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Life Update

Hey friends,

Thought it was worth leaving an update for anyone who is wondering where I've gone.

I'm all good, and I intend to continue with the story, but I just haven't had the bandwidth whatsoever, in light of some sad things happening in my immediate family.

Sadly, my dad, who has been ill for years, is facing some health complications. He hasn't felt like himself for a long time, and in the last month we learned his heart condition is terminal - simply put, he doesn't have a lot of time left, and my family and I are coping with it as best we can.

Its been incredibly difficult to see him lose independence, and become sicker and weaker in a way that seems slow but also too fast. I dunno. It's awful. There's this constant hum of dread and sadness running underneath everything, and I'm really tired.

I'll get back to the story when I can - come in and out for a while if I have the motivation to, and hopefully eventually return to posting the way I used to. I don't know. I miss it a lot. I think about it a lot, but not a lot of things are bringing true joy these days.

I miss you guys too! Thanks for sticking around <3

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please tell me lucky boy isnt over!

Hi! No it isn't (I hope) - I haven't worked on it in a while because I have some pretty heavy personal stuff going on. But It will pass, and I'll be back!

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Tag Game Bingo

Thanks for the tag @tikay21 !

Bingo lol

Been in a Long Distance Relationship

The first 2 years with my boyfriend were long distance. Then he moved to my town, and eventually into my house. I can't imagine how we managed at first, but I guess you do it for love etc.

Been on an Awkward Date

Yeah this one guy who worked in a factory. Said his dream was to become the factory manager and prevent people from going on their lunch breaks if they didn't work hard enough. Slept on my couch.

Met a Celebrity

Chris DeBurgh has a castle in my home county. I met him twice there at a Christmas function, and he did the whole thing where everyone begged him to sing a song and he pretended he wasn't going to. Sang Space Man Came Travelling for us and all the old people literally oohed and ahhed and took pictures of him. He was nice though.

Failed a Drivers Test

Three times. I cried two different times, once in the test centre and also under the hood of the car when the instructor told me to check the oil.

Have a Food Allergy

Gluten and dairy. Very hard. Hell. Never stopped being hard and annoying, even after seven years. Everyone always asks me about it when I'm ordering at restaurants. Like, no, I wasn't born this way. I started feeling sick every day and let it go for a year until it was unbearable. It happened because of an emotional trauma (A BOY) and I've not been right since. Lmao. Poetic.

Broken a Bone Before

Only my finger. My brother stood on it when I was ten, and nobody, including me, knew it was broken. It set wrong, and now it's crooked, but because it's my dominant hand and I'm and artist & musician, I can't see myself ever having a chance to fix it. Oh well. One nice hand, one ugly hand it is.

I wanna tag @sirianasims @lynzishell @rebouks @thebramblewood @ethicaltreatmentofcowplants and @invisiblequeen if you feel like it.

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As storytellers, there are so many pieces of our craft and I'm curious how you would rank each step of the process. Rank each of the following on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 lowest, 5 highest):

Setting up the scene (building sets, decorating, etc),

Posing the sims (creating / find poses, and setting up the sims),

Styling the sims (cc hunting, time spent in cas),

Writing the dialogue/story,

Editing the photos.

Send to three other story simblrs and get to know more about each others favorite and least favorite part of this crazy process!

oooh! Such a good question

Writing the story

I'm here to write, people! I guess it kind of varies depending on how I feel, but writing is generally my favourite part of the process. Also the most challenging, but fulfilling etc etc.

2. Setting up the scene

WHEN I'M IN THE MOOD. I love sitting down and creating someone's house, adding all the details etc, but when I'm not bothered and have to then it's pretty rough.

3. Styling the sims

It's fine, I don't mind it, but I like to get in and out of CAS pretty quickly. I feel overwhelmed by the amount of content, and it's often not easy to find something that fits both the vibe and the era.

4. Posing the sims

It's fine. It doesn't kill me, and I have the process pretty streamlined, but it doesn't exactly spark joy.

5. Editing the photos

Bleh. I tolerate it. It's fun for like, one screenshot, but repeating the edit 30 times is so draining.

Thanks for asking! I had to think about some of these. I guess it's changeable overall, depending on what I'm in the mood for, but that's the fun thing about writing this way. If you don't feel like doing one part of it, you might enjoy something else instead.

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Freeze! 🔫 you're under arrest for being so lovely 🩷🥰 Copy this message to other blogs that you think are amazing and deserve it 🩷✨️ Keep the game going and make others feel amazing, appreciated, loved, wonderful and important 🩷🫂

awwwwwe! thank you so much <3

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May. 

The sun’s hot on the window. It beams into the centre, onto the side of my face. The birds must be singing—making a racket in the trees, the leaves of which I can only see the impression of, blurred through patterned glass. I lift one side of my headset to hear them, but any sound of burgeoning summer is drowned out by the cacophony of voices and the clacking of a dozen keyboards.

The call connects with a soft chime, and I straighten up.

“Good afternoon. You’re through to support. My name is Jude. How can I help you?” 

“Okay, where the fuck is my iPhone?”

Feel a thin smile on my lips. I will have quit this job by next week. 

“I understand that’s really frustrating. Let me take a look for you.”

The man—surely all head and no neck by the sound of his voice—barks me through the sequence of digits that is his order number, while I stare at the Freundlichkeit ist oberstes Gebot im Kundenkontakt sign pinned to the cubicle above my computer. Friendliness is the top priority in customer interaction. Feel a bit indignant looking at it—the one-sidedness of it. Like a little peasant, I rattle obliging phrases down the phone at this man who, according to my personal rules outside this place, is not allowed to speak to me like this. 

On this phone, however, he can say whatever he wants. 

“So it’s lost then?” he snarls once I’ve pulled up his order. “Who lost it? Who the fuck lost my phone?”

Take a breath. “I completely understand your frustration. I will raise a ticket with our logistics team to investigate, and if it has been confirmed missing, we will send a replacement or issue a refund. Whichever you prefer.”

“I’d prefer to have my iPhone now, like I was supposed to.”

“Thanks. Your feedback helps us improve. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

He hangs up. 

I take my headset off and pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers. I forgot to use his name on the call. The team lead flagged me for that last week, saying customers like to feel human, as though the entire system wasn’t designed to the contrary. 

Thirty seconds of reprieve before the next call hits. Just enough time to remember I’m a person.

Slide my phone from my pocket, and the home screen reveals one new message. 

Evie. 

Eagerly awaiting your lunch update, pls.  Trying a bubble tea atm. Tastes like nothing. 

A picture of her cup against the backdrop of South William Street. Red brick buildings. Cracking sun. It makes me feel depressed. Forty-three minutes until I’m allowed to access my sad sandwich in the company fridge. I’ll spare her a picture.

Start to type something back. 

Grim. Always thought those looked good, in a kind of freaky frogspawn way tbh. There’s a place–

Chime. A call connects. 

Phone back in the pocket. Headset back on. 

“Good afternoon. You’re through to support. My name is Jude. How can I help you?” 

In the evening, after escaping the call center, I sit with Astrid outside a bar in Mitte. Her long, bare legs are stretched out in the golden light. The garlic-slick remains of her prawn tapas sit in a dish on the table, and I, pencil to paper, sketch, for the hundredth time, a diagram of a clay sculpture. 

“You’re allowed to stop working,” she drawls, following several minutes of silence. “It is possible to enjoy a Friday evening if you put your mind to it.”

“Mm, I know,” paw for my glass of wine and drink some without looking up from the page. “Just with everything... the job’s killing me this week. Can’t wait for next week when I can finally… you know, quit.”

“Well, not everything you deliver has to be perfect. Your assignments don’t matter so much in second year.”

“I’d rather have something to show at the end of the semester. You see where I’m coming from?” I gesture to the page, the drawing of a head, my head maybe, though it will probably be a decision based on time once I get into the sculpture studio. 

She sighs, heavy and hassled, and adjusts her sunglasses on her nose. “If a genie granted me one wish, it would be that you could just relax and enjoy your life.”

“Thanks, that’s nice,” I say, not knowing whether she intended it to be or not. Too busy to care. 

