Sweeter

by Eve Dangerfield

  Just a few hours ago Johnno—the big boss—had slung his arm around Ty’s neck. “Middleton’s a proper little lady, isn’t she?” he said. “Pretty as a picture, gets along with everyone. Just a great girl.”

  Ty didn’t think Middleton was a great girl. He thought Middleton was a pain in the ass. Waltzing around with her shiny hair and long legs and her throaty voice, being cuter than a fistful of buttons. Where did she get off?

  On Buddy, apparently. When he glanced back at the bar, he saw the younger man tickling Middleton’s sides. She slapped his hands, giggling madly. “Stop it!”

  “I can’t!” Buddy told her. “It’s your fault you have such a cute laugh.”

  Ty drained his glass. He was leaving. At least, he would be leaving if there was anywhere else in Bendigo where he could get a drink. The small inland town wasn’t exactly known for its nightlife. He caught the eye of a passing bartender, a glum woman in her fifties. “Excuse me, is anywhere else around here open?”

  “No.” The woman collected the glasses in front of him. “Just us.”

  “Bugger.”

  On the other side of the pub, Middleton’s hair caught the light and gleamed like a fishing lure. “Are you sure there’s nowhere else?”

  The woman gave him a scathing look. “It’s a Wednesday. In Bendigo.”

  “Right.” Ty’s words were coming out in that blurry, distorted way that said he was drunk, but not nearly drunk enough. He wanted to go to bed without a single thought in his brain. “Can I have another drink, thanks?”

  The woman looked as unimpressed as Ty felt. “You come here with that sustainability convention?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You going back tomorrow?”

  Ty knew what she was saying; don’t you have work in the morning, dickhead? He dredged up his best smile. It felt gummy and insincere. “Just having a night out.”

  Ty already knew he was far from the man he’d once been, but if he hadn’t, the proof was written all over the bartender’s highly unimpressed face. “You felt like having a night out alone?” she asked, sounding suspicious, as though this might just be a cover for a murder plot.

  “The rest of my colleagues tapped out early. Wives to call. Kids to talk to.”

  She scanned his left hand. “Hmm.”

  “I’m single.” Just twenty-four months, eight weeks and nineteen hours, but who the fuck was counting?

  “I can see that.” The bartender looked him up and down. “Bourbon, was it?”

  “Yeah, no ice.” Ty handed her twenty dollars. “Keep the change.”

  That got him a smile. Another glance at the bar and Ty prayed the woman would bring his drink back fast. Middleton, it transpired, had found a new way to inspect her friend’s tongue ring—by making out with it.

  Ty watched her and Buddy writhing against the karaoke machine in disgust. This was a girl who covered her ears when people swore. How was she tongue-fucking in a public bar? In fairness, no one else was paying them any attention. Maybe because almost everyone else in the pub was a student, too busy trying to get their own genitals rubbed to give a shit about Middleton’s. Ty scanned the room and with a jolt of unease, realised he was the oldest person there. That seemed to be happening a lot lately. He was the oldest guy in the gym, the restaurant, the cocktail bar, the cinema. There was a reason for it. Most of his generation stayed in on Saturday nights, selected gyms with childcare centres and cafés with aisles big enough for prams. Meanwhile, he stayed in the same circles he’d always been in, not quite out of place, not quite in it, either.

  He thought of Veronica, wondered if she’d bought a pram yet, and his alcohol buzz flattened. He knew he should clear out of the bar and go back to his hotel room, but then he’d have nothing to do but lie on his hard yet somehow also spongy mattress and watch the bedroom fan rotate. At least here there was loud music and cheap liquor, and he could distract himself from his life by hating Middleton. Middleton with her husky voice and perky tits. Middleton, who was twenty-five but looked about seventeen. Buddy, Ty could see, was attempting to pull her t-shirt from her skirt and get up her bra.

  Good luck, mate I bet she’s sewed in. By the way, Middleton, I’m your boss. You’re really gonna get felt up in a public bar in front of your boss? And how old is that kid? Nineteen?

  However young, he was a good looking little shit. Shaggy blond hair, clear skin, broad shoulders. His arm muscles were almost comically swollen, bulging inside his t-shirt sleeves like hams. They made a pretty picture, him and Middleton. People would pay serious money to watch them fuck, the porn tagline something like; ‘big brother nails sister’s friend at sleepover.’

