“Agreed,” Tam said. “About it not working out, not that he’s a cunt. Cunts are good things. I should tell Tim about this daddy stuff. Maybe we could give it a try.”
“I used to do daddy stuff with my ex,” Rapunzel said, crunching a leftover carrot stick.
Tam wrinkled her brow. “But, you’re a woman.”
“Oh, fuck. Really?” Rapunzel grabbed her tits. “What the hell? What are these? Tambara, I’m a woman—”
“Don’t—”
Rapunzel threw her head back. “Nooooooooooooo!”
Kate and Casey laughed.
“Yeah, lol,” Tam said, rolling her eyes. “I just mean, well…you don’t have a dick.”
“They have invented this thing called a strap-on Tam, look it up.”
“No thanks. Hang on, why would you pretend to be your ex’s dad? Why not her mum?”
“I dunno, it’s a taboo thing, I guess. Ask Kate.”
“Don’t ask me!” Kate said. “I only know my own weird head. I know nothing of lesbian BDSM.”
Rapunzel muttered something under her breath.
“What was that?” Kate asked, feeling uneasy for the first time since they’d started drinking.
Rapunzel exchanged a meaningful look with Tam, then sighed. “Sorry, I was being a shithead. I said ‘Maybe Maria can help you with that?’”
Kate winced. “Is this the part of the night where we talk about Maria?”
Rapunzel looked at Tam who donned a serene expression Kate was sure would form the cornerstone of her psychologist’s practise. “Yes. Although, there isn’t that much to say, besides Maria’s in love with you.”
“But she’s never even made a move on me! I was at her house all the time, she never even tried to kiss me!”
Tam raised a palm. “Let me explain. We don’t want to bitch about Maria, but we all feel weird about how she treats you. She’s possessive, she doesn’t like you being friends with anyone else, and whenever you’re alone with us, she muscles in. Remember the after-practise drinks?”
“That was kind of a weird night,” she admitted.
“Yeah, because of her,” Casey said. “How did she feel about you dating Ty?”
“She didn’t like him.”
“I bet she didn’t.”
“Yeah, but it was him specifically! She doesn’t, like, want me for herself. She’s always tried to set me up with guys in the past. They weren’t the best choices for me, but—”
“She knows you’re straight,” Rapunzel interrupted. “She knew she was never gonna get to fuck you, deep down. But if you want my dyke opinion, she tried to set you up with nerds so she could always be your number one, your mama bear. Ty’s different. He’s older and you’re so obviously in love with him—”
“I’m not!”
“Peach,” Rapunzel said gently. “No judgment, but you are, and I’m sure Maria knew that and was fucking terrified about it. I’m sure she thought he was going to take you away from her.”
The four of them fell silent. Kate thought about the coffee she and Maria had all those weeks ago, how she’d seemed disturbed, not by her attraction to Ty, but by the fact she was trying to seduce him at work.
“It’s more than jealousy,” she said. “Maria doesn’t want me to change. When she met me, I was so shy I was basically a lobster-person—”
“I remember,” Casey chirped. “I asked if you were new and you were so surprised you screamed a bit.”
“Yeah,” Kate said, her cheeks blazing. “Well, it’s like even though Maria helped me open up, she only wants me to go so far.”
“Because she’s scared she’ll lose you,” Tam said. “She helped you learn to walk, but when it looked like you were going to run away, she tried to hobble you.”
Kate nodded, tears budding in her eyes again. “She wants me to stay the way I am, but I can’t. Ever since Ty and I started hooking up, it’s like I’m going through second puberty or something. All I want is for things to change.”
“Like what?” Tam asked gently.
“Everything. I want a job where people take me seriously. I want to wear clothes that make me feel good. I want to talk to people without worrying they hate me. I want to not be trapped inside my aunt’s house and trapped inside my own head. I just always thought…”
“What?” Tam pressed .
“I…I always thought I’d have a guy to protect me when I was older.”