A mask, I think. Yes, the head should have a mask on it. Kind of halfway off. Scrawl a note to find a book about that in the university library on Monday. 

“There she is,” Astrid says, no excitement in her voice, and I look up as Mia crosses the plaza. Jeans and a t-shirt, hair sticking out from her ponytail in a halo of frizz, and a blush from the vigour of her walk across her cheeks and nose. Same flat expression she wore at Christmas.

Astrid doesn’t stand to greet her, but cocks her head to the side, peering up at her sister through her shades. “Hello,” she says. “How are you?”

“Fine,” says Mia. “I like your top.” 

Astrid just smiles. Shows no teeth. 

To me, then: “Hello, Jude.”

I tuck my sketchbook onto my lap and gesture towards the empty seat. “Hey, good to see you again. Sit down. Do you want to look at the wine menu?”

“Ah,” she slumps into the chair, brushes bits of her hair away from her forehead. “No, I’m not drinking alcohol. Not before performing.” Takes the menu anyway, perusing it while Astrid swishes pinot noir around her glass. 

“And the rehearsals?” She says. “They were fine?”

“Yes, they went well,” Mia flips to the cocktail page. “I’ve been finding Rachmaninoff emotionally consuming. It’s probably the most demanding concerto I have had to perform, so I’m feeling tired.”

Astrid nods. 

“What about it is so demanding?” I say, and hope their perception of my intelligence isn’t hinging on my knowledge of Rachmaninoff and his concertos, or whatever. “Is it like, you know, long, or something?”

“Mm, thirty minutes, approximately. It’s more about the endurance needed.”

“Right, right.”

She peers at me. “You’re coming to the concert?”

“Tomorrow, yeah. With my mom and sister. They’re actually flying in tomorrow morning, so yeah. They’re excited. My sister mostly, but my mom too. She sort of has an idea of the kind of person who listens to classical music and likes to play the part. If you know what I mean.” 

Mia nods. “Yes, I do.”

Wipe my hands on the sides of my jeans. “Hey, did you mean it, what you said at Christmas? About letting Ivy backstage and stuff? No pressure if you can’t, but I did want to ask.”

She hesitates. “I–”

“Oh, Mia is too busy for that,” Astrid says quickly. “Already going through so many long rehearsals, and then bringing a child around? I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Mia looks at her but says nothing. Heat crawls up my cheeks and into my forehead. “Okay, well, Ivy is not just some random kid. She’s my sister.”

Astrid shrugs. “Yes, but it’s a professional concert, and she’s still a child.”

“She’s a really great person.”

She just sips her drink.

I adjust my chair. “Well, I’m meeting them tomorrow at their hotel. They got one near the concert hall. It’s their first time in Berlin, so… we’ll make a day of it. Ivy’s apparently been listening to the concert programme on YouTube non-stop. She’s like, obsessed with the music.”

Nobody says anything. 

“Glad we’re all excited,” I mutter. 

Mia glances up. “I’m glad she’s coming.”

I’m not sure if she means it, or if she’s just being polite. Regardless, the conversation moves on. Something about a person they both know, or knew, and I turn my sketchbook over in my lap. Stare at the unfinished face. Mine or not mine. The mask sits crookedly on his brow. 

I scribble over it and close the page.

Beginning // Prev // Next

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9 people I want to get to know better

tagged by @swiftviolets and @tikay21 thank you darlings 💋

last song: I was going to lie to sound cool, but y'all deserve the truth. It was 'If I Only Had the Nerve' from The Wizard of Oz. I just booked a job as a pit musician in the musical in November and I have to familiarise myself with the score lmaoo I'm not just vibing to that on my daily walk.

favourite colour: Red forever and ever. All red. Every red.

currently watching: The Last of Us is the only thing I have on the go right now.

last movie: Small Things Like These

currently reading: Being Various

sweet, savory or spicy: if I don't lay into a packet of smoky bacon crisps on the daily I feel like I'm going to expire.

relationship: seeing a guy (for 6 years)

current obsession: my friend introduced me to the Finch app about a month ago and omg if I'm not nurturing the shit out of that cute baby bird.

last googled: walnut bed frame king. (My bed is on it's last legs - literally)

currently working on: crocheting a shopping tote! also blocking the knit jumper I finished this evening. And Lucky Boy, whenever I have the time ❤️

Tagging @sirianasims @likelyamused @rebouks @ethicaltreatmentofcowplants @madebycoffee @daniigh0ul @earthmoonz @aheathen-conceivably @bloomingkyras

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It’s evening, and the steady drizzle from the afternoon has turned into a torrent. It pummels the roof of her building. Sixth floor. Pellets on slate. I take the spare key from my bag—soaked through the canvas—and my fingertips have that rubbery, dulled sensation, as if I’ve been holding them underwater.

Astrid is on her couch, watching something on her laptop. She looks up. “Oh, hi.” Blinks. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”

“I sent you a text.”

“My phone died.”

Kick my runners off and leave them outside her door, on the tile. My socks then, too. Sodden, tucked into them. “Is it alright? I was working in the area. I couldn’t really face cycling home like this.”

“Sure.” She gives me a startled look, taking me in. “You’re soaked.”

“Yeah.”

She gets up and goes to the bathroom, comes out with a towel—unfolded in her arms—approaching me like you would a toddler or a wet dog. “Here,” she says, and rubs it over my hair. “You must be cold.”

“Yeah, I am.” Her sleeve smells like her perfume, of rose and blackcurrant. 

“Oh. You should get in the bath. You can take your clothes off here.”

My clothes are weighty in my hands—saturated denim and jersey, dripping onto the floor. My skin beneath is slick with rain and cold. There’s an odd self-consciousness in my nakedness—a childlike thing, like the fear of being seen too closely in the school changing room.

She gathers my clothing and puts it into a plastic laundry basket. “I’ll take it to the basement.” 

I shake my head. “I can do it.”

“It’s fine. You run the bath. Put your towel on the radiator so it’s warm.”

She leaves for the laundry room, and I turn on the old taps in the bath, metal squeaking, and steaming water spluttering into the tub. Ease myself in. Ears ringing through the complete silence of her empty apartment, while Berlin pulses with life outside the tiny window. 

I submerge my entire head and live there for a minute. The low throb of my heart, my breath bubbling across my face. Thoughts swirling, the slow boil of dissatisfaction, the distance from everything and everyone. I imagine her down there in the dingy basement, my clothes spinning in the washer. Running into a neighbour, and then forgetting I’m even here. 

Head above again, to the smell of acetone in the bathroom, nail varnish remover open on the sink. I use her shampoo, then. The one that smells like she does, in its matte black bottle. 

My phone buzzes in my bag. I hear it in the living room, and my muscles tense. For some reason, I am convinced it’s Evie. Texting me, like, hey sorry I had to hang up earlier. If you’re free again now?

And if I were free, would I call her? Would it be insane to do it in the bath, with the iridescent pink of my girlfriend’s shampoo still diffusing across the surface of the water? And then, what? Speak to her naked? Tell her about the rainstorm and the loopy old woman I encountered on my shift? No. Evie would know—she’d hear it in my voice—that I’m naked. That I’ve let my guard down. She’d pick it up just from the way I breathe.

Still, I sit up in the ripples of my body and consider climbing out to answer her text. 

Then Astrid comes back. Click of the door locking behind her, and I don’t move, like stillness could cancel out the betrayal. 

She comes to the bathroom door. “That better?”

“Yeah, thanks. It’s perfect.” 

No doubt she thinks I’m being weird, bolt upright in the bath with a guilty face on me, but she comes closer, kneels on the floor by the bath and rubs her hand on the back of my neck, sending shivers up the back of my scalp. 

“I’m glad you came over.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“It felt strange, this week, being apart.”

Feel myself thaw toward her. It all hinging on her acknowledgement. “I know. Look, I shouldn’t have said that stuff to you in the gallery.”

She shakes her head. “No, but it’s okay now. I’d rather not be upset about it. I just…” She gently rakes my nails down my spine, fingertips swirling in the water. “... find it hard when you’re like that towards me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s not even about you most of the time.”

She nods, her expression soft. Sad eyes, full lips drawn into a pout. When she’s like this, I feel so in love with her it stuns me.

