LITMIR.BIZ

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then put her bag away. After donning her white coat, she shoved her phone into her pocket and placed ear buds into her ears and turned on the music.

      This was her favourite time of day—when her co-workers were exhausted at the end of the week and they struggled into work one by one, talking about their plans for the weekend.

      Billie wouldn’t have a weekend if she could help it, but this weekend she had promised to help her mother and stepfather move into their new house.

      Marvin Gaye sang about his Inner City Blues, which had seemed appropriate on the tram ride to the university, but now she needed something other than her father’s favourite singer and she settled on Florence and the Machine.

      She moved through the scheduled work, testing new deodorants, and then onto a brand of soap powder that claimed to reduce all stains.

      The sound of the door clicked and Nick Miller walked into the laboratory.

      ‘Morning, Billie,’ he said cheerfully. He was still wearing his bicycle helmet and had one leg of his jeans tucked into an unevenly pink-coloured sock, but neither of these facts took away from his happy face.

      Billie smiled at him. ‘You look cheerful,’ she said. Nick was her work crush. He was what made it lovely to come in every day. With his good looks and his pleasant banter, she couldn’t wait to see him each day.

      ‘I got every green light on the ride to work today, do you know the odds of that happening?’

      ‘I have no idea but I’m sure you can work it out,’ she said, as she went back to her soap powder paste, which she was smearing on lipstick-stained cloth.

      Nick had put away his knapsack and taken off his helmet and was walking back to Billie when she pointed down at his sock.

      ‘Untuck,’ she said.

      ‘Gee, thanks, Bill,’ he said gratefully.

      When Nick had first starting working at the lab, his forgetfulness became an office joke and once, when Billie had taken a rare sick day, Nick had worn his helmet all morning, including in a meeting, and no one had told him because they thought it was so hilarious.

      Nick had said it was funny also, but Billie saw the flash of shame on his face when he was teased and she took it upon herself to socialise him, or at least remind him to take off his helmet and untuck his jeans from his socks. Then they began to know each other more and Billie’s friendliness turned into friendship, and then a crush.

      Not that she would do anything about it. Billie was as awkward around men as she was around make-up and fashion.

      ‘You’re in early,’ he said glancing up at the clock. ‘I wouldn’t have got here so fast if it weren’t for the green lights.’

      ‘I need to leave early to help my mum move house,’ said Billie, ‘so I thought I’d get a head start. God knows it’s going to be a bloody disaster with the amount of stuff Mum has hoarded over the years. The woman finds it impossible to throw out anything.’

      ‘I’m the same,’ said Nick with a sigh. ‘Thankfully, I live alone, so I don’t have to worry about anyone throwing anything out.’

      At thirty-three, Nick was the epitome of a nerd bachelor, living in his little house in Northcote, where he would heat up something frozen for dinner and watch documentaries and reruns of QI for a little light relief—he liked to regale Billie with the highlights of Stephen Fry’s humour.

      She knew some people in the lab thought him odd, even weird, but Billie saw through that and noticed his handsome face, and his patience in explaining things to others or when they teased him.

      Billie often wondered if he even thought about women, but he hadn’t even tried to ask her out on a date, so she presumed it was safe to say he just wasn’t interested in women at all.

      Not that Billie had pretentions about herself, but as a rare female in a science laboratory, who was pretty and had a slight resemblance to a popular character from Game of Thrones, she was nerd candy. Everyone, from the lab technicians to the top scientists, had asked her out, and even some of the married ones gave her the eye. It was exhausting, but slowly they realised she wasn’t there to play, she was there to work.

      She glanced at Nick as he pulled on his white coat. He had a slim, well-built frame from bike riding, and his pants sat extremely well on his hips. She always looked at the way a man’s pants sat on his hips. They needed to hang, not cling and for a moment she wondered what was under his pants and then admonished herself for thinking in such a base manner.

      ‘Are you doing the soap powder tests?’ he asked, walking towards her.

      ‘Yes, working on lipstick stains,’ she said, wishing she had a solution for dissolving blushes.

      ‘What sort of lipstick?’ he asked.

      ‘Just lipstick,’ said Billie frowning. ‘I just went to the pharmacy down the road and bought one.’

      Nick rolled his eyes. ‘Is it pearl, gloss, matte, long-wearing?’

      Billie felt herself redden. ‘I don’t know, I don’t really wear make-up,’ she admitted.

      ‘You don’t need it,’ said Nick casually.

      She reached up and touched her face, knowing she was blushing, but Nick was looking at the lipstick.

      ‘This is a Maybelline gloss. This has a lot of lanolin in it, so it will be more greasy than some.’

      He smeared the pale pink lipstick over the back of his hand.

      ‘It’s a bit sickly, needs more depth,’ he said.

      Billie watched him with interest. ‘How do you know so much about lipstick?’

      ‘I worked in a make-up lab before here, but they went bust,’ he said. ‘I actually enjoy the different compounds and ancient recipes. Some ingredients stay the same, regardless of the century.’

      ‘Like what?’ she asked, noting how excited he looked as he spoke.

      ‘Beeswax. In Victorian times, they used beeswax with spermaceti . . .’

      ‘What’s that?’ asked Billie, screwing up her nose.

      ‘It’s an organ from inside the sperm whale’s head,’ he said. ‘They would mix it with sweet almond oil and rose water and this became known as Crème Céleste or cold cream, as we know it now.’

      Billie laughed. ‘I have a cousin called Celeste in France. I’m sure she’d love to know she was named after something that came from inside a sperm whale’s head.’

      Nick shook his head and smiled. ‘Are you going to tell her?’

      ‘Oh God, no. I haven’t spoken to her in twenty-odd years,’ Billie said, as she held the lipstick up to her face. ‘I can’t even remember her.

      ‘Is it my colour?’ she asked, surprised at her coquettish tone.

      She wasn’t usually a flirt, but something about Nick being so knowledgeable, and his compliment with no expectation attached, had her head in a little whirl. However, she took comfort in knowing she would never do anything about this work crush. Her life was simple, and love would only make it complicated. The surety of science made up for any brief love affair she might have, when she knew it was most likely destined to break her heart.

      ‘No, you’d look better with reds, but with a navy base,’ he said, peering at her. ‘It’s the dark hair and blue eyes combination, just like Snow White.’ He beamed at her. Then he moved and started smearing soap powder over the stains, as the door opened and the rest of the staff arrived for their day’s work.

      And Billie spent the rest of the day wondering who exactly Nick Miller was and did he have a girlfriend and then Googling pictures of Snow White.

       * * *

      ‘Mum?’

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