of just running off with Sarah’s phone before my profile loaded. I obviously couldn’t do anything so melodramatic, so I just sat there bracing myself for their reactions.

“Oh, wow,” Sarah remarked as she watched something load on her screen. “I haven’t seen this one before, it’s great. When did you have short hair? It really suits you.” My heart almost stopped; she was looking at the painting. I kept waiting for her to say something about the fact my chest was flat in it, but instead of commenting on anything to do with that, she just looked up at me. Her eyes went straight to my hair, I think trying to judge whether or not it could have grown that much in the months that I hadn’t been working with her.

I didn’t know how to answer her question, though. How do you say, ‘I haven’t had short hair since I was fourteen, but I just felt like painting myself as a guy’? I couldn’t speak at all; I felt strangely disconnected from everything. I didn’t know what came next.

For all that Henry had been subtly annoying me with his over-attentiveness, he did actually rescue me there. “It’s been a few years since her hair was that short,” he said vaguely, and then shot me a bit of a quizzical glance about why I hadn’t answered that one myself.

Sarah looked between us, and then back at the phone. Rob took it from her so he could get a better look. “Fuck, you painted that?” I nodded mechanically. “Jesus. I can’t even draw a map of how to get from the airport to my house and it’s three roads. That’s fucking impressive. What else is there in here?” He started tapping at the screen, presumably flicking through my gallery.

And that was it. There was no shock, no disgust. No anything, really. Rob didn’t seem like the sort of person who could diplomatically gloss over a bad reaction to something. So, they thought that painting was a genuine self-portrait, and the fact I was clearly cross-dressing in it didn’t even warrant a mention. The only thing they’d been judging was the quality of my art. I should have been relieved, but I wasn’t. Deep in my gut I felt like there wasn’t a more dangerous reaction they could have had than being fine with me in that painting.

It meant I could do it. I could actually do it, I could be that cool. I remembered those clothes I’d bought yesterday and how I looked in them. I could do it, I thought, all I’d need to do is cut my hair and deal with my breasts somehow and then holy mother of fucking god, Min, what the fuck are you thinking?

Had I forgotten I had a boyfriend? A job? Parents? How did I really think that would actually go? And it wasn’t like I just wanted to cross-dress, either: how the hell did I think I was going to ‘deal with’ my breasts? Magically make them disappear? God this was so fucked up. And where did it stop? If I somehow ‘dealt with’ my breasts, then what? I remembered fantasising about being a guy punching Canada’s lead, and I felt so, so sick. No, please no. Please don’t let this be it.

“Oh, hah!” Rob said really loudly, mercifully distracting me. He looked around us as he startled people on nearby tables. “Sorry,” he said more quietly. “I’m used to yelling at people in mine shafts. Anyway, you play World of Warcraft? I haven’t played that for ages.”

I guessed he’d found a painting I’d done of one of the locations in the game. “I used to,” I said, trying very, very hard to focus on that instead of how shaky I was suddenly feeling. “I don’t have the time now. Mainly I just play first person shooters.”

“Xbox or PS?” he immediately asked, leaning forward and giving the phone back to Sarah. Conversely, Sarah rolled her eyes and leaned back, a long-suffering smile on her face. She kept tabbing through my paintings while Rob waited for my answer. “I hope you say Xbox, because Halo is unreal.”

I kind of wanted to hear what Sarah had to say about my art, but I didn’t want to be rude. “Playstation, actually,” I said a little apologetically. “Although I do have an Xbox that I never use. And I think I actually have one of the Halos, too.”

“Is it Reach?” he asked. “Fuck, that was good. I never stop replaying that. I tried to get Sarah into it, but no dice.” He hugged her.

“Not a game person,” she said, looking up from her phone. “Sorry, guys! Although it’s pretty hilarious watching him flip out when he gets killed.”

Rob looked indignant. “Which is hardly ever,” he said, puffing out his thick chest. “I’m a pro.”

Henry had been watching me with a smug grin. “That sounds like a certain someone I know.”

I scoffed, feigning being absolutely fine. “You’re just jealous he can’t beat me.”

For all Rob looked like a bit of a simple creature, he had some choice things to say about various game series. It was particularly amusing to sit and listen to him rant about what he didn’t like about Grand Theft Auto and why the franchise was ‘losing its way’. I wasn’t a big fan of the series myself – I hadn’t even finished the last one – but what he was saying made me want to play it again to see if he was right. That, and listening to him meant I didn’t have to think about myself.

He didn’t stop when our food arrived, either. In fact, he quickly forgot about his dinner. Henry had asked him some questions about the Arkham Series and he needed to passionately list all the ways in which it had ruined one of the the characters.

I wasn’t really that big a fan of that universe, so I’d been picking the bits of food I liked out of my pasta and half-listening as I tried not to let my mind wander. Sarah had been eyeing off Rob’s food, but every time she’d tried to ask him for some, he hadn’t noticed because of how loudly he was speaking. The last time she tried, I made eye-contact with her and we both laughed silently.

I lifted my fork and made a very subtle gesture with it towards Rob’s plate, mouthing, ‘Go on’. I looked up at him deep in conversation with Henry.

She smirked, and reached carefully under his arm to steal a prawn. He didn’t notice, and I pretended to applaud her. While the boys were talking, Sarah slowly escalated her food stealing until she just took his plate and said casually, “Mind if I take this for a sec?”

He sat back automatically to let her, still talking to Henry, but halfway through her putting it in front of herself, he double-took. “Hey!” he yelled, again startling the other patrons around us. “I’ve got a figure to maintain.” He patted his pot-belly with a grin. The two of them proceeded to play tug-o’-war with the plate for a few seconds. He let her win, but she gave it back to him, anyway. I laughed right the way along with them until they leaned in and started kissing. Then I stopped.

Henry and I just kind of sat there awkwardly, not looking at each other. Under normal circumstances I might jokingly have given Henry a really exaggerated kiss, but I just couldn’t face doing that right now. I kept thinking about the whole cross-dressing thing, and worrying about what would happen if Henry found out. I sighed, took my wine, and poured it down my throat.

