Chapter Two
Molly
“Hey.”
I looked up from my Principles of Biochemistry textbook at the sound of Peyton’s voice. The university library was buzzing with activity that afternoon – being the middle of the first week of the autumn semester, I wasn’t exactly shocked by this – and I was taking advantage of my only free Wednesday afternoon for the semester to get some study done. In one of Peyton’s hands was my new travel mug.
“I brought coffee,” she said, and held the mug out to me. I’d bought it from Typo a few days earlier after my old one had disappeared during the drive down from Gosford – it was light blue with white stars all over it, and the words Eat stars for breakfast and be extra sparkly on one side in white text. “You left pretty early this morning. Wasn’t sure if you’d had a chance to grab some on your way to class.”
“You’re amazing, Peyt,” I said gratefully, and took my mug from her. “How much do I owe you?”
Peyton waved me off. “Not a thing. But I wouldn’t say no to a smoothie later on if you’re buying.”
I flashed her a thumbs-up as I cracked the lid of my mug. “Biochem and biomech are freaking brutal,” I said, barely managing to hold back a sigh of relief. I had been in desperate need of caffeine all day, so Peyton was an absolute lifesaver. “Physiology isn’t much better. Remind me again why I decided to study medicine?”
Peyton smirked as she sat down next to me. “If that’s how you feel halfway through the first week, I can only imagine how you’ll feel when winter break gets here,” she said dryly, and I gave her the finger as I started drinking my coffee. “Charming.”
“You know you love me.” I set my mug down on the table next to my textbook. “What about you?” I asked, noting somewhat belatedly that Peyton only had her wallet and phone with her.
“I’m off class until Monday morning.” She gave me a grin and stretched a little. “I love studying journalism.”
“Wanna swap?”
Peyton gave a somewhat theatrical shudder. “I’ll pass, thanks.”
“You’re no fun. So, what, figured you’d come hang out?”
“Pretty much. Flat’s dead because Georgie and Bella are both off at class, and I didn’t feel like tracking down Tay or Zac so I can annoy them instead. So I thought I’d come keep you company for a bit.”
“Aww. I feel special.”
“You should.” She reached over and tweaked my nose a bit. “Still up for game night?”
“Yep. I have Thursdays off from class this semester – I’ll study tomorrow. Might have to sit out next week but I’ll see how things go.” I squinted down at a cell diagram, skimming over its various parts. “Any idea what Georgie’s got planned?”
“No idea whatsoever.” Right then Peyton’s phone message tone rang out, and she snatched her phone up. “Oh, here we go. How do you feel about playing Spoons tonight?”
“We’re not playing Cards Against Humanity?”
“Georgie probably doesn’t want to scare Bella off with how perverted we all are,” Peyton said with a shrug, and I snickered. We
“Yeah, sure.”
Peyton gave me a grin. “Awesome.” She started tapping away at her phone’s screen. “When did you want to head out? Georgie asked me to swing by the shops on my way back to pick up some munchies for the game, and I was thinking about having a poke around in Woolies if you reckon you’re up for it.”
“I’m ready when you are,” I replied, and stuck a bright pink Post-It Note into my textbook to mark my place. “Reckon she’ll get the boys to do another Macca’s run for dinner?”
“She’ll probably get them to duck out for pizza rather than Macca’s. Bit easier to eat one-handed.”
“Good point.” I closed my textbook, stacked it, my pencil tin and my notebook on top of my Physiology textbook, and shoved the whole pile into my backpack. After a quick glance over the table to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything, I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulders, picked up my travel mug and phone, and followed Peyton out of the library.
Georgina was digging around in the cutlery drawer in our flat’s tiny kitchen when Peyton and I walked in the front door, laden down with calico and canvas bags of groceries. “What the fuck are you doing?” Peyton asked as the two of us dumped our shopping on the dining table. I managed to rescue Georgina’s iPad just before Peyton dropped one of the bags on it.