“You don’t deserve it,” I whisper, and lift my hand to touch her face. Only remembering, somehow, that I’m wet when she flinches slightly in surprise. “I just worry about Steffan. Like, I worry about what he wants, and I know you know I worry, but it–”

“I wish you would trust that I know how to handle myself,” she says with that same gentleness as before. “I know how he is, and I know what he wants, but I see an opportunity—see the contacts he has, and the places I could go…” My thumb traces a streak across her cheek. “You probably had women–girls–before me that probably needed you to protect them, but I don’t need that from you. I’m not asking for it.”

“I see that.”

“I’m not weak like they are.”

I pause. Heat flares behind my ribs, but I say only: “Okay.” Take my hand away to trail the surface of the bath, and the water ripples. The others, Michelle, Alison, Evie–they weren’t weak either, but intricate. Unique examples of strong. Their own path, their individual complexities. I want to gently defend them, though she doesn’t even know it’s them she is talking about. 

She straightens up then, shakes her hair away from her face. “I think you should have something to eat. Are you hungry?”

“Mm.”

“I got pizza earlier, and I didn’t finish it. I know it’s–”

“It’s okay, I’ll have it.”

She lets me eat it in her bed, laptop playing some old British procedural show, and her head upon my shoulder. The overhead lights are off, just her antique lamp glows in the corner—soft orange light through the velvet shade. This is how forgiveness manifests. 

Later, when she’s in the bathroom brushing her teeth for bed, I go–finally–to my bag for my phone. Like the telltale heart in the inside pocket. Feel my heart thump as I pull it out, half-hoping, half-dreading a message from Dublin.

There is one, but from Jonas. Telling me he’s pickling radishes for the first time.

Hell yeah! Cool, man. 

I send back an emoji of a grin with a drop of sweat on its forehead. Relief, maybe, that it’s him I’m hearing from, and not someone else. Or a shameful pang that I’ll quickly stash beneath the warmth of Astrid’s bed. 

She comes back, climb under the duvet, loops her arms around me. Breathing softly into my neck like everything should be fixed now. I don’t want to move.

Beginning // Prev // Next

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they are so toxic but so beautiful

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Friday, days since the exhibition, and I haven’t seen her. Spoken to her, yes, by text, though her messages are short, formal. Good morning, I’ll say, and she’ll respond the same. Check-ins during the day, here and there. Skipping lunch this afternoon. Is my phone charger at yours? Maybe I’ll call you after your shift. Feeling wrecked, actually. Maybe tomorrow.

I don’t go to hers after work, but home to Neukolln, where the apartment is always cold, and Dalia is there. Having a cigarette outside, yammering on to Jonas through the half-open balcony door, or painting her toenails on the new sofa with the TV on. 

I want to ask her if she’s heard anything from Astrid with more substance than her sparse messages to me provide, but don’t, anxious to seem like a man who’s methodically destroying his own relationship. 

“She’s super busy this week,” I explain, when one of them asks why I’m home so often. “College stuff, you know?”

Dalia nodded then, saying, “Yeah, she mentioned a lot of art history essay work, I guess. That makes sense.”

Art history. Yes. Steffan—that smug, self-righteous bastard. 

I go to his lecture, anyway. My grades depend on it.

It’s warm on the second floor of the Bundesallee building, students settling into their seats, raindrops still clinging to black coats, and the smell of damp wool in the air.

I find a seat near the back. 

He’s five minutes late, Steffan, strolling into the room with a takeaway coffee, all rumpled with that leather satchel slung casually over his shoulder in a way that ignites an irrational rage in me. 

Modernism and the Avant Garde continued today, something about wreckage. Death of the renaissance, or whatever—I understand in broad strokes. I write: “Colonialism as aesthetic resource?” and stare at it until the words blur. No idea what I mean by it, really.

Steffan makes some joke that people laugh at half a second before I understand it, as though they were briefed beforehand, not that I would likely laugh, anyway. He’s not that funny, if it matters. 

But then, like some petty punishment, he picks on me for an opinion of some Höch photomontage, slight mocking tilt of his head. My face goes hot. I stutter something about modern life, fragmentation, gender, or whatever, and he interrupts to rephrase it in more elevated terms, makes the point his own. The girl next to me writes what I said into her notebook. 

Lunchtime, in the drizzle, and a headache behind one of my eyes, Astrid sends me a text. 

Lecture go okay? 

I’ll respond later. 

The smell of the bakery softens the edge of things, stomach grumbling like some animal coming to life. Hunger, my constant companion. Join the queue and peruse, peer through the crowd toward the sandwiches, enticing behind the glass. 

I’m still holding Astrid’s message open when a girl joins the line ahead of me. White puffer coat, light brown hair skimming her shoulders, weight shifted to one foot, and her boot turned inwards. I get an anxious flutter in my chest. 

She orders a sandwich in the wrong language, of course. It is not Evie, and her droll, midlands accent, but something about her is close enough to snap my brain to attention. I stand expectantly, like she might turn around and recognise me, as if she’s in a bakery in Berlin ordering a sandwich. 

I used to see her everywhere, phantom versions. Like, only Evie from the side, or Evie in the corner of my eye, until I looked, and it wasn’t, but it’s been so long since she’s haunted me like that. Seeing her here feels like the return of an old ghost.

 I take out my phone and snap a sly picture of the girl. Start a new chat in the message app. 

Thought you’d followed me to Berlin. 

I attach the photo. 

Your German doppelgänger? 

My heart rate ticks up, a rush that feels like getting away with something. I glance around the bakery as if someone might be reading over my shoulder, though no one here knows either woman.

Evie types, three dots bouncing. 

I have reached the top of the queue, and now the worker looks at me expectantly. 

“Uh, whatever that girl just ordered.” 

I order a pastry too. Stand glued to my phone while I wait for it. 

New message. 

So weird, because I just saw your doppelgänger, too.

She sends a picture of a church gargoyle, snow capped, his grotesque little mouth gaping open in a frozen scream. 

I laugh. So stupid. 

Yeah, spitting image. Still snowing in Dublin? 

My lunch is ready. I take it outside and unwrap the sandwich beneath the bakery awning as rain patters on the pavement. 

As you can see. 

Cheese and salami on wholegrain bread. Fuck sake. German Evie has horrible taste. Text clumsily with my left thumb while gnawing on it. 

So much for spring. The weather in that country is crazy.

‘That country?’ You mean yours? Are you suddenly not Irish anymore?

I meant our country, obviously.

Too late. We’ve already been disowned.

Huff out a laugh, step out onto the street and amble along, staring at the screen. It fades, and I tap it with my thumb to keep it alive. Hesitate over the keyboard. Type something and delete it. I’ve always been a shit texter. Never had the patience for it. And there’s something I miss in her voice, the cadence of home. Before I can think better of it, I ring her. 

She picks up after two rings, confused sounding down the line: “Hello?”

“Yeah, hi.”

A beat. 

“I…” clear my throat. “I wanted to infer from your tone whether you were amused or annoyed.” 

“Oh. Well, you sound insecure.”

“Okay, to be honest, I knew you were amused. I just don’t like texting. Especially while I’m trying to eat.”

A rustling on the line, like she’s switching from one ear to the other. “What are you eating?”

“Thought you didn’t want to hear about my lunch.”

“Well, tell me about it if you want. There’s nothing urgent happening with me.”

“Uh, a multigrain roll with salami and cheese.”

“Multigrain?”

“Yeah.”

“With like, eleven types of seeds?”

“Mhm.”

She guffaws. “Jesus, you’ve gone awful healthy, haven’t you?”

“I got a vanilla pastry too,” I say for some reason, knowing her approval of the pastry will dictate my enjoyment of it.

“Ah, sounds nice.”

I take a bite, and with it still in my mouth, ask her, “what did you have? For lunch, like.”

“A flat white.”

Interesting. “Nice. A substantial meal.”

“Well, everything is closed at the minute, on account of the snow, so.”

“Everything?”

“Yeah, except for this random coffee shop on Dame Street. It’s like the apocalypse over here, to be honest. They’re after shutting the place down.”

“They’ve been known to do that, haven’t they?” I check myself. “I mean, we have, of course. We, the Irish, a collective.”