Rob caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and stopped kissing Sarah. “Whoa, did you just drink all of that in one go?” I looked from him to the empty glass, and swallowed. He was clearly impressed. “Respect,” he said with conviction. “I dated a girl up on the mines who was the same. She could do a pint in under four seconds and she drank us all under the table, she was basically a bloke in a skirt. I always thought I’d end up with a tomboy like you guys, you know, with the video games and stuff.” While the colour was draining from my face, he looked affectionately at Sarah, and ruffled her beautiful hair. “Somehow I fell for Miss Girly, here, instead. What are the odds?” She gazed up at him adoringly.

They kissed briefly again, while I just sat there with my mouth open. ‘Basically a bloke in a skirt’? He hadn’t meant it as an insult; in fact, it sounded like he meant it as a compliment. It didn’t feel like one, though. I looked down at my own skirt, feeling all that adrenaline that I’d managed to quell before starting to surge back.

The worst part was that he was right. Everything just fit into place in my head like a completed jigsaw puzzle. I got it, and it made me feel sick.

At what point was I going to actually address how looking like this made me feel?

My heart started going again, and I panicked. No. No. Not at this point, I thought, not with work. Fuck! Not at this point. I took a few deep breaths while I stared down at my half-eaten dinner and tried to conceal my anxiety. Not now, I couldn’t have a personal crisis right now. I had too much going on, I could worry about whatever issues I was having in a few weeks time when the project was complete. I just didn’t like my chances of being able to cope with this and the shit that was going on at Frost. I tried to calmly tell myself that I was probably jumping to conclusions and maybe when work wasn’t so crazy it would all make sense. I could deal with all of this much later after I’d had time to think and reflect and god fucking damnit why wouldn’t my heart just chill the fuck out?

I needed to not be around everyone. “Excuse me for a second,” I said as evenly as I could, standing up.

They stopped kissing, and Sarah wiped her mouth. “Sorry, that was pretty inappropriate, wasn’t it? I think I’ve had too much wine.” She laughed.

I smiled tensely, stepping away from my chair and heading straight for the restroom.

It was empty, thank god. I went and shut myself in the far cubicle and leant on the door. My heart was pounding in full force, so much so that I could even feel it in my neck.

I can’t do this, I thought over and over. I can’t. I can’t do this. Every possible scenario started to crystallise in my head: Henry and I breaking up over it and me having to go to work every day and see him, me having to leave Frost because of it… or even me just needing to leave Frost anyway because if they didn’t respect me now, would they respect me if they found out what I wanted to do to myself? I’d be the laughing stock of the work place, just like high school. They were probably all either laughing or grumbling to each other about me already. What would they say if I just rocked up in a suit? What was I fucking thinking about dressing up like a guy anyway? How the fuck was that going to solve anything? It didn’t change reality. It didn’t change the fact I was in this body. It didn’t change anything, it just fucked everything up a hundred times worse than it already was. Why did I want to do that?

And why couldn’t I just forget all this, accept that it wasn’t possible and just be happy with myself? Why?

I leant against the wall and closed my eyes, trying to slow my breathing. Now was really the worst possible time in the world for me to be having a personal crisis, just when I needed to be able to focus on working really hard. Could it all just fucking go away? Could everything?

The restroom door opened and I stepped against the back wall so no one would guess what I was doing in here.

“Min?” Henry?

“This is actually the women’s toilets,” I pointed out.

He ignored me. “Min, are you okay? You’ve been in here for a while.” I could see his work shoes underneath the door of my cubicle.

I sighed at length; my breath wavered. “I just want to be alone for a few minutes.”

The door rattled as he leant on the other side of it. “You’ve had a few minutes. What’s up? Work?” God, he was being so lovely and all I could do was being irritated by it and wish he’d go away.

You want to know what’s up? I thought, I’ll tell you what’s up. I closed my eyes and imagined actually being able to say it to him: there’s something wrong with me. Henry, there’s something wrong with me. Please, please, make it stop. Fuck, now I was crying. Could I get any more pathetic?

“Min,” he gently prompted me.

Even with those words on my lips, “I just want to go home,” was what I actually said. The depth of resignation in my voice surprised even me.

Henry didn’t say anything for a few seconds. In the end, he didn’t argue with me. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell them you’re not feeling well.”

I didn’t want to sound like I was crying, but I think I did, anyway. “And… Is there a back way out of this place?”

When he spoke there was so much compassion in his voice, that god it hurt to hear him speak. “Oh, Min,” he said through the door. “I’ll sort it out.”

There was a back way out of the restaurant, and it was through the kitchen. It meant I needed to be herded past a series of chefs, sous-chefs and kitchenhands who all stared at me like I had three heads.

Henry didn’t tell me what Sarah and Rob had said about me leaving early, but it didn’t matter. I was convinced they both thought I was crazy. This was the second dinner I’d walked out of halfway through because of my stupid issues. I couldn’t even get a fucking dinner right.

Henry offered to hail us a taxi, but I shook my head. We walked.

Despite having failed to comfort me so far, he still insisted on trying. “Everything just seems worse at the moment because of how much pressure you’re under at work,” he told me as soon as we were walking alone. “I know you’ve got a big project running, but I really think for your own sanity you need a week off. Everything will be okay, Min. You just really, really need a holiday.”

From myself, I thought. “I can’t,” I said. “If I blow this it’s over for my career.”

We’d walked nearly the whole way home before he spoke again. “I know work is one of the main issues here, but are we going to talk about why you left dinner? The timing was pretty specific.”

I swallowed. That was the last thing that I wanted to do. Not with Henry. “No.” When he went to speak anyway, I stopped walking for a moment to accentuate my point. “Please,” I said, interrupting him. “I don’t want to discuss it.”

This time, he pushed me to talk. “Because I know you have some serious self esteem issues which are linked to how you look, and I know that Rob said you were a–”

“–Henry!” I said, throwing my hands up to stop him from speaking. There was a really raw edge to my voice, and I was too tired to disguise it. “Can you stop being so fucking understanding for like two seconds? You have to be fucking sick of my bullshit by now, you really want to hear more detail about it?”

He watched me, not reacting to what I was saying.

I didn’t want to cry again. “Yes, I have some fucking ‘serious self-esteem issues that are linked to how I look’, and if you knew the half of them you’d run a fucking mile. Do you really want me to go into all of that? Really?”

His eyes swept my body and then ended up locked on mine. He took a step towards me. “I want to do whatever makes you feel better, and you’re obviously desperate to tell someone,” he said, and went to reach towards my face. I shook my head, and he let his hand drop. “And not that I’ve ever particularly cared what my girlfriends looked like, but I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it: Min, I’ve always genuinely loved how you look.”