“I don’t think we have enough spoons,” Georgina replied without looking back at us. “There’s what, six of us going to play tonight?”
“Seven if Taylor ropes Neil into it,” I replied. “And eight if Elijah comes too. How many do we have?”
Georgina finally turned around and held up four mismatched spoons. “Four spoons, and potentially eight players. We need three more.” She blew a few stray strands of bright red hair out of her face as she finished speaking.
“So go nick a few from the food court,” Peyton suggested. “Or you can ask Tay to bring over a few from his flat. Simples.”
I could tell that Georgina very much wanted to bang her head against the kitchen bench upon hearing this. “I’m an idiot,” she sighed.
“You’re our idiot, though,” I piped up.
“Yeah, thanks Mol.” This was said as Georgina started tapping away at her phone. I figured she was sending Taylor a quick text message. “What did you get at Woolies?”
“Stuff,” Peyton replied.
Georgina pulled a face at this. “You sound like my mum.”
“Oh, what a fucking tragedy,” Peyton snarked, earning herself the forks courtesy of Georgina. “Bit surprised we’re not playing Cards Against Humanity tonight, though. I was looking forward to breaking in my set.”
“Bella needs to get used to how perverted we can get,” Georgina replied. “We’d probably scare her off if we shoved her in at the deep end this early.”
“Yeah, good point.”
Georgina gave Peyton a smile. “Give it a few weeks. I reckon by the time Easter break rolls around she’ll be used to us. I bet not even Taylor could scare her off by that point.”
“Who could scare who off?” I heard from behind me, and I glanced back over my shoulder to see Bella walking in through the front door. The door snicked shut behind her as she headed through to the lounge.
“We’re playing Spoons tonight,” Georgina replied, neatly sidestepping Bella’s question. “You’re welcome to join us if you like.”
Bella went slightly pink. “I’ve never played it,” she said, sounding just a bit sheepish.
“We’ll show you how,” Peyton said. “It’s pretty easy to pick up.” Almost as an afterthought, she added, “Should probably watch out for the boys, though.”
“They seemed nice.” Now Bella sounded uncertain, and I wasn’t sure I entirely blamed her.
“Oh no, they’re nice,” I assured her. “But they are typical boys. As in they’re perverts. You got brothers?”
“One. But he’s like, ten. He’s more interested in catching bugs and lighting shit on fire than he is in chasing girls.” I looked over at Bella just in time to see her glance up from her phone. “Have you known them long?”
“Mol and I grew up with them,” Georgina replied. “So yeah, we’ve known them for ages now. Since preschool, basically. Peyt’s only been in our little group since, what, high school?”
“First day of Year 7,” Peyton confirmed with a nod. “This lot basically adopted me.” She indicated Georgina and I with her phone.
“Yeah, because you wouldn’t leave us alone,” Georgina teased her, and Peyton gave her the finger. “Anyway, Tay and Zac shouldn’t be too far away. I asked Tay to bring some extra spoons with him, and I think they’re going to pop out to Pizza Hut to pick up dinner before they get here. You guys are okay with pizza, yeah?”
“Always, Georgie,” I said, Peyton echoing me with a nod. “Pizza’s always good for us.”
True to Georgina’s word, Taylor and Zac weren’t too far away at all. They announced their arrival with a knock at our front door that almost sounded like one of them was kicking it. Georgina got up from shuffling cards at the dining table to answer it, letting the two of them in. They were laden down with pizza boxes, with Taylor’s stack topped off with a couple of foil-wrapped packages.
“We got pepperoni, Hawaiian, barbecue meatlovers, and a vegetarian for Peyt,” Taylor said as he and Zac deposited the pizza boxes on the kitchen bench. “And cheesy garlic bread to share.”
“Oh, sweet!” Peyton said happily. “I’ll get us some plates.”
“So why exactly did you get Tay to bring some spoons with him?” Zac asked as he nabbed a slice of pepperoni out of its box. “I thought that was a bit weird.”
