Chapter 1 Empty Friday

Rachel

10:47 p.m. on a Friday, and I was already home.

I kicked my heels off inside the sliding door, poured what was left of the Pinot into the biggest glass I owned and took it out to the balcony. 14 floors up, Main Beach was warm and sticky, the air thick with salt and a storm that hadn't made up its mind. To the south, Surfers was lit up pink and blue, full of people having better nights than me.

My phone buzzed on the railing.

Had a great time tonight! We should do it again 😊

Brendan. 34, mortgage broker, a nice smile in his photos and a nice smile in person. He'd ordered for both of us without asking, which I could have forgiven if he'd ordered right. The boat was a 42-foot Riviera. I knew that because he'd told me 3 times.

He never once looked at my mouth. I'd worn the red lipstick, the one Fiona calls the threat, and he looked at the wine list, the waiter, his phone when a mate messaged about the footy. At the Uber he kissed my cheek like we were cousins.

I hadn't even wanted him to kiss me properly. That was the worst part. I'd only wanted him to want to.

I was 29. Good job, good apartment, an ocean view I was paying too much for. I knew how it went from here. 2 weeks of texts that read like customer service. A dinner. If the dinner went well, sex that started when he decided and finished when he did, and then him asking if I'd come in the voice of a man who didn't want to hear the answer.

I spent 50 hours a week deciding things. Which caterer. Which room. Which minute the CEO walks on and who sits where so nobody's ex ends up at table 4. Then I came home and planned my own sex life the same way. Picked the man. Picked the bar. Made sure, made sure.

I wanted somebody to take it off my hands. Somebody who paid attention like it was their whole job.

I wanted to stop being the one who decided.

The deadbolt turned in the front door. Only one other person had a key, and she never used it before midnight unless she had something she couldn't wait to tell me.

"Don't get up," Fiona called from the hall. "I've got chips."

She came through the kitchen like she paid rent, which she didn't. Black work shirt with the bar's logo on the pocket, hair in a knot that had given up hours ago, a bottle of rosé under one arm and hot chips in the other. Fiona was 22, my cousin, and the closest thing I had to a sister. I'd babysat her when she was 8. These days she was the one checking on me, which I tried not to think about.

She took one look at me. Date dress, knees up, the fishbowl of wine. "Oh, babe. Write-off?"

"He kissed my cheek at the Uber."

"Your cheek? In that lipstick?" She twisted the cap off the rosé and drank from the bottle. "Someone should be locked up."

I laughed, and it came out wetter than I wanted. I covered it with 3 chips at once.

By midnight the chips were gone and she had my phone in both hands like she was defusing it. Hinge, Bumble, Tinder. She scrolled Josh, 33, love a good yarn and a cold beer, and lowered the phone when I hesitated half a second too long.

"Rachel."

"Once. It was fine."

"You keep saying fine. You sound like the client feedback forms you hate." She tipped her head. "When did you last actually come with someone? Not fine. Good."

I could have lied. I'm a good liar at work. But it was midnight, and she was the only person who'd come over.

"Easter," I said. "Easter last year."

She went quiet. Down on the Esplanade someone was singing badly. The first fat drops of rain hit the glass balustrade.

"They do what they think they're supposed to," I said, to the ocean, because it was easier than her face. "In the order they saw it in a video. Then they ask did you? like it's a box to tick before they can sleep. I say yes. Then I get in the shower and sort it out myself. I've got it down to about 4 minutes." The laugh I did wasn't a good one. "I'm an event coordinator. I've run-sheeted my own orgasm."

Fiona didn't laugh. That was how I knew she'd heard me.

"It's not that they're bad," I said. "It's that none of them pay attention. I want someone who's already worked out what I want before I have to explain it. And then just does it. And doesn't ask me to manage it."

She went very still. Then she turned all the way round on the lounge and dropped her voice, like there was someone on the next balcony.

"Okay," she said. "Now I'm telling you what I heard at work."

Kayla, who worked the Thursday close and laughed like a kookaburra, had a friend. Fiona didn't know her name, which was apparently the point. Last week the friend had sat at the end of the bar, drunk 3 espresso martinis and told them something Fiona hadn't stopped thinking about.

"She booked something. Not a date. And not an escort, before you say it, because I said that and Kayla nearly threw a lime at me. They don't do it for money. You can't even find them unless someone who's been gives you a code." Fiona pulled her knees in. "It's men. More than one. Ex-army, Kayla reckons, security blokes. They wear masks the whole time. You never see their faces and you never get their names. And they come for you. Like a hunt. They watch you. They turn up when you're not expecting it. And then they take you."

My stomach turned over. "Fi, that's assault."

"That's what I said. Listen." She held up a hand. "She chose all of it. In writing, before any of them touched her. Every single thing. It's just that once it starts, they act like she didn't."

"That's—"

"There's a stop-word. She picks it. She says it, it's over, right there, no are you sure." Fiona's voice went lower still. "She tested it the first day, just to see. She said they stopped so fast she nearly cried."

The rain hissed on the tiles at the edge of the balcony.

"And then?" I said.

"And then she told them to keep going."