I could barely speak, and I lost my fight against tears. “Henry, I just hate it.”

He held his arms out to present himself, looking down at his shoes for a second and then back at me with a gentle smile. “And look, I’m still here with you, regardless of how much you hate yourself. Or why.”

Just that image of him standing there on the side of the road with a gentle, accepting smile. Loving me despite everything. God, it hurt.

“I don’t understand,” I said, and meant it, about everything. About Henry loving this, about the fact I was doing so badly at work suddenly, and most of all, how wrong I felt about how I looked now. “I just don’t understand anything, and I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Do you want to try?” he asked me very carefully. I shook my head. “Don’t forget I’m a psychologist.”

I shook my head again. He respected that, and we just walked home together. He did pause in the door of my apartment as he gave me my handbag, though. “I know you want to be alone right now,” he said, “but I’m not sure I should leave you alone. You’re not in a good place.”

I rolled my eyes. “Henry, I’m not going to kill myself.”

He looked a little alarmed. “Well, that’s good,” he said, I think satisfied that I wasn’t, “but I meant in general. No one should have to feel like you’re feeling and also be alone.”

And yet that was exactly how I wanted to be. “I’ll be okay,” I said. “I’m just going to go to sleep, anyway. I’m exhausted.” It didn’t look like I’d managed to persuade him, so I added, “Literally, I’ve had a really long week at work and I’m going to have a shower and then go to bed. I’ll feel much better after I’ve slept. There’s no point in you staying.”

“There would be a point,” he said, but he stepped out of the doorway anyway. “I’m not going to force you, though. I know you like your space. I hope you won’t be too upset if I decide to check on you over the weekend, though.”

I shook my head. “Goodnight, Henry.”

He put a warm hand behind my neck and kissed my forehead. “I’m here for you,” he said simply. “Whatever’s going on.”

I didn’t actually end up having a proper shower. I was too exhausted, I just kind of ran the water over myself and then at some point realised I should probably get out.

I had to face myself naked in the bathroom mirror when I was done, and it was still so weird. My hair was plastered against my neck and shoulders. I had a vision of myself just going ‘fuck everything’ and taking scissors to it. They were right there on my bathroom vanity, beside some makeup that I’d left out. I looked down at them for a second. They were new, they’d be really sharp. It would be so easy, I thought, but, fuck, who was I kidding? I couldn’t do that, I had my job to worry about. In one movement I just swept everything off the vanity and listened to it clatter across the tiles. Whatever, I thought, I went to put on my pyjamas.

The track-pants hadn’t come back from the wash, yet, so I just put on the jeans with Henry’s big old t-shirt and shut the wardrobe to a reflection of myself in the door. I looked like an eighteen-year old guy.

“Are you happy now?” I asked the mirror. “Is this what you want?”

I watched myself for a few moments, completely not understanding why this was how I felt comfortable. In the end I was the same person, so why was how I looked so critically important to me? I exhaled and shook my head. I had no idea how I was going to sleep. Wine might help.

I was so busy glaring down my front when I went into the kitchen that I’d forgotten about the flowers Bree had gotten me. I looked up just as I passed the kitchen bench and found myself staring straight into the gaping maw of one of the bigger ones.

There was already so much adrenaline in me that it gave me the fucking fright of my life. For about a second I literally thought there was an alien creature jumping at me from my bench.

I’d backed against the oven with my heart going again when I realised that it was actually just a flower. The rest of them were sinisterly lit by the glow coming from the city outside, and because they’d started to die, all their colour had faded and they looked slightly skeletal. Who the fuck buys these?

“Fucking Bree!” I said aloud, putting a hand on my chest. Those fucking flowers. Even as I said it I could hear her saying soulfully, ‘But it’s not their fault!’.

God, it was so ridiculous. I ended up drinking a few mouthfuls of red wine out of a bottle while I stared at them and tried to calm myself down. They were hideous, and I kept discovering new hideous things about them as they withered. I remembered Bree had said they’d reminded her of me, and I was feeling pretty fucking hideous right now, so it seemed apt. Shit, and I hadn’t replied to her before, either. I should do that quickly unless I wanted to add another person to the list ‘casualties of Min’s issues’.

I put the wine back in the cupboard and then grabbed my phone from my handbag and went and lay on the bed.

Sarah had texted me, ‘Hey Min, hope you’re feeling okay. Rob’s a bit sick, too! Must have been something in the food. Had a great time anyway, great to finally get you out of the office! See you on Monday!’.

I exhaled at length; at least she didn’t think I was crazy. On one hand I was glad I could keep her quarantined from my personal crap, on the other hand I hated lying to her. I closed text messaging and opened Deviant Art, going straight to my notes.

Bree’s latest message just read, “im sorry if i said something wrong again i didnt mean it 😦 😦 😦 pls dont ignore me 😦 😦 :(“

I took another deep breath. Fuck, I couldn’t do anything right, now Bree thought I was angry with her. I reconsidered that one; to be fair, I had been, but it all seemed extremely hypocritical now. I sighed and ran my hand over my face. I wasn’t sure I had energy to comfort her, to be honest. I was too fucking tired to deal with my own crap, let alone anyone else’s. But, in all honesty, I couldn’t leave her feeling like that, could I?

I hit reply and thought for a second. “Sorry, Bree, I’m not deliberately ignoring you! Things are just crazy for me at work at the moment. We’ll talk soon.” I read it a couple of times to make sure it seemed chirpy enough, and then sent it.

It took her literally two seconds to reply, “before we met u used to reply really quickly 😦 😦 😦 so like u can say its about work all u want but yeah………:(“

I had really only been planning to tick the ‘replied to Bree’ box so I didn’t feel like shit about it. I didn’t want to start a conversation with her, but the thought of her being heartbroken and thinking I didn’t like her was awful. God, she needed not to just open herself up like that to people, she was going to get hurt.

Since I didn’t want to be the one to actually hurt her, what should I say to make her stop feeling like everything was her fault, though? I could make something up, but I’d been grumpy at her for lying to me so that wasn’t a great option. On the other hand, I really didn’t want to confide in her. I’d have to be vague.

“I’ve been having a hard time recently over some personal stuff I don’t want to discuss. It’s not you at all.” As soon as I sent it, I regretted it. Why would I share that with a seventeen year old?

