Vivian had stayed inside, comfortable and couch-bound, happy on his laptop, just doing his own thing. Meanwhile, on my side of the deck, Chris L kept saying, ‘Do you feel it?’ No. ‘Do you feel it?’ No. ‘Do you feel something now?’ Cars drove past the ocean, the night came fluttering in, the very few streetlights were obscured by ragged trees.

‘Oh, now I think I feel something,’ said Chris L.

‘Chris L,’ I went to say, ‘I honestly just think,’ but as I went to tell him how self-defeating he was being, monitoring his feelings before they were even there, I felt a lightness circulating through my arms and veins, the space beneath my skin.

‘Do you feel something?’ he said.

‘No, Chris L,’ I said. Then the sac popped and the feeling filled me right up to the brim, and I leaned back in the deckchair, snuggly-snuggly, and said, ‘Ahhhhhh.’

‘Now do you feel something?’ he said.

‘You’re beautiful,’ I said.

He was magnetic. I realised, with great joy, that everything I once thought I disliked about Chris L was nothing short of a remarkable way of being. And to think, I used to scroll past all his identical photos when I needed a reminder of how bad things could get. I went back to the night we met, the parking garage in Fitzroy, the magic circle he’d drawn around him and me, prior to Vivian. Are you coming? he’d seemed to be saying. Everybody’s here.

‘Chris L,’ I said longingly, ‘why don’t I ever see you in your silver cape?’

He briefly pulled down his sunglasses. ‘It’s only for the big moments.’

‘Big moments,’ I repeated.

‘And the internet.’

At a certain point I looked around and we were all wearing sunglasses, all smoking the same menthols, all sharing the same deck. But there were only two of us chewing holes in the sides of our cheeks, while Dan and Lachlan were nestled in their messy, intense state.

‘You have to go say something,’ Chris L was whispering.

‘I can’t, I can’t,’ I said. We were huddled on our chairs, staring discreetly at the far side of the table.

‘We can hear you,’ said Dan. ‘What do you want?’

‘Please turn off that music,’ I said. ‘It’s really not the vibe.’

It was jagged, chugging, lyricless. The smooth R&B playlist was still going inside, but they were playing their own music through a coney-sounding phone.

‘We like it,’ Dan said.

‘Go inside,’ said Lachlan.

My mouth opened. Lachlan had never spoken to me like that, but it suited his carriage, his stiff seriousness. ‘You’re right,’ I said, but he was laser-locked on Dan, his own menthol burning down to cinders in his hand.

‘Hi boys,’ said Vivian when we came inside. He was on the couch, looking at his laptop.