Act Your Age

by Eve Dangerfield

  He could have completed Maria’s task at his kitchen while he cooked dinner—he hadn’t eaten since breakfast and he was starving—but instead, he climbed the stairs to his office. He shoved novels and loose pieces of paper off his desk, so the space he wanted to use was clear. He sat down, dug a fresh notepad and Bic out of the overflowing drawers and put one to the other. Instantly, his fingers began to itch.

  He stood, intending to go get himself a beer and then stopped. This thing with Middleton had been born in alcohol, sustained by alcohol, and brought low by alcohol. If he was going to spill his guts tonight, he should be sober as sober could get. He walked over to the window and forced it open so that cold salty air rushed into him. It unsettled the stagnant room, rustled loose sheets and raised goosebumps on his arms. It was uncomfortable, but it was better. He sat and picked up his pen.

  Write down how you wish it could be, Maria had said. Make it real, at least to yourself.

  It was ridiculous, a pointless exercise, but some hard part of him knew it had to be done. He took a deep breath and wrote, When I first met Katie—

  He tore the page from the pad, balled it up, and threw it in the bin. This was agonising, like having a thousand needles jabbed into him at once. The weakness he felt, even alone writing words no one else ever had to see, was staggering. He wanted to get up, go into the lounge room, and turn on the TV. Middleton was gone, why was he even bothering?

  Maria had all but told him he was entitled, incapable of handling bad times because some part of him thought he didn’t deserve them. Ty didn’t want to believe that, but if he turned away from this simple task just because it was hard, he’d be proving her right. He returned his Bic to the notepad.

  Middleton crawled into my hotel bed because she’s attracted to old men and even though I know it’s a mistake, I let her have me. The sex is good. We start dating. Her family think she’s insane for fucking someone twenty years older than her. All my friends think I’m having a mid-life crisis. People whisper behind our backs at parties. The age gap sounds bad and she’s so baby-faced it looks worse. The fact I used to be her boss is the cherry on top of the shit sundae. Doesn’t stop us from fucking one another, but the smell of it taints everything, like when there’s a dead rat in your ventilation. A few years pass, I get even fucking older, my hair starts to fall out, and my dick doesn’t work. Middleton meets a guy her own age. She leaves me. I die alone.

  Ty threw his pen aside, swearing under his breath. Some fucking exercise this was turning out to be. He stood, but again, he found he couldn’t leave the room. His gaze fell on his laptop, and he remembered what Maria had told him, the step that was supposed to have come before this one.

  “Kinkworld, shit.”

  He fired up his laptop, opened Chrome, and logged into Kinkworld. He was briefly sidetracked by a couple of new messages from @BadBastard1995— ‘You’re a cunt, and I bet you have chlamydia,’ and ‘Fuck you, you limp-dicked asshole’ before he returned to Middleton’s profile.

  She hadn’t uploaded anything since the cherry nightie picture. Ty hoped that was a good sign and not an indication she was too busy making out with strangers to spare a thought for Kinkworld. He had to scan her profile a couple of times before he found the blog section, which made him feel slightly better about not reading it sooner.

  Middleton’s first entry was dated almost three years ago. It explained why she was attracted to the idea of daddy-daughter play. As with her profile, he both recognised and didn’t recognise her voice—she sounded so confident here, so witty and unafraid. She encouraged anyone who was interested in topping her to read her next blog. Ty noticed that unlike her pictures, the blogs only had a couple of likes and no comments. Maria had been right—men, himself included—didn’t seem very switched on when it came to seeking out this stuff.

  Ty clicked on the next entry. It was about what she was looking for in a daddy, an almost painfully romantic musing on what it would be like to play with someone whose fantasies aligned with hers. This one had no likes and only one comment, a guy had written Vert nice, DM me, and I will spank yuor butt.

  Despising his gender a little, Ty clicked on the next blog.