She looked around the circle. “I know that sounds pathetic and unfeminist and sad, it’s just what I thought. I wanted to meet someone who’d show me how to be who I really am. You know, love me so much I understood everything about the world?”
“It’s understandable,” Tam said. “It’s what girls get told to want, the prince who rescues you. But men are just people, they’re flawed, they change their minds. You don’t want them to hold ultimate power over you.”
“I know,” Kate admitted. “And I don’t want that really. It was just a nice idea, y’know?”
All the girls nodded.
“So,” Kate said, wiping her eyes. “Does anyone have any ideas about how to change yourself in every single way?”
It was a weak joke and she didn’t expect anyone to respond, let alone shoot to her feet the way Casey did. “Do you have candles, a bowl of water, notepaper, and a pen?” she asked.
“Erm…yes?”
“Excellent.” Casey picked up her handbag and pulled out a thick wand of what looked like weed.
“Whoa, what’s that?” Kate asked, alarmed by the sheer volume of contraband now in Aunt Rhonda’s apartment.
“Don’t worry, it’s a sage bundle. Can you please go get the other things?”
Rapunzel pressed a hand to her eyes. “It’s about to get fucking Wiccan in here, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” Casey said, pulling several shiny rocks out of her bag. “Yes it is.”
She named the ceremony the ‘healing and reinvigorating ritual for Katie May McGrath’s vagina, heart, and other areas that may need cleansing.’
Kate hadn’t wanted to use her real name but Casey said it was important. “Names have power. If the name’s wrong, the spell could go bad. But at least the moon’s waxing, which means—”
Rapunzel pressed a hand over her friend’s face. “Please hurry up before my disbelief turns this witch circle into a black hole?”
The ritual took almost an hour, but the time passed quickly. Kate wasn’t sure if that was the novelty of watching Casey chant and wave sage and utter incantations, or if it was actually doing something.
It didn’t matter, she realised, as Casey tried to bully Rapunzel into holding a chunk of rose quartz. The real charm was that someone cared enough about her to wave burning herbs all over her body to break the ties that bound her to people and things that no longer served her. When the ritual was done, Kate was holding three pieces of paper—a list and two letters.
“Take those and do with them what you must,” Casey said, waving the sage over herself and then Tam and Rapunzel. “You’re officially purified.”
Rapunzel raised a pierced brow. “Officially?”
Casey shot her a dirty look. “I think you should choose a new name, Mac.”
“I will. Births, Deaths and Marriages is on the list—”
“No, not that. I mean a new derby name.”
“Why?” Rapunzel howled. “Princess Bleach is awesome.”
“‘Princess’ is a word Kate’s brothers and sisters used to pick on her because she had undiagnosed ADHD. It’s not exactly associated with happy memories.”
Kate thought about it. “If I change my name, can I still like baking and pink jumpers?”
“No,” Rapunzel said. “Also, you need to shave your head and join the navy.”
Casey rolled her eyes. “Ignore her. Of course, you can like all that stuff, but you can be a more authentic version of that person. Embrace the other aspects of your womanhood bes
ides sweetness.”
Tam patted her arm. “You’re so granola.”
“Thank you. So Kate, new derby name. Any ideas?”
“What about The Inferno?” Rapunzel suggested.
They all pulled faces.
Tam poured herself another glass of wine. “I think we can do better than that. You like cooking, Mac. What about…Julia Wild?”
Rapunzel made a fake gagging noise and Tam glared at her. “Oh, I’m sorry, The Inferno.”
Kate looked at her hands and, like a key slipping into a lock, it came to her. “Sylvia Wrath.”
The girls stared at her.
“Who?”
“Sylvia Plath was a poet,” Kate told them. “I like poetry.”
“Cool,” Rapunzel said. “I hate it. All that fucking rhyming and sentences that don’t make sense. But Sylvia Wrath is a boss name.”
“Agreed.” Casey picked up the box of matches. “Write it down, and we’ll sage it.”
Rapunzel groaned. “Not more fucking sage.”
