Page 64 of The Friend Zone Experiment

He was roused out of his stupor by his phone vibrating again.

Ket Hau had shut the door behind him. Ket Siong grabbed his phone out of his pocket.

My headddddd

Four and a half cocktails was too many cocktails

A GIF followed, of a bleary-eyed SpongeBob SquarePants getting up off the floor, swaying and burping out a large bubble, accompanied by the caption:This is me

Then, simply:

Thanks for everything, last night

Ket Siong looked at Renee’s messages for a long time.

Ket Hau wasn’t wrong. There were any number of things Ket Siong could say to Renee, to try to set them on a different path. He went so far as to type some of these things out.

Any time. I was glad to hear from you. Call on me whenever you need me.

But Renee had made it clear what she wanted from him. It wasn’t any of this. He deleted the drafts and looked up from his phone. Ran his hand through his hair, breathing out slowly.

No problem. Hope you feel better soon.

17

Renee woke onTuesday to seven emails from Su Khoon’s PA in her inbox, providing the promised information about the Freshview pitch. An eighth email came in while she was reading them—a calendar invite for the meeting at which Su Khoon was to present Chahaya’s pitch to Freshview, in two weeks’ time.

Then the other calendar invites started coming in.

Renee had picked up her phone to check her emails the moment she’d opened her eyes, a bad habit and one she was deeply regretting. It was only seven a.m. She could’ve had another hour of sleep if she’d done the sensible thing and rolled over. That wasn’t happening now.

She’d thought she might have to fight Su Khoon to gain meaningful access to the Freshview deal, notwithstanding his agreement to work with her the night before. But it looked like he was adopting the opposite strategy—drowning her in detail.

She had to admire it. Taking her at her word meant there was no way she could complain to Dad.

She put down her phone and went and got dressed. COS black jersey dress with an asymmetric draped neckline; hammered gold wrist cuff from an indie designer; BB cream, mascara, tinted lip balm; black coffee; laptop.

Suitably armoured, she took a deep breath and rang her brother on her old phone. She’d transferred her old SIM card—the one she texted her actual friends on—to the new phone.

Su Khoon picked up straight away. “What is it?”

“Your PA’s trying to book out the next two weeks to prep for the Freshview pitch,” said Renee. “I appreciate the thought, but I’ve still got a business to run. Can we work out a compromise?”

Su Khoon snorted. “Thought you wanted to be involved? If you’re thinking you can just fly in at the end and take credit for the deal…”

“That’s not what I was thinking,” said Renee. “I’ll put in the work. But come on, Er Ge. I don’t need to be in your office eight hours a day, five days a week, to get a slide deck sorted.”

She heard him draw his breath. Before he could launch into a rant, Renee said:

“You don’t want to see that much of me, do you? I thought the whole point was to try to avoid killing each other.”

This elicited a reluctant huff of amusement. “What are you proposing, then?”

Renee glanced at her calendar on her laptop screen. She was going to have to get Louise to move meetings around, cancel some stuff. And—this hurt—she was going to have to push back the launch of Virtu at Home. She’d been hoping to get the line out in time for Christmas orders, but that had been optimistic even before Chahaya had resurfaced in her life. It was wholly unrealistic now.

She tried not to think about what her team would look like when she told them. She’d cross that bridge when she got to it. You had to be flexible in business, go where opportunity led.

“Give me a day to get through the materials you’ve sent me,” she said. “Then why don’t we have a meeting tomorrow and make a plan?”