The journalist looks disappointed, but obligingly asks Jessop what she likes about Marley’s art. I scan the room, trying to find my girlfriend. It’s impossible. I glance at the huge crowd of people trying to talk to Jessop. She’s going to be busy for a while and she’s a fucking media pro, she won’t mind if I get out of here and find Marley. She won’t be able to meet her if she’s AWOL.
I peel away, unnoticed by anyone but Shark Smile who calls some inane question after me. My heart is starting to pound against my ribs. I really didn’t want to fuck up Marley’s event, but every second I can’t find her the worst I feel. Calling her to explain is the obvious solution, but she won’t have her phone on her—it makes her too nervous. I could have called Anna, ex-sugar baby and Marley’s PA, but Anna can be a bit...dramatic.
A hard tap on the shoulder makes me turn. Speak of the devil. Anna’s dark brown eyes are full of the same loathing that inspired her to pitch a drink into my face the night we met. I raise my hands to head height. “Don’t kill me. Where’s Marley?”
“Hiding, so no one makes her take a picture with your supermodel, influencer ex-girlfriend.” Anna punches my arm. “The fuck were you thinking, Hat Boy?”
“I was thinking it would be good for Marley’s career!”
Anna bares her teeth. “I’m good for her career. Instagram is good for her career. You, when you’re not acting like a gigantic ass-clown, is good for Marley’s career. You starting drama at her first New York event, on the other hand...” Her fist comes at me and I step backward. “I’m not starting drama. Jessop’s cool and she likes Marley’s stuff—”
“So why didn’t you tell Marley you wanted to invite you ex? Or let me know she was coming so I could tell Marley and spare her this stupid jump-scare ass-clownery?”
“It was really last minute! I didn’t have—”
Anna’s punch is fast as a rattlesnake strike. “You don’t learn, do you, Hat Boy? You never get out of your own dumbass way and ask people what they want.”
I think I know what she’s referring to, and I wholeheartedly object. “This is not the same as me transferring Marley start-up money in secret—”
Anna slaps a hand over my mouth. “Shut your face. If I wanted to hear pre-adolescent whining, I’d wake up my daughter. You’re officially on damage control. You have twenty minutes to make Marley the nervously optimistic woman she was before Jessop Taylor showed up in her Barbie clothes and beeswax mascara.”
I swallow. “Okay. I can do this. I can fix this. Where is she?”
I climb the marble stairs to the room where Marley had her hair and make-up done. My heart is hammering against my chest. I thought I was doing the obvious thing, inviting Jessop, but Anna has a point. Marley doesn’t really like surprises, not even spontaneous trips to Taco Bell. And me bringing my ex-girlfriend to her art show is hardly an unexpected crunchwrap supreme.
Nothing you can do about it now, Faulkner. Just find your girl and remind her why she puts up with you.
I approach the door Anna directed me to, run a hand across my hair, straighten my tie and then knock.
“What is it?” calls a familiar voice. Goddamn, even when I’m nervous as hell I’m so happy to hear her. To know that I’m close to her. Love is fucking wild.
“It’s me,” I say. “Your boyfriend, William Faulkner. No relation.”
There’s a short silence. “I’m not in the mood for jokes, Will.”
“That’s fair enough. Can I come in?”
Another short pause. “Fine, but I’m warning you, I’m pissed.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
I mean it. It’s always good to know what your partner is feeling. That was one of the things that drove me and Jessop apart—whenever I did something, she didn’t like she’d say ‘that’s fine’ then the next time she got drunk, she’d go off on me. For a second, I debate telling Marley this, as a sign of why we’re a much better couple. Then I realize that might be the single dumbest idea of all time. I ruffle my hair again and open the door.
Marley is sitting on a make-up table, her back to the mirror. Her legs are bare, her feet swinging through the air. She looked calm, but only an idiot would mistake her for mood for playful. Her eyes are green slits.
“So,” she says. “Instead of holding my hand through my first big exhibition, you’ve escorted your ex here, for no reason and without telling me about it.”
