"Yamcha, your phone's beeping at you."
"Shut up. My credits are not balancing with my debits again. I've screwed something up."
"I'm going to listen to your message."
"I think I did something wrong with my double debits."
"Oooo, it's Bulma."
"Did yours balance? Mine is not balancing, still."
"Oh... oh, Yamcha, I think you should listen to this. Uh..."
"I didn't even want to do accounting. Why is this a compulsory subject?"
"YAMCHA." Krillin reached over and pressed the cell phone against his friend's unwilling ear while Yamcha continued to attempt double debiting. His attempts lasted only the few seconds before he realised what the familiar, almost comforting, voice of his long-time girlfriend was telling him through his message bank. Dumping him? She was dumping him? He stared down at his book.
Of course. He'd written that 6 down as a 9.
"It's balancing now. I fixed it." Krillin's brow furrowed in obvious concern. That wasn't really an appropriate response to being dumped, in anyone's books.
"Yamcha?"
"It's ok, Krillin, it's balancing. Hey, could I crash on your couch tonight?" His tone was casual, almost flippant. This sort of reaction, mused the short teen, should have been easier for me to deal with than him bawling his eyes out or going into a rage.
Somehow, it seemed worse. He volunteered to help move clothes and personal possessions from Bulma's apartment.
It seemed like the calm before a storm.
oOo
"Goku's having a hot pot tonight, if you guys want to come." Chichi gave her friends an expectant look that virtually dared them to turn down the invitation. 'Do you want to live?' asked the look, in a way that made the spoken question completely irrelevant.
"Chi, I don't even know what the hell a hot pot IS, let alone if I want to come to one." Julianna had one hand on her hip, coiled into a fist. She was the only girl either Chichi or Bulma knew who could make a hand-on hip pose look dangerous in an 'I'm going to punch in your face' way, rather than an 'I'm going to withhold sex for three years' way.
"Oh, I know!" The corners of Bulma's mouth twitched slightly as she tried to maintain a straight face. "It's a drugs night, where everyone smokes pot and, uh, gets hot, sweaty and naked."
The joke itself wasn't funny, it was the look of over-protective horror on the small, Asian woman's face that left Bulma and Julianna snickering conspiratorially.
"He doesn't like to cook."
"More to the point," Ju added, "Nobody likes his cooking."
"Well, yeah, okay. Anyway, a hot pot is a party where everyone brings a whole bunch of ingredients and we shove them together to make a casserole." She gave the two a suspicious look. "And I'll be inspecting contributions at the door. If you guys bring whipped cream and a tub of Vegemite you can't come in. I'm the bouncer."
Bulma did her best innocent eyes as Chichi turned the key in her door and slipped inside, shutting the door lightly behind her. Julianna turned to the blue-haired girl.
"I'm going to go out and buy five kilos of lentils."
"She's going to be so pissed at you."
"Okay, six."
oOo
Accounts would say that the hot pot was a smashing success, and that Chichi's avocado, mango and lentil casserole was surprisingly delicious – wherever did she get the idea?
Some of a more critical nature would say that the party was rubbish. These people were passed out on the couch, blind-drunk, by half-past eight, blue hair flowing across the tasteless, clashing cushions and beneath the people who had given the more favourable accounts, who sat and chatted, laughing, on the sofa. To be honest, they would have done more than just chatted, but it would have felt strange to them to do so next to Bulma's unconscious form. Besides, Chichi wanted to eavesdrop on a certain conversation.
"You know, I actually quite like lentils", remarked Krillin, pushing around the remains of his casserole, long since gone cold, with his fork.
"I brought six kilos of them."
"They were your idea?" He sounded genuinely impressed with her ingenuity. Ugh. If she didn't know better, Julianna would have suspected that he had a creepy little crush on her. Gross! "You must be a good cook."
She gave him a withering look. "They were a joke, moron. Anyway, the only cooking I do is what can be done in the microwave. Can't be arsed doing anything more complicated."
He laughed nervously and it came out so loud he could have died. "I'm the same. Cooking's not my thing."
She shot him a sarcastic smile and he wondered how difficult it would be to hack off his own tongue with a butter-knife. It would probably take so long she'd get exasperated and think he couldn't even do that right. It was his honest opinion that Julianna Gero was a bitch. But, you know, in a good way. Like she was such a bitch you wanted to impress her, and it would be this amazing honour to have her look at you and be impressed with what she saw, not because she was a woman of discerning taste and heartfelt opinions, but because she was such an amazing cow that she didn't like anyone, and wouldn't it be just fantastic to be the only one she did like?
Not to mention her legs. All the way to her arse, my friend. All the way.
He allowed himself to at least give her a broad smile. She rolled her eyes and stood up, her chair scraping harshly against the floor.