She took a bit longer to reply this time, saying, “hang on a sec im gonna make something for u,” and leaving me in limbo.

I didn’t know how long she wanted me to wait, all I really wanted was to go to sleep and just pretend today had never happened. Unfortunately, she was quite unpredictable and the thin slither of me that didn’t just want to go to bed forever was curious about what she was up to.

It took her about five or ten minutes to get back to me, and when she replied, it was with a link and several winkie faces.

I tapped it, and my media player opened. That made me raise my eyebrows, but not half as far as they went up when I heard her voice blaring out of the speakers of my phone.

“Hey, Min!” she said. “I’m sorry you’re feeling like crap, but I bet I know something that will cheer you up!” She giggled. “I don’t know how good your Korean is because you sound like a total Aussie, but on the off-chance that you actually speak it, I spent all evening learning something for you. I hope I don’t screw it up too much!”

Then, she began to sing.

She was terrible. All her high notes were just a little bit flat, and her timing was way off. Despite her abysmal musicianship I could still understand her: she was singing Kpop. A Girls’ Generation song, I think, but Kpop always sounded completely generic to me so I couldn’t be sure. I had no idea if she knew how bad she was, but she was so darn enthusiastic about it that it was hard to criticise her.

Towards the end of the song, the second-hand embarrassment factor was just so high I ended up with my pillow over my head, laughing from the pain.

She finished off by saying, “Hope I didn’t do too badly and I hope you liked it!”

When my phone fell silent, I took the pillow off my head. She hoped she hadn’t done too badly? She could not have done worse. That was almost a YouTube infamy level of terrible.

I didn’t really know how tell her she was potentially one of the world’s worst singers, so I decided not to comment on the song at all. I just typed, “You’re silly ;)”.

“i know 😉 😉 😉” was her reply.

I decided to leave the conversation there and get some sleep, and when I leaned up to put my phone on the bedside table, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and everything that had happened just hit me again. I flopped back against my mattress and pulled the doona up under my chin. Whatever, I thought, the wine would kick in soon.

Henry had ended up being really angry about something Sean had done. When I answered the door to him, I didn’t even get to say hello before he’d walked past me with the takeaway and angrily hung up his jacket beside the door.

I had been about to rant about Bree, but when I saw his face, that plan went out the window. He was way more upset than I was.

Illustrating this point perfectly, Henry turned towards me and held up his hands. “I am working for an infantile fuck,” he announced. “And I think I am going to kill him.”

Right. I just stared at him; I hadn’t seen him this angry in ages. He was normally calm and pleasant and it was kind of shock to see him so red in the face that his veins were standing out on his temples. I supposed it would be really inappropriate to make a comment about boss fights belonging in video games, so I just said, “Whoa. Want to tell me what happened?”

Before he did exactly that, he marched on to my kitchen, took out two plates and began to divide the food between them with the most violent movements he could possibly have made without breaking anything. It was very telling that he wasn’t shattering them; they were bone china and I’d broken a few myself just by using them. I actually found it kind of hilarious that even at his angriest he was still careful not to accidentally break any of my plates.

“I watched him break the law today, Min,” he said, throwing the container away. “Right in front of my fucking face, and knowing I’m the one who has to deal with the consequences of it. And you know what he said?” I mutely shook my head, and he pretended to speak in what I presumed was Sean’s voice. “’Oh, you’re a very capable man, Henry, I’m sure you’ll be able to manage whatever happens’. It wasn’t a very flattering imitation.

He walked sharply over to the table with our dinner and laid it out, and then went back to get cutlery. “Fork or chopsticks?” he asked me, trying to not sound as angry and holding both out for me to choose. I took the fork. He kept the chopsticks for himself, sitting down at the table. Before he started dinner, though, he gave the evil flowers he was facing a bit of a strange look.

“Don’t ask,” I recommended. That story could wait for later.

He gave me a strange look, too, but took my advice and just got stuck back into Sean and his dinner. “I can’t fucking believe that man. I can’t believe it.” He took a mouthful, chewed and swallowed and then said, “No, actually, I can believe he’d do it. Fucker. Jesus, that man is a fucking asshole. He has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.”

I sat down carefully opposite him. I didn’t really know what to do because I didn’t see him angry very often, so I tried to sound comforting. “Are you okay? What did he actually do?”

Henry shook his head stiffly. “Yeah, I will be okay, but I can’t actually tell you what he did.”

I made an ‘oh’ face, but I didn’t push for details. He’d very respectfully not asked me for them about my project. “Okay, then… Is there anything I can do to help?”

He shook his head and took another mouthful, swallowed again and then sat back, running his hand through his short hair and making it all stick up like he’d been electrocuted. “And now I’m so angry I can’t even enjoy my Pad Thai.” He looked up at me. “And I’m taking out all of my anger on my poor girlfriend who works at the same godforsaken hellhole as I do.”

I squinted at him. “You are?”

He nodded stiffly. “When you express uncontrollable anger in front of others, it is stressful and potentially traumatic for them.” He took a breath, making a ‘calm down’ motion with his hands to himself. “So I will try and find a healthier way to express it. Min, I am very angry at Sean Frost for making me so upset I come directly here and take it all out on you, and I am very angry at myself for transferring the blame to him when I should be perfectly able to control of my own emotions.”

“Those were some excellent ‘I’ statements,” I told him. “But, seriously, it’s okay, I’m not traumatised. I’m just a bit worried about you.”

“Thank you,” he said, still sounding frustrated. “And I’m glad I haven’t caused you vicarious trauma. Fuck,” he said, pushing plate away. “This is going to sound a bit weird, but do you have any tracksuit pants that might fit me? I think the solution to all of this adrenaline is to go for a quick run and all I have with me are my singlet and sneakers.”

I only had the one pair that was unisex, and that was the pair he’d left here a couple of years ago that I wore all the time when there was no one around. He’d probably forgotten they were his by now, though. I almost had. “Yeah, I might,” I said, and then went to get them. They did end up still fitting him, and so he put them and his sneakers on and just went for a jog in the singlet he wore under his work shirt.

I chuckled to myself as I shut the door. At times I’d really wanted to strangle Jason, so I was completely with Henry about having an infuriating boss. I did feel a bit bad about my reaction to his anger, though; even though he was really upset, I still found him hilarious and entertaining. Poor guy. He was great, I hoped the run made him feel better. He worked too hard to put up with this crap.