“Ha ha,” she drawls, audible eye roll. “So what are you doing today, anyway?”

I feel a lift in my chest, like, yes, she’s talking back, letting me talk to her. I continue quickly in case she changes her mind. “Nothing now. I had a lecture this morning, and now it’s lunch, so I’m just talking a walk.”

“How was it?”

“Fine, yeah. Fine.” Time to shift the subject off me. “And you?”

“Like I said, just grabbed a flat white. I’m in town.”

“Doing what?”

She makes a sound, like “Hm,” then says, “Walking around like you. Killing time.”

“And what are your Fridays like when it’s not snowing?”

There’s a beat of silence. When she laughs, it sounds thin. “Um, whatever, like. I just hang out.”

“With friends?”

A noise of vague agreement.

“Where, usually?”

“My God. You’re asking questions the way my mam would ask questions.”

“I am?”

“Yeah! Like, where were you? Who was there? Et cetera. I dunno what I do on Fridays. I just go with whatever is happening. Tonight I’ll probably watch TV. Is that exciting enough?”

I drop it. “Yeah, TV is exciting.”

“You don’t watch TV,” she says, accusatory tone on her. “You’re far too busy.”

“Is that so? Busy doing what?”

“Being mysterious. Getting involved in mysterious activities.”

I smile. Mysterious sounds better than panicking over college, ferrying takeaways, and arguing with Astrid.

 “You’re right, I am doing that. Predictable.”

“Knew it.”

We talk for twenty, maybe thirty minutes while I have my lunch. Just walking, looping the same streets. My shoes are soaked through now, socks damp and cold against my feet, but I keep going. Don’t remember most of what we say, just her voice in my ear, the crunch of old snow under her feet, a stray voice now and then as she passes someone on the path.

I imagine her walking there, that curved street around Trinity, maybe, the frosted buds on the trees, sky ice blue and harsh, shadows sharp over the ground.

“I should go,” she says eventually, and my hair is wet now from the rain.

“Yeah. Call me back anytime. This was nice.”

The line goes quiet. 

I check the time. The message from Astrid waits there on the screen. 

Lecture go okay?

My finger hovers, then I switch off the screen. What could I say? That I sat there hating her professor? That he was a fucking dickhead? And that I spent my lunch walking around in the rain talking to another woman? 

I head back towards college, the phone still hot in my pocket.

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testing new shaders & editing, and UM

She's so beautiful. I am screaming

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The gallery hallway is quieter, colder, the faint smell of cigarette smoke seeping through the courtyard door. Leaned against a wall, I stare down into my drink, gone flat now, swishing around in the glass. It doesn’t taste good. Never was a fan of champagne, or any drink with an opinion of itself. So much commotion, it seems, over something with the power to disappoint instantly. 

I hear her coming before I see her. Those shoes with the needle-thin heels clacking across the floor, through the gallery doors. In these, she’s tall enough for us to see eye-to-eye. Unsettles me a bit. 

I straighten up. “Hey.”

“Hello,” the buzz of conversation continues behind closed doors. “They really like to talk, those men.”

“Yeah, seems it. He–they seem impressed by your stuff.” I don’t intend for my words to have a curve, to have their back up like a threatened cat, but it is how they come out. She hardly seems to notice. 

“It was Steffan’s friend, really. He writes for an architectural journal, and wanted to talk about doing an article about the exhibition. My pieces remind him of soft brutalism.”

“Ah, yes. Soft brutalism. That’s what I thought, too. Found it obvious.”

Clumsy joke, worsened by my flat delivery. 

She doesn’t smile. “I never got the impression you thought that.”

“Oh, well, like, I didn’t. Not really.”

“You thought it was challenging, you said.”

Hesitating. Did I say that? It takes a beat. “Ah, yeah. Anspruchsvoll.” Fantastic, really, to know what the word means. “Yeah, I do. I think it’s challenging and ambitious and fucking… uh, sophisticated.”

She half-smiles. “Ah, that’s what Steffan said, too.”

Violent irritation jolts through my spine. Words slipping before I can catch them. “Ah, and was he talking about the work or about you?”

Her eyes sharpen. “What?” 

“Just...” I look past her down the hallway, at the abstract painting hanging on the wall. “He thinks a lot of you, doesn’t he?” 

She scoffs. “It was kind of him, actually, to come tonight and support me.” 

“Alright, yeah. It was.”

“And it was kind of him to introduce me to his friend, the writer.” Her voice takes on that careful, measured tone. “That was an important networking moment. I’ll need these connections when I leave—” 

“Yeah, but did he have to keep touching you all the time?” The words come hot and fast. 

A thick silence. She crosses her arms, spine straightening.

“On your...” My hand gestures vaguely in the air between us. “All over your arm every time you said something, his hand on your back. Christ, Astrid, the way he looks at you—like you’re a piece in his art collection.” 

A muscle twitches near her temple. “So this is why you’re standing out here sulking. You were waiting to have this argument again. It’s like déjà vu.” 

“Again? You mean after all the times he insisted on holding you back after class? Or the critique session last month?” I lower my voice as someone passes by. “I don’t know why you can’t acknowledge the way he talks to you, like you’re—” 

“Like I’m what, Jude?” Dangerous edge to her voice now. 

“Like you’re his. His student, his discovery, his—” I struggle for the word in any language. “It’s the way he ferries you around to his friends. Like you’re his little protégée, or like he wants them all to get a good look at you. It’s...” 

Her eyebrows shoot up. “What exactly are you implying?” 

“I don’t know!” I snap, then check myself. Quieter now: “It’s not right. You don’t see how his eyes follow you when you walk away?” 

Astrid takes a step back. Controlled voice. “It sounds as though you spend a lot of time thinking about Steffan.” She tilts her head. “Do you think he thinks of you quite so much?” 

The question hits like a slap. “Right. Jesus. Okay.” 

“You’re so interested in him, in this idea of what he thinks of me, or why he likes my work so much.” She studies me like I’m one of her art pieces. “I just wonder why.” 

“Because it feels obvious that he also likes you,” I say tightly. “For reasons that have nothing to do with your work.” 

“Oh, because a woman who looks like me could not possibly create something valuable.” Her voice rises, color touching her cheeks. “Any success I have must be entirely because of the way I look? Is that what you think?” 

“You’re twisting my words. I meant—” 

“You meant what? That my adviser appreciates me for my looks rather than my talent? That my work is secondary to whatever imagined attraction you’ve conjured up?” 

“No, I—” 

“Okay, and what’s the endgame here? You think we will sleep together? That’s the kind of person you assume I am?” 

The conversation slips from me like fistfuls of water. “No. That’s not my point. It’s that he… and I… It makes me feel—” 

“Ugh, God,” she groans and throws her eyes to the ceiling. “It makes you feel. It hurts your feelings. It’s always so melodramatic, these conversations, repeatedly. Since you got back from Ireland, this is every day for me. I’m tired of defending myself against things I haven’t done.” 

I keep my mouth shut. Stomach souring with shame and anger. 

“Do you know what Steffan said to me tonight? He said my work shows remarkable confidence. Confidence.” She lets out a bitter laugh. “Meanwhile, my boyfriend is hiding in hallways because he can’t bear to watch me succeed.” 

I stare at the champagne glass, rum my thumb around the rim, wishing for something stronger. 

“Please,” she says, genuine fatigue in her voice now. “I want to enjoy my evening. I want it to be about me, not about you, and what is making you sad and insecure today. Enough.” She takes a breath. “I’m going to go back in. Will you come?” 

The question hangs—an offering, despite everything. “In a bit,” I say finally, and she turns, loud heels across the floor as she pushes through the door into the noise.

I stay where I am—the sound of her swallowed by the gallery’s chatter. Slipping back into her world, a small group crowding her, and Steffan’s hand there, appearing by her elbow before the door swings shut. 

Drain the champagne. Horrible. Leave the glass on a plinth.  

Outside in the courtyard, freezing air, cigarette smoke dense and seductive. I borrow a smoke from someone I know from college, chatting to some others, their fluent German filling the space. I say “Ja, sicher, genau,” about fifteen times, picking out the words I know from their conversation, contemplating the ones I don’t. 

