The first time we kissed my lips were sunburnt. You’d been away for five weeks and I’d spent the whole time trying to become more beautiful for when you got back. Then, in the last three days, I managed to get the worst sunburn anyone in my family had ever seen. No one could see that my lips were burnt, though. No one could see that my best friend and I were in love with each other, either. It wasn’t until the start of autumn that someone told me I looked sick. All summer, I’d stayed up till 5am, talking to you in different time zones. At 7am, I’d go to work. On the bus, I would furiously write down everything that had happened the last time my best friend and I slept in the same bed; then, something like, “Is it possible to be in love with two people at once?” For lunch, I ate three strawberries, then, put my apron back on and stood on Lambton Quay blowing lemon-scented bubbles until I thought I would faint. Sometimes I wondered what the soap would taste like. On my afternoon off, my friend and I mixed fruit syrup and gin in a plastic drink bottle and drank it on the bus. We ran around the Botanical Gardens talking about love and sex and sat laughing on a bench with my arm in one sleeve of her jacket and her arm in the other. When a band started to play we rushed down to the sound shell and squeezed to the front of the crowd. An old lady with a foreign accent told us, “There is nothing more beautiful than young girls dancing together.”
Later that night, when we were sitting in the trippy tree, I told her about the “best friend” situation. She shrieked with surprise and gripped my arm. I didn’t tell her anything else.