“How does it work, like the competition side of things? How do you score?”
They talked roller derby for a few minutes until Kate, tired of trying to use her fingers to demonstrate blocking and jamming, got her phone and showed him an instructional YouTube video. Watching it required him to sit right beside her, and Kate found herself zoning out to the feel of his shoulder against hers, the smell of his sweat and cologne.
That was when it hit her—in the excitement of her upcoming date, she’d forgotten to take her Ritalin. No wonder she’d spent half the night feeling as loose as a scarf knitted by a ten-year-old. She leapt to her feet. “I have to…pee.”
Ty raised a brow. “Okay.”
She locked herself in the bathroom, swallowing her pill with water she sucked straight from the tap. Ty was too much of a gentleman to ask but she suspected he already knew she wasn’t peeing. It should be easy to tell him she had a totally manageable form of ADHD but what folks didn’t know about behavioural disorders could fill a mineshaft. Kate wasn’t sure what was worse, the people who thought she was crazy, the people who thought ADHD was invented to sell pills, or the people who wanted to buy her Ritalin.
Or the people like Maria who think you’re a googly-eyed flower who can’t take care of herself.
“Shut up,” Kate told her reflection. “You’re always ready with a bitchy comment, but where were you when I needed to be reminded to take my pill?”
The voice said nothing.
“Exactly.”
When she returned to the couch, Ty didn’t so much as bat an eyelid. “So,” he said as she sat down. “Whereabouts are your games played?”
“They’re called bouts,” Kate corrected with a smile. “And Northcote Stadium.”
“Hipster town, hipster sport.”
“Pretty much.” Kate was struck with a sudden idea. “You know if you want to see a game, I could get you a ticket. Our finals are coming up and there’s heaps of night markets and taco trucks and…would you want to come?”
Ty took a long slug of beer before answering. “Not sure that’s my scene, Middleton. Thanks, though.”
She felt the air cool between them, the electric warmth evaporating into wherever negative romantic chemistry went. Kate picked up her rum and sipped it. She should have been embarrassed but weirdly she wasn’t. The man had expressed an interest in roller derby and she had invited him to a bout. He’d said no, which he was at liberty to do, though considering she’d just defied nature to put most of his penis in her throat, he could have been nicer about it.
“I have a question for you,” she said without thinking.
“Oh yeah?”
Kate’s heart banged a warning against her chest, but she ignored it. “I go down on you all the time, and you’ve never gone down on me.”
Ty’s ‘you’re so cute’ smile vanished. The atmosphere between them cooled another degree. “That’s not a question.”
Kate’s hands were trembling, but she wasn’t ready to back down, she really freaking wanted to know why he wouldn’t do it. “My question is, why haven’t you ever gone down on me?”
“Am I not getting you off?”
Ty’s voice made her think of rusted axes embedded for centuries in mossy logs. “Yeah, but—”
“Go to some other man if you want your pussy licked, Middleton. I don’t do it.”
Kate’s magical confidence melted away as swiftly as it had emerged. She tugged the blanket across her lap, needing the warmth. How did a guy get away with not giving head in this day and age? Maybe he was just so handsome no one ever demanded it of him. Still, if the old clichés were true and you were what you ate, she would basically be his sperm. It seemed uncharacteristically selfish that he wouldn’t return the favour. That he would rather she slept with another man than get that from him. Prick, she thought, the word sharp as a vaccination. Prick .
“It’s not what you’re thinking.”
Kate turned to look at Ty. “Huh?”
“Me not eating pussy doesn’t have anything to do with the taste, or how it looks or being lazy.”
“Then why don’t you do it?”
“Because…” Ty looked as uncomfortable as Kate had ever seen him. “…it’s a submissive thing.”
She was so surprised by his answer she laughed. “Are you for real?”
Lines furrowed his handsome brow. “Yes.”
“My sister Claudia once faked a pregnancy to get out of the year ten swimming carnival and this is still the worst excuse I’ve ever heard.”
