The mood of the pub is turning on us. We’re ruining trivia, and I’m thinking we should go when Lauren yells, ‘Karaoke!’ and Penny shouts ‘Yes!’, and I mentally delete another $50 out of my account, which I can’t afford, but I would rather be in serious debt than go home and lie in bed imagining them having fun without me. Better for me to go along and watch them have fun without me.

‘Yay, karaoke,’ I add to the general excitement, but my acting skills are slipping away.

Tristan walks over and says, ‘Are you okay?’

‘Fine,’ I say.

‘You and Jesse aren’t talking to each other,’ Tristan says.

Why does he need to notice this? And worse, comment on it. Mind your own business.

‘We had a fight before we came, but we’re over it now,’ I say.

‘As long as you’re sure you’re okay,’ he says.

‘I’m fine.’

‘You can talk to me, you know.’

‘Well you didn’t say a word to me for months after you brutally dumped me right before exams, so excuse me if I don’t feel like confiding in you,’ I snap. Tristan hates conflict so starting fights with him is a pointless exercise. He’ll grovel and backpedal, but it does feel cathartic. He’ll take my guilt-tripping tactics and my anger and swallow them down hungrily.

‘I’m so sorry, Brooke. I wanted to reach out to you so many times,’ he says.

‘It’s fine,’ I say.

‘It’s not. I know it’s not. I wrote so many texts and then deleted them. I even wrote you a letter. Well, it was actually kind of a poem, about our relationship, a kind of follow-up to the other one, but Kendra and my mum both said not to send it.’

Another poem! I could have had a matching pair.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter now,’ I say.

‘It does matter. You still matter to me,’ he says, putting one hand over mine and squeezing it, before letting go and looking into my eyes. I feel my face burning a little, because Tristan is over the top and the touch of his hand makes me want to run, but something about his earnest intensity is still appealing. At one point in time, we really liked each other. Maybe he’s still a little bit in love with me, or, even better, in lust with me. Would that be so bad? He’s the only person here tonight who I am confident is more interested in me than in Lauren. I refuse to analyse how pitiful that thought is.

Jesse is suddenly by my side.

‘Hey,’ he says.

‘Hey,’ I say.