  Ty pictured himself, blond hair that was getting too long, blue eyes bracketed with lines. Firefighting had left him with bad knees and his back ached when it was cold. He looked forty-five because he was forty-five. In the porn scenario, he’d be Buddy’s dad, home early from a business meeting. He’d spot what his son was up to and—

  Guilt rose up inside him like bile. He squashed the thought before it could expand into a full blown fantasy. Creep, he told himself. Sicko. Pervert.

  Middleton kissed her way across Buddy’s cheek and Ty felt invisible lips ghost across his jaw. Middleton was going to suck that boy’s cock tonight, he’d bet his right hand on it. She had the perfect lips for blow jobs, pale pink and pouty. Perfect hair, too—thick and grabable. He bet she moaned while she sucked, her tongue humming so the guy could feel it in his balls.

  That was Ty’s favourite thing. A girl’s head in his lap, his fingers running through her hair as her wet mouth bobbed on his dick. He sat back in his chair, trying to remember the last time he’d been blown. A year ago, he guessed, maybe more. Hookups rarely included blow jobs; when a woman took a man home she wanted a ride, not to suck all the stiffness out of his dick. That was understandable, but still, Ty missed head. Veronica never swallowed, but she’d always been happy to suck him dry if he returned the favour. Diminishing thrill-factor aside, the sex was so much better when you were in a relationship. Getting it regular two or three times a week from someone who knew how you liked it beat fumbling around with strangers by a country mile. Still, he had no plans to find himself a girlfriend—no matter how many of his friends insisted he go out for dinner with their cousin’s best friend’s wife’s doctor’s sister. He was no good on dates anymore. No good with expectations of romance or nervous, hopeful smiles. The very idea of being set up made him want to leave whatever room he was sitting in.

  He studied the couple by the bar. If Middleton blew him, Buddy was young enough to get it up again. Hell, maybe he’d get it up three or four times. Middleton would probably roll into the breakfast meeting tomorrow exhausted and Ty would have to watch her yawn and know she’d spent the whole night getting screwed.

  He closed his eyes. “Where the hell is my drink?”

  As though she was waiting for him to ask, the bartender reappeared with his bourbon. She had, despite his request, put three ice cubes in it. Ty wasn’t surprised. It was that kind of night.

  “Here you go.” She placed the glass in front of him.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. I’m, erm, Sandy by the way.”

  Ty’s stomach panged a warning. Looking up, he saw she’d put on lipstick, and her dark red hair was fluffed around her face. No. Not a fucking chance.

  Her age didn’t bother him—far as he was concerned, consenting adults were all the same age in the dark—but she had a wide, earnest smile like this was a high school disco and he was the teacher she’d had her eye on all year. He didn’t have the fucking energy. He just wanted to get drunk enough to go back to his hotel room and pass out. If he was horny, he could always crack open the complimentary moisturiser and wring himself out. It wasn’t as good as a blowjob, but it was a lot less messy. Metaphorically speaking. He picked up his drink without meeting Sandy’s gaze. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Are you staying across the road?”

  �
��Yeah, I am.”

  Sandy rocked on her heels. “Is it a nice room?”

  “Nice enough.”

  Part of him felt guilty about how he was acting. There were better ways to do this. A few years ago he’d have told her he had a physically demanding job and needed sleep, or that he had a girlfriend. Then again, a few years ago he did have a physically demanding job and a girlfriend. Now he was just some mid-level, middle-aged corporate asshole with a borderline drinking problem and an unfinished manuscript, of all the fucking clichés. So he waited for Sandy to read his near-silence as a complete lack of interest and leave him alone. The moment never came.

  She leaned closer, her thick purplish perfume surrounding him like an eighties miasma. “I finish up in twenty minutes. Want some company?”

  Across the pub, Middleton had her hand in Buddy’s hair and was kissing him so deeply she looked at risk of falling into his face. Ty genuinely considered Sandy’s offer. He could bed her and make her scream so loud everyone in the hotel block heard it. Then tomorrow when the guys were ribbing him in that half-admiring, half-jealous way, Middleton would know she wasn’t the only one who could pull on a work trip. She’d have to look at him and wonder how he was in bed, see him as a guy who could get laid instead of some old man she offered meringues to at work.

