I left her in the bedroom and went into the kitchen to continue getting ready. While I was sharing my stuff between all my pockets, she crept in and wrapped her arms around my waist. “I didn't want to hug you before because of that guy you were with,” she explained.
Yeah, I was pretty glad she hadn't hugged me in front of Sean Frost, because on top of what had happened in the lift, the fact he’d thought I was burning out and the fact I had a small mini-porn star trailing cheerfully after me... Well, I didn’t want him also thinking I was cheating on Henry with a girl. Henry did work for him, after all. “Good decision,” I told her, ruffling her hair and then prying her free. “Come on, let's go.”
When Sarah had said she lived miles away, we must have had different ideas about what constituted 'miles' because I'd pulled up in front of her house in less than half an hour, and most of that was spent in traffic trying to get out of the city. That meant we got there really early. Henry would already have been expecting that and been ready by quarter-to, but I didn't think Sarah was used to me yet.
“So we're just going to sit here for 15 minutes,” Bree said flatly, looking across at me from the passenger seat like I was crazy.
“Yup,” I said, but just as I'd said it, another prestige car pulled up in front of us. Two guys got out of it, and while they were unloading a crate of wine, one of them slapped the other on the arse. I sat up in my seat. “I think they're Sarah's friends.”
“They're not waiting in the car,” Bree observed, and then before I'd told her not to, she just jumped out to go and say hello.
Of course she would, I thought, and then reluctantly followed her out. They were already shaking hands with her as I walked up. I was taller than both of them; I felt self-conscious. I wondered if they could tell I was female.
“This is Matt,” she said, pointing to the white guy, and then she pointed at his partner, who was Asian, too, “and this is Andrew, his boyfriend. And this,” she said, presenting me, “is Min.”
I took my hand out of my pocket to greet them with a stiff wave.
Andrew didn't look Korean, I didn't think. I shook his hand when he offered it, and it turned out he was thinking the same thing. “You're not Viet, are you?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “Korean.”
He nodded, and then stood back and looked up at me like I was a tall building. “Some serious tall genes you got there. Want to swap parents?” was his assessment. “I'm sick being called 'shorty' by this one, here.” He scruffed his boyfriend's hair affectionately.
“Well, you're welcome to my mother,” I said dryly. “Please, have her.”
Both of the men laughed openly at that, which suggested to me he might actually have my brand of mother, too. “Trust me, I've got one of those of my own,” Andrew said as he turned back towards the car and took out a crate. “Here, could you grab this for us?”
He dumped a crate in my arms and then turned around to get another one. It was such a subtle confirmation, and as it dawned on me what it meant, I smiled slightly. They do think I'm a guy, I realised. It wasn't surprising given how I looked, but still — it was daylight. I'd spoken to them, and neither of them had appeared to think twice about it.
On the way in, though, Bree pulled me a little to the side. “Does Sarah use male pronouns for you? You know, when you're dressed like this?” I shook my head and she made a face. “Well what do I do, then? They think you're a guy.”
On one hand, I would have been perfectly fine for everyone to use 'he', on the other, did I really want to create any more awkward situations where people saw me in my work clothing or found out I wasn't male? 'She' was okay, I was used to it. And really, I didn't care. I just didn't want everyone to talk about it. I didn't even want to talk about it. “Just leave it. It will sort itself out.”
Bree didn't look comfortable with that at all. “Not knowing which ones to use with these guys is stressing me out,” she said, and then walked up the driveway onto the porch and rang the bell.
Yeah, well, this whole thing about needing to choose right now at this second is stressing me out, I thought, following her onto the porch.
Bree had progressed to knocking on the door as I carted the crate up the stairs. It was Liz who opened it though, not Sarah. She gave Bree the once-over. “You must be Bree.”
“You must be a supermodel,” was Bree's reply as she looked up at Liz.
I came up behind Bree with the crate on one hip, reaching down and wrapping my arm around her head until my hand was over her mouth. “Hi, Liz,” I said casually, as if Bree wasn't struggling and mumbling through my hand.