But they did sage her new name and then—because Casey thought it was a good idea—they saged her old derby uniform and then—because Rapunzel thought it was a good idea—they lit Aunt Rhonda’s coal barbecue on the balcony and cooked a t-shirt Ty had left at her place. As Casey and Tam argued about the influences of the moon on civilisation, Rapunzel slung an arm around Kate’s neck. “Miss him, don’t you?”
Kate nodded.
“I can tell. You’re having fun, but part of you wishes he was here. Wishes you’d ignored what you’d heard today, and he was with you instead of us.”
Kate looked up at the velvet black sky, too numb and drunk and happy and sad to cry. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. It’ll fade with time. I know hearing that makes everyone feel like shit, but it’s the truth. You’ll get there.”
Kate thought about Rapunzel in Rumba Bar talking about how beautiful people needed respectful partners. “Do you want to talk about—”
“No.” Her tone was friendly but firm. “You know when we were doing all that sage crap, I thought of a line. I think I jacked it from Game of Thrones, but you should listen to it, anyway. Here we go; set fire to the princess, let the woman rise from the ashes.”
Kate thought about it and found it made a surprising amount of sense. “I like that.”
“Cheers. I feel like I’m combining a bunch of different metaphors with some phoenix shit, but you get the gist.” Rapunzel took a long swallow of wine. “Peach?”
“Yeah?”
She cleared her throat. “Are you, uh, really looking for a roommate?”
Kate could hardly believe her ears. “No, but I seriously wouldn’t mind one! Do you really want to live with me?”
Rapunzel’s face lit up in a way Kate had never seen before. “Hell yeah, I want to live with you! How soon can I move in? How much rent do you want a month? Can I bring my cat?”
“Lesbian cat!” Casey shouted from the balcony’s edge. “She’s a cat with a lesbian. What a cliché!”
Rapunzel shook her head. “Munted,” she said. “Absolutely munted. You should be careful, Peach, she probably fuckin’ cursed you during that ritual.”
“I don’t mind. Anyway, I don’t know anything about having a roommate, but I’ll look it up and get back to you with rent prices and—”
Rapunzel gripped her shoulders. “You mean it? You’d let me live here?”
“Gosh yeah! I really like you, Rapunzel.”
“Oh, Peach.” Rapunzel pulled her into her chest and hugged her so tightly Kate felt her eyes pop. “I like you, too, you adorable bug-person. You won’t regret this.”
Kate smiled into her jumper. “I know. Plus, having you here means I won’t be tempted to invite Ty around.”
“Accountability,” Rapunzel agreed. “Plus, if he shows up here like he did at derby I can punch him in self-defense. Y’know, for invading my home.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s how self-defense works, but—”
“Katie!”
Kate looked over to see Mr Petkovic from next door leaning out of his living room window. He didn’t looked very happy. “Hey Mr Petkovic, what’s up?”
“What in the hell are you doing?” he shouted back. “It’s three in the fucking morning, and you’re having a barbecue! Why are you having a barbecue?”
“We’re, um, cooking the t-shirt of a guy who was a jerk to me?”
Mr Petkovic didn’t seem to think that was an adequate explanation. “Go inside, you silly girls!”
“Hey!” Tam yelled. “We’re doing witch stuff out here!”
“Yeah, we’re allowed to burn shit on coals if we want to!” Casey screamed. “You can’t tell us what to do! You’re not our dads!”
Tam and Casey were debating Mr Petkovic on what was and wasn’t a violation of city burning laws, when Kate realised something. She nudged Rapunzel, “This is my first ever noise complaint! That means this was my first party! I mean there are only four of us…”
“Hey, two’s a party, three’s a crowd, four’s a fucking blowout. Nice work, Sylvia Wrath.”
They smiled at one another and listened to the debate until Mr Petkovic gave up and slammed his window shut. Then they heard Casey ask, “On a scale of one to inevitable how likely is it that you’re gonna throw up right now?”
“Eleven,” Tam moaned. “Eleven.”
Rapunzel let go of Kate. “Shit. Do you have any buckets, or can she just do it over the side?”
