Page 50 of Try Hard
I simply waited.
“Oh, it’s so cute,” he gushed. “Those pancakes lookincredible.”
“They are,” I replied without thinking. My mind was suddenly full of the memory of Eve feeding me her passion fruit ones.
“You ordered pancakes? My, my, you really are on holiday!”
That broke me from my reverie. “What? I eat pancakes. Everyone eats pancakes.” That wasn’t technically true, but it was the principle of the thing.
“You eat pancakes in private.”
“For fuck’s sake, Fuad. It’s not some deep, dark secret. It’s breakfast.”
“Brunch.”
“Whatever.”
He laughed again. “You just like to keep food serious.”
“What’s more serious than a pancake?” In truth, when Eve had been feeding me hers, nothing in the world had ever felt more serious.
Jesus.What was wrong with me?
“So true,” Fuad said, more seriously than a pancake probably deserved, but also, as the person mooning over my secondary school gay awakening and her pancakes, I knew I didn’t have a leg to stand on. “I take back what I said. Can’t wait to have them when we go.”
“We’re not—” I shook my head. What was the point? If Fuad decided we were going, we were probably going. Still, no playlist.
“That’s what I thought,” he said triumphantly. “So, anything other than amazing brunch to report? Have you suffocated on people yet?”
“Nothing else to say.” Not to him, not to anyone, really. Maybe my mum? The feelings Eve was stirring up felt like they needed an outlet somewhere, but, if I told Fuad, I’d never hear the end of it and we weren’t friends like that. I didn’t talk about my personal life at work.
“So, there’s way too many people but you’re having the best time celebrating your old BFF from secondary school’s wedding. Got it.”
“Kim was not my…BFF.”
“She invited you to her wedding after twenty years. You have to have been close.”
“Kim’s just friendly. I’m sure you’d get along.”
“Only you could make that sound insulting.”
“Simply an observation.”
Fuad chuckled in that way he did when he thought I was being difficult, and I wondered what he’d think of Tanika, too. And the fact that so many of my friends from school were chatty, bubbly people.
“What was the other reason you called?” I asked, getting us back on track.
“Ah. So, yeah, remember that this is all talk and, honestly, probably stuff I shouldn’t even have been eavesdropping on, but, it’s me. Talk at your own risk.”
And that was one of the reasons I wouldn’t be talking about Eve.
I braced myself in my seat, noticing my mum was peeking out of the living room window to check I was okay. This wasn’t really the place you just loitered in your car and got away with it.
“How do you feel about being on video?” he asked.
I frowned, waving my mum off. “You want to video call me? No, thank you.”
He laughed. “No, silly. Like on social media.”