On the way back to my Pad Thai, I spotted the scary flowers again and looked up at the clock. If Courtney lived near Paramatta, Bree should definitely be there by now. I took my phone out and went to send her a note, and then remembered that she’d lied to me.

I spent the next quarter of an hour with my phone next to my dinner as I ate, trying to decide if I was angry enough not to check that she was okay. In the end my concern for her won out and I typed her a quick note to confirm she’d arrived at Courtney’s in one piece.

It didn’t take her long to reply. “are u worried about me?? 🙂 🙂 :)”

I frowned at the screen. “Yes, and I’m not very happy about it,” I told the phone, but I wasn’t in the mood to actually reply.

Henry wasn’t gone for much longer, but I’d nearly finished my food when he let himself back in. He looked calmer. “That’s better,” he said as he staggered into the living area. “I’m going to have a quick shower and then let’s kill everything together.”

“Sounds romantic,” I called after him, and went to set up the console.

I didn’t tell him much about Bree until we’d called it a night and were lying in bed, because he was finally enjoying himself and I didn’t want to stress him out again. Furthermore, when I watched him put on the hoodie that was on my bed, I kept my mouth shut. It was difficult, though. I’d bonded with that stupid hoodie and I didn’t like him wearing it.

Before we went to sleep Henry startled me by making a sudden noise. “Jesus Christ, Min, I’m the worst boyfriend ever,” he said, remembering something. “You got promoted today and all I can do is talk about my problems. We should have been celebrating!”

I laughed shortly. “No, I’m way past that,” I said, and then finally told him about Bree. At the end of the story, when I got to the point where I’d found out that she’d lied to me, he actually laughed. It sounded affectionate, but it was still a laugh.

I must have looked quite indignant because he laughed again. “I’m sorry, Min,” he said, reaching over and rubbing my arm. “I am, really. I know honesty is a big thing for you after high school, but when you said she’d lied to you in that tone of voice I was expecting it to be about something serious and major.”

“Does it really matter what it was about? She lied to me. That’s not okay.” He had a familiar expression look on his face as he was listening to me which meant he was analysing what I was saying. That sort of stuff may have worked to calm him down but that wasn’t how I dealt with my emotions. “And, Henry, if you pull that shrink act on me at this time of night I swear to god I’m going to murder you.”

He sounded like he was smiling. “Min,” he began, pulling it anyway. “Why do you think she lied to you?”

“I’m not playing this game,” I told him, and he was very pointedly silent. “Henry, I know where you’re going with this and I’m not going to rationalise it.”

“Of course not. Then you wouldn’t have an excuse to push her away and never talk to her again. Why do you think she lied to you?” he repeated, sounding gently insistent.

I looked at him. He raised his eyebrows at me and I rolled onto my back and groaned. “Fine,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “She was trying to get into my house.”

He didn’t stop there. “And why do you think she was trying to get into your house?”

I turned my head back towards him and just glared. “Henry, I get it, she wanted to be friends with me.”

He smirked, looking rather pleased with himself. “Wow, what a despicable human being, wanting to be friends with you. She clearly can’t be trusted.” The smirk faded a little and he did a facial shrug. “I don’t know, Min. She just sounds like a normal teenager to me,” he said, and then rethought it. “Well, maybe not normal, per se. But what is normal? You obviously enjoy her company, and that’s all that really matters. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“She’s seventeen and she keeps doing things that remind me of that. I’m pretty sure that matters.”

He didn’t look convinced. “Seven years,” he said, reminding me of the age difference between him and me again. “Shall I go on?”

“No.”

He chuckled. “Probably for the best. I’m a bit biased about this whole thing with–’Bree’, wasn’t it?”

Despite the fact I’d said I didn’t want to go on discussing it, I couldn’t help following up on that one. I looked across at him. “How can you possibly be biased about her? You haven’t even met her.”

His humour faded. “Well, you’ve been here for four years, Min. I’m just happy you’re finally throwing down some roots.” He snaked an arm across my middle, smiling. “Really happy, because I love your company, despite the colossal seven year difference and I want you to stay in Sydney.” He paused. “Although, obviously if I accidentally see you without make-up, I will dump you on the spot.”

I thought back to how boyish I’d looked that morning in the hoodie he was now wearing, and winced.

He saw my expression and his smile dropped straight off his face. “Oh, Min, I’m sorry, I was just joking because I thought it would make you feel better,” he said, sounding a bit panicked as he shuffled closer and wrapped his arms around me. “I didn’t mean to say anything that upsets you. Shit.” He shook his head. “Sorry, that was really insensitive of me. I’m doing a great job tonight, aren’t I? I’m so immersed in my own problems I’m not being very helpful about yours.”

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” I said dismissively. “As in, I’m actually fine. Let’s just get some sleep.”

He did worry about it, but we eventually got to sleep anyway. Unfortunately, the following morning he had a couple of hours off because he’d been doing serious overtime even by Frost standards, so he left my apartment in the hoodie so he could go home and get dressed for work. I wasn’t prepared for how upset that made me, either. That was my big, comfy hoodie, and I felt very not-fine about him taking off with it. Especially since my trackies were now all gross and sweaty, too.

I stood in front of my ‘weird’ amount of make-up – thanks, Bree – and got irrationally annoyed about the whole thing before I remembered that I was an adult and I could actually purchase my own clothes. By the time I made it into work, I’d decided I’d duck down to one of the places on George Street while I was getting lunch. Maybe I could even get some comfy clothes that I wasn’t embarrassed to be seen in, too.

On my way into my new office I got accosted by the lead from the Canada project team.

“Mini,” he said, in a voice I couldn’t really ignore. I stopped walking and turned to face him as he asked, “Have you finished with the draft layout concept for the website?”

No, I hadn’t, and I’d explained why to those guys yesterday. “I won’t be able to volunteer for your project because I’ve been assigned my own team, now.”

He put a hand on my shoulder which automatically got my back up. I looked at it, and then at him. “I know you’ve got other stuff to do, Mini, but we’re really counting on you for this. We even reallocated the budget for design to something else and it’s as good as spent. We can’t afford to outsource now.”

You had to be fucking kidding me. “Really, I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it.”

He squeezed my shoulder. “We’re really going to be in big trouble if you can’t finish what you started for us, Mini. It’s going to put a lot of pressure on the rest of the team. And, really,” he said, copying the way I’d said it to him, “it’s not like you can’t fit another design job in on top of whatever boring crap you’re doing for the political pitch. Those never need to be flashy.”

