There wasn't enough air in the room for how much I wanted to sigh right then. “This is blackmail,” I told her. “You're blackmailing me.”
“Yup!” she said, gave me a smile, and then got back to her research while we were waiting for the others to get back. I stared daggers at the side of her head while she pretended I wasn't there. She even started humming softly.
I didn't get to take revenge then, though, because Ian and Carlos returned with their own coffees and then Ian came right up to me and said, “Hey, here's an idea: do we know exactly where the mine's going to be? We could do some shots of the area, you know, dress it up a bit and then sell it like that: capturing a piece of this wild and beautiful country or something.”
In the background, Carlos muttered, “That was my idea...”
I decided to ignore whatever was going on there. “In Western Australia,” I said. “The Kimberley, the prospectus didn't say exactly where, but we can look it up by mining lease, I guess. Could you do that?” Ian nodded, and then went to sit down at his PC.
Sarah had stopped what she was doing to listen. She gave me a 'not bad' expression and then took out her phone and started flipping through it while I went to sit back at my desk.
Ian did find the location, and it was somewhere out in the middle of the Kimberley down a dirt track. We hopped along it on Google maps in case there were any interesting locations, but the whole area looked unremarkable.
“There goes that idea,” Ian said, and then turned around to Carlos, “good one, mate.” The two of them faced off for a second, but neither of them pushed it any further.
I was watching them and wondering how to handle the conflict when Sarah made a noise. I'd been seated at my computer with them around me to look through Google maps and she was still standing over me. “Look at this,” Sarah told me, and then held her phone so I could see the screen.
Someone had sent her a photo of a spectacular sunset over the ocean. I squinted at it. “That's Australia, yeah? Where is it?”
She grinned. “Broome. Rob took it from his front porch.” She pretended to think hard. “Broome's in the Kimberley, right?” She was still grinning.
I had another look at it. “Guys,” I called, and gathered everyone back around again to show them Rob's photo. “What do you think?”
“I think I'm moving to Broome,” Carlos said as he gave the phone back to Sarah.
Everyone was looking at each other. That was basically a consensus, so I turned back to Sarah. “Rob would be fine for me to paint something from that, yeah? Can you send it to me?”
She did, and for the rest of the morning I alternated between checking my secure email and painting an incredible sunset slightly off to one side to accommodate the Frost logo and some to-be-written text. None of the contacts from the companies we were trying to get a hold of in Vladivostok got back to me, but I did use every colour in the palette on the sunset.
I also finished off the last playlist from Bree's USB, which was her favourite music. It was a mixture of pop and some classics, and even a few Disney songs. Some of them were a bit obnoxious, but it had been ages since I'd listened to music and painted so even obnoxious pop music was kind of enjoyable. At one point I was experimenting with a couple of filters and it occurred to me how much money I was being paid for sitting here painting and listening to music, and I felt like I was cheating the universe.
“You're in a good mood,” Sarah commented from across the room. I didn't hear her the first time, so I took out my ear buds and she repeated herself.
“I'm plotting my revenge against you,” I told her. “It's sweeter than anticipated.” I put my ear buds back in and kept going as she laughed.
When I'd finished and shown Jason this particular painting, he actually stopped what he was doing—which was making angry noises while he read the marketing requirements documents of another team—to give my picture his full attention. “You painted that, Mini?” I nodded, and he looked at it again. “Fucking hell. I want that on my wall. Yeah, that's good, use it, and use white text on this side,” he said, and then went back to grunting at the MRD without making any sort of infuriating or snide comment either about the fact I was female or that I was Asian. It was disorienting.
“What did he say?” Sarah asked me when I returned to Oslo. The boys were gone. I checked the clock and it was past six so they'd probably gone home. I envied them; I couldn't wait to get these fucking clothes off myself. She spun around in her chair to face me for second. “Did he like it?”
I gave her a confused look. “Yeah,” I said. “And he didn't tell me to make him a sandwich, either.”