“Are you looking to get your backside slapped?”
Kate wasn’t done being confused about his vagina prejudice but her body heated at the idea of another round. She chewed her lower lip.
Ty smirked. “Feeling shy, are you? That’s okay, we can play like that.”
He reached out to grip her hair but Kate held up a hand, warding him off. “Can’t you tell me why you won’t do it to me? Really?”
Ty opened his mouth, then closed it again shaking his head. “I already gave you my answer, Middleton. We’re leaving it at that.”
“And what if I decide I don’t give head anymore?”
“You’d miss it too much. I see you pressing your legs together whenever you’re blowing me. You like it. You like it when I pretend I’m watching TV or drinking beer, too. When I’m acting like I don’t know there’s a girl between my legs.”
Kate looked away, embarrassed to have been caught out. It was bizarre how Ty could be so cagey about some things and so open about others. They had such a bipolar relationship. Sometimes she felt like he knew her better than anyone. Other times it felt like they were strangers who’d happened to see each other come.
Her stomach gave a painful rumble. On days when she knew she was seeing Ty, she was always too nervous to eat. Now she was starving. She needed dinner, something heavy with lots of salt and sauce. She reached over and grabbed her phone.
“What are you doing?” Ty asked with a frown.
“Ordering dinner. Are you hungry?”
“No. I’m good.”
He was going to leave; she could feel it in the current of the air, in the tone of his voice. He could drink with her, eat her cupcakes or slices, but it was clear that in his mind an entire meal was violation of their sex-buddy code. Kate’s stomach squirmed but she forced herself to open the Uber Eats app and scroll through the options. “All I’ve eaten today is espresso martinis and your semen. As nutritionally balanced as that is, I need dinner.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ty staring at her, his mouth slightly open. She felt a perverse sense of satisfaction. “Hey, did you know Cookie does Uber Eats?”
“No, I didn’t,” Ty said warily. Every Melbournite knew about Cookie, they did the best Thai fusion food in the city, and if she’d once heard Ty tell Stormy it was his favourite restaurant, that was just a strange coincidence.
“Well, they do,” Kate said in her chirpiest voice. “I’m gonna get Penang Curry, fat rice, salt and pepper calamari, and sticky rice pudding.”
She watched in her peripheral vision as Ty opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
Come on, have dinner with me, you know you want to…
“Middleton?”
She glanced at him, all casual-like. “Yeah?”
“Can you put down five-spice chicken?”
Kate turned her head away so he wouldn’t see her smile. “Sure.”
“I can see you smiling.”
“I’m not,” Kate said, adding five-spice chicken to her order.
Ty made a soft growling noise, like a hostile bear. “I’m gonna beat your ass while we wait for our food.”
“Okay.”
“It’s going to hurt.”
“I’m sure it will.”
“Then I’m going to fuck you from behind while you bite down on your panties.”
Kate licked her lower lip. “Fine.”
Ty s
tood up, unbuckling his belt and pulling it from its loops. “When our food gets here you’ll be lucky if I don’t make you get the door naked. Now come here.”
Chapter 12
“Who are you sleeping with?” Georgie demanded. The two of them were weaving their way out of Nova Cinema toward the little patisserie where they always got coffee after a movie.
“Fuck, George, don’t you at least want to pretend to talk about the movie?”
“The lighthouse is sad and so am I. Who are you sleeping with?”
“A gentleman never tells.”
Georgie snorted. “You weren’t nearly so gallant when we were at uni. Anyone I know?”
“No.”
He could feel his friend staring at him. Georgie had intense single-lidded eyes, as meticulous at spotting anomalies in her personal life as they were spotting damaged heart valves in her patients. “You like her, whoever she is, don’t you?”
Ty groaned. This focused scrutiny was why he’d wanted Georgie’s husband to join them tonight, but Dave hated arthouse films. “They’re always about the fucking ocean,” he said. “Why are they always about the fucking ocean?”