"I'm going home." She shot the small man a look. "I can't stand it here anymore."
oOo
She awoke at 3am, as was her custom. She had expected to sleep through the night when not by his side, but she supposed that by now it was as much the state of her body clock as his heat that woke her.
She was alone in the central room of the small flat, sprawled across the couch with her skirt riding up around her waist. The table was littered with dirty plates, the lentils growing into a gluggy, glue-like paste as the night (or morning, she corrected herself) wore on. Glasses sat on the coffee table, the soft-drink dregs congealing like syrup in the bottom. She felt like vomiting.
She stood with shaky knees, pulling down her skirt and stepping into the sneakers she had left lying haphazardly at the side of the rug. The air felt cool, although in reality the weather was quite warm, even at this time of the morning. She splashed water on her face and drank from the kitchen tap, savouring the tinny taste of tap water.
Her notebook computer sat on the kitchen bench in its bag. She slung it over her shoulder and let herself out. It was time for her morning ritual.
oOo
She set the laptop on the ground. There was no dew on the ground this morning, and she worried there would be another drought soon. Water restrictions were a pain.
She checked the status on the batteries and, satisfied, set about composing a spreadsheet detailing the study plans she proposed for Goku who, in her humble opinion, could use her help.
She heard the soft crunch of footsteps on crisp grass and looked up to see him. She smiled to herself, noticing that he wore jeans despite the heat. Most men wore shorts, unless they were in air conditioning or were self-conscious or vain. By the way he walked, she assumed he fell into the latter category.
Once again, she was seated beneath his tree. She told herself it was due to the fact that the spot was superior to her last one but, if she was being honest, she had enjoyed the few words they had exchanged the night before.
"Are you an insomniac?" She called out as he approached, resisting the urge to shut the notebook and concentrate on conversation.
"Are you a prying whore?" He snapped irritably. She jerked back in surprise, not having expected such an aggressive response. Then, relaxing, she laughed.
"So people tell me." He gave her a look that was a mixture of curiosity, confusion and contempt and she smiled at him.
He dug into his pocket and removed a small box. She watched curiously as he proceeded to deftly roll a cigarette.
"I've never seen that done before," she noted as he lit his cancer stick and took a drag. "I thought only the truly pretentious did it these days." He didn't answer and she jumped at the chance for a snide remark. "Not that you disprove such a theory."
"Why are you bothering me?" He groaned. "Why are you here? Go home and leave me alone."
"I'm studying," she replied, not really untruthfully. "I'm doing a degree in mechatronic engineering," she added, for no reason other than to boast. "What are you studying?" She asked the question with genuine curiosity, unable to imagine him out of the context of a dark figure smoking beneath a tree. She couldn't help but assume he was studying something she would consider 'lesser'. As hard as she tried, she could not have the same respect for a degree in business as she did for the one she herself was aiming to achieve. She knew it was proud and presumptuous of her, but it was a belief that was almost ingrained in her, the concept that one sort of knowledge could be better than another, based on how difficult she found it to achieve.
"I'm doing my Masters."
"In what?" Even in the dark, it was hard to miss the weary look he gave her.
"Mathematics."
"Oh." It was a blow. She couldn't have that same feeling of superiority now as when she'd assumed he was doing a bachelor of arts or something. At least, though, she was going to have a career when she finished and he would just be left with his numbers and nothing else. HA. "Why maths?"
"I don't like people."
"I should have guessed."
"Don't you ever just shut the fuck up?"
oOo
When she got home the flat seemed too empty. She had spent so long silently bemoaning how over-crowded she felt with him there and as soon as he was gone she felt like she was bouncing around in a space far too large for her. She didn't even understand herself anymore.
She could see where he'd taken down the sports memorabilia that had always bugged her so much, and the photos of him with his friends had disappeared too. She remembered Krillin saying he had helped Yamcha move the afternoon before the hotpot. She would buy some art for the spaces that once bore signed cricket bats, football jerseys and baseball uniforms. The empty space was ugly in a way other spaces were not. They bore the mark of their previous ornaments, not physically, but in Bulma's mind.
She moved to the bedroom, intending to collapse into sleep, and stripped down as she walked. She bent to pick up her pyjamas and stopped.
He had left a pair of jeans beneath the bed. She picked them up like they were made of porcelain, fragile and brittle. She could smell him on them.
A magpie stared at her from a branch outside her window. It tilted its head curiously and stared her with black button eyes.
"Go away!"
She screamed it now, throwing the jeans at the window in a rage and then feeling her anger pour away as the bird flitted off.
"Come back," she whispered, crumpling into a ball on the floor.
She didn't sleep, but spent the morning sobbing into a pair of jeans he had rarely worn, anyway.
oOo
Eight months, is it? I wrote this today, only remembering the story as I went through my spreadhseets to delete the ones I didn't need anymore. Lucky you, it meant you got a chapter.
Review please.