Liz looked very entertained. “You guys are fucking priceless,” she said. “Come and bring the grog in to—” She caught sight of the other two guys over my shoulder. “Hey! Matty-boy! Long time no see!” She pushed past us to go and basically jump on him. He swung her around despite the fact his boyfriend was standing right there. They must have been friends from way back.
When he put her down, he held his arm out towards Andrew. “This is my man,” he said, and introduced them.
I wanted to hear more of that conversation, but Bree was tugging on my shirt. “Come on, let's go in!”
I left Liz and the boys on the porch and followed Bree inside and down a long hallway which lead to the back half of the house. Gemma's probably in there, I thought, and while I was mentally preparing myself for that, Sarah leant out of a doorway to the side and stopped me. “Hey, Toyboy!” she said, pulling me inside by an elbow. “Fuck, I can't believe you actually came. Bring the wine in here.”
Bree followed us into the kitchen. “I told you I'd get her here.”
Sarah went and crouched back in front of the fridge where she was playing a game of Jenga with the carefully stacked beer. “You've done well, young Padawan,” she said, laughing, and then gave Bree a beer. “Can you go give that to the guy who's got his leg up on a chair in the living room?”
“Sure!” Bree said, and then went to do that.
When she was gone, Sarah looked me up and down. “Fuck,” she said. “And now you're a guy again. It's like a magic trick.” She squinted at my tie. “Is that...” Leaning forward, she flipped it over to display the Cloverfield emblem on the back. Leaning back, she smirked at me.
“Clearly it's proof I'm sleeping with her,” I said flatly.
“I didn't say anything,” she told me innocently as Bree's head hung around the doorway again.
Bree looked troubled. “Min,” she said. “I kind of need you to make a ruling on this one. The guy with the busted ankle saw you before Sarah dragged you in here and he's like, 'is he your boyfriend?' and I'm like, 'no, just a friend' and then he's like, 'so how does he know Sarah?' and now I don't know what to do, so I told him I needed to ask you something.”
Before I could answer, the two boyfriends and Liz came down the hallway and dumped their crate in the kitchen, greeting Sarah and then heading off into the living room. I stood out the way for them, and then for Liz, who came in after they were gone.
“Okay,” Liz said to me. “This is kind of a really strange thing to ask, but they think you're a guy. Did you tell them you were a guy? Should I correct them, or...?”
I probably went as red as Bree had been earlier. I did not want to talk about this, and I felt cornered. “Oh, good,” I said dryly, “Let's all have a big conference about my gender and talk about it as much as possible. This is great.”
Sarah opened one of the beers she'd carefully extracted and reached past me to give it to Liz. “Just pick one and we'll go with it,” she said to me, and then went about grabbing another couple of drinks out. “Or we’ll try to, anyway.”
Bree was still hanging around the door frame. “We could go male pronouns?” she offered. “Like, maybe you could try it and see if you like it? You do really look like one, after all.”
Liz looked from Bree to me, eyebrows way up. “Okay, what does that mean?”
I was so not ready to school people on ge
nder, because 'I don't know, call me whatever you want' seemed like a perfectly acceptable answer to me, but everyone else was having huge issues with it. Fine, I thought, I’ll choose something to keep everyone happy. I was actually tempted to go for Bree's suggestion of male pronouns, but Sarah's 'or we’ll try to' was what worried me. I didn't want people mixing them and then thinking they needed to correct themselves and each other all evening. Having my gender constantly coming up was the very last thing in the world that I wanted.
I just went with the easiest option that I thought would cause the minimum amount of discussion. “Tell them I'm a girl, then, I guess.”
Liz took a sip of her beer. “Okay,” she said. “Killer shirt, by the way. Where did you get it? I should get some ones like that for Chris.”
I shrugged. “It's Henry's.”
Liz and Sarah shared a glance. “Oh,” Liz said. “Okay.” She continued to the living room. Bree followed her, presumably to deliver her answer to Chris.