“Georgie got it in her head to play Spoons tonight,” I replied as I reached for my own slice of Hawaiian. “Didn’t want to scare off our new flatmate by playing Cards Against Humanity right off the bat.”
“So basically it’s our Year 12 Formal afterparty all over again.”
I let out a chuckle. “Pretty much. And we didn’t have enough spoons in the kitchen, so Georgie got Tay to bring a bunch with him. Are Neil and Lij coming, by the way?”
“Last I heard they were.”
Neil and Elijah did indeed turn up, right as the rest of us were settling ourselves in the lounge room for our game night. I had crammed myself onto the lounge between Taylor and Peyton, doing my best not to knock elbows with either of them, while on the other side of the coffee table Georgina, Bella and Zac had perched on an assortment of plastic milk crates. Across the flat on the kitchen bench were a pile of spoons – the four from our cutlery drawer, and three that Taylor had brought with him.
“Pull up a pew anywhere you like,” Georgina said without looking up from a sheet of paper she had in front of her. It had all of our names written down one of its longer edges in black texta. She quickly added Neil and Elijah’s names to the bottom of the list. “We all know the rules?”
“Yeah Georgie, we know the rules, just deal the cards already,” Zac said. Georgina gave him the finger and began dealing out four cards apiece. I fanned my cards out in my hands as soon as I had them – the seven of clubs, jack of spades, six of diamonds and the jack of clubs. Once we all had our cards the game began, with Georgina taking a card from the top of the draw pile and immediately passing it off to Bella.
Zac was the first to collect a full hand. He was up off his crate so fast that he knocked it over, with the rest of us chasing him into the kitchen. A pitched battle ensued between Taylor, Peyton and Elijah for the last two spoons, with Elijah and Peyton emerging victorious. The rest of us cracked up laughing at the look of dismay and utter betrayal on Taylor’s face when he realised he had lost the first round.
“You can all go fuck a cactus,” Taylor grumbled as we resumed our seats, with Georgina almost gleefully writing an S next to Taylor’s name on her score sheet. She gave Taylor a sweet smile before gathering up all of our discarded cards, piling them on top of the draw pile and shuffling them again.
It was sometime around the middle of the evening, during a break between rounds, that I realised something was going on between Georgina and Zac. They had been sitting together since we’d started our game, but that wasn’t particularly unusual – they were good friends, best mates even, and had been since Taylor, Zac, Georgina and I were kids running around Gosford City Park of a weekend afternoon. It stood to reason that they’d want to sit next to one another tonight.
But tonight seemed like it was different somehow. Zac’s hand would linger a second or two longer on Georgina’s as he passed her another piece of pizza or a drink, or Georgina would almost tentatively brush a stray lock of hair out of Zac’s face. It was a little puzzling, but I shrugged it off just in time for us to resume the game.
It hit me right in the middle of the next round what exactly was going on, and I did my best to hide a smile.
Zac liked Georgina. And not only that, but I was almost certain that Georgina liked Zac as well, and more than just a friend at that. The real question here, though, was if either of them realised it yet.
“What are you smiling about?” Taylor asked me in almost an undertone as he passed me a card – the king of clubs, as it turned out. I gave it an almost cursory glance and immediately passed it off to Peyton.
“Tell you later,” I replied, my voice just as quiet. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Media and vis comm lecture from eleven-thirty till one-thirty, then a tute at half-past three.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Taylor studying me. “Want to meet up for lunch?”
“I’ll find you,” I replied.
The university food court was packed when I wandered in early the next afternoon, in search of not only a late-ish lunch but also some company. I had been studying almost non-stop for the last four hours and was in desperate need of a break. Not to mention something to eat.
I found Taylor sitting at one of the long tables near Subway. He had a notebook open in front of him and his iPad propped against his backpack, headphones wedged down over his hair, and was intently watching a video on YouTube. As I got closer I could see that he had filled almost a whole page of his notebook with the scrawl that passed for his handwriting.