  The next few entries were erotica—short stories detailing spankings, bondage scenes, and a trip to the movies in which Daddy made her blow him in the back of the cinema. Knowing she wrote down her fantasies the way he had when he was a teenager made Ty’s insides ache. Some of the stories were so similar to his, it felt too significant to be a coincidence. It felt like fate. The stories got him hot but Ty was feeling too many things to jerk off, he just kept clicking through her blogs until he came to…

  “Poetry?” Ty asked his office. “Middleton writes poetry?”

  He winced. It was one thing to read charming sex stories, but he didn’t know if he could take poetry. If she’d tried to rhyme anything with ‘Tyler’…

  “Man up,” he told himself. “Do it.”

  To his relief, the nerves weren’t necessary. Her poetry was good, or as good as someone who knew nothing about poetry could make out. They weren’t just about sex, they were also about summer and loneliness and a woman Ty was sure was Middleton’s Aunt Rhonda and a longish one called Seaweed and Other Entanglements that made him laugh. It sounded as though Middleton had experimented with bondage by wrapping herself up in kelp and had gotten stuck and had to be cut out by her brother. He clicked on the next blog, one dated a couple of months earlier, and found a poem called Moonlight Baby. His skin prickled as he began to read.

  Even when he is there

  i can touch nothing

  but bright air

  he had no plans to love me

  but i made plans of my own.

  i shaped myself from his sun

  and became a moonlight baby

  Below this, there was an even shorter poem; Not and Never.

  i think it would be nice,

  to be loved.

  i think it would be good.

  to be loved

  i think it would be nice to know

  someone loved me

  Ty pushed back his chair. “Middleton,” he growled into the silence. “Kate.”

  He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her words had done something to him, cracked him open the same way Maria’s insights had done in her kitchen. He wanted to see her and tell her she was wrong, he did love her and that was the whole problem. How could he be with someone so kind? Someone so comfortable relying on him? She had so many needs and when she pressed her face against his chest he wanted to give her everything, everything. He’d never felt that before.

  He had loved Veronica sincerely, but not like this. She hadn’t needed him the way Katie did, hadn’t required all of him the way Katie would. With Veronica the boundaries were well defined and impenetrable; he’d given her monogamy and a diamond ring and a piss-yellow breakfast nook, but not a baby or a house where they could start their lives fresh or even a fucking Instagram account so she could tag him in all her photos.

  With Middleton it would be different, he felt like an asshole for saying it, but it would be different. Not because she was so young or pretty or good in bed, but because when she wanted something he needed to give it to her.

  He endured days of shame when he turned down her invitation to the derby match and when he saw sense and went back to her, where had he gone? It was their dynamic, to give and take in equal but different ways. He would use her body and provide her with every single thing she desired because he was her Daddy, her lover and her protector. If she wanted a new house, he would sell his beloved beachside home and move somewhere else. If she wanted to get married in the Catholic Church, despite him being the world’s biggest atheist he knew he would concede. And if she wanted a baby…

  Ty’s breath caught in his throat. As ugly as it sounded and as impossible as it seemed, Kate was the one for whom it would be different. It was so monumentally unfair to Veronica and any woman who’d
ever wanted his child, but she was the exception and if she needed a baby, wanted one with all her heart, then he would change his mind. Find a gym with a childcare center. Go to the movies on Saturday nights. Be a father.

  He started to cry then, not loud and not hard, just soft, soft as rain.

  “I’m in love with Kate,” he said, just to say the words aloud. “What the fuck do I do now?”

  But he already knew the answer. What he and Middleton shared had gravity, it would pull her back toward him as surely as the moon pulled at the ocean tides. He could get her number in Prague from Maria, call her long distance and say “Middleton, you’re everything I ever wanted in a woman. I’m your man now. Fly back to Melbourne and be with me.” But that was lacking a certain romance and if he knew anything by now it was that Kate liked romance.

  He’d hurt her, badly. He owed her something a little better than a bossy phone call demanding she cut her first overseas trip short. He was just starting to think of alternate ideas when his phone vibrated against his thigh. Unthinkingly, he pulled it out and answered. “Henderson.”