Sarah stood up from the fridge and offered me a beer. I accepted it and as she passed it to me, she said, “I'm glad you said 'girl', because I've been talking about my boss like you're a chick for the last three weeks. That, and Gem isn't here yet, either. I can just imagine her coming into the living room and saying 'she' something about you and then having you both freak out over the scene that would cause. It was difficult enough to drag you out from under your bed, I don't need to do it to her as well.” She put her hands on her hips, glancing up at the clock. “Anyway, that reminds me. I don't know where that girl is. She was going to come here after work but she hasn't and she's not replying to any of my texts. She overthinks stuff a bit, but I didn't think she was that worried about you being here.”
I grimaced. I knew exactly why she wasn't here. “Um,” I began, and Sarah looked suspiciously at me. I scrunched up my face. “I bumped into her in the lift at work,” I said, adding, “Also, Sean Frost was in there, too.”
Sarah watched me as the implications of what I'd told her settled in. She exhaled, looking a bit frustrated. “Didn't go so well?” I shook my head. She rolled her eyes and said cryptically, “And I can't even outsource this one, either. We really need to find that girl a boyfriend.”
Her keys were on the counter, and she grabbed them. “Back in 15,” she said, and then rushed out the door. Shortly after that, I heard a car start. She was probably going to go check to make sure Gemma was okay, I thought, guessing that that's what she meant about Gemma needing a boyfriend. That was nice of her, but, fuck, I hoped Gemma wasn’t staying away just because of me. Away from her own group of friends… all of whom were probably waiting in the living room to meet me, I realised. With Bree. I winced.
Well, I couldn’t just hang out in the kitchen by myself. I took my beer, psyched myself up and went to join everyone in the living room. There were a couple of other people I didn't know in there—both men—and everyone turned to look at me as I came in. Bree had been sitting on the back of couch behind an enormous, muscular guy with his leg bandaged, and instead of letting me slink quietly in she called to everyone, “This is Min! Min: this is everyone!”
“Hi, everyone...” I said, feeling really self-conscious. There weren't any seats left on the couches, so I just stood behind them, taking a sip of my beer.
The huge guy was probably Chris, Liz's rugby-playing husband. He was staring at me, with particular attention to my flat chest. Liz clipped him across the ear. “Stop being a dick and just drink your beer,” she told him quietly.
“There's space next to us,” Andrew offered, shuffling along the couch to create room. I was okay with standing over here, but I didn't want to seem impolite, so I went and sat down next to them. “Sorry I thought you were a guy before,” he said, looking a bit embarrassed.
“It's kind of the look I'm going for,” I told him a bit shortly, aware everyone was trying to pretend they weren’t watching me. I really, really, really didn't want to talk about it, either. Especially not in front of all these people. “So, thanks, I guess…”
Bree made eye-contact with me from the other couch, and she saw how uncomfortable I was. She looked around frantically until her eyes fell on Chris's bandaged knee. “So how did you fuck your knee?” she asked him. “Is it a cool story?”
Liz groaned. She might have heard it a few times. “Don't get him started,” she told Bree, but it looked like she was too late.
Chris puffed out his colossal chest and looked fiercely proud of his injury. “I still reckon I scored the try that won the fucking game with it,” he said, and then launched into his story.
I had absolutely zero interest in rugby but I listened politely, so thankful to Bree for distracting everyone from me. People were still casting curious looks in my direction but at least they weren't saying anything. I thought Sarah was probably right: they probably didn't care, but being the centre of attention was something I hated and I just kind of wished I could press a button and become invisible. I figured I'd probably care a lot less if I was loaded up on alcohol, and if I got started early I'd be sober again by the time I needed to drive home. I finished my beer in record time.
One of the other guys I didn't know leant over to me from a chair he'd pulled up, and handed me his full bottle when I was done with mine. “I don't really like this one, you want it? Don't worry, it’s not gross or anything, I didn't backwash.”
I looked down at myself as I accepted the drink from him. “I think it's a bit too late for me to worry about being infected with guy germs.”
