Page 9 of Fling

Still, she loved the office’s stunning view of where the River Liffey met the sea. She envied the river. It never stopped to question where or why it was flowing. It relied purely on natural instinct, its path fixed from beginning to end. Tara used to feel her life obeyed the same laws of nature. Now, her life felt like an ocean. She could swim in any direction but she didn’t know which way would lead to shore.

At exactly 9.05 a.m., Emily arrived with Tara’s coffee.

‘You’re early,’ Emily said, surprised to see her.

‘And you’re late,’ Tara said, only half-joking.

‘It’s pronounced latte,’ Emily said, handing her the coffee. ‘How was I supposed to know you’d be on time for once?’

‘Touché,’ Tara laughed, taking the cup.

Emily was twenty-three years old and had recently graduated with a BA in Psychology from Trinity College. She had a black bob haircut, a stud nose piercing and she dressed exclusively in vintage clothing from alternative thrift shops. The outfits she wore each day were rather provocative for an office setting, but Tara didn’t dare infringe on her right to self-expression.

As a Trinity graduate herself, Tara liked the idea of taking Emily under her wing. Although truth be told, Tara wanted to be a mentor more than Emily wanted to be mentored. Sure, she couldn’t be a mother, but she could still leave a legacy. She could still inspire women, uplift women, champion women. Even something as simple as a young girl seeing her thrive and saying, ‘I want to be her when I grow up’. That would be enough. Enough to know that she, as a woman, had made a difference and left her mark.

She had learned rather quickly that Emily had nothing but apathy for the world of work and was merely hopscotching through internships in an effort to bulk out her CV. But Emily’s star sign was Libra, the most compatible sign with Gemini, and Tara therefore excused her complete indifference to her role and let her get away with murder.

As an only child, Tara always longed for a sense of sisterhood in her life. She had female friends, of course, but they were all mothers now, and whenever she would call to catch up with them, they always seemed to have their hands full. She often felt like she had no one to talk to, no one to confide in. In many ways, Emily felt like the little sister she never had. And Tara admired how engaged she was with issues that affected her generation, specifically feminism, a field Tara was always trying to improve in.

Although she had studied business at Trinity College, Tara had taken a women’s studies elective as part of a broad curriculum initiative. The module had changed her life. The patriarchy was suddenly everywhere. Her rose-tinted glasses of childhood had been replaced with bleak blue bifocals. There was no going back. She was ready to join the cause and become a trailblazing feminist icon, smashing the glass ceiling and dismantling the patriarchy. She had spent weeks writing a paper titled ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fundamental Rights: A New Theory of Synth-Wave Feminism’. But then, to Tara’s horror, she only received third-class honours, or 49 per cent, to be specific. She was so devastated that ever since that grade, she found herself overcompensating in an attempt to prove that she was, in fact, a good feminist. How on earth had an elective on female empowerment given her an inferiority complex?

Tara took the first glorious sip of her triple-shot vanilla latte. Bliss.

‘Don’t tell anyone this, Emily, but the reason I’m early today is because I drove in the bus lane,’ Tara said, still riding the high of her rebellious act.

‘I know, it was on the news,’ Emily said without expression.

‘What?’ Tara panicked. ‘Did someone record me? Oh Jesus, did someone file a complaint?’

‘Yeah, the guards asked me to wear a wire and record your confession. They have the building surrounded,’ Emily said sarcastically.

Tara felt a wave of relief. She should have known Emily was just winding her up, especially considering she did so every day. It was just so hard to read Emily’s resting bitch face, an expression she had spent years perfecting in response to men telling her to smile more.

‘OK, you got me,’ Tara admitted. She couldn’t help but notice Emily seemed taller than normal. She looked down to see a pair of knee-high patent leather boots.

‘Emily, are those stripper boots?’ Tara asked, raising an eyebrow.

‘Well, you always say to dress for the job you want, not the job you have,’ Emily said, showing them off.

‘That’s not exactly what I had in mind,’ Tara said, bewildered. ‘Anyway, how did your date go with that guy?’

Every Monday morning, Emily would debrief her on her latest hook-up stories and Tara was eager for the juicy details. With her own sex life dead as a dodo, she sometimes found herself living vicariously through Emily’s youthful promiscuity, even if she secretly sometimes found the stories shocking.

‘Ugh, he was so nice. It was awful. Why can’t I just find a guy who’ll ruin my life?’ Emily said.

‘Oh come on, nice guys don’t always finish last,’ Tara said.

‘At least he got to finish. I swear, whenever a guy calls himself a cunning linguist, he always turns out to be icliterate,’ Emily complained.

Tara nearly spat out her coffee at Emily’s turn of phrase. She had a rather creative way of describing things. ‘You young Millennials never cease to amaze me,’ Tara laughed.

‘Ew, I’m not a Millennial. I’m Gen Z.’

‘Sorry, I always get those two mixed up.’

‘Millennials are the ones who can’t afford a mortgage because they spend all their money on avocado toast. Gen Z are the ones who want to save the planet and have constant anxiety about failure,’ Emily explained.

‘Oh,’ Tara said awkwardly.

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