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‘We don’t need to do it again,’ I say. I am torn between making sure he knows I’m still angry at him and making sure he knows that I have no emotions about him whatsoever.

‘You want to pretend to be broken up?’ he says. ‘That feels more complicated.’

‘Well no, we can just…’ I hesitate. ‘I guess we can pretend to be together but just not be really together. We don’t need to put on a whole performance like last time.’

‘Right. Okay.’ He looks uncertain.

‘Or we can tell Tristan the truth! I don’t care.’ I shrug my shoulders, even though I think I have developed a tremble in my right leg from the layers of stress I am internalising right now.

‘Is that what you want? To tell him the truth?’ Jesse says.

‘Not really. I don’t know,’ I say. I feel desperate and pathetic. My head is aching now.

‘It’s fine Brooke. We can be a fake couple again, if it doesn’t mean anything to you then it doesn’t mean anything to me,’ he says, jamming his hands into his pockets.

‘It doesn’t mean anything to me,’ I say with more aggression than I really planned.

‘Great. Fake couple it is then,’ he says. We walk over to the table, where Tristan is beaming at us, and Henry is explaining that he and Tristan decided last weekend to start their own trivia team after they realised they have perfectly complementary interests: Tristan can do science, geography and celebrity, and Henry can do history, music and sport.

‘Shots! I bought shots!’ Lauren yells, and several of the trivia teams around us turn and frown at her like she’s a hooligan interrupting everyone’s pleasant evening, which I guess she is.

She carries the tray over to the table, and everyone but me downs a shot. I watch Jesse knock it back with ease, and Lauren smile and elbow him and say something, and, oh god, he’s definitely going to sleep with her. He looks so happy, laughing with her. Harper and Penny do too. Henry, who initially seemed excited to see me even though I have avoided a do-over first date, seems enchanted by her. Fine Lauren, take everything then! The thing is, she doesn’t even want it. My friends, my housemates, my sad little life, this is just another night out for her—she can’t help being a force of nature. The more fun she is, the sterner and more sober I feel.

I’ve missed my calling. I needed to be born in a time when people used to have chaperones on dates. I am the perfect chaperone, I just need a few crisp shirts to button up tight and put my hair in a bun, and voila, I could grimly oversee any kind of shenanigans.

Get a grip.

I take charge of the pen and paper, since everyone else is getting steadily drunker, and if we’re going to play, I want to at least try. Lauren shouts the wrong answer every time, and Henry and Jesse laugh. God, they are both so transparent. I’m not even sure which one I dislike more right now. Tristan takes it seriously, as I knew he would, but I can feel Kendra monitoring how many times Tristan and I interact, so I am trying to avoid talking to him. I am also busy monitoring how much Lauren is drinking, because I know the exact number of shots it takes before she attempts to do a handstand (she cannot do a handstand), and I’ll need to step in in case she hurts herself. I write down answers on the sheet as best as I can, but at some point, the pen is grabbed from my hand, so Lauren can draw ‘an anatomically correct shark penis’.

The mood of the pub is turning on us. We’re ruining trivia, and I’m thinking we should go when Lauren yells, ‘Karaoke!’ and Penny shouts ‘Yes!’, and I mentally delete another $50 out of my account, which I can’t afford, but I would rather be in serious debt than go home and lie in bed imagining them having fun without me. Better for me to go along and watch them have fun without me.

‘Yay, karaoke,’ I add to the general excitement, but my acting skills are slipping away.

Tristan walks over and says, ‘Are you okay?’

‘Fine,’ I say.

‘You and Jesse aren’t talking to each other,’ Tristan says.

Why does he need to notice this? And worse, comment on it. Mind your own business.

‘We had a fight before we came, but we’re over it now,’ I say.

‘As long as you’re sure you’re okay,’ he says.

‘I’m fine.’

‘You can talk to me, you know.’

‘Well you didn’t say a word to me for months after you brutally dumped me right before exams, so excuse me if I don’t feel like confiding in you,’ I snap. Tristan hates conflict so starting fights with him is a pointless exercise. He’ll grovel and backpedal, but it does feel cathartic. He’ll take my guilt-tripping tactics and my anger and swallow them down hungrily.

‘I’m so sorry, Brooke. I wanted to reach out to you so many times,’ he says.

‘It’s fine,’ I say.

‘It’s not. I know it’s not. I wrote so many texts and then deleted them. I even wrote you a letter. Well, it was actually kind of a poem, about our relationship, a kind of follow-up to the other one, but Kendra and my mum both said not to send it.’

Another poem! I could have had a matching pair.