Sarah feigned profound shock and she swivelled back to her desk. “Maybe he knows about you.”
I probably looked as alarmed as I felt. “Don't even say that,” I said, and then started packing up. “Speaking of which, what am I wearing tomorrow? Who's going to be there?”
“Do your guy thing, you'll be fine,” Sarah told me as she copied and pasted data between spreadsheets. That wasn't for my project, so it must have been for her other team. “Liz and Gem will be there, but I met everyone else at uni, not Frost. One of them is a gay guy who's bringing his new boyfriend for us to meet.”
Well, that sounded promising at least. “And you're sure no one's going to be weird about me?”
Sarah made a face and shook her head. “I doubt it. Not on purpose, anyway.” As I left, she added, “Tell your little schoolgirl I said hi.”
I stuck my head back through the door to glare at her. “Tell her yourself, since you guys are now BFFs on Facebook.”
“Okay,” Sarah said sweetly. “And while I'm at it I'll tell Gem you're looking forward to tomorrow.” I gave her a look, and she laughed. “I won't, I promise. Don't worry, it's not going to be awkward at all with the two of you. We're all adults.”
I hoped she was right, because I really couldn't handle being there if it was going to be uncomfortable. I hoped Bree wouldn't be upset if we had to leave early as a result.
Later, Bree wasn't waiting for me outside work, which was odd. I checked around the corner where she'd met me last time, but it was empty. When I took out my phone to see if she'd texted me, she had. So had Henry, actually. I checked his first because I felt a bit bad about not replying to his dinner invite from Monday.
“No dinner tonight I assume...? Maybe early next week. I hope you're not working too hard.”
I made a face and I replied, “Yeah, sorry, work is so full on at the moment. Maybe we can do Sunday? Same time as last week?” I decided not to mention Bree and that she was staying over. He'd probably understand, but I just didn't want to complicate things for now.
He replied with, “No worries :) Take care of yourself. Call if you need to.”
Bree's text message had an entirely different tone. “its cold im going to wait at ur place”
I looked around me, frowning. It wasn't that cold; the sun hadn't even set yet. Then again, I wasn't wearing as little as Bree always was, so maybe that had something to do with it.
On my way back home, I wondered what Sarah and her friends were going to make of Bree. She was lovely, sure; but she was a bit of an acquired taste and liable to do something either infuriating or embarrassing. I cringed, remembering her just walking straight out of the fitting rooms in her cupcake bra with her breasts practically falling out everywhere. God, Bree. I hoped she wouldn't do anything like that at Sarah's. That was just about the last thing I could handle right now. Actually, fuck, what was I doing? If something went wrong at Sarah's I really couldn't afford to be fucked up by it over the weekend. We had less than two weeks before pitch, I needed to focus. We should probably just stay home.
When I got back up to my apartment, Bree was seated against my door as usual but jumped up to greet me as I stepped out of the lift and walked towards her. Grabbing one of my forearms, she bounced up and down beside me, excited. “Did you listen to everything?” She had her tie loosened and her top button undone. I
could see into it, and her bouncing was not helping me to focus on getting to my front door. I wished she wouldn’t do that.
“I’m pretty sure your school doesn’t let you wear your uniform like that,” I commented, nodding at her cleavage.
She stopped jumping up and down and peered down her body. “Oh my god, are we back to this?” she asked, laughing at me. “Why, are you going to give me detention or something if I don’t do it up?” She didn’t make any sort of move to fix it as she trailed along next to me to my door. “So what did you think of my favourite songs? Sorry there was so much Disney, I love that stuff. Did you watch Disney when you were a kid, or did you watch, like, Korean things?”
I fished my keycard out of my handbag, giving her a look. “I grew up in Australia, remember,” I told her, but neglected to mention that Mum had forced me to watch all the dubbed versions of everything, anyway.
“So, did you like them?” she asked, hanging off my arm as I awkwardly tried to swipe my card in the reader.
