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I dug through my handbag and quickly found my phone, scrolling until I found the number I was looking for.

“Riss?” she answered on the first ring.

“Yeah, what?”

“Let’s go out.”

A groan from the other end of the phone.

“Do you want to or not?”

“It’s fucking Sunday, Zarina. I have work tomorrow and my boss can be a bit of a bitch.”

A small smile crept onto my face and I let loose a chuckle. Some of the tension fell away, but it was still there, waiting for me to have a moment of silence, a pause in activity, anything.

I couldn’t stop.

I had to keep going, keep moving, keepdoing.

Maybe Iwasa bit like a shark.

“Fine,” I sighed. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Look, I’ll come if you desperately want,” she said, a rare tinge of worry to her voice. “I don’t want you going out alone.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll just go home.”

A beat of silence.

“You promise?”

“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered. “Yes.”

“Okay…” Larissa said slowly, not believing me at all.

“I’ll see you in the morning?”

“Yeah, course.”

“Love ya, bye,” I sang.

A chuckle. “Love ya, bye.”

I hung up the phone and scrolled through my contacts list, looking for somebody,anybody, who would be up for a big night out.

After two more phone calls, I was still alone.

Only a few years ago, all my friends were up for a night out any day of the week. It didn’t even matter if we had work the next day.

But now, we were fully-fledged grown ups.

Some of them had important jobs. Some had wives or husbands. Some even had kids.

It felt like everyone else was moving forward, and I was still here, standing in the middle of a random street in Melbourne, looking for the closest place that would sell me a strong drink.

12

ZARINA