I’m a project lead, too, I wanted to say to him. I actually can’t fit your dregs on top of my workload, and it’s not a political pitch. Fuck confidentiality, seriously. Just fuck it, and fuck my complete lack of capacity to say ‘no’. “Fine,” I said, despite the fact it really wasn’t. “Give me a couple of days, though.”

He lifted his hand from my shoulder and patted my arm. “Good girl,” he said, and then strode off somewhere on another mission.

I watched him go, and I’m pretty sure I looked disgusted. ‘Good girl’, was he serious?

That put me in a bad mood, and even Sarah noticed it. “Wrong side of the bed?” she asked with a grin as I walked into Oslo and put away my handbag. One of the other team members looked up and smiled at me. I managed to return it, but it was very difficult.

“Some of the people in this place…” I said to Sarah cryptically; I couldn’t really discuss why I was so upset while there were other people around.

She spun her chair around to face me. “What I’m hearing is a great reason to get out of this place and vent to me somewhere else,” she said. “Actually, Rob’s going back to Broome next weekend and I was thinking that you and Henry should come on a double-date with us. I think you guys would really get along.”

I shrugged. “I’m sure we would,” I said politely, “but I just accepted another design job because I’m a doormat. So I think I’ll be Red Bull’s best customer for the next couple of days.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Why would you do that to yourself?” she asked me, but then said, “But you’ve got to eat, right? What do you say to Friday night? That way if you need to catch up with some work because of it, you can do it on the weekend.”

I made a face. “Sarah, I’d love to, but I really can’t. I’m just too busy.”

“Me too,” she said. “I’m on two teams as well, remember?” When I didn’t say anything, she sat back in her chair and considered me for a few seconds. “I’m not going to be able to get you out, am I?”

I sighed. “It’s nothing to do with you, I promise,” I said, sitting down in my own chair and switching on the computer. “Please don’t take it personally.”

She made a noise. “Okay,” she said, not sounding hurt or upset, which I was grateful for. She then swung her chair back towards her own computer and got back to work.

Not that I really should have expected that much in a single day, but I felt like the team wasn’t making as much progress as I hoped they would when I’d been doing timelines yesterday. They were all hard workers which was fantastic – not that they’d be employed by Frost if they weren’t – but I felt like especially the younger guy was really missing the mark when it came to the depth of research required. I’d just have done everything myself, but I couldn’t. Not even if I was working twenty-four hours a day.

I had actually planned to forgo my hoodie-buying expedition because of the extra work I’d taken on, but the oldest team member ended up chucking me out of the office at lunch time, saying I’d kill myself if I didn’t take a break. I didn’t argue with him because he was right, but I did spend the whole walk to the shopping centre worrying about being unfit for management. I was so busy stressing about not knowing my own limits that I nearly forgot to grab something to eat, too.

Well, apparently women the world over did cheer themselves up with shopping, so maybe I could give retail therapy a shot.

The store I’d been planning to get my own hoodie from was one of those surfie-type places that all of the beach-tanned blondes always bought all their bikinis and perfectly distressed denim from. I didn’t look like I belonged there at all, and two separate sales clerks tried to offer me assistance because of that.

The women’s hoodies were in all these pastel colours and some of them had strange embellishments like dead-end pockets or zips that lead nowhere. I wasn’t a big fan of anything that wasn’t very plain, but I took the last three ‘XL’s anyway and then went to go and try them on. On the way there, I spotted the men’s hoodies hanging in their loose, completely plain glory over on the far wall.

That’s more like it, I thought.

I looked furtively back toward the counter. Fortunately, the girl staffing it was busying doing something tedious and not looking in my direction. Feeling like I was about to commit some sort of felony, I crossed the floor and went to go have a look at what was on the men’s side.

The colours were much bolder over there and the majority of the tops there had normal pockets and quite plain print. I took a blue one from the rack. It was an ‘XL’ as well, and when I compared it to the women’s XLs, they were like baby clothes.

I liked it, it looked really comfy and it was exactly what I was looking for. I held it for a moment. What was the big deal, anyway? There was nothing wrong with me buying this for myself. Women wore their boyfriends’ clothes all the time, and men apparently found it cute. So I was buying it for myself instead of waiting for Henry to leave one at my apartment, so what? What was the difference?

I still felt really uncomfortable, though, and I couldn’t put my finger on why that was.

“Hi, can I help you?” another one of the clerks asked, suddenly appearing beside me. I forced a smile but didn’t say anything straight away. Because of that, she asked, “Oh, you don’t speak English?”

I would have actually been tempted to go along with that if it would get rid of her, but I had a feeling she was one of those people who would try and help me anyway even if I pretended to not understand. “No, I do,” I said. “Can I just walk straight into the change rooms or do I need one of those number-tag things?”

She indicated where the rooms were like an air hostess showing me the overwing exits. “No, you can just go straight in. Also, we’re having a promotion today. If you purchase one of the men’s tops from this range or that wall over there, you get forty percent off men’s jeans from the same line.”

She proceeded to show me the jeans she was talking about and ask me about sizing, and while she was loading me up with them I just agreed they looked great and the deal was good value because I figured it would make her go away faster. It did, but by the time I went into the changeroom under the guise of trying on the women’s hoodies, I had my arms full of men’s jeans. I dumped them all in the corner of the cubicle.

The lighting the changerooms was actually pretty flattering, but I still had to face myself in a bra before I got the first of the hoodies on. It was one of the women’s, and the sleeves were too short. That probably wasn’t an enormous problem in itself because I always pushed them up my forearms anyway, but I felt like it was a sign. It also was a pastel purple and made me look as if I was trying too hard to be cutesy when I just wasn’t. Well, so much for trying to buy something that I could actually wear in public, I thought. I scrapped that idea.

That hoodie had gone so badly that I didn’t even bother with the other two pastel ones, I just went straight for the men’s. It slipped over my head so much more easily than the purple one, the sleeves covered my arms and it hung at a really comfortable length down my middle.

It looked weird with a suit skirt, though.

In the reflection of the mirror, I could see the jeans I’d just dumped in a pile in the corner. I frowned at the glass. Min, you came here for a big comfy hoodie to wear at home. You’ll leave with this one. What the hell are you going to do with those jeans? Hang around the house in them? You can save a hundred dollars and just do that in your trackies.

