Depth Perception

4: Last of the Real Ones

6:15pm, Friday

Juliet hopped off the tram and set off down her street with a spring in her step, mostly because she was listening to a real banger of a track.

Although it was partially because she'd been messaging with Fiona since she finished work an hour ago.

Her normal train-ride activity of doing crosswords on her phone had interrupted every few minutes by a message from Fiona. She'd almost forgotten to get off the train at the right station because she was too busy thinking about how to reply.

Barely 2 minutes later, Juliet was walking through the front door of the small townhouse where she lived with her mum. Her mum's car was parked in the driveway, meaning she had presumably gotten home from work within the last half hour or so.

As she walked through the kitchen to her bedroom, she ran into her mother.

"Hello, mother." Juliet said matter-of-factly.

"Hi, sweetie." Her mum replied.

Juliet walked into her bedroom and dumped her backpack on the bed, and turned around to see her mum had followed her in.

"How was work?" Her mother asked.

"Fine..." She replied, uninterested.

"Do you want me to tell you when the oven's ready so you can put your pizza in?"

"Yeah, sure." She answered as she clicked her computer's on button.

Juliet's gaming computer hummed to life as the two monitors on her desk flipped on.

She turned to see her mum standing in the doorway. She looked tired as always. Her hair had turned completely grey so long ago that Juliet couldn't easily remember what it used to look like.

"Ok..." She said just before leaving Juliet to her business.

Once she had changed into more comfortable clothes, sat down at her desk and started up discord, Juliet saw that a few of her friends were in a voice call together.

She put her big gaming headset on as she entered the channel.

There was an almost immediate response.

"Oh my god, a homosexual has joined us!" Said Claire jokingly.

"Hewwo..." Juliet responded as she clicked her camera on.

This opened the call display on her secondary computer screen, showing the camera feeds of her friends Claire and Marnie. Shade, as usual, had their camera off.

"Jules, why are you smiling so much?" Said Shade as Juliet was looking away.

'Jules' looked back to her friends to see Claire and Marnie looking back at her, both with mischievous looks on their faces.

"Ummm..." She stuttered as she tried to put her words in order.

"Did you get matches from speed dating?" Asked Marnie, the 'straight man' of the call.

Well, not 'man', but she was the lone straight cis woman in the sea of bi and lesbian trans women that was their friend group, so...

"Yeah..." Juliet answered somewhat nervously, "Well, one."

"Ok, and...?" Marnie probed further.

Juliet continued with a smile: "She messaged me at midday..."

Claire and Marnie's faces lit up.

"What's her name?" Claire asked mischievously.

Claire and Juliet had been best friends for years now. They'd even dated for a few months after meeting, before they realised that they were much better at just being friends.