I hate that she tells people. I hate that she fucking blogs about it, like my sex life is just fucking Tumblr discourse for her. You know, for someone who claims to be woke, she truly does not give a flying fuck about consent the second it comes to flapping her skinny lips about my personal business.
‘Did I tell you Serotonin is going to be at the Hackney thing?’
‘No,’ says Flo. ‘She’s quite big now, isn’t she? Like, doesn’t she live in New York?’
‘I think so. It’ll be nice to see her again. I used to be—’ I move from Flo’s left eye to her right. ‘—so close to her. Weird we didn’t really keep in contact.’ Flo hums. She fucking hated Sera. It was very transparent – a lot of ‘I suppose you’re busy with her’ when I told Flo I couldn’t speak to her on the phone. I always assumed making exactly one new friend was one of the main reasons we stopped speaking for a bit while I was in London and she wasn’t.
Ariana Grande kicks in next. ‘Greedy’。 Flo’s eyeliner is finished, and I shuffle back to my corner of the room.
‘I’m not doing your falsies for you,’ I tell her, and I brush the powder off my cheeks. When the chorus to the song kicks in, I sing ‘greedy for cum’ instead of ‘greedy for love’; I do it every time that line pops up, and I do it specifically because Flo thinks it’s disgusting.
I’ve gone for a bronzy eyeshadow look – everything else tends to be a bit clashy when you’re ginger. Flo’s hair is bobbed, and bleached to shit, but it does mean she has a lot more by way of eyeshadow choices. She’s gone for purple tonight.
‘Should I do a red lip?’
‘If you want to look like a slapper, then aye, absolutely,’ I say. Flo has no taste; she just copies. If left to her own devices, she’d wear total trash. And not trash in a good way, like when I do trash.
‘Don’t you think it’ll look quite editorial?’
‘Not on your bone structure, no,’ I say. Flo is… cute. Like, she’s pretty but she’s not stunning, she’s not beautiful. ‘You’ve got those round baby cheeks. You’ll just look like you’ve made a mess with your mam’s makeup.’
‘Hmm. You’re probably right,’ she says. ‘Nude lip?’
‘If you pair it with, like, a lilac and wear a blush with kind of a lavender tone… that’d look… like, editorial without looking super OTT.’
‘Genius,’ she says. I don’t think she has the bone structure to pull off a monotone makeup look either, but I’m wearing a nude lip tonight, and I’d rather we didn’t match. She’s always trying to match me. I never tell her what I’m wearing.
A knock on Flo’s door – probably Finch. She sticks on a dressing gown before she trots over to answer.
I’m right. He looks cute tonight. Concealer on his acne, and a half-open shirt. He’s been very determined to be as shirtless as possible since his recent top surgery. Fresh haircut too. Short back and sides, heavy on top. Not very exciting; I think that’s the only haircut barbers are doing at the moment. I’ve offered to let him model for me, but he said no, even though he’s a bit of an Irina Sturges fanboy. I think he caught on I was just interested in the novelty factor – or maybe he was just shy. This was years ago, though, early transition. His skin’s been consistently garbage since he went on testosterone; I’ve fully lost interest.
He’s holding a bottle of prosecco, which I loathe. Flo immediately pops it open, firing the cork out of her front door, into the garden.
‘You look nice,’ Finch says, Flo dangling on him.
‘Oh my God, he is such a ladies’ man,’ says Flo, to me. Finch gives her an uncomfortable smile, his lips rolling back into his mouth.
‘I’ll grab some glasses,’ he says, plucking the bottle from Flo’s hand and slinking into the kitchen. Flo mouths, So cute. ‘Have you picked up?’ he calls.
‘About a month ago. Hang on, I’ll go and ask the old ball and chain what we’ve got—’
I cut Flo off. ‘I’ll ask, I’m going for a drink anyway.’ I cut through the kitchen and bump past Finch on the way. I pluck a glass of bubbly piss from his little hands.
‘I like your top,’ he says.
‘It’s a bra,’ I say. It’s longline and sits just above my waist. I didn’t want to get makeup on my top. I’m heading to Michael’s ‘man cave’， a small room off the kitchen where Flo keeps him. There’s a recliner, a huge desk and this big, loud gaming PC with a three-monitor setup. He’s playing some crunchy looking medieval RPG on the centre screen, with football and Archer on either side.
The PVC of my skirt squeaks slightly as I nudge open the door to his room.
‘Hey.’
‘What,’ he says, pulling off his headphones. There’s no need to perform pleasantries without Flo here. He gives me a look, sullen and lascivious. Scowling at me, sneering, while he looks at my thighs, my tits, the bare sliver of stomach between my bra and the waistband of my skirt.
‘Flo wants the drug box,’ I say. He sighs, and begins digging through his desk drawer. Michael is not unattractive, but his urban-lumberjack look is very 2015. He’s heavy set: fat but solid, you know? I like his arms, but he always wears long sleeves. He holds out a Tupperware box for me to take, opens his mouth to speak, then doesn’t.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
I wink when I take the box off him. I’ll get Flo to do a slightly suggestive snapchat to send to him later, when she’s getting sloppy. Cry-wank and a Pot Noodle for Mikey tonight.
Flo labels her drugs with little stickers, which is dorky, but it is a massive time saver. Michael’s weed lives in a separate Tupperware box, so we have here only powders, and a few scattered dud pills rattling around beneath the baggies. I knock back my drink and return to the living room where Finch tops me up. Flo has removed her curlers and is combing her hair out with her fingers.
‘Doesn’t she look just like Marilyn Monroe with her hair like this?’ says Finch. She doesn’t. She looks up at me, expectant, like a dog after fetching. I hum, non-committal, and perch on the sofa, cracking open the Tupperware with my thumbs.
‘You have, about—’ I begin lifting each baggie, holding it to the light, giving them a shake so the powder settles at the bottom. ‘—like, two grams of coke? A gram of MDMA, and a mostly empty thing of ketamine. Like, less than a third of a gram?’ There’s also a small, unlabelled wad of tinfoil in a bag, which I hold out for her. ‘What’s this?’
‘Acid. We bulk-bought the last time we picked up,’ Flo says. ‘We have, like, ten tabs if anyone’s interested in going halfsies with me on one tonight?’ Acid is Flo’s new thing. Acid and ketamine. She keeps banging on about how she’s gone off uppers, and she’s into dissociatives now, even though she can’t physically say no to coke when it’s stuck under her now highly unfashionable septum piercing. Tomorrow, she’ll be picking dried-up coke off it, I’d put money on it.