Page 111 of Begin Again Again

Hey, what are you up to this week? Would you want to go to NGV with me?

Another message came up.

I’m asking you out because I think you’re stunning and not because I want to keep you on the team. Although, I also want to keep you on the team.

She laughed, pleased. Not so much to be asked out by Josh so much as the confirmation that life would keep moving on. She clicked out of the messages without replying and added “When The Party’s Over” to the playlist. There were fifteen minutes until she was due to talk to Dolly. Beth headed back onto the track and began to run.

Chapter 17

Josh pointed at the statue of a naked woman, an imitation of a classic Greek statue decked out in silver and pink chrome. “This is pretty.”

“It is,” Beth agreed, walking closer.

Maybe it was an expression of consumerism—replicating classical art with gaudier, cheaper materials. Or maybe the artist was trying to breathe new life into an old style—remind viewers that human made the original statues to suit the times, not because they were inherently more dignified. Or maybe they were putting superficiality on display. As you moved closer to the naked woman, you saw yourself in the reflective surfaces. The watcher becoming the watched. That’s what Beth liked about art; all observations were relevant, all opinions mattered.

Josh shifted his head to the side. “I can see my face in her boobs.”

Except maybe that opinion.

Beth smiled weakly. “Want to move to another room?”

“Sure.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and steered her forward. Beth resisted the urge to pull away. In early sobriety, she invented Beth’s law—the gap between the fun you were having and the fun you wanted to be having, as measured in the drinks you’d need to get from one to the other.

She’d taken Joshua Ramos for a nice, chilled out guy, but now that they were alone, he’d unearthed a pretty juvenile sense of humour and an overly touchy vibe. She had no doubt it was partly nerves, but that didn’t make it any more fun. She was about three red wines from where she wanted to be. She wanted to be amused by his jokes and flattered by his affection. She wanted to focus on how good he looked in his blue shirt with his hair swooshed back and stop thinking things like‘he’s a toolbox’and‘he has no interest in being here. He just thought it would be a good date.’

Because what was wrong with that? You were allowed to take a girl to a gallery because you thought it would be a good date. And she was allowed to have fun in a nice place with a handsome guy who liked her. But that was the problem with sobriety—the surface level was always giving way to deeper water. And she wasn’t having fun. This felt like a work event, with additional handholding.

They moved into an exhibition called House of Heroines. It was a circus tent of clashing fabrics, glittery and bold. The word SISTERS stood next to a row of women carrying banners. Elsewhere a picture of a woman stood, bisected by different coloured felt. She had two children clinging to her and her shorts read NEVER ALONE. Goosebumps prickled Beth’s arms and she turned to look at Josh. He was studying a pillar of green and argyle fabric with a smirk. It wasn’t hard to figure out why—red-tipped stockings looked like deflated penises. Beth ducked from under his arm and walked away to study a glittery honeybee. NOT YOUR HONEY the sign beside it read.

Behind her, Josh laughed louder and she knew he was trying to get her attention. She ignored him. She wanted to immerse herself in the exhibition, not snigger at intentional depictions of dicks. Joshua came to collect her, steering her from House of Heroines to a room full of recycled glass portraits. He seemed equally amused by the pictures of naked women swimming with sea creatures. This was exactly how Stephen acted whenever they did anything ‘arty.’ He whined through the Terracotta Warriors, yawned through Dolly’s cross-stitching workshop and refused to wait in line to see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. Art wasn’t his thing? Fine. But he could have not been a dick about it. And here she was, at another beautiful art exhibition with a man who acted like him being here was the main attraction. Beth remembered the Salvador Dali poster in Byron’s room and her stomach dropped like a stone.

No. Not now.

Beth focused on a painting of four naked women. They gazed solemnly back at her. Three were solidly coloured, one in what looked like biro—

“Hey!” Josh tugged on her arm. “There’s some movie in the other room. Let’s check it out.”

Beth’s Law expanded to five wines. Maybe six. She followed Josh into the next section, wondering if she could get Lara to fake an emergency call. Then she remembered she and Lara weren’t speaking. A lump filled her throat.

“You okay?”

Beth smiled at her date. “Just a bit tired. Want to get a drink?”

“Sure.”

They headed to the refreshment area. On the way, they passed a dark window. Josh tilted his head toward it. “We look good together.”

Beth looked, and she had to agree they did. Josh was a head taller than her, his black hair complementing her red. His stocky, muscular body balanced by her curves.

“Two hot Kiwis,” Beth agreed. “Want a Coke?”

“Yeah. I’ll get it.”

Josh went to the drinks table and Beth chose a seat away from the windows. It didn’t matter how she and Josh looked together. Unless he was severely concussed and acting entirely out of character, this date was a bust. She needed an exit strategy, some way to say goodbye without offending him or getting locked into another date. She shouldn’t have accepted his offer, but she’d been on such a roll moving on with her life this past week, she’d let Dolly talk her into going.

“What do you have to lose?” her friend demanded.

The answer was three hours, a million opportunities to appreciate modern art and a friendly relationship with her rugby team. Daisy had found out about the date and apparently everyone on the team was already planning their fucking wedding.

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