| |
––––––––
Ty watched Kate struggle to chopstick a dumpling into her bowl. Her tongue was out, her eyes narrowed as she maneuvered the slippery object into the air.
“Yes!” she said, a split second before it fell onto the table. “Shoot! Why is this so hard?”
Heat swelled in Ty’s chest, sudden and powerful as a volcanic eruption. I love her so fucking much.
Kate looked up from her dumpling struggle, frowning. “You’re staring, Mr. Henderson.”
“Not staring. Admiring.”
“Because of the sex?”
“Because you’re incredible.”
“I mean, sure, but also, I can barely eat dinner.” She stared daggers at the dumplings. “Do you love me?”
“Of course, baby. Why—”
“Great.” Kate plunged a chopstick deep into the dumpling and hoisted it to her mouth. A split second later it broke in half, splashing into her bowl in an explosion of soy sauce and chilli. “Aw, fuck! I almost had that.”
Ty burst out laughing. “Middleton, get a fucking fork!”
Kate gave him the finger instead. She looked genuinely irritated, but as she was spattered in inky soy sauce, it only made him laugh harder. “Want a serviette?”
“No,” she said sulkily, wiping her face with her palms. “You don’t have to laugh at me, you know. You could be nice.”
But Ty kept laughing. He couldn’t help it. He laughed until his old firefighting injury flared up, cramping his lower back.
“Are you okay?” Kate asked as he stood to smooth them out.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Your old man’s just falling apart.”
“Don’t say that!”
“That I’m your old man?”
“That you’re old or falling apart,” Kate said with an irritation that hadn’t been there when he laughed at her dumpling malfunction. “You’re healthy and strong and gorgeous. Do you need a heat pack?”
“No, baby, I’m fine.”
She shot him a stern look. “So sit and eat with me.”
The hot feeling resurged in Ty’s chest, almost as painful as the injury. She was so fucking kind. She always knew what he needed to hear. Ty stared into her bright brown eyes and was gripped with an old terror. Five years ago, he’d almost fucked it all up. Been so arrogant and self-flagellating, he’d failed to see the gem Kate had been holding up to him. And, just like that, the question he’d promised himself he wouldn’t ask came bubbling out of his mouth. “Have you thought about what I asked you last month?”
The concerned creases in Kate’s forehead smoothed, her gaze zeroed in on her bowl. “Ty...”
Mistake. He’d just made a stupid fucking mistake.
“You don’t need to say anything. I’m sorry for bringing it up, I just...wanted to know.”
Kate didn’t reply. She kept staring into her soy sauce like she was waiting for it to tell her fortune.
“Baby, it wasn’t a real proposal. I can do it again. Properly. Not that we have to get married.”
“I know,” Kate whispered, drawing her lips into her mouth.
He wasn’t sure she believed him. He wasn’t sure he believed himself. He didn’t mean to ask Kate to marry him on a Thursday night at a mid-priced wine bar, but they’d been sitting by the window, nursing glasses of Marqués De Murrieta, and her smile...unlocked something in him. He’d gotten on one knee in the cramped little booth and blurted, “Middleton, fucking marry me.”
He wasn’t an idiot, at least not all the time. He’d known getting engaged wasn’t high on her list of priorities. That it might not be there at all. Unlike most women he’d dated, she didn’t start dropping ‘ring hints’ after their one-year anniversary. When they walked through the botanical gardens, she was more interested in the dogs than the brides in their long white dresses. She announced her friends’ engagements with mild confusion, as though they’d taken up beekeeping. He never, ever got the sense she was waiting for him to make an honest woman of her, but something—fear, it was always fear—kept him from asking the question. It was an old mistake. The same he’d made with his ex-fiancée, Veronica, when he’d held back the fact he didn’t want kids. But Kate knew he didn’t want kids. She had driven him home from his vasectomy. He’d never guessed she didn’t want to get married, though. At least not until he was kneeling in old gum in Percy’s Wine Bar. It was the stupidest he’d ever felt, crouching on the carpet while Kate gaped at him as though he’d just grown a second head.
“Ty...no way.”
“Why?” he’d asked, like a total sap. “Is it me?”
Kate looked horrified. “Of course not! I just don’t want to marry anyone.”
And there it was. He’d squinted at the fact as though it was a Magic Eye and with enough effort, he could get it to morph into something else. He’d felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach.
“Ty, please stand up?” Kate asked. “The bartender’s watching. I think he thinks you’re wasted.”