Later, half an hour, maybe, I’ll go back into the gallery, stand by the edge of her spotlight, practice words under my breath that might impress someone in her group. Vielschichtig. Eigenwillig. Facettenreich. But for now, I lean against the cold, flat wall, silent, and let myself be foreign. 

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A flute of champagne. Delicate thing in my hand. Protective of it as I navigate through the gallery, past groups of observers, making comments about the pieces using German words I have not learned yet. Anspruchsvoll. I commit that one to memory. Something to look up in the dictionary after I get home.

She’s at the back of the room, black polo necked top stark against the white paint on the wall, and the spill of her hair down her spine. Steffan, the art history lecturer, listens with intent interest to whatever she is saying. Sees me coming, eyes flicker to me, before pretending he hasn’t, and he deepens his frown of concentration. 

Midway through her point, I don’t interrupt, but quietly slot into place next to her. Confidently voicing the intention of her work.

“...this incredible societal push for positivity. It’s almost aggressive, actually, without direction or nuance,” she takes the champagne. “I wanted to make work that disrupts that. That invites a kind of… necessary slowness. I tried to make something that… advocates for introspection, I suppose.”

“Yes, of course,” Steffan, nodding. “I sensed that. Particularly with the collection of three displayed together. Your work seems to represent an offering of solace amongst the fatigue of contemporary life.”

German. Something I understand well without speaking well. A frustrating thing. A link missing between what I want to say and what I actually can, like a via missing in a circuit board, a connection faltered, and nothing to carry the words to my mouth. 

Like now, when Steffan acknowledges me right before it might be considered rude not to. “Jude must have some fascinating thoughts about the work, too, seeing as he has been spending so much time in your studio.”

I falter. Plaster on a grin. “Yes, it’s true,” I say slowly, foreign accent seeping through the words. “I have spent some time watching her create the work. I even helped her… um, I helped her to photograph it for the… magazine piece.”

She leans in and squeezes my arm with pride or embarrassment, I’m not sure. 

“Aha,” Steffan says, eyebrows creeping beneath his tousled flop of hair. “But what exactly is your impression of it?”

I squint at a piece balancing on a pedestal, an abstract mass of porcelain, vaguely Roman-temple-esque. Black and purple glaze dribbles down the sides like ink from a newspaper left in the rain. It’s like deciphering a riddle. Something about collapse. Something classical, then undone. Post-something. Post-truth? Post-intention?

“I think it’s… anspruchsvoll.” Pray the word carries the right kind of weight. I leave it hanging there, like it should mean something profound. Steffan’s eyes flick to my girlfriend, amused. 

“Ah, right, of course. But as I was saying to Astrid earlier, it’s really the concept behind the work that’s most intriguing, don’t you think?” he says, the effortless flow of native German pouring out of him. “It’s all about the intellectual rigor. You’ve likely noticed that, too, but maybe not in the same way as Astrid. I’m sure it is anspruchsvoll to you, but I might have thought you’d have a more sophisticated understanding of the work by now, no?” He laughs then, so I know it’s a joke. 

Astrid, with a brittle smile on her lips, sips her champagne. “I think Jude’s got a pretty sharp take on the work, actually. He just needs the right words, don’t you think?”

“Ah, but we are in Germany, no? Shouldn’t we all be speaking the language? Jude, you’ll be writing your dissertation eventually, won’t you? Might want to brush up on some of the language for that. ‘Anspruchsvoll’ only goes so far, after all.”

I nod. Yes, Steffan. Thank you Steffan. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten I’m a foreigner. Haven’t forgotten the diabolical art history grades I rack up in your class. Those big smug question marks on my misspellings appear in my nightmares, thank you. An essay that took me five days, tossed back on my desk like it had been written on a takeaway napkin, big note on it, saying, essentially: What???

“God, Steffan,” Astrid laughs too quickly. “You’re being an ass.”

“He knows it’s a joke,” He slaps my arm, stands too close, as though we are friends. That thin, patronising smile on him. “Just kidding, Jude. Your German’s definitely better. Just needs a little polish for the heavy lifting ahead.”

His eyes drift over my shoulder to someone more interesting, and then he leans in to Astrid, touches her arm. “Oh. I have a friend over there I’d like to introduce you to. Could I take you to meet him?”

She hesitates. Glances at me like she might ask, might defer. Then back to him. “Yes, sure,” she says. “That would be fine.”

I look too, through the crowd at groups of arty types, examining the work, speaking in hushed tones. Each of them indistinguishable, variations on the same theme, in the same jacket, the same shoes.

“Won’t be long,” she mutters, before Steffan whisks her across the gallery, hand touching, just a moment, the curve of her lower back. That thin, practiced touch. The kind men use when they’re testing the water, or reminding you it’s already warm. Hackles rise along my spine. Idiotic. I take a moment to remind myself of who I am, and who he isn’t.

I watch them go. Wait a beat longer than I should. Then amble to the champagne table, careful not to glance at her. Fetch a glass, stem slippery with condensation. Try not to look like I’m waiting.

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We walk together along the quay. The snow piles on the balustrades lining the river, and softens the path. Our footsteps crunch through it. Neither my worn-in runners nor her platform sandals are suited for it. Before I ask her if she’s cold, the words catch. Second guessing the things I say now, especially the stupid things. She is, obviously. Her breath steams out in front of her. Teeth chatter. 

“Fucking freezing,” she mutters, lips buried in the collar of her jacket. 

“Yeah. You didn’t think to wear tights or anything?”

“No.”

“Right, well.”

Looks out towards O’Connell bridge, lit up in green and gold, while snowflakes settle in her hair, and I ball my fists inside my pockets, fingers like ice. “It’s been nice to talk to you again. I missed it.”

“Mmm,” she says. “Really.”

“Of course.”

She lets out a snort. Something between laughter and contempt. “I’m sure you did.”

“I did.”

Silence. 

“Look, Evie, I’m not looking for some full reset, here, I know–it’s all—” I break off, try again. “I’d just like to talk to you again. Not just run into you every once in a while by chance.” Nudge her. “Can I give you my phone number?”

“For?”

“I don’t know, to text you, or whatever. Send you a picture of my lunch.”

A laugh, faint amusement. “Don’t send me your lunch, please.”

“You wouldn’t want photos of my sandwiches?”

“Might as well send pictures of your toes at that rate. Just poor content.”

“Alright, if you’re into that…” hold my hands up. “But I’m actually not willing to exploit my body. At least not for free.”

She laughs now, properly, turning her face away a bit like she doesn’t want me to see. “Right, whatever, you freak. I knew you were up to weird shit in Berlin.”

Laugh along, then, though I feel a mini jolt of anxiety. “What do you mean? You didn’t hear something about me, no?”

“No,” she says. “Nobody will tell me anything about you.”

Something shifts in my chest. 

The lights and noise from the bar grow closer. People spill out through the door. Drunken, staggering towards their taxis.

I hold out my hand. “Can I’ve your phone?”

“For what?”

“My number. I’ll give it to you.”

She pulls it from her pocket and unlocks it. Slips it into my palm, and I punch in my details. 

“One is my German number,” I explain, handing it back. “And the other one is my Skype. You can call me there in the evenings, if you want.”

“Do you want mine?”

“Your number? I still have it.”

She frowns. “You kept it?”

“Yeah. No idea why.”

I kept the emails too. Archived, untouched. Couldn’t bring myself to read them, naturally, but deleting felt wrong on some deep, cosmic level. 

“Okay, well, call me, text me if you want, but I won’t hold my breath.”

“I’ll call you.”

She just smiles. I know she doesn’t believe me, but I will. 

I think I will. 

We rejoin the others at the venue, grabbing their bags, putting their coats on as the bar shuts down. Outside, we hug goodbye. An unemotional kind of hug, like, see you later instead of goodbye, and then I watch her go, the conversation settling into my chest like a weight. 

Half an hour later, in our trudge through the snow, Jen and I are still discussing the night.

“That’s just how they are. They can’t help it,” she fumbles with her house keys, stiff fingers, and snowflakes catching on her hands. “I thought you might have been used to it from your own college, to be honest with you.”

“They’re there, yeah, obviously.”

