‘Yes. We’re talking right now,’ I say, folding my legs under me.

‘Okay. Well. Back when we were in high school—’

‘No. I don’t want to talk about that,’ I say quickly, shaking my head.

‘Brooke, if you never let me bring it up then we can never get over it.’

‘We’re over it. It’s fine.’

‘Okay let’s talk about what happened last week then.’

‘I’m over that too.’

‘You were really upset. And we haven’t spoken since!’

‘Well, I’m fine now. I’ve had my outburst. We can move on.’

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘So…’

‘So we’re friends. We’re back to being friends,’ I say. Being friends, I have decided, is the best and safest way forward. As long as I don’t think about any of our history, the kiss, the way I feel, as long as all of that is safely bottled up, being friends will be easy.

‘Good,’ Jesse says, nodding. ‘Good.’

I see his eyes land on the legs of the dog that are sticking out from under my pillow, wearing the telltale green dogtor scrubs. I can tell from his expression he knows what it is. Great. Now he’ll think I sleep with it. Which I do sometimes. But I never want him to know that.

He looks like he’s working himself up to say something else, but suddenly there’s a scream, followed by another, and a smash, and someone yells, ‘Brooke!’

28

28

Lauren is sitting on the couch, clutching her hand, which is bleeding.

‘There was a mouse!’ she shrieks. ‘It ran that way.’ She points down the hallway and blood drips from her hand, adding a new shade of red to the wine stain on the carpet.

‘What happened?’ I say.

Everyone starts yelling at once. Apparently, Lauren was going to attempt a handstand with Henry and Kendra holding her legs and Penny supporting her butt and Tristan filming, when mid-manoeuvre they all saw the mouse and everyone freaked out. In the chaos, someone smashed a tray of glasses and Lauren rolled into the smashed glass.

‘It touched my foot!’ Kendra is yelling about the mouse.

‘Babe, no it didn’t. That was me,’ Tristan is saying.

‘Get me a bandage, and we can still do the handstand. Quick, before I lose momentum,’ Lauren says.

‘Show me your hand,’ I say.

This isn’t my first rodeo. Lauren was once drunk and walked on broken glass and I had to pick the shards out of her feet. I feel a sense of almost calm settle over me. I knew something was going to happen to Lauren, because something always happens to Lauren, it’s just a matter of what it is and how bad it is. And now it has happened, and it is this—a small, manageable thing—and I can deal with it.

‘It’ll be fine,’ she says.