Page 43 of Power Moves
Remi raises her eyebrows.
‘There was not! Maybe you’re mistaking it for a hate vibe? There were probably pretty obvious hate vibes.’ Ugh, I can feel them seeping out of my pores now. That man is so presumptuous with his little smirky smiles.
Remi lifts her glass to inspect the bubbles. ‘I don’t get why you’re so obsessed with hating him.’
I take a giant gulp of my champagne. There are many reasons why I hate Archie but listing them would be too tedious. Thankfully, the God of all DJs is on my side. He’s gone fully old school: Tina Arena—‘Sorrento Moon’. Could there be any better song in history? The unbiased answer is no.
‘Dance?’ I ask, tipping back another mouthful of champagne.
‘Dance,’ Remi agrees.
‘Until Tyler appears and I have to third-wheel.’
‘Hon, don’t stress,’ Remi reassures me. ‘Between you and me, I’ve always considered Tyler the third wheel.’
?
Normally I’m a one-drink-an-hour gal. The kind of drinker who can still drive you home and remind you to have a Hydralyte before bed. The kind of drinker who still makes it to spin class the next morning. Sometimes, however, particularly when I’m with the uni crowd, the units of time in which I consume my drinks seem to condense. Dramatically. And it’s not just me. When we get together, we’re all the same. I’m hoping we grow out of it soon.
Remi and Tyler have been levitating all night. Every time a good song comes on, they are hoisted onto a pair of shoulders so they can dance at ceiling-level while we all wave our arms around them, as though preparing for their logical next move: crowd-surfing. It’s like they’re our sacrifices to the God of Great DJs. And to be honest, if they were, the God of Great DJs would be stoked, because Remi and Tyler are possibly thebest people ever—apart from my sister and brother and dad, of course, and all my other uni girlfriends, but yes, at this present moment, I would say Remi and Tyler might be the best two humans in history. In fact, I need to tell them this. Right now. Yes! Right now!
I stagger towards them through the melee of bodies. ‘Guys I lovesssss youse,’ I cry, grabbing them both in a headlock. They smell like champagne. Or maybe that’s me?
Remi swings her head back and cackles. ‘We loves youse too, Camilla Parker Bowles!’
Haha,yes! I haven’t heard that nickname in forever. I throw my head back to chortle with her, and as we swing our heads back to upright, our faces smash together with a sickening crunch.
‘Jesus!’ I cry.
‘Shit!’ yelps Remi. ‘You’re bleeding!’
I lift my hands to my face and register the warm blood seeping from my left nostril. ‘I’ll nip to the bathroom!’ I yell over the music.
I dart through the crowd, clamping the bridge of my nose. Nothing like a head injury to sharpen your senses. The adrenaline instantly wipes the fuzziness from between my temples, restoring my twenty-twenty vision and rebooting the crisis-management server in my brain. The blood is pooling in my hand and I can feel it trickling down my wrist towards my elbow, so I start jogging. Lucky I’m so swift on these heels.
The bathroom is at the end of a corridor towards the back of the building. I cup my spare hand around my elbow so the excess blood doesn’t drip onto the carpet and push my shoulderagainst the door, forcing my way into a white-tiled room with an eighties-style floral frieze. In one corner of the overly large space is a toilet, and in the other there’s a giant white wicker basket full of fake tree branches with LED lights on their tips. The sink sits in a long laminate bench that runs along the length of the wall opposite the door, under a giant poster that saysLife’s a Beach. I can’t tell if it’s the crappiest excuse for a powder room in an otherwise super upmarket clubhouse, or some kind of post-modern interior decorating genius.
The sounds of the dancefloor are muffled by the closed door and the air is cooler in here too. I kick off my heels and shove my face over the sink to scrub off the blood. Rivulets of reddened water swirl down the plughole. There’s so much blood, I’m not sure if Remi headbutted me or decapitated me.
A loud knock rattles the door.
‘Occupied!’ I yell. My nose is still under the running water.
‘Millsy, it’s me.’
‘Oh.’ I twist the tap off and grab a bunch of paper towels to shove around my nose, which is a completely useless exercise—I can already feel the blood dampening the paper. ‘What are you doing here?’
Archie opens the door and sticks his head through. ‘I’ve had a few head knocks before. I thought I could help.’
At my defeated shrug, he walks inside, closing the door behind him.
‘Life’s a beach, hey?’ he says.
I narrow my eyes. ‘That would have been awful even if it wasn’t directly plagiarised from the wall.’
Archie smiles. ‘Let me see how bad it is.’
‘Is the amount of blood not a clear indication?’