Fuck she’s pretty. Her lilac dress and dark make up make her look like an evil, sexy pixie. I want to tell her she’s beautiful and I’ll do whatever she says, but that’s the second dumbest idea of all time.
“I’m sorry about bringing Jessop here without telling you,” I say, as quickly as I can get the sounds out. “But I can still support your through your big exhibition. We can go down together right now.”
Marley doesn’t move. She’s clearly waiting for more information.
I swallow. “Nothing is going on between me and Jessop. She DM’d me on Instagram because she’s in town and a fan of your work and I knew that if I brought her it would mean great things for your show.”
Marley’s eyes narrow dangerously.
“I thought it would mean great things for your show,” I correct. “I don’t know shit about anything. And I’m sorry I’m late. I had to give Jessop a ride and the snow was ridiculous.”
Marley glares at me. “Why didn’t you let Anna know you’d be late? Or that you were bringing the beeswax queen to my event?”
And that’s cutting point. The bone of contention. A million excuses push at my mind, sperm hustling to fertilize the egg of what to say. But trying to make excuses right now is the third dumbest idea of all time. I force myself to hold Marley’s gaze. “Because I didn’t want her to tell you and have you say that Jessop shouldn’t come. Because regardless of whether she can make you a success or not, she can bring up the exposure for this event by a million percent.”
Marley nods coldly. The truth is the answer she’s already guessed. That’s the thing about lying to someone who knows you so well. They usually get where you’re coming from. They just don’t always like it.
Marley presses her fingertips to her temples. “I wanted to get exposure on my own terms. You don’t think I want to be successful? That I don’t want to bring my art to the world stage?”
I hesitate. I don’t want to dig my hole in the doghouse any deeper, but I have to be honest. Marley taught me that. “I know you want to be successful, but you’re proud.”
Marley jumps off the desk, her feet hitting the floor lightly. “Too proud?”
Bravery, Faulkner. No need to be mean, just say what you feel. “Sometimes. You want to make it all on your own but no one does. I know you’re uncomfortable with asking favors, I know management wanted celebrities here, so I thought I was making things easier for you. I should have done it better. I should have told Anna what I was doing, but I didn’t bring Jessop here for anything or anyone but you, baby.”
Marley stares at me. For a second I think she’s going to yell, then the corners of her mouth turn down and she looks heartbroken and vulnerable. “Fine. I’m too proud. I’m too scared to talk to celebrities or push them to come to my events or wear my stuff on Instagram. Objectively, you did me a favor. This is great for my brand. But I still hate that you brought your twenty-three-year-old, Malibu barbie-looking ex to my fucking art show.”
My chest contracts. I want to sprint across the room and pull her into my arms, but my higher instincts tell me that’s the fourth dumbest idea of all time. I stay where I am and press my hand to my chest. My heart. “Baby, what do you want me to tell you? You want me to tell you that you’re fifty times more beautiful and talented than Jessop? Because you are.”
“I’m not.” Tears are sparkling in Marley’s eyes. “Objectively, I’m not. And I know I shouldn’t care but—”
“You don’t have to care, you just fucking are. Marley, baby, you’re the only woman I’ve ever really loved. I stayed in Montana for y
ou. I’ve built my life around you and I love it that way because the best thing I’ve ever done is meet you, convince you to go out with me and let me support your art.”
“You mean it?” The tears are falling now, down Marley’s cheeks and onto her dress. I move forward without thinking, or feeling my feet on the ground. I wipe them away. “I’ve never meant anything more.”
Then we’re kissing, deep and slow. Marley shudders beneath my hands and a similar reverb goes through my body. A relaxation. A recognition of how right and good this all feels. Marley pulls away and looks right into my face. “Daddy?”
Another tremor goes through me. There was a time when she couldn’t say it seriously or sincerely anywhere but in bed, but now...
I pull her even closer. “Yes princess?”
“I need you.”
I close my eyes, cock throbbing. “What should I do, princess? Should I show you how much I love you?”
Marley nods into my shoulder. I don’t need more encouragement. I pick her up and push her back onto the make up desk. “Legs apart please, princess.”