Then I remembered my trackies were currently soaked in Henry’s sweat. I could use something comfy to wear while they were at Laundry.

So, wait, I was going to buy really expensive, really ultra-fashionable men’s jeans because my hundred year old trackies were going to be gone for two days to be washed? And then what was I going to do with the jeans after that? Where was I going to wear them? I had never been a big fan of jeans.

On the other hand, the only reason I avoided wearing jeans in the past was because the skinny jeans I had at home were tight and uncomfortable. If I had big bootcuts maybe I’d feel more like putting them on.

But, seriously, if I did really like them, where was I planning on actually wearing them other than at home? Those jeans screamed ‘man’. There was nothing feminine about them at all. They belonged on a sepia-tone billboard under rippling abs and visible Calvins, not on me.

I bent down and picked up a pair of them. Fuck, they were so cool, though. I really wanted to put them on, regardless of who they were meant for. But what would it mean if I liked them?

I made a frustrated noise at myself. Who cared what it means? Jesus, Min, get a fucking grip, the sky is not going to cave in if you put on a pair of men’s jeans and like them. What the hell is wrong with you? This isn’t high school anymore, no one’s going to draw moustaches on photos of you and post them online just because you’re wearing men’s jeans.

I ended up just kind of holding them up and scowling. Great work, Min, I thought. How balanced of you. You’re having a fucking personal crisis over a pair of jeans. A pair of goddamn jeans.

I was there for ages, so long that the clerk came to check on me. “Is everything okay in there?” her cheerful voice called through the door. “How are the sizes?”

I looked at them in my hands. They were enormous. “I’m good, thanks,” I called back, “I’ll be out in a sec.”

My final verdict was that I didn’t have time to make this decision now. And since I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to come back, I just decided to buy them and worry about everything later.

I wasn’t sure what I had expected, but the girl on the counter didn’t seem at all weirded out by the fact I was buying men’s clothes. I supposed women did it all the time – probably not for the same reasons I was, though. I felt like she could read them all over my face as she greeted me and I was almost bracing myself for that smile to disappear. “Are these for yourself?” she asked, still smiling for now.

I panicked. “Why?”

That made her look a little surprised. “Because I can put them in a non-transparent recycled paper bag if you want to hide them from someone in particular.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling so, so stupid. “That sounds great.” Then, completely unnecessarily, I added, “They’re for my boyfriend.”

The girl smiled while she was running my card. “I’m sure he’ll love them.”

Fuck, I was no better than Bree: ‘they’re for my boyfriend’. Min, really? You’re going to lie to her? And Henry most certainly would not love them if he saw me in them, either. But whatever, I wouldn’t wear them around him. Or anyone. They were for me.

Even in that paper carry-bag, I was actually too afraid to take them back to work. It was ridiculous, because if anyone saw the bag and what was inside it, they would assume I had bought them for Henry. Just as a means of avoiding that conversation, though,I walked all the way home and left the bag inside my door before I returned to work.

I was late back from lunch, but given the amount of overtime I did, the only comments people made were more of the ‘long lunch date?’ variety.

“Yeah, I’m cheating on Henry with clothes shops,” I said dryly when Sarah asked. She laughed at it, though, which made me feel a bit better.

“I didn’t think clothes shops were your type,” she said afterwards, handing me a USB. “That’s pink diamond sales in North America and Mainland China,” she said. “Actually China’s hedging out the US at the moment.”

I accepted the USB from her. “Interesting,” I said, and then asked, “and you didn’t think clothes stores were my type?”

Sarah laughed again. “You don’t seem like the kind of person to go shopping, that’s all, I’m not having a go at your fashion sense. You dress way better than me, anyway. I’m lucky to brush my hair in the morning.”

And yet you look amazing, I thought, a little bit jealous. I bet she never got stuck stressing for half an hour in a changeroom. Envy aside, though, she was right, I wasn’t really a fan of shopping. Rather than think about why that was and spend too much time dwelling on what I’d just bought, I reviewed the figures that Sarah had dug up for me.

I didn’t need our data-crunching ex-intern to tell me that the US was out, but I wasn’t too sure sales in China were strong enough to justify positioning ourselves there, either. I gave the USB the team members and asked them to see what they could mine out of it while I sat back and tried to think of what the hell we should do.

Okay, so it was only day two and I didn’t think anyone other than me had really expected we’d be completing the marketing requirements document by now. Still, with only four weeks we really didn’t have time to spend ages figuring out who we were even trying to sell these things to. There was just so much to do, and I had a sudden panic that the four weeks would be up and we would have achieved nothing, that I would be demoted, end up in admin and need to tell Mum what a terrible failure her daughter was.

Shit, and with everything that had gone on I hadn’t even told Mum about the promotion in the first place. I was clearly losing the plot.

“Back in a second,” I told my team, and then grabbed my phone to head outside.

Several of the levels had their own alcove balconies, and ours was usually full of smoking marketing reps, especially around lunchtime. Today, though, there wasn’t anyone out there when I pushed the door open and dialled Mum’s number. As usual, she picked up almost instantly. “Min!”

Predictably, Mum was overjoyed for about five seconds and then started playing her usual game of running through a list of catastrophic what-ifs about if I blew the opportunity. I had been walking backwards and forwards and half-listening to her while I privately what-iffed about those goddamn jeans when the balcony door opened and Sean Frost came striding out.

I stopped walking. What was he doing here? He never came onto level thirty-six because it was Diane’s stronghold. I didn’t even think I’d been this close to him before.

He was supposedly an enormous heart-throb, but even from this distance I couldn’t see it. What I could see was how fit he kept himself and how well-dressed he was, but those things never really impressed me, anyway. He did seem much more easy-going than his sister; compared to her the only intimidating thing about him was his obvious self-confidence.

On that note, he smiled amicably at me when he saw me looking. The smile turned out a bit crooked because he had an unlit cigarette between his lips as he felt around in his pockets presumably for a lighter. He didn’t find one.

Because I was on the phone, when he walked up to me he just mouthed, “Lighter?” as he made a lighter motion with his hand. I shook my head. He nodded once, and then proceeded to search around the pot plants, seats and railings for an abandoned one.

I couldn’t help being amused; this man was a co-CEO of a billion dollar mining company on his hands and knees in an Italian suit, retrieving a fallen lighter from underneath a bench.

