High Heels & Pink Glitter (the heavily edited version)

Agent Provocateur

"Sweetpea, are you free this evening? Martin is conducting another MasterChef practise run, and I've told him that if I eat another bloody beef wellington, I'll explode. As it is, I've put on three kilos since New Year and I'm fat as fuck."

Kelly, who was sitting on her bed with the pillows propped up behind her, made soothing noises down the phone. "Leon. You're not fat as fuck; you're still the fourth best-looking gay man I've ever met."

Leon, as she could have predicted, squealed indignantly. "Fourth?! Oh, piss off. But seriously, please come around this evening. I've asked Gordie, but his diet is ninety per cent KFC and the rest cornflakes and Pot Noodles. He wouldn't recognise gourmet if it bit him on the bottom, whereas you can provide Martin with constructive criticism."

Martin had announced the other week that he intended to apply for MasterChef, having watched the show avidly for years, the armchair amateur chef commenting negatively on others' efforts.

"I can't," Kelly said. "I've got a date."

"A date? Who with? Are you back on Tinder?"

Kelly studied her toenails, frowning. The polish on her big toe—Shellac, the stuff that was meant to last three weeks—was chipped. She reached into the drawer beside her bed and extracted a bottle of near identical coloured polish.

"No."

"A blind date? Nell's set you up with someone? Oh! Is it Keto Nate? Tell me, it's Keto Nate! Think how handy it would be to date a personal trainer. You could negotiate mate's rates for his fees for me and Martin. Maybe he would even do us for free just to impress you."

Kelly, the phone jammed between her ear and her right shoulder, stretched over to paint her toe nail. "Leon! My sex life isn't there solely for your convenience."

"No? Pity. But beneath Nate's gruff exterior, I sensed a kindly soul. And my spidey senses are almost never wrong. So, come on then? Who's tonight's lucky, lucky chap?"

Kelly hesitated, knowing that if she told him about the date with Mark, he'd not only rain on her parade but piss all over it. On the other hand, Leon was such an old friend—they'd met on their first day in secondary school—that honesty was always the best policy.

"Oh, God almighty. You're going out with Mark, aren't you, you absolute eejit." Too late. He'd already guessed.

"He's taking me to Number 16!"

That diverted Leon for a few seconds, and Martin must have been listening in the background because she heard him exclaim that she should take pictures of every course, so he could analyse the food presentation as part of his MasterChef homework.

"Gosh, Number 16! Best meal I've ever eaten in my entire—oh, no, no, no, those seared scallops with the pomegranate glaze you cooked last week, Martin, were out of this world. So fantastic, I practically came on the spot. When you present them to John and Gregg, they'll die."

He returned his complete focus to the phone. "Seriously, Kelly? To refresh your memory, do you want me to list every single reason you gave me at New Year about why you wanted to shove Mark into the category of men you wouldn't touch with mine?" His pause for breath didn't last long enough for her to interject. "Don't answer, I'm going to run through them anyway. Number one.

"The time he phoned you, told you to come around to the flat and you showed up at the same time as another girl he'd sent the same message to, forgetting that he'd asked you both?"

Ouch.

"Or that time you bought him a birthday present and got Martin to make him a cake, only for him to cancel you coming around at the last minute because he got tickets to see Suede? Three tickets, mind. He could have invited you."