To be fair, this movie had been about a couple finding a baby by the ocean. Ty circumvented a cello player busking behind a woollen hat, hoping that Georgie would take his silence as a hint and drop the matter.
“Tyler. Answer me.”
He looked sideways at her. Like Middleton, Georgie looked much younger than she was; her pale skin was as unlined as it had been when they’d met at an orientation party. They had almost nothing in common, the Queensland farm boy and the Vietnamese-born yuppie, but they’d gotten on like a house on fire. They studied together, backpacked through Asia together, even lived together for a while in their twenties before Georgie’s cat addiction drove him to more hairless pastures. There had never been any sexual attraction between them. The idea of Georgie calling him ‘Daddy’ made Ty want to puke and Georgie swore she was still traumatized from the time she’d accidentally seen his dick in the shower. Still, she was his oldest friend, something that had given Veronica no end of grief. That, and the fact he and George once made a drunken marriage pact, agreeing they’d get hitched if they were fifty and single.
As the one to uncover Veronica’s cheating, Georgie seemed to think she was personally responsible for finding him another fiancée. She constantly badgered him about dating and now she’d (rightly) guessed he was sleeping with someone, she was desperate to find out who it was. Ty knew he had no obligations to tell his friends—or anyone—about Middleton, but Georgie was crafty. If he didn’t throw her a bone there was every chance she’d use her brilliant cardiologist brain to access the information by stealth and uncover a lot more than he was comfortable with her knowing. The sensible thing to do was talk. “You’re right,” he told her. “I’m sleeping with someone.”
Georgie let out an excited squeal.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Ty warned. “It’s just sex.”
“That could turn into more!”
“It won’t. She’s twenty-five and we work together.”
“Ooh, risky.”
“You would know.”
Before she met Dave, Georgie had had a disastrous fling with a twenty-three-year-old nurse. It had ended on what George called ‘bad terms’ and Ty called ‘a clusterfuck.’ There had been stalking, threats of libel, and constant drama. Thoughts of things taking a similar path with Middleton made him break out in a cold sweat.
Georgie sighed loudly. “How could such a beautiful man be so clueless?” she asked, clearly referring to the nurse.
“Because his life’s passion was skateboarding and he still lived with his parents?”
She made a face. “Yeah, I always forget that. So, how’s your bit of fluff, then? Nice?”
Ty eyed his best friend suspiciously. “Nice enough. Don’t even think about calling GGS and trying to find out who she is.”
Georgie scowled. “Well, when can I meet her?”
“How about never? Unless you feel like stopping by her place and cheering me on while I—”
She punched him hard on the arm. “You’re so gross. Fine, so it’s not serious and I don’t get to meet her, but promise me you’re not being a man about this?”
He knew what she was asking, knew why the answer meant so much to her. “I promise. I’ve been very clear about what this is and isn’t. We’re having fun and she knows it’s not serious.”
Georgie visibly relaxed. “Good, I don’t want a repeat of The Incident.”
Ty reflexively rubbed his eyebrow. “No one does.”
In his second semester of uni, he’d slid into some bad behaviour. He’d held the urge to fuck at arm’s length for so long that when the dam burst, he had no self-control. It was all too easy for him to take girls to bed, and soon the regularity with which he could get his dick sucked made a pig of him. He screwed two, or three times a day, and still went out to clubs and parties, looking for more. Georgie, who knew he’d come to uni a virgin, let it go for a while, but soon their friendship became strained. She thought he was being an asshole, sticking his dick into anything he could and not giving a damn about anyone’s feelings but his own. It was true, he had girls crying outside his dorm so often the spot became known as ‘the fountain,’ but he didn’t care. It felt too good, and as he told Georgie, if girls couldn’t handle no-strings sex they shouldn’t be fucking him in the first place.
The good times ended the night she came to his dorm room for a study date and found him fucking one of her best friends—the sister of a girl he’d hooked up with two nights before. Georgie snapped. She threw a copy of Intercourse at his head, shouted “who the fuck are you?” and ran away, vowing their friendship was over. After a week of intense groveling on his behalf they made up and Ty promised not to let things get that out of hand ever again.
