Page 34 of Begin Again Again

Lara frowned. “You don’t wish you’d married Stephen, do you?”

“God, no!”

“Then why is Ruby getting engaged a big deal?”

Beth said nothing, sensing it was smarter to back off.

“Bethany?”

She sighed inwardly. Lara was one of those people who spent her twenties saying she was never getting married… until she did. Now she was way too defensive about it.

Beth raised her hands. “It’s not a big deal. It’s more like… when we were kids, I did everything first because I’m older than him. But now… I mean, Ruby already has a house, and he and Clara are gonna get married…”

“You haven’t failed because he’s doing this,” Lara said. “You’re allowed to do things at your own pace.”

“Yeah, but no one respects you for it.”

It was Lara’s turn to say nothing. She reached under the pram for another ice cream. “Want one?”

“No thanks,” Beth said, trying to keep the bite out of her voice.

She loved Lara, but she was so sick of married, mortgaged parents giving her advice.‘Do things at your own pace.’Yeah. Sure. Nice of women like Lara to tell you to be yourself behind the shield of traditional femininity. No one said ‘tick-tock’ to them or asked whether they’d considered freezing their eggs at after-work drinks. No one took them aside to point out the real estate market was only getting harder to crack into and she should buy a house now and sell it if she got married—as an uncle had done to her last Easter. Now her baby brother was engaged, and Dolly was trying to have a kid, and the worst part was Beth could remember when she didn’t give a shit about any of this stuff.

Two years ago, she barely knew who was marrying what. She was putting in twenty hours a week at her office and fifty-plus hours on the podcast. She did Bikram yoga most days and drank Sauvignon Blanc most nights. She got five thousand likes on bikini pictures on Instagram. When people asked if she had kids, she laughed at how boring that was. The only thing she wanted was to keep making women laugh with Dolly and have some fun before climate change totally sank New Zealand.

Or so she thought.

Beth pulled out her phone and unlocked it. Her background was a naked woman covered in coloured butterflies. It had been drawn by the Naked Pastor—a symbol of personal liberation. She thought of Lara’s iPhone background—Nathan holding Angus.

Normies could deny it all they wanted, but if you didn’t get married and have kids at a certain point, your choices weren’t just your choices anymore. You had to start justifying them. BETH! had enough success to look anyone in the eyes and tell them she was fine, thanks—provided you didn’t see the tequila bottle she was spiriting away in her left hand. But times had changed.

Funny how the straw that broke the camels back seemed so inconsequential at the time. She quit drinking so she could sleep better, work harder, avoid situations like the one with Stephen on the rainy hill. No big deal, it was only booze. Then she pulled the pin and the world stopped spinning. It turned out she could deal with none of it—not her family, not her boyfriend, not her podcast, nothing. It all came tumbling down.

Beth shoved her phone into her pocket, stretching her neck from side to side. Dwelling on the past, imagining you knew things you didn’t know yet, was pointless. She made the choices she made and then she’d moved on. Besides, it was a lot easier to pretend to be an adult than actually grow up. BETH! looked great on paper, but she was emotionally ten. The new version of herself might seem aimless but she was at least eighteen and a half.

Beth looked across at Lara. “Hey, I forgot to ask you something?”

Lara glanced up from her rainbow treat. “What?”

“Would you do Derek Hardiman in a toilet? Now we’re such good friends, I can probably get his number for you.”

Lara laughed loud and hard, and Beth laughed too, partly because Lara was laughing, partly because it was good to break the ice.

“Fuck no,” Lara said when they stopped a street away from her house. “He’s twenty-five! What am I? A pedo?”

Beth gave her a look. “Ahem?”

Lara’s eyes widened. “Not that Byron’s too young for you! I’m old! I’m thirty-six! You’re young! You’re hot! You’re twenty-nine!”

“And ten months,” Beth said drily. “Let’s go home, Granny.”

Chapter 7

Five hours and zero texts from Byron later, Beth threw on a pair of purple leggings and left Lara’s house for touch rugby. The early evening was cool, and the dappled sunlight made it feel more like spring than summer. El Nino, Nathan said, though it might just have been the cold inhale before climate change blew out its fiery breath. It wasn’t a cheerful thought—but it hadn’t been a cheerful afternoon. Lara was grumpy, Angus was grumpy, and she’d gotten several snippy emails from Glenda. She wasn’t her manager, but that didn’t stop Glenda from chasing her on stupid shit while hinting darkly that Beth had a lot of cleaning to do once COVID restrictions eased and they returned to the office. The suggestion was as confusing as it was patronising. Who the fuck had gotten the office dirty while everyone was working from home? And why was it her job to wipe desks and wash coffee mugs? She was a receptionist, not a waitress.

Stupid workplace, Beth thought, ducking around a giant tattooed guy.Stupid job. Stupid Byron. Stupid everything.

When she started looking for work in Melbourne, her plan had been to go to a recruiter and get a communications gig. She had her media degree and plenty of office experience and she figured as long as no one knew she’d spent nine hundred hours talking about sex on a podcast, she’d slot right into a wheat-toast media career. Then COVID hit, pushing her plans into fast-forward. She’d moved into Lara’s spare room and accepted the receptionist role at Mint Energy at the eleventh hour. They’d kept her on her feet, but she couldn’t handle the gig long term. She’d expected it to be boring and repetitive, but she wasn’t prepared for how much everyone talked down to you as a receptionist—acted like they were your boss because you answered the phone.

---