He’d stood, feeling absurdly like he was going to cry. He’d ordered another round of drinks, then he and Kate had the marriage chat. He didn’t cry, but Kate did. Tears dripped onto her cheeks as she told him she’d never wanted to get married. He’d asked if she could change her mind and she said she didn’t know. They’d come to no conclusions, but Kate told him he could ask her about it again once she’d had time to think. Evidently, she hadn’t had enough time to think and he’d rushed her back into renegotiations.
“Middleton,” he said, with a stab at indifference. “I know you haven’t changed your mind. That’s fine. I shouldn’t have brought it up so soon.”
Kate looked up from her bowl. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not what you want to hear. I know you want to get married.”
“I want to get married to you.”
She gave him a half smile. “You know I have thought about getting married, but all I realised was that when I was younger, I thought I’d change my mind when I met the right guy. But if you’re not the right guy, no one is, and I still just...don’t want to. Sorry.”
Don’t be sorry. Just fucking marry me.
There were those who’d call him a hypocrite. He had the far less palatable boundary of not wanting kids. That had ended several serious relationships, including his engagement to Veronica. Who was he to be crushed that his much younger, incredibly attractive girlfriend didn’t want to make a legal commitment to him? But he was, goddammit, and he couldn’t seem to stop probing.
“But why? It wouldn’t have to be a big, traditional church and marquee nightmare. We could do it overseas? Or elope? Or go to the registry?”
Kate rubbed her lips. “It’s not the idea of a wedding. I like weddings. I had fun at Tambara’s and Gilly’s and all the rest of them. It’s not about the event, I just don’t want to...”
“What?”
“Be a wife,” she blurted. “I’m so not a wife, Ty. God, even saying wife...” She rolled the word around her mouth like a floury mint. “Wife, wife, wife, wife...”
Ty knew what she was thinking even if she was too polite to say it. Yuck.
“Mah wahyfe,” Kate concluded in a Borat impression. “I don’t get it. I keep waiting to get it and I never do. So, I’ve concluded I won’t. I know that’s hard to hear now, but could you maybe be cool with it in the future?”
He couldn’t imagine such a thing, but even as he debated his next pro-marriage argument, Ty knew he was fighting an uphill battle. He saw in Kate a version of his own ambivalence about children—he didn’t hate them; he mostly liked them, he just couldn’t see why people wanted them. Yet he couldn’t stop himself. “Okay, fuck the wedding, fuck the ring and the ceremony. Fuck all the details. I just want to marry you. I want to propose, marry you, and walk around with a ring on my finger, telling everyone I meet ‘I’m married to Kate McGrath.”
Kate raised her eyebrows. “Why does that matter?”
“So, people know you’re mine.”
“People already know I’m yours! Whenever we walk together you have a hand on my ass.”
“It’s not the same. It’s the spectacle of the thing.”
Kate’s brows rose. “Spectacle? You’re not going to do one of those flash mob proposals, are you?”
Ty scowled. “No.”
“I guess that would be a bit 2012.” Kate tapped the side of her bowl with her chopsticks. “Why do you want to get married? We already live together and we’re happy. Why do we have to get engaged?”
He’d asked himself the same thing multiple times since the botched Percy’s proposal. He wasn’t sure about the answer. It wasn’t like he’d grown up thinking marriage was the secret to domestic bliss. His mum and dad’s relationship was tepid, bordering on hostile, and his brothers were embroiled in an endless rotisserie of petty marital squabbles.
“I’m not sure.”
He’d no sooner said it than an unpleasant thought slid into his mind like an earwig.
His fiftieth birthday was just two months away. But that didn’t matter. It wasn’t relevant.
“Ty?”
He blinked. “Look, I don’t know why I want to get married; I just do. I think about it all the time.”
Kate looked thoughtful. “Maybe that’s the difference between us. I don’t. I’ve never fantasised about being a bride. Probably because my sisters were already becoming brides.”
“That checks out. Your sisters are a scary bunch of—”
“Hang on.” Kate put a hand to her cheek. A cheek that had turned suddenly and shockingly pink. “I did fantasise about getting married. I completely forgot until now. Holy shit that’s so weird.”
Ty felt a jolt of electric panic. “What? When? Who?”
Kate stared, unseeing, into the middle distance. “Mr. Peterson.”
“Who the fuck is that?”
Kate didn’t reply. She stared at nothing, apparently lost for words.
Ty took a deep steadying breath. “Who’s Mr. Peterson? Some guy off TV?”
He strongly suspected he wasn’t, but Ty wasn’t ready to give up hope.