“Hey,” I said as I sat down next to him, and poked him in the side for good measure. He reached out to his iPad and paused the video, and flicked a switch on his headphones before taking them off. “What’re you watching?”
“Visual communication lecture. As if the one this morning wasn’t enough.” He rolled his eyes almost theatrically, and I let out a quiet giggle. “Class today?”
I shook my head. “Not until tomorrow. I’ve been in the library almost all morning studying for my physiology lecture and prac.” Here I leaned forward and put my head down on the table. “Second-year medicine is brutal as fuck. I almost wish sometimes I’d picked something else.”
“You wouldn’t be happy doing anything else, though.” I felt one of Taylor’s hands on my back, his thumb beginning to rub in small circles between my shoulder blades. “I know you too well. Hungry?”
“Freaking starving.”
“Thought you might be. What’re you in the mood for?”
I raised my head and looked back over my shoulder. “Sushi?” I asked hopefully.
“I honestly don’t know how you can eat that.”
“Hey, you’re the one who asked what I was in the mood for,” I said as I straightened up, and punctuated my sentence with a shrug. “And I just happen to be in the mood for sushi.” I picked my backpack up off the floor, unzipped the front pocket and dug around for my wallet. “Can you get me some salmon and avocado nigiri?” I asked, and took a ten-dollar note out of my wallet. “And a bottle of water if they have any.”
Taylor took the money from me and gave me a quick salute. “On it, boss.”
He was back around ten minutes later with my sushi in one hand, a bottle of water tucked into the crook of an elbow, and a takeaway container of what looked like Indian food topped off with a plastic fork and spoon in his other hand. I took my sushi and water from him as he sat back down.
“So what did you want to tell me last night?” he asked as he cracked open his lunch. “I mean, it obviously wasn’t something you could talk about with everyone else in the room.” He started folding rice into what looked like a curry. “Though I’m not sure how this is any different,” he added almost as an afterthought, and gestured around at the crowd that packed the nearby tables.
For some reason I decided to wait until Taylor had started eating before I answered him. “I think your brother likes Georgie. More than as friends, I mean.”
Taylor promptly choked on his lunch, and I thumped him hard on the back. “What the actual fuck, Mol,” he rasped out once he could speak. “You couldn’t wait?”
“You asked,” I said with another shrug, and I took a bite out of my sushi.
“Well, yeah I asked, but while I’m eating?” He pulled a face at me and fished a piece of what I thought was chicken out of his lunch with his fork. “And anyway, what makes you think I give a crap about my little brother’s love life?”
“He’s hardly little. Almost as tall as you the last time I looked.”
“Ha-bloody-ha. You know what I mean.”
“Entirely aside from the potential for blackmail?” I pried the lid off the little tub of soy sauce that had come with my lunch and dipped my sushi into it. “Wouldn’t you rather be the first one to find out, rather than Dan? You know what he’s like.”
I could have sworn Taylor’s face went a few shades lighter at the mention of Georgina’s brother. We all knew very well how protective Daniel could get of his younger sister, especially when it came to members of the opposite gender. That I’d worked things out first and then passed that particular bit of information onto Taylor was practically a godsend.
“Good point,” Taylor managed to get out. He studied me for a little while. “What about Georgie?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s mutual.”
“Damn.”
“Mmm-hmm. Not sure if either of them realise it, though.” I took another bite of sushi. “I thought we could work on that. Getting them to figure it out, I mean.”
“That’s assuming I want to spend more time with Zac than I already do. We don’t even live in the same building. I’m in West, and he’s gone and holed himself up over in Trench Town because he can’t be fucked cooking for himself. Game night is about the only time we see each other for longer than ten minutes or so.”
“Doesn’t he take the same classes you did in second year?”
“Not as far as I know. He’s minoring in Music, not majoring.” He forked some of his lunch into his mouth before eyeing me, looking thoughtful. “I could always text him, I guess. See what he’s doing this arvo.”
“Won’t he think that’s a bit suss?”
