Exotic

~ three week bender ~

Thursday was a long day. I had Miss Riley's first personalised quiz, directly after a full day of school. She sat at her desk and marked papers as I crossed out answer after answer, desecrating my eraser and snapping my pencil lead more than once. When I finished, she made me sit with her as she marked it, flinching every time she ran through a line with red ink.

My final mark was 11/20. I felt ashamed to be excited at not failing outright.

"Your sentence structure is fine, but you need to study the content closer," she informed me. "Re-read chapter 40 tonight, with a more critical eye. Got it?"

"Got it," I lied. I had a show that night. I wouldn't be so much as thinking about Modern History, except maybe the Prohibition Era, and how it was always doomed to fail.

"Your first tutoring session will be next week, Tuesday," she said firmly. "In the library. Alright?"

"Alright."

Zsa Zsa was stretching with a TheraBand when I entered the dressing room at Crescendo that night, dumping my belongings at the door. His calves strained as he arched over his knee, effortlessly flexible. "Who pissed in your face cream?"

"Uhg," I landed in one of the chairs at the mirror. "Try everyone."

"I would never."

I laughed at my reflection. "It's just various things piling up. I just want to induce selective memory loss tonight. You down?"

Zsa Zsa frowned. "It's Thursday, babes. I'm working tomorrow."

Sometimes I forgot that Zsa Zsa was a functioning, contributing member of society outside of the bright lights of the inner city. I tried to picture him in a suit, waiting tables, or sitting behind a desk balancing budgets, and chuckled.

"So do I," I stated, unzipping my jacket and removing the singlet beneath.

"Are you doing alright, Seph?"

Zsa Zsa tone made me want to slap my head against the mirror. Why does everyone keep asking that? "I'm peachy, Zsa. Long day, that's all."

"Is it a boy?"

I sighed. I guessed, when it came down to it, it was. "Isn't there always?"

"Is he ignoring you, or vice versa?"

I patted down my cheeks with moisturiser. "We've kind of got a mutual ignoring thing going, actually. It's nothing. I'm..."

"Pining?"

I shot him a look. "Doing just fine."

"You're definitely not going to abandon me on stage tonight?"

I groaned. "I told you, I was sorry about that. I wouldn't have done it for anything but a good reason, you know that."

"I know," the TheraBand snapped, and Zsa Zsa stood, waltzing over and wrapping me in a hug. "You know what we should do? Make a set together. We've been performing back to back for a year and we've never collaborated."

I beamed at the thought. "I can't dance."

"And I can't sing. We'll make up for each other's faults," he squeezed my shoulders. "How's the Insta going?"

I hadn't checked all day; a rare occurrence. "Your quest to make my social media famous dwindled at about 200 followers."

"You gotta make it public, babes. No one goes through the trouble of requesting anymore, you gotta let them see you first," he prodded. "Let people stalk you, it's totally worth it."