Page 29 of The Sound Between Us

7

loser flu

Seren

The steam curls upward from some delicate domestic disaster. I blow at it, lazy and deliberate, fanning it across the kitchen. A pathetic little symphony of pasta and avoidance.

“Then what happened?” The phone wedges between my shoulder and ear, precarious, and slips just as I stir the penne. I catch it before it ends up boiling with the pasta.

“Oh, Ser.” Flick sighs, dreamy and dramatic. “It was amazing. Like honestly, amazing. Like I could have died.”

“If you say ‘like’ one more time, I might have to make it happen.”

She ignores me, obviously. “You should have come. Simon cried. Full-on tears. During that ballad they do. What’s it called again?”

I reach down to the cupboard beneath the island, pull out a jar of pasta sauce and thunk the lid against the marble. “No idea. Is it called ‘We Are So Shit’?”

“So you don’t want to know if we saw him?”

The jar splats into the saucepan; the sound is grossly satisfying. “Nope. I’m just glad you had fun.”

“Mm.”

“Mm what?” I stab at the sauce with the wooden spoon.

“Mm... how come we went out for my birthday and you didn’t mention that Harrison Carter had been in your shop. Or that you baptised him in strawberry milkshake?”

My stomach clenches so sharply it feels like punishment. “So you did talk to him.”

“Thought you weren’t interested.”

“I’m not.”

Liar.

We slip into silence. I keep cooking. Violently. Taking my emotional issues out on carbohydrates. She eventually speaks again, suspicious. “Why does it sound like you’re murdering someone?”

“I’m making pasta and sauce.”

“No roast with the old man and Kimba?”

I shiver and glance toward the bottle of bleach by the sink. A little melodramatic, maybe, but the thought of Dad and his wife-from-hell makes me wish for memory erasure. Industrial strength.

“Don’t call her that.”

“Better than calling her Mum.”

Flick laughs, wicked and amused. “How’d you get out of Sunday Institution, or whatever he’s calling it these days?”

“They’ve gone to Munich. Some music festival.”

“In March?”

“Yeah.” I shrug. “Whatever.” Translation: thank God they’re gone and nowhere near me.

“Want me to come over?”

I look at the pot of pasta, now slightly massacred, then at my open laptop. Still glowing. Still taunting. Still showing the same bloody image I’ve been staring at on loop.