I gave her a what do you think? look with a slight grin and swiped my card again, finally getting a green light and pushing the door open. “They’re not generally my thing, but yes, I enjoyed them.”
She released me to take her shoes off. “So what is your thing? If you say goth or death metal or something I’m totally going to judge you. My brother likes that stuff.”
“Nah,” I told her, hanging up my bag and kicking off my own heels. Fuck, it felt good to be rid of them. Now to get all of these other stupid, uncomfortable clothes off asap. “Mainly game soundtracks, orchestral movie soundtracks, that sort of thing. There’s a stack of old CDs next my games if you’re interested.”
Bree followed me up the hallway in her socks, making a face. “That music puts me to sleep.”
I grinned down at her. “Note to self…” Oh, that reminded me. My grin disappeared.
She saw it immediately and looked panicked. “What? I didn’t mean that I hated that music! It's not boring or anything, I mean it literally makes me tired and sleepy!”
I gave her a hard glare over my shoulder. “It’s not that. I hear you've been talking to Sarah on Facebook.” She came into the bedroom with me as I took my pearls and my earrings off and put them on my dresser.
In the reflection of the small mirror, I saw her look a little guilty. “Oh…” She knew exactly what I was talking about. “Come on, it'll be fun,” she said. “I'd like to meet your friends! I'll be really nice, I promise.”
That was a wholly unconvincing argument, because Bree's 'really nice' was just a more intense version of herself. “They're not really my friends,” I said. “Sarah's my friend, and they're her friends. I actually think we should probably leave it until after my project's signed. I've got too much to deal with at the moment, there's no reason to add to it.” I tied my hair back.
“Well, we’re going anyway. I promised Sarah.”
I stopped in the middle of putting the elastic around my ponytail to look down at her. “Oh?” Actually, it made me a bit angry. “Since when did you decide you were able to tell me what to do?”
She looked a little uncertain, but fired back, “Uh, you constantly tell me what to do. Constantly. And, like, that’s okay, but now this is something you need to do.” I expected her to back off and apologise when I glowered at her, but she didn’t. Not at all. “I took those pics off Facebook, and you’re coming to this party thing tomorrow night at Sarah’s with me.”
It was actually difficult to argue with that, because she was right. I just… hadn’t expected her to stand her ground like that. I should have, because 'stubborn' didn't even begin to describe her. I watched her for a couple of seconds, and then turned back to the mirror and finished my hair. “I’m not comfortable with doing this kind of stuff in the middle of a project.”
“Your comfort zone is the size of a pea, Min,” Bree told me. “And like, I get it with the whole trans stuff, like it must be super awful to always have to worry that people might flip out, but Sarah said none of her friends are like that so I don’t see what the big deal is.” She frowned at me. “And I’d totally threaten to just tie you up and drag you there, but I kind of don’t think I’ll need to.”
Having Bree lecturing me was... unsettling. I twisted to look down at her. She was waiting for me to answer, and, actually, she looked serious. I felt like a petulant teenager refusing to clean their room. What a strange feeling.
I tightened my ponytail. I'd never hear the end of it if I refused, would I? “Fine,” I said simply.
She looked stunned. “Really?”
“You just went off at me and you’re surprised I said yes?”
She made a face. “Yeah, kind of. Guess I won’t have to tie you up after all!”
I raised an eyebrow at her on my way to the bathroom. “I’m having a shower,” I told her. “I’ll be out in a minute.” Closing the door, I left her to bounce around my apartment in celebration.
I spent longer in the shower than I usually did because after so much of Bree's cleavage, I noticed mine and got really depressed about it. They might disappear if I lost more weight, I thought as I stood away from the mirror. Then again, I might disappear if I lost more weight. I was already so skinny that I didn't even have periods every month as it was. It occurred to me that if I lost more weight I might stop getting them altogether. Tempting, but I seriously couldn't face Henry's patented Looks of Concern, and if I accidentally put myself in hospital for any length of time I was unlikely to get lead on any projects anytime soon.