I follow her inside. It's not much warmer in the flat. Her boots thump on the carpet as she kicks them off. Flicks on the hall light. Black mould blooms along the skirting board like bruises under the paint.

“But Berlin’s worse,” I add. “But I don’t talk to those people.”

“Except for, obviously, the girl you were fucking back in first year.” Flips on the boiler and it rumbles to life. Old radiator pipes clicking now along the base of the wall as I follow her through.

“Gabija, yeah. She wasn’t really like that.”

“From the photos on her Instagram, she looked a fair bit like that. The haircut on her, like.”

“Yeah, but she was…” I slump onto the sofa, yanking a stack of magazines out from under me. “I…” Sigh. Stare up at the ceiling as she fumbles around in the crockery cupboard for a mug. “I’d just moved there. I was just looking for something fun. Wasn’t on the hunt for a specific vibe.”

“Really,” Jen says, sardonic voice on her as she fills up the kettle. “Waifish doe-eyed brunette was not your taste at the time?”

I ignore this. “Anyway, my point was: I’m around those people all the time, too. I’m forced to overhear their absolute pretentious waffle every week in college, but I don’t invite them out with me. Like, they wouldn’t be coming to my birthday party, that’s for certain.”

She chuckles. “Maybe Evie loves the pretentious waffle. Maybe she does it, too.”

“She doesn’t.”

“Bit defensive.”

“You don’t know her.”

“Just because you didn’t like those people, you know, doesn’t mean she doesn’t either. She has free-will to like who she wants.”

I stare at her. “You think they were her friends?”

A casual shrug. Fishes a spoon out of the sink and starts bashing a tea bag about her mug. “Dunno. She was fairly stuck to that little pink-haired one all night, wasn’t she?”

“She was one of the worst people I ever met.”

“Yeah, I know. You mentioned it four times.”

“And the guy…”

“Yeah, yeah, the cocaine guy. Well, she obviously wanted him there too, seeing as he was, like, there.” 

He flashes into my mind again, wild-eyed, twitching like a rat in a trap, huge, insane pupils on him. Feral. Like he’d chew through his own hand if it got him what he wanted.

Jen’s mouth curls into a smile as she pulls up a kitchen chair, nursing a steaming cup of tea between her palms. Doing that smile she does when she’s about to say something to piss me off. “Maybe she’s sleeping with him.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I scoff, real disgust. Letting a guy like that touch you would be an act of self-harm. “At that point, she might as well sleep with the ghoul from Ghostbusters.”

She’s smiling into her tea. “No need to be so affected.”

“You piss me off sometimes,” I say, more seriously than I meant to, my skin hot. “I’m not affected. I’m just saying the guy was feral, like he came out of a bin.”

“Mm,” takes a sip. “Maybe you caught him at a bad moment.”

“You didn’t see him, so you don’t know what he was like.”

“You don’t know what she’s like.”

I scoff. 

“Or maybe you do, I dunno, judging by the energy between you after the kebab place.”

“What vibe?”

“I felt a… charge.”

I shift. “A charge.”

“Like the sense that with enough time alone, the two of you were either going to end up in tears or in bed. Not necessarily in that order.”

I don’t like when she says these things to me. To get a reaction, no doubt. She’s always poking, digging. Being Jen’s friend means living under a microscope, like she’s collecting evidence. Holding you up to the light to see through your skin. Always telling you things about yourself that make you question your own reality, like, do I think that? Is this what I believe? Coming at you with this unnerving sureness. Smug smile on her like she’s correct by default. 

“Why would you say that?” Look away from her. Rest my heel against the radiator pipe and let it heat through my sock. Nice at first, tingling warmth. “It feels like you’re analysing a fucking fossil under glass. Like, hey, let’s see how he reacts to this.”

I press harder on the pipe until it burns.

She laughs. “Grow up, Jude. It was just an observation.”

“Yeah, well. When you start pointing things like that out, it makes me feel weird. I want to be able to talk to her without being paranoid that everyone is overthinking it.”

“Okay.”

“What happened with Evie before I moved away was basically nothing. We kissed a couple of times, and then it was awkward. Can I just be friends with women without you getting invested?”

“You’re going to be friends again?”

“I told her I’d text her.”

Jen frowns, tapping a nail against the ceramic mug. “And that’s wise?”

I stare at the floor. The boiler hums as exhaustion washes through me, draining everything out. No, of course it isn’t wise. It’s idiotic, actually, selfish, wanting Evie within reach again while I am supposed to have built a life elsewhere, with somebody else. Needing her to remember me so I don’t have to face being forgotten, the miniature death of it. 

I don’t look at Jen as I stand up and head toward the hall, but sense her expression. Utter dismay, like she can’t imagine what she might have said. 

“I’m just going to head to bed,” I mutter. “I’m wrecked.”

Pull her bedroom door behind me as her voice follows, something I catch only the gist of. She meant well, et cetera. Forever shocked is Jen, when her well-meaning words blow up in her face. I’m not mad at her, not actually. I just need the quiet. It all weighs on me, pulses in my head.

I take out my phone and dial Astrid. I don’t really think about it. An automatic gesture. A vie for comfort.  

It goes to voicemail. 

“Hey…” I say after the beep. “It’s late, I know, but I thought I’d try, anyway. I’m fine here, nothing to report. Just… yeah. Call me if you get a chance. Miss you.”

I hang up.

The room goes still again. The silhouette of a tree shifts on the wall. Bare, spindly branches stretch across the plaster, reaching for something they can’t touch. I stare through it, eyes unfocused, while Jen switches on the TV in the other room. A muffled sound through the walls. The pipes tick. Snowflakes patter on the glass, and the night repeats—whirring through my head, ringing in my ears.

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Jen and I used to play takeaway bingo when we were teenagers. You wind up at enough of them between midnight and two, and start noticing a pattern. Someone fighting—one point for your card. Someone forgetting what they ordered—another. Someone trying to get into the locked staff toilet. Someone kissing. A hen party singalong. The presence of a blow-up doll. Someone passed out in a booth, getting sick outside the door, a drink exploding over the linoleum, hapless drunks jostled around by bouncers.

The kebab shop is quiet tonight. One point for my card, for the guy snoring in the booth next to Evie and me.

She eats in silence under the lights, those grim fluorescents that hum faintly and cast a contaminated grey hue over everything—the kind I always thought made the food look suspect.

Still, she doesn’t care. She shovels it in. A kebab, handfuls of chips, chicken goujons, leaning over the paper packaging with greasy hands poised like a connoisseur of drunk food. Touch nothing but what you intend to eat. Can’t trust the surfaces. Never risk touching your clothing with saucy hands.

I watch her with admiration, fingers drumming idly on the side of my Pepsi can. I told her I wasn’t hungry, even though my stomach’s been growling since ten, and almost believe it myself when I say it. Hunger’s easier to ignore than the blow to my pride that would come from admitting I can’t afford a bag of chips. I long for the tacos I left on the plate earlier. Thirteen euros for them, sitting now in the bin in the Mexican place while I starve here.

But here I am anyway, watching her eat, the surreal, satisfying feeling of being with her again. Her. In the flesh instead of in memory. The different, less triumphant reality than what I had imagined.

She eyes me while I twist open the can, the hiss of it seeming to remind her I’m here. 

“Wow, greedy,” she says. 

“Yeah, I’m a mess. Might have to have me airlifted out after this feast. Here, can I’ve a chip?” I reach for the bag, and she swats my hand away. 

“No. Look at you—doing that thing boys always complain about. Girls not ordering anything and then stealing their food. This is modern feminism.”

I laugh. “Oh, come on. Just one, for Christ's sake.”

She eyes me distrustfully as I pluck one skinny chip out. 

“You want to count it?” I say. “Make sure I haven’t another hidden in my hand?”

“Ugh, shush for a minute,” she says, this edge of desperation in her voice. “Please, I really just want to eat this.”

I lean back, taking conservative sips of my drink while she tears into her food. It’s a bit insane, the ferocity at which she goes at it. This kind of relentless feasting, head down, elbows out, chewing with mechanical focus. Like if she stopped, she’s have to think about talking to me again.

“Skipped dinner?” I say eventually, and she wipes a blob of sauce from the corner of her mouth. “Didn’t have time to eat today.”