Taylor shrugged. “Maybe. His problem if he does, though.” He put his fork down, balancing it against the rim of his lunch container, and fished his phone out of his pocket. It was rather battered and looked like it had been dragged along an unsealed road for a few kilometres. I watched as he swiped his thumb across its screen to unlock it, opened his messaging app, and started tapping out a new text message. While he was writing out his message I pulled my own phone out of my pocket, unlocked it and opened Facebook, deciding it wasn’t really my business what Taylor had to say to his brother.
“Done,” Taylor said after a couple of minutes. “Asked him if he wanted to hang out at the UniBar after class, if he doesn’t have anything else planned.”
“Reckon he’ll say yes?”
Taylor shrugged again. “Fucked if I know. But seeing as I offered to shout him dinner, probably. You know what he’s like.”
I knew very well what Zac was like, so I didn’t say anything. Instead, I finished off my sushi and got back to my feet. “I’d better get back to it. Thanks for the company, Tay.”
Taylor gave me a smile. “Anytime, Mol.”
I didn’t end up making it back to the flat until almost nine that night. By the time I stepped off the Shuttle at the stop across the road from the Innovation Campus, I was just about falling asleep on my feet and looking forward to collapsing into bed. Coffee would have been nice too, but I knew that I’d never get to sleep if I had any so late.
Peyton was sitting at the dining table scrolling one-handed through her phone when I wandered into the flat. She looked up as I eased the door shut behind me. “You’re home late,” she commented as I all but fell into one of the other chairs at the table.
“Studied almost all day,” I said. “I’m knackered.” My gaze landed on the faintly-steaming mug Peyton had close at hand. “Please don’t tell me that’s coffee.”
“Nope, tea. Too late for coffee.” She picked the mug up and took a sip. “You got class tomorrow?”
I nodded. “Not until half-past twelve though. I’m going to try and sleep in. If I try and study any more than I already did today it’s going to start leaking out my ears.” Peyton snickered at this. “Hey, can I talk to you about something?”
“‘Course you can.”
This time, I did wait until Peyton had finished drinking her tea before I came out with it. “I think Georgie and Zac like each other.”
“You what?”
“Not even kidding.”
“Bloody hell.” Peyton sat back down at the table and just looked at me. “When did this happen?”
“I honestly have no idea. I just know what I saw last night.” Here I proceeded to detail exactly what I’d seen going on between Georgina and Zac during games night, falling silent once I had finished speaking to give Peyton a chance to take it all in.
“Amazing,” Peyton said at last. “A-fucking-mazing. How the hell did none of us pick up on that before now?”
“I’m not saying anything to Georgie yet. Can you keep it to yourself until I figure out how to ask her?”
Peyton nodded. “It’s in the vault, I swear.”
“Thanks, Peyt.” I gave her a tired smile and eased myself back to my feet. “I’m going to bed. See you whenever it is I wake up.”
As tired as I was, though, I didn’t go to sleep right away. I lay in bed, staring up at the fairy lights that Taylor had helped me string up across my bedroom ceiling a day or so after we’d moved back to university, watching them blink lazily on and off and thinking.
Georgina was not only my best friend, but she was also the closest thing I had to a sister. We pretty much told each other everything – there wasn’t a thing we were shy about discussing. Not even Peyton got to hear all the gory details that Georgina and I told each other. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much, but there were just some things I was only comfortable talking to Georgina about.
I had to hope that the reason Georgina hadn’t told me anything about liking Zac was because she didn’t realise it herself, or she hadn’t figured out how to tell any of us yet. I wasn’t entirely sure which was more likely than the other.
But I couldn’t think about it any more that evening. Even though I didn’t have to be at university until midday at the absolute latest, I did want to get up at a halfway reasonable hour so that I had enough time to get ready for class. And for that I needed to get some sleep.
I felt around for the battery pack attached to my fairy lights and flicked its switch, rolled over under my blankets, and settled down to sleep, allowing myself to be carried off on the sound of waves breaking on the nearby beach.