  For a second Ty was sold, then the stupidity of the idea sank into his bourbon pickled brain like water soaking into soil. Unprofessional, inappropriate, and not to mention tacky. He raised his glass again, downing half the too-cold liquid inside. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m headed to bed as soon as I finish this.”

  Sandy raised a heavily plucked eyebrow. “I’m saying I can keep you company in bed.”

  “I heard you.”

  “Well, you’re not gonna turn me down, are you?”

  Ty closed his eyes, feeling the dirt and grit that had collected there. Why couldn’t anything ever be easy? “Sorry, I’m not interested.”

  “Why? You got a better offer?”

  Ty’s gaze jumped to where Middleton stood sucking face with her teen paramour. “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “You a mum?”

  Sandy frowned. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t do mothers.”

  Her mouth fell open. “You can’t be serious?”

  “I am.”

  For a moment she stared at him in confusion, then the reality of what he was saying seemed to hit her right between the eyes. “You’re an asshole!”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t know it enough.” Sandy’s palms found her hips, her elbows sticking out like the handles on a premiership cup. “Finish your drink and get out of here, or I’ll chuck you out.”

  “Not a problem.”

  She shot him a look of pure venom and stormed away. Ty felt a twinge of remorse, but the relief was much, much greater. He didn’t need a fly-by-night fuck, he needed to start sleeping off what he hoped would be a manageable hangover. He finished his drink, stood and pulled on his jacket. It was a nice coat. A double-breasted wool affair Veronica had found in a boutique store when they were staying in Dublin. He almost choked when he saw the price tag, but she’d insisted he buy it. “You look like such a catch in it, Tyler. Like a handsome stranger you fall in love with on the train.”

  As he buttoned up, he cast a last glance at Middleton, who was still making out with Buddy by the jukebox, oblivious to him the way she’d been all night, the entire time he’d known her.

  Outside, the winter air was sharp as a knife. Ty breathed it in, feeling pleasantly warm and cold, sober and drunk. He lingered by the beer garden, inhaling deeply, wishing he could smoke like the kids around him. He had dropped the habit when he joined the MFB. You couldn’t be a firefighter who voluntarily gave yourself smoke damage, but years later he still craved the taste, the smell.

  “Have you seen Trigger?” a stringy-haired kid shouted, audible even over the crowd. “He’s, like, two seconds away from fingering that chick right at the bar.”

  Ty paused as all the kids in Stringy-Hair’s gang—teenagers far gawkier and more acnefied than Buddy— turned and looked at Middleton through the window.

  A Burmese kid with a nose ring groaned. “Fuck me, who is she?”

  “No idea.” Stringy-Hair sounded wistful. “Trigger just walked up to her and asked if she wanted a drink. I hate that cunt sometimes.”

  A doe-eyed kid in a beanie laughed and held up his phone. “Don’t be jealous. Did you get Trigger’s snapchat?”

  “He snapchats me twelve times an hour,” Nose-Ring complained. “What’s this one about?”

  “He said if he can get that chick back to his dorm he’s keeping his laptop open.”

  Several boys hooted and Stringy-Hair downed the last of his pint. “That said, we should head back and get comfortable before the show starts.”

  “Solid plan.” Beanie-Baby began tapping on his phone. “I’ll tell Trig we’ll be ready in a halfa.”

  Drunk and a member of Gen X, it took Ty a few seconds to realise what was going on. When he did his pleasurable drunk-cold sensation vanished. Buddy was going to cam himself and Middleton fucking, and let all his friends watch. Ty’s hands balled into fists. For some unfortunate reason, watching porn with your mates was a male rite of passage, like doing a burnout in your mum’s car or discovering soap made terrible lube. But this, what they were planning to do to Middleton, was completely fucked up. He needed to do something. The kids were busy finishing their beers and arguing if there were any chips in the dorm kitchen. None of them noticed Ty enter the beer garden or walk up behind them. He cleared his throat. “Having a good night, boys?”

  The group turned, their expressions hostile until they caught sight of him—six-two and built like the metro firefighter he no longer was—their facial features became neutral real fast.

  “Uh, yeah.” Stringy-Hair gave his friends a sidelong glance. “We’re, uh, having a good one.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Ty walked over to where Beanie-Baby was lighting up a big-boy cigarette. “Can I grab a smoke?”