I bandaged my chest up and then put my jeans and hoodie over everything. The bandages were tight, but it was still such a relief to have everything gone and just be smooth surfaces. Well, except for my ponytail which stuck out a bit, but there wasn't much I could do about that.
When I opened the door to the living room, I expected Bree to perhaps be upside down on my couch with her phone. I didn't expect her to be standing at the dining table, elbow-deep in packaging with a really guilty look on her face.
She jumped when I came in, looking down at the package and then up at me. She was holding something that looked like, well, I didn't want to specify what it looked like. “The courier came while you were in the shower,” she said, like that explained everything. Then, she went bright red. “I-I just thought I'd take a peek, but... but…”
I didn't understand what she was so nervous about until I walked up to the table, about to ask her that very question, and saw what she was holding. The breath caught in my throat. What the fucking fuck? “What's that?”
She looked like she was about to burst with something. Discomfort? Nervous laughter? I couldn't tell. “It's your new dick.” She was cupping it in her hands like she would a baby bird, and it was so fucking horribly, unbearably uncomfortable I could hardly handle looking at it.
“It's what?” I said, probably sounding like a cut guitar string, as I hurriedly scrambled through the packaging. When I saw the binders, I realised that it was what I’d ordered on Monday, but what the fucking hell was this doing in the box? “I didn't order it!” I said desperately. I could feel my face burning. “I didn't order it... Why the fuck would they send something that I didn’t order? Maybe it’s a mistake? Maybe they mixed up the orders…?”
Just as I said that, though, I saw the packaging for what Bree had in her hands and it had the word 'Packer' on it. It had a picture of a guy slipping it into his undies and then apparently going to a business meeting, and suddenly everything made sense. 'Free packer with two binders ordered?' Oh god... oh god, oh god....oh god, I did order it.
“It's okay,” Bree said, looking down at it and looking anything but okay. “It's okay, I get it, I shouldn't have opened it, I'm sorry...” I thought she was finally about to put it down, but she was looking at it again, brow quivering. “Um, like, are they normally this big? Or did you just choose a big one to look, you know, hung?”
I couldn't even answer her, I just put my hands up in my hair and felt like part
of me was dying inside forever. “Why are you holding it like that?” I asked her. “Why are you holding it? Why is it out of the box? Why did you open my mail?”
She was so red that even her neck and cleavage were red. “I was just wondering what was inside so I thought I'd unpack it for you and then when I saw it I.... well, they're supposed to be really lifelike these days, right? So I kind of thought I wanted to know what one felt like, because I haven’t… Uh, yeah. So I was just taking it out of the packaging and then I remembered I read on this website that you're supposed to treat your partner's packer like a bio dick, you know, respect it, be gentle, and so I thought I'd just hold it really carefully,” she demonstrated, “like this, and—”
“—and, god, Bree put it away, Jesus fuck! You’re killing me!”
“Okay, okay! But you should feel it first, because it feels kind of... well...” She looked down and it and then slowly turned it over in her hands, and it was fucking agonising to watch. It looked like a real dick, and it looked like Bree was playing with it. “It’s really soft, here, feel it.”
No fucking way. Not in front of her. I put my hands in my hair and did a circle on the spot I was standing on. “Bree!” The whole fucking thing was fucking unbearable. When she opened her mouth to say something else, I cut her off. “Put it away and stop talking about it! Fuck!”
Mutely, she put it very gently on the glass dining table. I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when she looked up at me for a moment as if she'd just had a great revelation. “I've gone from, like, zero to third base with you in two minutes.” Her mouth was open. “I just touched your dick,” she said with a really strange expression, and then completely lost it in a fit of something that was a cross between nervous giggling and shrieking, and went and buried her face in her hands on the couch.
I was just about there too. I watched her for a second, still horrified. Then I looked back at the table.
Under My Skin Page 37