Hosting a party, Kate learned, made you responsible for those kind of decisions.
Chapter 20
Ty was disappointed when Middleton cancelled—okay, he was pissed off, but he understood where she was coming from. He’d never had a period, but he could imagine they were painful enough without adding a spanked ass. Still, he was morose as he rounded off his last few projects for the day, a hangover throbbing in his temples. He promised himself he’d never drink like that at lunch again, no matter how hard Roger McMillian was to be around sober.
He’d intended to go home that night; he had a rib-eye thawing on his kitchen counter. Instead, for the first time since he and Middleton began their affair, he spent the night on the couch at GGS.
The next day Middleton called in sick, something she’d never done before. He texted asking if she was okay, but no response came. At four o’clock he made the monumental mistake of closing the door to his office and calling her. The call rang out, and when her husky voice told him to leave a message, he opened his mouth, and made an even bigger mistake.
“Middleton, it’s me. Ty. Just checking in to, uh, make sure you’re alright. Do you wanna go out tonight? We don’t have to fuck or anything, especially if you’ve still got your period, but we can if you want to. Look, I just wanna see you and make sure you’re okay, please call me back—”
The dial tone beeped, cutting off the worst voicemail message in the history of voicemail messages, including some of the batshit ones Veronica had left him. Only the hope that Middleton would return his call kept him from dropping his phone off the roof. He went out that night with a few guys from a rival conservation firm, got drunk, booked a hotel room at two in the morning, and slept there.
On Friday he came in late and found her desk empty again. A wave of nausea that had nothing to do with alcohol swept over him. He’d just pulled out his phone to call her again when Stormy told him he needed to speak with Johnno.
“Shut the door and sit down,” the CEO barked as soon as Ty showed up at his office.
He obliged. “What’s up?”
“Middleton.”
Instantly his mouth was ash-dry. He’d been outed. Less than forty-eight hours had passed since he told Roger McMillian he was fucking someone and the slippery prick had already found out it was Middleton. He was going to be fired and so was she, maybe she was already fired. He sat, teetering on the edge of panic. He’d help Middleton
find a new job—he had the contacts— but what would he do for himself? He’d deal with that later. He had to call her and—
“Middleton quit.”
Ty paused amid his frenzied planning. “Huh?”
Johnno slammed his fist on the desk so hard a cup of pens upended. “She quit. Quit this morning by registered fucking post.”
It took several seconds for Ty to unglue himself from thoughts of a year-long sabbatical and absorb what Johnno was saying. “Middleton. She quit…?”
“Get with the fucking program, Henderson.” Johnno held up a letter. “She quit. Reckons she got another job at Demonte and Decker. Isn’t even giving notice because she called the union, and they told her we owe her a shitload of overtime. Now she’s gone and the business’ll be down an engineer for weeks.”
“Right,” Ty said, trying not to ask if Middleton had quit for a third time. “She say why she left?”
“No, and who gives a shit, that girl fucked over everyone in this office. Now I’ve got the union breathing down my neck, asking me about gender quotas and why I wasn’t letting my only female employee take RDOs, acting like I’ve done something wrong when we spent years training her.”
And she spent years getting coffee and being boxed out of management opportunities and offered up as fuck-bait. Ty thought. So you got a new job, huh Middleton? Good for you.
He would call her again once this was over. He’d tell her he knew about D&D and offer to take her somewhere fancy to celebrate. Their situation was still a clusterfuck, but it had just been downgraded from a clusterfuck that could also get them fired.
Johnno let out a loud, petulant sigh. He began to pick up his spilt pens and place them back in the cup. “I think something happened to her on Wednesday.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if something happened with her after she took that file down to The Breton. She came back here in a right state and asked to take the afternoon off. Dutchy told her no, and she damn near told him to go fuck himself. Said she never got to take leave like everyone else.”
Ty, who’d been rifling through his mental restaurant Rolodex, snapped to attention. “Middleton brought that file to The Breton Club? I thought that was one of the interns?”
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