Sarong Party Girls Read Online Free Page B

type—­we are so far up, how to hear anything?
    My god. It was too much. I started laughing, at first just a little bit, but then when Sher started laughing also, we held on to each other and just started laughing louder and harder. I even slapped my hand on my thigh so hard I could feel it getting hot from how painful it was. But then suddenly I started to feel something else—­it began in my chest. A burp, I thought? Next thing I knew I was leaning over the railing, shooting crap out of my mouth like one of those big fire engine hoses—­I could taste Chivas, and some green tea mixed with bits of the noodles my mum made me eat before coming out.
    I remember two things happening as it started—­Sher’s left hand catching my shoulder as I bent over, and her right hand quickly grabbing and holding back my hair. She waited one minute for all of it to really finish before saying, “Eh, we’d better faster siam.” When I opened my eyes, I saw the Ah Bengs all staring up at us, pointing and shouting. A few of them were touching the tops of their heads and then pointing even more. I could hear myself start to laugh again as I wiped the corner of my mouth, making them point even harder. Then one of them pointed toward the staircase and they all started to move. Sher grabbed my hand, swiped my handbag from the booth and we both started running for the secret back VIP exit, not even stopping to see where Louis was so we could give him his two air kisses goodbye. We didn’t stop laughing until we reached the roti prata stall ten minutes away.
    â€œAiyoh, Jazzy,” Sher said as she clinked her mug of hot ginger tea to mine when we had laughed until there was no more sound coming out and we actually had to buy a twenty-­cent packet of tissues to wipe our tears dry. “You tonight ah,” she said, “were really number one.”
    So, when it came down to it, when Sher begged me to come to her wedding, after all the nights we’d been through over the years, how could I not give her face?
    Outside the wedding banquet hall, Imo, Fann and I were standing around, looking chio and dressed in gold just like Sher texted us to, and saying hallo to her relatives all. “Auntie, congrats ah?” I said when I saw Sher’s mum.
    Auntie looked like she’d lost some weight, maybe to fit into the turquoise and gold cheongsam she was wearing. She looked at me a little bit sad, like she wanted to say something. I felt bad lah. I had seen her almost every week since primary school, though I had been avoiding their place for months. But we both knew that now wasn’t the right time. So she just smiled sweetly and squeezed my hand. “I think Sher wants us all to line up right on the inside by the door,” she said, leading me through the large double doors to the ice-­cold banquet hall and pointing to the area just to the right.
    The music started the moment I took my spot. I almost started to cry—­I only needed to hear five beats to know what it was: Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting.” Sher and I used to sing it all the time in secondary school. And then also after that lah—­but by then the song was not so happening anymore, so we secretly sang it, like, only when we were in the house type. (Outside the house, if we hear ­people singing it, we’ll just blink and stare at them as if they are bloody kampong idiots. Which is true lah.)
    After I didn’t do so well in my A levels and I applied to uni in Australia, Sher would always say, “Just think of Richard Marx and this song. We will always be best friends even if you go. Don’t cry, don’t cry.” In the end, something lucky happened—­I failed the entrance test, so I kena stuck in Singapore anyway.
    But why would Sher purposely play this song at this moment?
    The lights dimmed and a small, sharp spotlight came on, swirling around the room in big loops