  “Sure.” Beanie-Baby handed him a Winfield Blue along with his lighter. It was purple and had a topless chick on it. Ty was one hundred percent sure it was meant to be ironic. Kids these days had no fucking taste. He lit up and took a swift drag, relishing the hot prickle in his throat.

  “Thanks.” He tossed the lighter to Beanie-Baby then stepped back so he had all the little assholes in his line of vision. “I think we should have a chat about your plans after you leave this pub.”

  The boys looked at one another in drunk confusion. Beanie-Baby laughed. “We’re going back to our dorm, y’wanna join us?”

  He was expecting his friends to laugh, but they just nudged the ground with their sneakers and looked at their phones. Ty was sure some of them already knew what was happening. He locked eyes with Beanie-Baby. “If you wanna go back to your dorm and have a circle jerk, that’s your decision, but you’re not gonna do it watching your mate fuck one of my employees.”

  It was satisfying, watching their faces fall. The most satisfying thing Ty could remember experiencing in weeks. Maybe months. He smiled at the mortified boys. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re gonna swear on your sad little lives you’re not gonna do what I heard you say you were gonna do, then you’re gonna run back to your crusty dorm room and jack off to Porn Hub like good little boys, understood?”

  There was a spatter of mumbled consent but Beanie-Baby scowled at him. “And if we don’t?”

  Ty pointed at the CCTV camera fixed to a nearby brick wall. “Then I’ll call Senior Sergeant Gerry Handler down at Bendigo Police Station. He’s a friend of mine. I’ll tell him what you were planning on doing. I’m sure he’ll be able to ID every one of you rapey little fucks from the security video.”

  “It’s not rape—” Beanie-Baby began, but Nose-Piercing elbowed him in the ribs. “We were joking,” he said. “We wouldn’t
do that.”

  “Yeah, the sincerity in your voice is heart-warming.” Ty ground out his barely smoked cigarette on one of the wallets sitting on the picnic bench. Beanie-Baby gave a hiss of outrage but was elbowed into silence again.

  “C’mon, let’s go.” Stringy-Hair picked up his phone and shoved it into his pocket. The rest of the gang followed suit, muttering under their breath. Ty watched them go, his anger thrumming like a live wire. From the way they were talking, he’d bet money they’d done this before, the perverted little shits. He breathed deep, telling himself he shouldn’t follow them and give them a more physical taste of his fury.

  He turned to the pub window and found Middleton still getting warmed up by the boy who planned to exploit her. If he didn’t help, no one would, but god he didn’t want to talk to her. Not now that he was drunk and alone and had spent so much of the night thinking about sex. Maybe he could just wait till Buddy went to the toilet and king-hit him? Maybe he could text her. Something like ‘your boy's an amateur pornographer and he wants to make you a star, so go to fucking bed’ should do the trick.

  As he shoved his hands into his pocket, he considered doing the lowest thing of all—nothing. Middleton was a savvy girl, surely she’d notice if the kid started fucking around with his laptop? And if she didn’t, that was none of his business. This wasn’t a burning building, and he wasn’t a firefighter. Not a hero, not a good guy, just a drunk moron who’d singed a kid’s wallet and insulted a woman who wanted to shag him.

  So leave. Leave.

  He couldn’t. He couldn’t move an inch. Ty sighed and allowed his feet to carry him toward the pub door, his guts twirling like spaghetti through fork tines. Middleton and the kid were still making out when he tapped his employee on the shoulder. She unstuck herself with some difficulty and turned to face him.

  When Ty was a kid, he and his brothers had set off a whole crate of fireworks at once. A blistering rainbow had exploded inches from his face, and even though his mum burst out of the house screaming for them to move, Ty hadn’t. He’d stayed still, drinking in the colours, watching them burst through the air and set pineapple trees ablaze. Looking at Middleton was kind of like that. It burned, stung, made him immune to his own stupidity. Every time he saw her face, with its upturned nose and lightly freckled cheeks, he wanted to do terrible fucking things to it. Up close he was powerless against thoughts of tearing her out of her high-necked, knee-length clothes and keeping her naked in his bed for a week. Transform her from a good girl into a writhing animal who lived to pleasure his dick.