She squirms a little, hesitates. I gently but firmly push her thighs wider. “Do what I say, baby. You don’t want me to be disappointed, do you?”
Marley shakes her head and opens her legs. I settle between them, moaning as I realize she’s not wearing any underwear. Thank god for the person who invented dresses like this—so silky and sheer you can’t have underwear beneath them.
I kiss the inside of her right knee and Marley’s hand weave through my hair. “Daddy, what if someone comes in?”
“Then they’ll see what a bad girl you are.” I lick the line of her left thigh. “They won’t come in, baby. I won’t let them.”
“You’ll take care of me?” Marley looks at me and I see a trace of her former uncertainty in her eyes. I kiss her right thigh, hard as I would kiss her mouth. “Always.”
She makes a happy sound. “Thank you, daddy.”
“You don’t need to thank you. You just need to come on my face. Can you do that for me baby?”
Her knees close around my shoulder. “Mmm-hmm.”
I lean forward and lick her slowly and softly. My cock goes from hard to aching. I’ve done this a million times, but the taste and smell of Marley’s pussy always blows my mind. It’s like sunsets or sundaes, it never stops being amazing. I lick faster and Marley’s grip on my hair tightens like she’s about to come. I’m not surprised. Heightened emotional states do things to my princess. They make her hypersensitive and desperate for comfort. They make her wet for me. I imagine all the people below, admiring her work and wondering where she is and I smile into her gorgeous folds.
“Daddy,” she moans. “Daddy, please.”
I keep licking and lapping, feeling her shift and sure enough within seconds she’s shuddering against my mouth, moaning my name. I keep going, tasting her climax until she’s so sensitive she gently shoves me away. I smile and wipe my hand on the back of my hand. “Did you like that princess?”
Marley nods, but that’s not good enough. I bite the inside of her thigh. “What was that?”
“Yes, daddy, I like it.”
“Good. And you know how much I fucking love you don’t you, baby? How proud I am of you?”
She blushes, but she doesn’t look away. “Yes, daddy.”
“Good.” Then it comes out, something I wasn’t expecting. Something I never would have planned to say while I gave my girlfriend head on an empty desk at her art show. “I’m going to marry you, Marley Ellis. You’re going to be my wife.”
Marley freezes. She lets go of my hair. “Did you just...?”
I hustle back on my knees, kind of stunned yet not in the least bit nervous. “I don’t know. I don’t think it was a proper one. An official one.”
Her eyes are round as coins. “Do you wish it was?”
I don’t have to think. “Yes.”
“That’s really what you want?” she whispers.
“Yes,” I say, a bit dazed by my own announcement. “Holy shit, yes. I want to marry you. In Montana when the air is just starting to get cold and the leaves are turning orange.”
Marley presses a hand to her mouth. “I...I think I want that too.”
“Holy shit.” My heart feels ready to fall out of my chest. “Baby, do you mean it?”
“I think so. But are you seriously proposing to me right now? After you’ve just eaten my pussy?”
I grin. “It’s not a proposal, it’s a guarantee.”
My girlfriend, who is maybe now my fiancée, groans. “I don’t have time to process this. Can we please put a pin in this conversation until after my show?”
“Of course.” Head still spinning, I get to my feet and check my watch. “Fuuuuck.”
“Oh my god, what time is it?” Marley asks straightening her dress.
I hide my wrist behind my back. “Not too late. Still in the fashionable zone.”
Marley shoots me a wry smile. “Especially since Jessop Taylor is here to entertain everyone.”
“Is this you admitting it was a good idea to bring her?”
“Watch it, boy.”
I raise my hands in surrender and then realize what’s just happened. I can’t help myself. I have to talk. “So, are we...engaged?”
Marley pauses as she slides her toes into her shoes. She smiles at me, a big glowing smile full of promises. “I think we might be, but can we keep it to ourselves for a little while?”
“If course.”
Marley smiles softly. “Anna is going to lose her shit. She’ll want to plan the whole thing.”
