Until finally, I didn’t need to try anymore. I forgot them, forgot the pack, Dad’s promise, all of it. I’d achieved what everyone said I should do—I moved on.
Away from my hometown, I’d achieved everything I had hoped for. I’d graduated with an honour’s degree, had some early papers published, and found myself a job straight out of university in a reputable and well funded medical research facility. I had a life, a purpose, to help those people who didn’t clearly reveal as alpha, beta, or omega, to explore what was going on when people didn’t reveal at all. We were part the way through developing a gene therapy for people who got stuck halfway through a shift and never any further, caught between beta and omega or alpha. Every day, I woke up feeling like this was what I was supposed to do, and that put a spring in my step.
Which brought me to now.
Seven years later.
I breezed in the door to our business unit, carrying a cardboard tray with three coffees in it.
“Morning, Riley!” Janet, our receptionist, sang out as I entered, making me smile. She was a cheery, mumsy figure who seemed intent on looking after everyone in our business unit, and we secretly loved it. I deposited a mocha latte with two pumps of caramel in front of her, and she flushed. “You’ve got to stop doing this! I’m already questioning whether the structural integrity of this office chair will hold up if my arse gets any wider, and it’s my job to get the coffee, remember?”
“Pfft…” I replied. “You get more than enough crap coming from Il Duce over there.”
Both of us looked guiltily over at the director of our business unit’s closed office door. Robert Windsor was a very effective seller of our ideas. He just couldn’t claim to be especially personable.
“Don’t I know it! I’m cold calling about a million alphas and omegas today to see if we can find some crash test dummies, I mean subjects for your current study.” She shook her head slowly as she scanned the list, then glanced hopelessly back at me. “We’re getting a few possible nibbles but…”
“You deserve all the coffees,” I said, “and the cakes—”
“No.”
“And a cruffin from the place on the corner.”
“No, definitely not,” she said, even as her eyes rolled back in remembered pleasure.
“Good morning, bitches!”
Our remembrances of pastries past was rudely interrupted by my colleague, lab partner, and general pain in the arse, Candy.
“Ooh, is that coffee for me?”
She swept in and took a sip from the nearest cup, then spluttered when she realised that was my perfectly roasted single origin long black. My drink was plonked back in the holder and swapped for the other one—a froufrou mix of milk, sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon, with just a dash of coffee to legitimise its existence. I was kinda glad for its low caffeine content because she had much of the mannerisms of a rabid Chihuahua without adding in stimulants. Janet was less pleased. She handed Candy a cloth with a long-suffering look so she could clean the mess she’d made.
“So, I was thinking, we should all go for lunch today,” Candy said, wiping up every droplet of coffee. “My shout.”
“Not that male revue place again?” Janet asked with a sigh. “A man waving his limp sausage in my face puts me off eating my own sausages.”
“Or that medieval themed theatre restaurant with the guys making jokes about the contents of their codpieces,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Or the all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant where you ended up licking seafood sauce off that guy’s—”
“OK, that’s enough out of you two,” Candy said, shoving her hands in front of our faces and waiting for quiet before sucking in a dramatic breath to make her announcement. “How about The Caledonian for a pub meal?”
Our eyes narrowed as we looked Candy over closely, trying to work out the catch. The Caledonian was a perfectly serviceable pub down on the west end of town. Typically, it catered to the tradie crowd—guys looking for a beer and a hearty feed before going back to work.
“Are there strippers?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Some kind of naked sit-in for better wages and conditions?”
“Nope.”
“So why The Caledonian? You got a hankering for chicken schnitty?” I asked, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Well, you know how I like my meat,” Candy said with a smug smile. By god, she did. The woman was a veritable wizard at Tinder, seeming to be able to find every free-range hottie in town and getting together for bed breaking antics that she then recounted to us. Janet and I lived vicariously through her. Well, I did. Janet had a husband to go home to. “But no, it’s time for another mission.”
And there it was, the fucking catch. Janet and I groaned simultaneously.
“Operation Riley Catches a Dick, Part… What number are we up to?” Candy asked, scratching her head dramatically.