“I aim to make getting tested for STD’s a routine experience for women,” Nicole had written on the home page of the website Tabby built her. “With proper education and the support of her peers, I hope all women can live healthy, more well-rounded lives, without the fear of being stigmatized for having sex. Shame has no role to play in a woman’s bedroom (unless she’s into that!)”
Nicole DaSilva. Sometimes he questioned how he’d ever understood the world before she came into his life. Had he really just rattled around thinking nothing could change and everything was already doomed? Scott arrived, carrying the chicken he was supposed to cook. “How’re the sausages?”
Noah shrugged. “I’m doing my best.”
“And that’s all anyone can ask. Get you a beer?”
“Yesterday.”
Scott returned with a Pale Ale and Noah gulped gratefully. He was considering the chicken—did he need to oil the hotplate? Was that a thing?—when his phone buzzed.
The back of his neck buzzed and, somehow, he knew who it was. He looked around carefully, making sure no one was in hearing distance, then turned his back and answered. “Hey, Ed.”
“G’day, Noah.”
Edgar’s voice was slow and calm. It sounded like it was vibrating on a different frequency from the plane their bodies occupied, and it probably was. “How are things?”
“I can’t talk,” Noah said. “We’re having a barbecue.”
“Ah,” Edgar said comfortably. “How are the girls?”
Noah looked at them; Sam laughing at Scott, Tabby draining the last of her cider can, Nicole fussing around with plastic cups. “About the same.”
“I doubt that.”
He was right, but Noah didn’t say so. He was already paranoid someone would notice what he was doing and ask who was on the phone. “Are you coming home?”
“Too soon to tell, mate.”
Noah rolled his eyes. “Eddie, I know I promised not to tell, but it’s almost been a fucking year.”
“But the girls are doing better without me.”
It wasn’t a question. Edgar sounded as sure as the sphinx.
“Maybe, but I know they miss you and I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this to myself. Especially now Nikki and I are…”
“In love,” Edgar said with satisfaction.
When Noah had called to let him know they were dating—five months into their relationship—Edgar hadn’t sounded the least bit surprised. In fact, if he didn’t know better, Noah would have said he’d expected it to happen.
“You should think about coming home,” he repeated, though he knew he wouldn’t sway Edgar. In his own, sea-salt-and-wind-chimes way, he was more stubborn than all three of his daughters.
“We’ll see,” his former mentor said with clockwork predictability. “Take care of them for me, won’t you?”
“I’ll do my best, but you should write to them again. And maybe something less fucking cryptic this time?”
He laughed. “We’ll see about that, too. I’ll let you go, mate, love you.”
And he hung up, leaving Noah standing at his barbecue with his family, the burden of knowledge just a little bit heavier. As it always was when Edgar called. He turned around to continue laying out the sweet and sour chicken wings and found Toby staring at him, his hands full of raw steaks, his handsome face blank. “Were you on the phone with Tabby’s dad? Do you know where he is?”
And maybe it was just bad luck, or maybe it was his practice of replying whenever someone asked him something, but Noah didn’t even think to keep quiet. “Yeah. Don’t tell anyone.”
Reflexively, Toby turned to look back at the party, at the laughing DaSilva sisters.
“Oh, man,” he said. “Oh, this isn’t okay.”
“Hope you’re good at keeping secrets.”
“I’m not.”
“Then you’d better learn fast.” Noah clapped his hands hard, just like his old man used to. “D’you know how long you’re supposed to cook chicken?”
The End
Acknowledgements
First, the usual suspects;
Huge love for my brilliant editor Jessica Cale whose Instagram game is god tier and whose sweet and funny comments keep me sane while I’m going through my manuscript, wondering if I should change my name and fly to Canada.
Big internet hugs to Kole, who proofs like no one else and leaves the best Facebook comments ever. I must have some sweet karma to have reached out to you as an unknown author in 2016 and had you a) write me back and b) agree to help me.
A massive thank you to Leticia Hassar for the gorgeous cover, it’s one of the best yet and so appropriate for Noah and Nix’s story.
An enormous thanks to those who read and buy my books and newsletter and comment on my social media stuff. I’ve lost count of the times you’ve made me smile, lightened my mood and brought me back to my keyboard.
Thank you to my loved ones, who make me so unbelievably happy.
Thank you to Sarah, who helped me paradigm shift in ways I never believed possible.
Thank you to almond milk, which is very vanilla-esque when you have it in coffee. Thank you to the Buddhify app which is very relaxing and useful. Thank you to the Cormoran Strike novels, because they are good.
A final thank you to Lou, who sat next to me at the Melbourne STD clinic, cracking jokes and breaking through the sweaty panic that seems to fill every inch of that place. May it not always be so, because of friends like you.
About Eve Dangerfield
Eve Dangerfield has loved romance novels since she first started swiping her grandmother’s paperbacks. Now she writes her own tales about complex women and gorgeous-but-slightly-tortured men. Eve lives in Melbourne and when she's not writing, she can usually be found jugging a beer, her phone and a lip balm. Not literally. She’s bad at juggling. Sign up for her cheerfully bonkers newsletter Living Dangerfieldy at www.evedangerfield.com
Eve Dangerfield hath various social media accounts
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Eve Dangerfield hath written other books
So Wild: Silver Daughters Book One
Act Your Age
Degrees of Control
Locked Box
Captivated (coauthored with Tessa Bailey!)
Something Borrowed
Something Else
Taunt
Open Hearts
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. Unprofessional sexual conduct suited Middleton about as much as a bald head would have.
If he’d had to guess ahead of ti
me 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.
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 se
x 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.”
So Steady: Silver Daughters Ink, Book Two (Silver Daughters Ink Book Two) Page 28