A strange look crossed Kate’s face, as though she was debating what to say and what to hold back. “I don’t know how to put this...”
Ty gritted his teeth. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” And if you have no vested interest in keeping me sane.
She looked up, her eyes fixing on something high above his forehead. “So...don’t get mad or think it means anything because I was a kid and it didn’t count, but I used to want to marry this guy who drove me to school.”
Ty’s face felt wooden. “Okay.”
“Please don’t take this seriously!”
“I’m not,” he lied as his guts rearranged themselves.
“You are.” Kate’s cheeks flushed darker. “I can see you taking it seriously.”
“I’m fine,” Ty said stubbornly. “The guy drove your school bus?”
“Yes...well, no. It wasn’t an official school bus. Mr. Peterson was a surfie. He had a van, you know, for his boards, and he took a bunch of us to school with his daughter because there wasn’t any public transport. All our parents paid him to do it. That’s how we became friends. Or knew each other, I guess. It wasn’t a big deal. For me, or, Mr. Peterson.”
Ty hated the way she said his name, casting her eyes down the way she used to when she said ‘Mr. Henderson,’ back when they worked together. “He was a dad from your school?”
“Yeah, you know I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned him before.”
“Mmm,” Ty said. No, she hadn’t. He’d have remembered. If not the name, then the way she said it. But why would she lie?
“So yeah,” Kate said. “It was just a kid thing. Nothing important. I just forgot I wanted to marry him, is all.”
Ty’s stomach twisted up like barbed wire. He could just picture a bug-eyed baby Middleton gazing in admiration at some shaggy surfer asshole. “He flirt with you?”
“No! He was just friendly. We talked about books and school. He never knew I had a crush on him!”
Ty doubted that. There were few people who didn’t know when they were being crushed on, and he doubted pubescent Kate had been subtle. She’d been blatantly fucking obvious at the age twenty-five. No, this Peterson guy had known exactly how buttered his bread was, the cunt. Still, the defensive lift to Kate’s chin said pointing that out was a bad idea. “Was he married?”
“Yeah.” Kate’s gaze flicked up the ceiling. “But we weren’t that close. We just talked to each other in the van.”
“About what?”
“Books. Surfing. Whatever Mr. Peterson working on—he was an electrician and...”
She called him Mr. Peterson, an evil voice whispered. But what she wanted was to call him Daddy. You know she did. She wanted him to be her daddy. Her first daddy. Her only daddy. She wanted to marry him.
“...so, he kind of got me into engineering,” Kate said from somewhere far away. “Anyway, it’s ancient history. It doesn’t matter.”
My hole it doesn’t matter. Ty sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. “So you sat next to him? In the van?”
“Yes.”
“And you wanted to marry him?”
Kate shifted in her seat. “Yes. No. It was more like I wanted to be close to him, and back then I thought that was the only way to get close to boys.”
“So you were interested in him sexually?”
Kate’s mouth thinned. “Ty, maybe we shouldn’t do this?”
A solid idea, but he was in too deep to stop now. “Did you want to call him Daddy?”
Kate shook her head so vigorously, her chopsticks clattered against her bowl, spraying yet more soy sauce across the table. “I didn’t know any of that stuff about myself yet. I barely knew what sex was.”
“But you had a crush on Mr...this guy?”
“Yeah, because he was nice to me.”
“Why did that matter?”
Kate laughed, but there was no joy in it. “You know my family! Mr. Peterson was the only person who talked to me like I wasn’t a huge waste of space.”
He grimaced, embarrassed by his own question. He forgot sometimes that Kate grew up in such a painful environment. Or maybe he tried to forget because the truth was so shitty. He was a dick for questioning her about her feelings for this Peterson dickhead. She’d been the accidental tenth child to middle-aged parents, bullied by her siblings and schoolmates for being unwanted and having ADHD, and here he was, giving her shit for having a crush on someone who was nice to her.
Ty walked to Kate’s side of the table and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said into her hair. “I’m an idiot. It doesn’t matter if you had a crush on this guy when you were a kid.”
She snuggled back into his arms. “You’re so jealous and paranoid, daddy-bear.”
“I know. Forgive me?”
“Only because you’re my daddy. The only daddy for me.”
Ty smiled. “Good. Let’s stop talking about this.”
“I’d like that.”
He kissed her cheek. “Done. I’ll drop the wedding thing too. The next time we talk about it, it’ll be because you brought it up.”
Kate nodded, but he felt a thin frost blossom between them. Ty waited a few seconds, then swallowed his pride. “Is there anything else you want to say, baby?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Have you heard anything about Paris?”
