New Year

New Year’s Day.
Sun already doing damage.
That hot, clean Fremantle light where everything feels forgiven too early.

They’re wedged outside by the water, tables sticky with last night’s ambition. Someone’s thongs are under the wrong chair. Someone else hasn’t bothered finding theirs. Salt in the air, yeast in the air, a faint smell of regret and sunscreen.

Adam squints at his beer like it might explain itself.
“Hair of the dog,” he says, “is a lie we tell ourselves so we don’t have to admit continuity.”

Marcin hasn’t taken his sunnies off. Probably slept in them.
“Continuity’s real,” he says. “I’m still pissed. That’s continuity.”

Anna stirs ice in a glass that used to be something respectable.
“Some of you got on it more than others,” she says. “Some of us observed. Like scientists.”

Adam snorts. “You were on the dance floor explaining probability to a guy dressed as a pirate.”

“Exactly,” Anna says. “Field work.”

A ferry goes past, slow and loud, full of people who look too clean. No one at the table trusts them.

Someone mentions swimming.
No one moves.

The sun climbs. The beers sweat.
Last night hasn’t finished yet — it’s just changed tempo.

Adam lifts his glass.
“To ideas,” he says. “Which don’t have consequences.”

Marcin clinks.
“And to reality,” he says, “which absolutely does.”

They drink.
The water keeps doing what it does.