I walked over to the table and pulled out the chair while Kate’s eyes remained fixed to the screen that glowed in her palm. Kate has always had this annoying habit of becoming so engrossed in her phone that she often forgets she has company and rousing her from it is like trying to wake Sleeping Beauty without giving her a quick snog first.
I managed to take off my coat, sit down, cross my legs and heave a sigh before Kate even noticed I was there.
‘Effie! You’re here!’ she gushed, placing down her phone, the screen still open and showing the other conversations she was having on the side – it was like being blatantly cheated on. She grinned widely at me, her eyes darting to her phone, then back to my face. I wished she’d stop pretending to be excited to see me; we both knew she wasn’t. ‘I didn’t know what you drank these days, so I just got something for myself.’
I desperately tried not to grimace and roll my eyes.
I’d only been drinking lattes for ten years, but then how would someone who still insisted on calling me her ‘best friend’ know that?
‘No worries,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll go and get it myself.’
She didn’t notice my passive aggression and happily went back to phoneland while I got up and joined the queue.
The guy at the counter was pretty, in a grubby hipster kind of way. He had a thick black beard, which I instantly deemed unhygienic to have dangling that low over the tray of exposed pastries beneath, and wore braces that held up his burgundy drainpipe jeans.
He greeted me with an overly enthusiastic ‘Hi there!’ and waited for my order. I ordered my latte and looked longingly at a cinnamon bun that sat close enough for me to catch a whiff of its sickly sweet goodness. I thought about ordering one, then looked over my shoulder at the slim and beautiful Kate and decided to forgo the calories.
I looked down at the barista’s name tag; it read Bernard.
I couldn’t help but wonder if Bernard was his actual name or if, like Catholics, you got a new name when confirmed into the fold of Hipster.
‘Which of our coffees would you like today?’ Bernard asked.
I looked up confused.
He took this as an invitation to elaborate. ‘You could have our house coffee, which is a dark roasted bean with a bitter finish and hints of raspberry and chocolate or our guest coffee, which is a medium roast with a velvet finish and caramel undertones.’
I looked at him with confusion, wondering when ordering a coffee became like the general knowledge round of Mastermind.
‘Which would you recommend?’ I asked, trying to hide that I was out of my depth.
‘It depends entirely on your palate, madam,’ he replied, unhelpfully.
I flinched at his use of the word madam. It made me feel like an old biddy or the proprietor of a whorehouse.
‘Erm, the cheapest one.’ The rising intonation at the end of my sentence made me sound like I was asking a question.
He gave me a pitiful smile, as if he thought me a complete philistine, and took my money.
When I returned, Kate had a smile plastered over her sickeningly made-up face. I found it difficult to do the most basic of tasks, like draw matching eyeliner flicks for both eyes without making my entire face look lopsided, but somehow Kate had managed to become the Rembrandt of cosmetics.
‘So.’ Kate grinned and splayed her manicured hands out on the table. ‘I have massive news.’
‘Really? Do tell,’ I replied, as eager to hear her news as I was to have an unnecessary root canal.
‘I’ve been asked to go to Toronto for three months and broker a deal between my company and some fancy Canadian firm. If they approve the deal, then I can pretty much retire at thirty.’
‘Wow,’ I said, jealousy building inside me like Vesuvius, ‘are you taking it?’
‘Am I taking it?’ she scoffed. ‘What kind of question is that? They’re practically begging me to go. I mean, the flight, the hotel and every ounce of food and wine will be paid for. It’s basically a free holiday with a tiny bit of work thrown in.’
The green monster inside my brain began to scream and tie a noose for itself.
‘There’s just a lot to think about isn’t there?’ I tried in vain to talk her out of it, just so I could cease to be friends with someone so perfect and accomplished. ‘What about Callum and your parents?’
Kate scoffed. ‘My parents? Honey, I’m late twenties.’ I felt the blow of Kate’s words hit me directly in the gut. She may well have escaped the purgatory of living in the family home, but I was very much still there. ‘And as for Callum …’ Kate paused and I instantly knew what was coming. If the intonation of her voice hadn’t given it away, then the sickeningly self-gratified grin had.
I knew what she wanted me to do, but I refused to do it. I would not look at her hand.
It was my one small act of defiance.
When I didn’t look down, Kate brought her left hand up into the air and that’s when I saw it, the oval-cut diamond that sat on her perfectly polished ring finger. ‘… he proposed.’ The diamond reflected the neon green light of the exit sign behind me and all I wanted to do was turn around and use it.
‘I’m so happy for you,’ I lied. What else could I have said?
‘I knew you would be. Of course, you will have to be part of the day,’ Kate cooed. The idea of being stuffed into