Ty froze. “Has someone said something?”
Kate pulled away, turning to look him in the face. “No, why?”
“Because...well, Melissa called this afternoon.”
Kate’s expression brightened. “They still want you?”
“It seems like it. They’re offering a bit more money per year, travelling expenses, that kind of thing.” Actually, it was fifty thousand dollars more and free first-class flights, but Kate was already too excited about him being headhunted. If she knew how badly Howitzer wanted him, she’d lose her shit. As it was, she pushed back her chair and jumped to her feet. “That’s amazing! What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
Kate looked like someone had shot her puppy. “Nothing?”
“I told Mel I’d think about it.”
Kate whooped, jogging the room in spirals like a decapitated chicken. “You’re considering it! I can tell!”
Ty watched her run, amused but irritated. He was a prick for thinking it, but why couldn’t she be even half this excited about getting married? “Don’t get your hopes up. They’re probably wooing other people, and I’m not sure I want the gig. Paris is a big fucking change, and I’m happy where I am.”
“You could be happy in Paris! We could walk and look at art and eat cheese—”
“We already do that here—”
“And I can learn French and wear red lipstick and—oh my God.” Kate stopped dead, her socked feet skidding. “We could get a dog! One of those fluffy white ones! We could call it Kiwi and take it on walks to the Eiffel Tower!”
“I mean...”
“You don’t want a dog called Kiwi? You don’t want an adventure?”
Ty struggled to say something that wasn’t ‘not really, baby.’ “It’s just a job. And France is overrated.”
Kate put her hands on her hips. “I don’t know why you’re not freaking out about this. You love travelling, and this is a two-year European holiday!”
“Yeah, but—”
“You said it’s a consultation position. You’d do half the hours you do now for twice the pay, and we’d be in Paris.”
Ty walked back to his side of the table and picked up his wineglass. “I’m too old to do the expat thing.”
“Rubbish! Besides, in Paris, old is the new black.”
“Says who?”
“The internet. I bet we won’t look mismatched there at all. People will just think I’m your mistress.”
“They already do that.”
“Yeah, but in France you’ll get props instead of people assuming I was your nanny!”
Ty didn’t smile. Sometimes he could handle jokes about his and Kate’s age gap, but with fifty looming, his sense of humour on the subject was fast drying up. He took a big swig of wine. “You want this pretty badly, don’t you?”
Kate’s eyes glossed as though shiny shutters had been pulled over them. “I just think it’s an amazing opportunity. For you.”
“Is that right?”
She flushed a little, but her gaze was steady. “Yes, I don’t want you to miss out on Paris because you think you’re too old.”
“And what if I’m happy to stay in Melbourne because we have a good, stable life here and I don’t want you to give up your job or support networks for me?”
Kate tapped a finger on the tabletop. “My job’s not that good. And what do you mean support networks? My shitty family and our intensely awkward Christmases?”
“I mean your friends and derby team and the doctor you’ve been seeing for your ADHD since you were twenty.”
He thought that was a pretty convincing argument, but Kate just rolled her eyes. “I’m sure someone in France has ADHD, Ty. And I can make new friends. I could join a French derby team. They must exist, right?”
Ty stared at her, her gaze bright, her smile wide. She wanted this. Wanted it quite badly. An evil thought occurred to him. What would you do for it, princess?
He could make an indecent proposal. He’d made plenty before. He could walk to where Kate was sitting, grab a fistful of her hair and bend her over the soy-splattered table. Pull up her nightgown and slap her hard on the ass. Listen to me, Katie. Listen and choose the right answer and maybe you won’t get punished.
Only she wouldn’t be sucking his cock for pocket money or letting him fuck her ass for a new car, he’d be making a different kind of deal—marriage for Paris. You want walks through the Louvre and a puppy called Kiwi, baby? Wear daddy’s diamond, and you’ll get whatever you want.
“Ty?” Kate smiled quizzically at him. “What do you think?”
I think you should walk over to the couch and bend over, princess. Daddy has something to ask you.
They stared at each other for a beat, and Ty came close, so close to saying it, then shame rose in his guts like bile. Did he have to use sex to get his girlfriend to marry him? To navigate their shared futures? It was too fucking pathetic. He stood, gathering his bowl and chopsticks. “I’ll think about it, but, like I said, don’t get your hopes up. Want me to clear your plate?”
Kate’s smile didn’t fade. It grew wider the way it always did when she was disappointed. “Sure.”