“Ah.”

“You went to some Mexican place earlier,” she says between bites. “The guys were saying.”

“Yeah.”

“Hm, risky move, isn’t it? Bringing you to a Mexican restaurant?”

“Why’s that?”

She shrugs, and a piece of kebab meat drops onto the paper. “Because you’ve probably had, you know, actual real Mexican food when you lived in the states. That’s what everyone always says, isn’t it? Like, ‘oh, you don’t know Mexican food until you’ve had it in America’, or something like that.”

“I imagine they’d probably say that about Mexico, too.”

She just smiles. 

“Well, yeah, the food was okay. It was nice to see Claire and Shane again. That was the real reason I went out. They look good.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, of course. Shane’s gotten real fit, you know? He’s in great shape.”

Evie lets out a derisive laugh. “Yeah.”

“Hm?”

“Like, yeah. He’s working out the whole time. Twice a week home to train, then the coach has him sanctioned to the gym every other day, just about. He’s gone full protein-shake mode, at this stage. I assume he’s aspiring to become the Hulk.”

Feel my smile thinning. “Good for him.”

“Mm. Bit miserable, don’t you think?”

“Clearly you do.”

“Well,” she pauses thoughtfully, swallowing a bite of kebab. “He doesn’t do anything fun, in my view. He doesn’t have free time anymore, and his coach has all these rules, even, about things he’s not allowed to do off the pitch. It’s like a totalitarian regime.”

“Alright,” I say, and her face falls. 

She doesn’t speak then. Just wipes her mouth with a serviette and shifts in her seat. Eyes locked on the food, though there’s something stiff in her posture now. 

I sip my drink, watching her a bit as she pretends to focus on the next bite, but it’s like she’s eating something made of rubber, something unappetizing, eyes zoned out, like she’s left the room without her body. 

The silence drags on longer than it should. 

“So come on, Evie, what’s been going on with you? I can’t believe it’s been so long since we last spoke, to be honest. That’s crazy.”

“I know,” she says, flatlined voice. “Seems we lost touch there at one point.”

I hesitate. “Yeah, I regret that. Life got so busy so quickly and… it was all a whirlwind, really. But, I… uh, I thought of you often, Evie. I always imagined we’d run into each other again.”

“Ah, well, what can you do? Here we are. A year and a half on.” I reach for her arm across the table, a bid for connection, to bridge a gap between us, but she moves away, pretends to want a drink from her milkshake. 

Nice, okay. Good to know where I stand, at least. I fist my hand in my lap. “You look really different. I always think of you with that really long hair you had.”

“Yeah. I cut it all off, as you can see.”

“And do you still run? And swim? Do you do all that stuff you used to?”

“No, actually I don’t,” she says. “I suppose I fell out of the habit when I moved here. Don’t really do most of the things I used to.” She fixes me with a new look, eyebrow quirked in some expression of defiance, like hey, you don’t know me at all anymore, and I will punish you for trying to. “How’s Berlin, anyway? Better than here, after all?”

“Yeah, really good. Hey,” again I move to reach out to her, knowing it’s futile before my hand rises above the table top. Drop it back down to my lap. “If you’re angry with me for losing touch—”

“Why’re you wondering about that?” she cuts in. 

“You’ve gone chilly on me all of a sudden, I don’t know.”

Her eyes widen with fury. “It’d be a bit intense if I was still angry about something like that, wouldn’t it?”

I say nothing. 

“Good to know you got my email, by the way. It was a pity it wasn’t worth responding to, apparently.”

I can’t help but laugh. In shock, really, instead of amusement. “Oh, come on. Don’t be like that. Yeah, I could have dealt with it better, but I was getting to know a new city, and there were all these new people… I left your email sitting there a bit too long and then, well, I suppose it started feeling like it’d be weird of me to respond after so long.”

“You didn’t really try, exactly, did you?”

I let that one sink in for a minute. Rougher than I expected. I always knew I should have tried harder, but I thought she’d just... forgive me, like she was supposed to. I didn’t want to be the bad guy here. I wanted proof I wasn’t one.

Say something. “You could have sent another message.” A reflex. Hollow sounding, and words sticking in my throat like they belong to someone else. Some weak little man.

Her face seethes. Oh, yes, good. She loathes me. Loathing is preferable to indifference. I might actually take that. The horrible, ugly victory of it. The proof she feels. Felt. Missed. Longed, maybe, for me to fill some dark and terrible hole. I hate the thought and the feeling. Sick triumph, like the smell of decay. I didn’t want to ruin you, not really, Evie. I just needed proof I mattered.

“Look, I–” 

“You have a new piercing in your ear,” she says, sharp jerk of her head, like, no. Don’t dare go on. Her features swiftly neutralise as she goes back to picking at her food while I touch my finger to the silver hoop through my left helix bone. 

“Uh, yeah. I did. I figured–” clear my throat and adjust in the seat. “You know, since my dad already hates the other two, might as well swing for a third.” It was a piercing I got done in Slovenia. Drunk. “It hurt,” I offer. Bled, in fact. She might relish the thought, but I don’t disclose it.

“Little baby,” she replies, smile tugging at her lips. “I got the same one done when I was like sixteen and it wasn’t bad at all.”

“I remember the piercings you had,” I say. “You had four on one ear. Can I see?”

And she turns her head for me, revealing a single hoop, the rest of her ear dotted with tiny punctures. Emptiness now in places that used to be studded with silver and gold. 

“I took them out,” she says, rueful. “They didn’t feel like me anymore.” 

And I am too—rueful about it. “Damn. I thought they were cool.” 

She hums in vague agreement and glances around, eyes on a group of rowdy lads who come in, chanting some tuneless chorus on their way to the counter. “So, any other surprises up your sleeve?”

Yes, literally, up my sleeve. I risk it for another chip. She lets me have it, and I pop it, cold and rubbery, into my mouth as I tug my sleeve up for her, exposing the soft underside of my forearm to the fluorescent light.

“Did you design it?”

“No, I just thought it was cool.”

“Ah, okay. And like, does it mean something in particular? The mango, like. Bit unusual.”

“Uh, no, actually. It really doesn’t. It’s just I was in Thailand and kind of thought it’d be fun to get one.” How devoid of depth and opinion do I sound now, really? I think. Have yet to come up with a decent reason to have a tattoo—can’t even formulate a lie about its meaning. Just cos. That’s why. Stupid thing, really. Artistry is impressive, yes, but I’m not even sure I pull it off. 

“Thailand, yeah? When was that?”

“June,” I say. “I always wanted to go. I think everyone should, if they can, to be honest.”

“Well, go on, then,” her straw squeaks in the lid of her milkshake. “Tell me all about it.”

“Oh, I can’t do it justice with words, really.” I retrieve my phone, aware that photos are safer than conversation. “Here, I can show you.” 

“Yeah,” she shrugs, and gets up. Slips into the booth next to me. “New phone, I see. I thought you’d still have that piece of shit you used to.”

“Had to upgrade. Needed maps to survive Berlin.”

“Hope you’re making good use of the torch feature.”

I chuckle. “Alright, well, let’s look at my holiday pictures when you’re ready.”

She leans over but never close enough to touch as I scroll through Bangkok temples, islands, markets. She’s performing interest, laughing at the right moments, asking non-probing questions. 

When her hair accidentally brushes my arm, she yanks away with a whispered “Sorry” like I might be contagious. 

“Here’s Koh Samui. Near the end of the trip.” 

“I could tell. You look aggressively tanned.” 

“Yeah, I tan easily.” 

“I remember.” A flash of something genuine in her voice. 

“There’s a photo somewhere of a monkey that jumped on my shoulder. Let me find it—” My thumb scrolls too far. “Oops. Uh...”

A photo of Astrid and me flashes on screen. At the lake. Barely wearing anything. 

Panic detonates, my thumb fumbles, scrolling too fast, Jonas asleep on the plane. Then back again. Astrid. My hand on her arse. Nowhere to hide from it. 

I can’t exactly lie or say she’s my friend. 

“Uh, yeah,” I look up from the photograph too fast, my thumb stills on her waist, mid-kiss, glowing on screen. “That’s my girlfriend, Astrid,” I admit. Feeble smile. Might as well be confessing to a crime.