He stood up and showed it to me as he triumphantly lit his cigarette. I smiled back, and I didn’t even have to force it. Before I got too friendly, though, I caught myself: this was the guy that had broken the law and made Henry really upset last night. This was the fucking asshole fuck and all those other things Henry had called him.

I should have been really angry with Sean on Henry’s behalf, but I was finding it really difficult. I mean, Sean definitely wasn’t doing to me what he did to most of the female staff and maybe a few of the men, but he was very charismatic and very likeable one-on-one. Definitely a far cry from the cool professional I’d seen give speeches at annual general meetings, and an even farther cry from the things Henry had called him last night.

“Min, Min? Are you listening to me?”

Shit, I’d completely forgotten about the phone against my ear. “Sorry, Mum, I’ll call you back later,” I said, and hung up.

Sean looked over towards me, and that’s when he saw my expression. He cringed, clearly thinking it was about the fact he’d been scrounging around for a cigarette lighter and not to do with Henry’s opinion of him. “I promise I don’t normally crawl around on the concrete,” he said. He had a pleasant voice. “It’s just been a really hard day and I really needed a cigarette.”

“I hear you,” I said, surprising myself by actually speaking.

I meant that it had been a hard day, but Sean thought I was asking for a cigarette. He patted down his lapels and his pockets. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you one, they’re in my office,” he said, and then considered me for a moment. “Min Lee, isn’t it?” he asked.

I was too surprised he knew who I was to correct him. When I didn’t, he put the cigarette between his lips and dusted off his palms, walking over so he could shake my free hand. I was taller than him, but he didn’t make me feel awkward about it. In fact, apart from the fact I knew Henry hated him for some reason, everything about him put me at ease. “I work with your boyfriend. There’s a picture of you on his desk. Pleasure to finally meet you – I hear you’re the rising star of Marketing at the moment.”

I wasn’t sure he was supposed to know about my position, but it’s possible Henry mentioned something. “Henry does tend to exaggerate his praise of me.”

Sean laughed. “I’m the same with my beautiful wife. So, how’s your new team? Political project, is that correct?”

It seemed like a perfectly innocent question, but following Diane’s advice I was careful to be appropriately dismissive. “You know how they go.”

He was still smiling, and I could see where he got his reputation for public relations. “Fortunately, I’m pleased to say I don’t,” he said. “But according to my sister you get results, and since that’s what she cares about, I’m guessing we’ll have a politician or two in our pockets by June.” He nodded politely, finishing his cigarette and butting it out in the bin. He gestured towards it. “Sorry again you had to witness the awful lengths I’ll go to in order to feed my nicotine addiction. Now if you’ll excuse me, unfortunately I have to run.”

I smiled at him as he went back inside, but I didn’t follow him straight away. Henry hated that guy? Really? I unlocked my phone with the intention of texting him, but then I saw I had a note on Deviant Art. I didn’t have to check who it was from.

“sooooooo,” it said. “did u have a shower yet?? 🙂 :)”

I pictured the smiley face Bree had drawn on my shower screen and grinned for a fraction of a second before I remembered what else she’d done. You lied to me, Bree, I thought, but then I realised how many times I’d lied today and felt like a raging hypocrite. That didn’t change the fact I was grumpy with her about it, though, so I decided to leave that message for now. I did end up texting Henry, but he didn’t answer either so I figured he was already back at work and busy.

I’d better get to work, too, I thought, and then went back inside.

That evening I was the last one to leave as usual, but Sarah didn’t leave very long before me. She gave me a bit of a measured look as she held the door open, but she didn’t say anything other than, “Bye.”

“Bye,” I said absently, trying to figure out why I hated the colours that Canada had chosen for their scheme so much.

I didn’t get home until maybe nine or ten. The recycled paper carry-bag was still inside my door, so I took it with me into the bedroom and only faced it again after I’d had a shower.

Since my trackies were off in Laundry, I was sort of forced to put on my new comfy clothes. I wasn’t too unhappy about that. Despite my inner conflict, part of me was looking forward to wearing them.

The jeans were seriously fucking cool, and when I pulled them on they were really comfortable. Not baggy, exactly, but nice and loose. I’d bought one size bigger than I probably needed so they sat low on my hips; if I was going out in them I’d need to wear a belt. I stopped for a moment: yeah, right, ‘going out in them’. Just, no. As if people didn’t stare at me enough already because of how tall I was, I didn’t need to add ‘wearing men’s clothes’ to that. I put a soft t-shirt on under the hoodie, and then shot myself a passing glance in the mirror while I was throwing away the bag.

It was just supposed to be a quick look, just to check nothing was on back-to-front and no tags were still attached. It didn’t end up being quick, though, because my reflection was just so different from what I had expected to see.

I wasn’t wearing any make-up and I had my hair tied back because I’d just been in the shower. Between my hair seeming short and the fact I was wearing men’s clothes… fuck, what was I doing? They were only supposed to be comfortable, that was why I’d bought them. It wasn’t even about how I looked at all.

But that didn’t change the fact that I looked good like this, really good. And better than that, I looked right.

My heart started racing again, and I forced myself to look away from the mirror. No, I thought. I’m not doing this, not now. I had way too fucking much going on in my life to want to add more stupid, whimsical complications to it. Work was already making me feel like I was on the brink of losing it, I didn’t need something else to worry about. I just needed to dag around my home and enjoy my new comfy clothes like anyone would. That’s enough, Min, please just leave it there and stop thinking about it.

I followed my own advice, poured myself an enormous mug of wine and went to quickly eat some dinner. In doing so, I was sitting opposite those evil flowers and they reminded me that it had been a while since I’d replied to anything Bree had sent me.

When I went to get my phone so I could, there was already a message waiting for me. It wasn’t from Bree, though, it was a text message from Henry. “Hey, Min, one of your co-workers—Sarah, she said her name was – invited us out for dinner on Friday night with her and her boyfriend. Obviously, I said yes.”

I stopped chewing mid-mouthful.

You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. She didn’t, she went behind my back and just asked Henry?

God, she was as bad as Bree. I reconsidered that and made a face: okay, no she wasn’t, no one was as bad as Bree. She was sneaky, though. I still had no idea what to do about Bree, but I knew one employee who was about to find herself with a lot of very boring paperwork for the next four weeks as penance for ganging up on me with my boyfriend.