“I’m fine with that.”
“She’ll want you to ride up to the altar on horseback.”
“I’m fine with that.”
Marley laughs. She strides over to me and wraps an arm around my back. “I love you, William Faulkner. You’re unpretentious and kind and your surprises are dubious, but your heart is always in the right place.”
“That’s because it’s in you.”
I barely have time to congratulate myself on coming up with the perfect line before she kisses me. Then she takes my hand and steers me to the door.
“I’m not nervous about my show anymore,” she says. “Right now, it feels like I’ll never be nervous again.”
“I know exactly how you feel.”
We smile at each other. We know eternal happiness isn’t possible, but we also know we’ll be here for each other when the bad times come back around. I squeeze Marley’s hand and we head downstairs to her art show.
The End
Act Your Age
By Eve Dangerfield
Chapter 1
The pub was almost empty. Gone were the families, older couples, and tourists, all that remained were the degenerates who wanted to get off their heads on a Wednesday night: uni students, labourers, alcoholics, and him, Tyler Henderson, drunk, alone and watching Middleton peer into a rugby players’ mouth. She touched a finger to the piercing embedded in the guy’s tongue. “That’s so cool! Did it hurt?”
She sounded as breathless as if the stud were already fiddling with her clit, but then she sounded like that all the time. It was one of the many things Ty loathed about her.
The rugby player, whom Ty had privately dubbed ‘Buddy’, pulled his idiot tongue back into his head. “Not much. I can do all kinds of things with it.”
“Like get stuck on magnets?”
“Better.”
Middleton dissolved into a fit of trademark giggles, and Buddy beamed like he was the king of the fucking world. Ty glowered into his bourbon. For the past hour he’d been forced to listen to Middleton flirt with this guy. Was it annoying? Sure. Did he wish she and her barely pubescent lover would fuck off and have young person sex already? Yes. Was it unprofessional of her to be picking up students at the local pub? Very much so. Especially since she and the rest of Golden Glaze Solar were in Bendigo on a work trip. That’s what he couldn’t understand about this situation. Unprof
essional sexual conduct suited Middleton about as much as a bald head would have.
If he’d had to guess ahead of time what she’d get up to tonight, he’d have said ‘brushing, flossing and climbing into bed with a stuffed animal,’ but Middleton had apparently left her ‘I’m so sweet it’ll rot your fucking teeth’ attitude back in Melbourne.
She was the youngest and only female engineer at GGS. Most female engineers Ty knew acted like the boys: drinking hard, swearing like sailors, wearing gender-neutral clothes as though baggy slacks might make men mistake them for one of their own. Others emphasised their femininity: high heels, tight tops, raunchy jokes. They took control of the flirting and perving before it was inflicted on them, or at least pretended to.
Middleton, on the other hand, never swore, she never drank, never said a mean word about anyone. She baked chocolate chip cookies and wore floaty pink blouses and headbands with ribbons on them. Once, while babysitting his nephews, Ty had watched a kids’ TV show. The host was a curvy brunette who by all the laws of biology should have been smoking hot. Instead, she projected such brightly-coloured asexuality he felt guilty just trying to picture what her tits looked like. That was the frequency Middleton operated on. Ty wouldn’t be surprised if she too was sewn into her outfits so she wouldn’t accidentally show cleavage or stomach.
The week she started at GGS, Ty had run into her in a hallway. He was hungover and wearing a three-day-old suit. Middleton was in a pink dress and what looked like yellow tap shoes, her waist-length brown hair was pinned back by a silver clip shaped like a hummingbird. A fucking hummingbird.
“Hi, Mr Henderson!” She held up the huge pink cake tin she was carrying. “Would you like a lemon-curd meringue?”
Ty thought she was going to be eaten alive by the other engineers. He was wrong. Within six weeks all the guys were chatting to her in the break room, sponsoring her roller derby team, begging her to make them chocolate éclairs. They never said anything sleazy about her and admonished outsiders who did. Somehow this Shirley Temple caricature had gotten every bozo in their office to not only tolerate, but like her.
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