“You better not,” Georgie had told him. “You can have sex with whoever wants to have sex with you, but there’s no need to be a cunt about it.”
It was a philosophy Ty had tried to respect ever since.
“You know I still can’t find that copy of Intercourse,” Georgie said as they entered Monique café.
“Don’t worry about it,” Ty told her, inhaling the scent of fresh coffee and warm sugar. “If I fuck up you can always hit me with a hardback of The Feminine Mystique.”
“True.”
They ordered coffee and cannoli and sat at their usual table by the window.
“So what gives the girl away?” Georgie asked.
“Huh?”
“What reminds you she’s ridiculously young? Is she broke? Living with her parents? Posts every dump she takes on Instagram? Plays with fidget spinners?”
“I said she’s twenty-five, not five,” Ty said indignantly. “She’s a civil engineer. She has her own place and she likes nature documentaries and making biscuits.”
“She’s not a bitch?”
“Fuck no. She’s sweet as anything, would give you the shirt off her back if you asked. She’s a little bit weird but that’s part of her charm. She’s from the country, one of those big Catholic families.”
“Ah,” Georgie said knowingly. “So she’s batshit in bed?”
“You have no fucking idea.”
Ty kept waiting for the day when Middleton wouldn’t be astonished by his ability to make her come, but it never arrived. Every time he got her off, she swooned. Her blissful bewilderment made everything they did so much hotter. He felt like a god who’d come down from heaven to teach mortals about sex.
“So,” George said, interrupting his wistful recollection of Middleton on all fours. “Is she pretty?”
“Gorgeous,” Ty said absently. “Real girly, you know? Long brown hair and freckles. She’s shy, you can tell she doesn’t know how attractive she is, but when she smiles—”
Ty caught sight of his best friend’s smug expression and realised he’d been had
. “You’re a bitch, Georgie.”
She laughed. “I am, aren’t I?”
“I mean it. I’m never telling you shit ever again.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic! I only did it because I can tell you’re really happy for the first time since Medusa left. If this girl is mature and cute and you like her…?”
“Not going to happen.”
Georgie put both palms on the table. “But what if—”
“She does roller derby,” Ty interrupted. “You know that game where girls in fishnets and roller skates try to knock each other over?”
Georgie’s hopeful expression faded. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. And she…” he struggled to think of something else that would convince her that he and Middleton were a bust. “…she wears headbands with sequins on them.”
Georgie looked like the government had declared a nation-wide embargo on coffee beans. “You can’t marry a girl who wears sequin headbands!”
“Yeah. No shit.”
Their order arrived and they both took big bites out of their chocolate cannoli.
“You never get dessert,” Georgie said, bits of pastry flicking out of her mouth. “What gives?”
Ty shrugged. He’d been craving custard ever since that first plate of slice at Middleton’s place. The taste was bound up in the bone-deep satisfaction of lying on her couch, his lifelong fantasy fulfilled. Although he’d have a hard time explaining that to his GP if his cholesterol shot up fifty points.
“About your fuck-buddy…” Georgie swallowed the last of her cannoli and picked up her second. She always ate like it was going out of style and yet remained rake-thin, another unforgivable offence in Veronica’s eyes. “…you’re just going to wait for the sex to run out of steam?”
Ty nodded. In truth, he had no idea what he was going to do. Before Middleton he’d been living on a steady diet of irritation and apathy. Now he lived in a parallel dimension where outwardly everything was the same and inwardly things couldn’t be different. The smallest things made him feel good—duck curries, good coffee, drinking a beer in the shower, football games where you jumped to your feet and swore at the TV. He was sleeping better, hitting the pool almost every morning the way he had before Veronica left. The reflection in the mirror was frequently as clear-eyed as it had been in Middleton’s bathroom. He was happier and could understand why people like Georgie would think that made Middleton his dream girl, but they were wrong.