Evie’s gone rigid in her seat. Not smiling, just observing. “Yeah, she’s very pretty,” she says. 

“She’s… yeah. She’s absolutely beautiful.” 

I flip to another photo. If we’re doing this. Astrid posing for the camera, hair sleek and straight, so long it brushes the waistband of her bikini. In moments like this, I see her as others do. Objectively. She’s extraordinary.

How’d you pull her? They always ask, and I have no idea how to answer. 

Evie sits there in this calm way that makes me wish she’d just scream, or something.

“Wow. Yeah. There she is,” she says. Her eyes flick to the men at the counter, clinging to each other’s coat sleeves, bawling out their orders, rocking unsteadily as a unit. And it occurs to me that, though they fill the place with noise, her silence is louder than all of them.

I shut the phone off quietly. Slide it back into my pocket. 

“We should go back, I think,” she says, all mild again. “They’ll all be wondering where we are.”

“Yeah, sure,” I reach for her food wrappers to help, but she tells me no. Takes them herself. 

The men start on her as she moves.

 Here, my mate fancies you. Can he have your number? He’s a gentle lover, he is. Ye’d have a beautiful life together. 

Evie looks bored. Takes her coat from the booth and zips it to the top. 

“We going?”

“Yeah, we can,” I hurry after her to hold the door. 

“This was nice,” I say as she slips out ahead of me. “Thanks for the chips.”

“It’s fine. Thanks for coming with me.”

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More Before and afters - Lucky Girl x Lucky Boy

I get so excited & happy to see the improvement

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She’s with the cocaine guy now, the girl with the pink hair. Forlorn look on her face as she tries to get him to drink some water. I feel her eyes on me as I pass. Of course they know each other, those two. I should have guessed. They’re probably on the same drugs. 

Evie’s in the booths now, with Claire, Shane and Jen. A jolt of anxiety at the sight of her there beside her bags of gifts, still crushed into the corner of the seats, but I adopt a nice casual stride over, drop onto the seat beside her.

“Hey,” she says, and smiles faintly before gazing across the bar to the table I just passed, brows knitting.

“Yeah, hey."

I nudge her gently. 

“Hey, who are those two? They’re a bit… intense.”

“Oh, they’re… from college.”

“Okay, well, can I be honest?”

“Yeah,” eyes on me now.

“That girl is weird. She was telling me about her polyamorous relationship and how her boyfriend is into bondage. Offered to tie me up in his house if I came home with them.”

Evie’s face twitches, then smooths out into something neutral, like a learned response. “Hm, okay. And what did you say to that?”

“Obviously I was like, fuck yes. Gimme some of that.”

She tries to smile, but it flattens. She tucks her hair behind her ear, looks away. “Okay, well, that’s clearly the only acceptable response.”

“Yeah, good offer, right?”

“Right. And him?” She gestures toward the guy, forehead on the table now, the girl scanning the place desperately for someone else. “Did he say something to you?” 

“Not really, just tried to sell me bag in the toilets.” 

“Oh.”

“I actually walked in on him trying to do a bump off the wall mirror.”

Her palm comes to her forehead. “Oh, God,” she breathes. “Sorry, I actually am just feeling a bit stupid.”

“What? Why?”

“No, I just thought he was drunk.”

“Um,” another glance at him, probably completely unconscious at this point. “He’s probably drunk, too, but nah, he’s out of it, Evie. No doubt. I saw him–yeah, it’s definitely drugs.” 

“Oh, well, that’s awful then.”

I can’t help smiling a bit. Seeing an innocence in her distress, finding it a bit endearing. An urge comes to comfort her about it, teeth worrying at her lip like a puritanical fourteen year old who just found out her friend went rogue and tried a cigarette. 

“It’s not that awful though, is it?” I say, dipping my head to level my gaze with hers. “You know, a bit of coke. It’s–everyone does it a bit, don’t they?” 

“What do you mean?”

“I thought you’d know since you live here now, is all.” 

She scoffs in outrage, indignant that others would have the temerity. “Well excuse me, but am I the only one who actually cared about the anti-drug posters hanging up in school? Of the woman with the horrible scabs all over her face? I couldn’t look at it. I had to avert my eyes if it was lunchtime, or whatever, and I was trying to eat a sandwich.”

I want very badly to laugh, but her face is so serious. Huff instead, an easy shrug, like, yeah, fair point. “I suppose some people get scabbed up a bit, to be honest, yeah. That’s a legitimate concern. Still, people will do whatever is fun. I think you’d probably have what’s considered quite an extreme view.”

“Do you do them?”

I blink. “Drugs?”

“Yes.”

Pick a thread in my jeans. From catching myself on a nail in some customer’s stairwell. “I have done, yeah. Not lately.”

“Hm.”

“Have I changed in your eyes?” 

“No, it’s… like. I just hate to feel naïve.”

“It’s fine.”

She brings her fingers to her nose, pinching at her nostrils. Like she’s wiping away phantom powder. Her nails are short, bitten-looking. “Maybe I should get with the times and start doing them, you think?” 

I laugh. “Yes, Evie. Very much your style.”

“Can’t imagine it, either.” A shake of her head, a look of amusement in her eyes, as she tries to picture it. Impossible. Like if Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls lit up a smoke. Makes me want to laugh—the absurdity, until a wave of protectiveness hits me. Glancing again at the table with those two as the backs of my hands prickle. Strange dread. A sort of knowing. 

She squeezes her hand, flexes it before reaching across the table for her drink. I remember that specific gesture. I learned she did it when she was nervous. When someone in the group asked her a question. Before she leaped off the rocks into the sea. She did it with me when she knew I was about to kiss her, neon light glowing through her ears like paper. Looking so serious, like kissing me back was something that required thought and preparation. It nearly killed me how soft she was. Now I don’t know what she is. 

“Whatever you do, make sure it’s because you want to. Not because of anyone else,” I say, then shrink, instantly cringing. Who am I, her dad? Sounding so superior, but I can’t help the way my voice is. How it reflects this horror I feel of these weird people circling her in the water. 

We both fall quiet for a beat, music thudding around us. Stupid lyrics, Shawty fire-burning on the dancefloor, or whatever her current dilemma is. I shouldn’t have said anything to Evie. Should have said “cool” or something, then I wouldn’t have sounded like a cop.  

“All I want to do is leave this party, to be honest,” she says, hands moving now to her stomach, chuckling at herself. “I’m so hungry. All I can think about is food.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m starving.” 

“You want to get some?”

Her expression is timid, embarrassed to have to say it. “Nah, it’s too late. Everywhere is probably closed.” 

Slip my phone from my pocket, then. It’s near one AM. “There’s places still open for sure. We can get the gang moving, if you want.”

Her lips curl into a smile. “I feel so bad saying it, but yeah, I actually do want to go. Is that rotten of me?”

“No, never.” I wave across to the others, deep in their own conversation. “Food,” I yell. “We’re getting food. Are you guys in?”

“Are you mad?” says Jen. “After that feast we had earlier? No, I’m good. You go.” The others nod. 

I turn back to Evie. “You okay if it’s just me?”

A flicker of something—panic?—crosses her face before it smooths into something practiced. My God. When did she learn to hide like that?

“It’s grand,” she says. “Yeah, we can go. I really just want food in me.” She finds her coat in the pile and stands up to shrug into it. “Claire, we’ll meet you back here in, like, half an hour.”

Claire looks startled. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

I find my coat, too. Struggle into it and zip it all the way up, feeling the whole time Shane’s eyes on the side of my face. I look at him. “You better mind her,” he says. Joking voice, sure, but his eyes harbour a distinct threat. 

“Christ, Shane, relax,” Evie says. “He’ll hardly let me get killed at the kebab shop.”

We move towards the exit then, together, the sleeve of my puffer coat pressing into hers for a moment on the stairs, past party-goers slumped across the steps, boots kicked off, tights laddered at the toes. 

“You don’t mind abandoning your own birthday thing?” I say, and Evie laughs.

“No, not at all,” she says. “Get me out of here, quick.”

“Let’s go, then.” I hold the door for her, and we step out, shoulder to shoulder, onto the snowy street.

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