He looked relieved for some reason and then laughed, holding out his hand for me to shake. “The name's Matt as well, but these guys call me Smithy because the position of 'Matt' had already been filled by this guy when I rocked up.”
Matt, who must have been furtively listening, grinned across Andrew at Smithy. “First in, best dressed, bro.”
Both of them were dressed very casually, and because I already had a beer in me, I couldn't just leave that one. “I'm clearly the best dressed out of the three of us,” I pointed out. “Does that mean I win the title of 'Matt'?”
They all thought that was hilarious, and that made me relax a little. They can't be that uncomfortable with me if they're laughing at my jokes, I thought. They were okay.
When they were done laughing, we all sat back and listened to Chris waxing poetic about his heroic sports injury. Or they did, anyway. I was just happy they'd all stopped throwing secret glances at me when they thought I wasn’t looking.
The topic had shifted to other heroic injuries, and Smithy had started to tell us about when he'd broken his arm—complete with horrifying scar, which we all made faces about—when the front door opened. Shortly afterwards, Sarah came marching into the living room with an open bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. “Did you miss me?”
Smithy mock-glared at Sarah. “I was actually in the middle of telling everyone about when that car knocked me off my bike,” he said. “If you don't mind.”
Sarah looked properly chastised and grabbed a couple of wine glasses from the kitchen table as she wandered over to where Bree was seated on the spine of the couch. While Smithy got going again, I saw Sarah pour some wine into one of them.
“Can I have some?” Bree asked her.
“Not until you're a grown-up,” Sarah told her, but then gave her the full glass anyway.
Bree took a sip from it. “I'm not a kid.”
Sarah gave Bree's large chest a very pointed look as she poured another glass. “I can see that.”
I had expected that glass to be Sarah's, but she didn't drink from it. Instead, she stood up and walked over to the doorway and handed it to the person who was quietly loitering in it. When I saw who it was, I nearly spat out my beer. It was Gemma. She was dressed in a big floppy jumper, tracksuit pants and Uggboots. She looked a bit embarrassed by that, especially when she spotted me among the faces looking at her. We shared an awkward whoops-I-didn’t-mean-to-look-at-you glance. “Hi guys,” she said a bit shyly as ever
yone greeted her. “Sarah didn't give me time to get changed...”
“We’re all friends,” Sarah said as Gemma took the wine from her. “It doesn't matter what you wear.”
I could guess what Gemma meant by saying Sarah hadn’t let her change: Sarah had needed to drag her here, and that made me feel awful. These were her friends and because of me she hadn't felt welcome.
I had gone to sit forwards again so it didn't look like I was staring at her, but when I glanced over at Bree, she'd noticed already. She didn't look happy, either, and she hopped down off the spine of the other couch and came and stood in front of me. “There's enough room for me,” she told us, speaking mainly to me. “I'm small.”
Matt and Andrew looked at each other. There really wasn't enough room. I was tempted to offer Bree my lap, but then I wondered why that thought had even crossed my mind. No, Min, I thought, you’re not going there, not with Bree, you know that. Instead, I stood up.
“Have my seat,” I told her, and then went and sat on one of the kitchen chairs.
Bree took it, but when she looked over at me from my spot on the couch, she looked so hurt and disappointed. It was like I'd just rejected her. I didn't know what to do about it, so I just tried to look apologetic.
The boys were still half-listening to Smithy's story, but Gemma saw the whole exchange between me and Bree, and looked like she was liable to just go home again. Before she could, though, Sarah ushered her into the living room. “Pizza's going to be like an hour,” Sarah told us all, seating Gemma in one of the kitchen chairs. “It's busy tonight. So,” she said, walking over to the TV and turning on her Foxtel IQ. “I've got like a hundred movies recorded. Which one first?” We all participated in scrolling through the list, and the consensus seemed to be a horror movie. While Sarah was getting it all set up, everyone went to go and grab themselves more alcohol.
Bree took that opportunity to come over. “Why don't you want to sit with me?” she asked, although I suspected that wasn't the real question.
Under My Skin Page 41