  “Tyler?”

  If someone had walked up behind him and zapped him with a cattle prod, Ty could not have been more shocked. “Veronica?”

  There was a short silence. “Yeah! Hi! How are you?”

  His ex’s tone was bright but with a quavering note of panic. Ty knew she hadn’t expected him to pick up, she’d been planning on leaving another batshit voicemail. “Why the hell are you calling me?”

  “I just wanted to talk to you!” She sounded so chipper Ty was surprised she didn’t add ‘you big silly!’

  “Great,” he said, his voice a cheery imitation of hers. “What did you want to talk about?”

  Veronica was silent.

  “Why don’t I go first? How’s your husband? Heard a few people got food poisoning at your wedding. That’s no good.”

  Veronica was breathing hard and fast down the line. Beneath it Ty could hear the sounds of cars swooshing and traffic lights ticking. He’d bet any amount of money she was calling him from her car, on her way home from running an errand or shopping.

  “Okay, so you don’t want to talk about Colin,” he said. “That’s fine. What about your son, Dominic?”

  “Don’t you say his name!” Veronica snapped.

  “Why not? Don’t you want me acknowledging you have a son?”

  Faster, shallower breaths. Ty could almost smell his ex-girlfriend’s lemony Hyacinth perfume, feel her hair brushing over his cheek. “I’ll ask you again, why are you calling me?”

  There was another short silence, and Ty became sure his ex didn’t know why she was calling, she’d just had the impulse and followed it. She’d always been that way, whirlwind holidays and three thousand dollar coats, impulsivity to mask sharp bursts of fear and need. Am I missing out? Can I have everything? Is my life as exciting as everyone else’s? Had this happened yesterday, Ty might have been angry, but in the face of his Middleton revelation, he found himself feeling profoundly sorry for his ex. “Veronica, this needs to stop.”

  “I miss you,” she whispered. “I miss us.”

  “You left me for another man two years ago. I’d say that ship has not only sailed, but been boarded by pirates, stripped of all valuables, and sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.”

  “You’re still mad at me,” she said with satisfaction. “That’s good, that means—”

  “It doesn’t mean I still care!” Ty took a deep breath. “Look, you fucked me over worse than anyone’s ever fucked me over, but at the end of the day, it was for the best. We never would have worked; we weren’t right for each other. Now, why the hell do you keep leaving me voicemails? And don’t tell me it’s because you bloody miss me.”

  There was no answer.

  “Do you know what I think?” Ty said. “I think you’ve trapped yourself in a situation you can’t squirm your way out of and you want my help getting free.”

  A small scoff. “Colin—”

  “I’m not talking about your dumb-fuck husband. I’m talking about your kid. He’s out in the world now, no stuffing him back where he came from, no palming him off on your parents, and no matter how many times you call, I’m not coming to rescue you. You’re a mum now, Veronica, there’s no going back.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “It’s the goddamn truth. You got what you wanted and it’s time to accept it. You can’t have a baby and a husband and a pining fucking ex too.”

  “Why not?” she said trying and failing to sound glib.

  Ty thought about Maria. “Because shit doesn’t always go your way. Sometimes it goes bad and you just have to accept it.”

  There was a short pause. “But I don’t want to.”

  “And that used to be my problem. But then you dumped me, so now it isn’t. I’m going to hang up and once I do I’m blocking your number.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I’ve met someone else and I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Give my best to Colin.”

  Ty’s thumb was an inch from the red ‘end call’ button when she said it, “I know who she is.”

  He raised the phone to his ear. “What?”

  “I know who your new girlfriend is, you pervert!”

  The last word came out hard, like a burst of bad breath, and Ty knew Veronica was telling the truth. “How? How do you know?”

  She gave a short crazy laugh. “I’m not going to tell you. Let’s see how you like living with that!”

  But Ty wasn’t listening, he was looking at his laptop. He had a new Kinkworld message from @BadBastard1995. It read, ‘You’re an asshole, Tyler Henderson.’

  It should have scared him that some anonymous internet troll knew his full name but it didn’t, because it wasn’t an anonymous internet troll. The answer was so clear, so neat and tidy, he felt stupid for not seeing it sooner. Veronica had always been a chronic snooper. Throughout their relationship he’d busted her going through his laptop and phone looking for evidence he was cheating. He tuned back in to the voice in his ear and listened to Veronica tell him they needed to have dinner and talk about everything.

  “You’re still reading my emails, aren’t you?” he said dully. “You didn’t stop doing it when we broke up. You’ve been stalking me and when you saw the confirmation email for me to create an account on—”

  “Kinkworld? ” she shrieked into the phone, all semblance of self-control gone.

  “Yeah, Kinkworld,” Ty said, cringing a little at the silly word. “You logged into my profile, didn’t you? You guessed my password and—”

  “It was the same one as your email password!” she shouted as though it was his fault she’d gone through his private information. “I can’t believe you, Tyler! That Kate girl is your employee and she’s twenty-five and she’s a retard!”

  “What?”

  “She has ADHD. She’s a spastic and you’ve been sleeping with her.”

  For the first time since this conversation began, Ty found himself getting angry. No, not angry, furious.

  “How,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Do you know Kate has ADHD?”

  “I had Becky do a search on her at work,” Veronica said triumphantly. “What she was diagnosed with is severe as fuck. She’ll be on brain pills for the rest of her life. I can’t believe you would ever—”

  “That’s enough!” Ty got to his feet, so mad he could barely think or breathe. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but ADHD isn’t a disability and even if it was, what you did is a crime. I could get you and Becky thrown in jail.”

  Veronica gave a high hysterical laugh. “Oh, really?”

  “Maybe not jail. But I could make sure neither of you had a job that wasn’t folding t-shirts ever again.”

  That shut her up, for about ten seconds. “You’ve got some nerve threatening me when you’re taking advantage of a girl who’s mentally ill.”

 
“ADHD isn’t a—”

  “I’m not talking about her fucking ADHD!” Veronica screamed. “I’m talking about the twisted fucking games you’ve been playing with her, I’ve read your messages, I know everything, Daddy.”

  Ty cringed but was determined not to let his ex get the upper hand. “She’s an adult, we’re not hurting anyone, and this is none of your business.”

  “Oh, isn’t it? If I’d known that’s what you wanted when you made me call you that disgusting word, I would have cut your dick off. That’s pedophilia, Ty. Pedophilia and incest. You made me a part of that.”

  These were the accusations that had terrified him since puberty. They’d dominated his nightmares and his daydreams, kept him from pursuing the sex he wanted in any way, shape or form. He’d lived in fear of those words ‘pedophilia’ and ‘incest,’ convinced they applied to him even though they made him feel sick. And yet now that they were being levelled at him, all he could think was, what a waste of time. I was so fucking scared and it was all a waste of time.

  He closed his eyes. “I don’t know if you looked around Kinkworld while you were stalking me, Veronica, if you took a moment to admire the view, but if I’m a depraved pervert then I’m one of millions. What I do to a consenting adult woman is not wrong. Comparing calling me ‘daddy’ to the most disgusting crimes in human existence, on the other hand, is the shittiest thing you’ve ever done to me, and that includes stalking, cheating, and leaving my ass. That you think you have a right to judge my sex life after what you’ve done is a fucking joke.”

  He moved his thumb to the red ‘end call’ button but again Veronica spoke before he could tap it. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I liked calling you Daddy, you never made me say that—”

  “That’s enough,” Ty said, his jaw was so stiff every syllable was an effort. “I’m not listening to another word that comes out of your mouth. We’re done. If you ever come near me or Kate again I’ll go to the police and tell them you had a friend abuse her role as psychiatrist to stalk me and we’ll see where that takes us. Goodbye.”