Page 19 of Not Your Shoe Size

“We all were. What the fuck possessed you to go after Kate?”

Kate’s heart gave a weird tug. On one hand, having Rapunzel dig at her old enemy was something of a dream come true. On the other hand, therewaschemistry between Deidre and her best friend. She wasn’t sure what to hope for. She appreciated Deidre’s apology, but she wasn’t sure that put her on Team Raidre. She wasn’t sure of anything at all. She desperately wanted to go somewhere and unpack this, give herself a chance to process what had happened.

Mr. Peterson cleared his throat. “I feel like taking a walk. Kate, did you want to come with me to get some coffees?”

“God, yes,” Kate blurted. It was only once she and her former hot dad crush were walking up Hope Street she realised her current situation was dicier than the one she’d left.

Chapter 5

Ty was having a hard time keeping his eyes off the clock. He’d come into the office with the understanding that he’d be here for an hour. Twenty-six emails later, he hadn’t started what he’d come to do. He was supposed to be at the gym, not reassuring some forty-something property developer thatno, he wasn’t going to piss their money up a wall because he wasn’t an incompetent ass clown.

Hey Daddy, you know where’s not full of incompetent ass clowns? Paris.

Ty glanced at the photo of Kate he kept on his desk. She was standing in the surf at Wilson’s Prom, laughing as the water sprayed around her like diamonds. “You don’t know what Paris is like, Middleton.”

Photo Kate stared back at him, and for a second her sweet smile seemed mocking.Are you sure you know what I need?

“Yes. Always.” But a low ache in his stomach said otherwise.

Long-term relationships had highs and lows, he knew that, but he and Kate didn’t seem to be in a low. A space was opening between them. A space full of static sounds he couldn’t interpret. And Paris wouldn’t help. Maybe she thought a big change would improve their lives, but he’d done the big overseas move before. You had the same problems with less friends, family, and familiarity to fall back on. Not that Kate had family to fall back on.

The photo on his desk was taken a few hours before Ty had dinner with Kate’s parents for the last time. Kathy and Boris McGrath were old and irritable and completely disinterested in their daughter. Ty had sat in their loungeroom, drinking beer through gritted teeth as they hassled Kate about her ADHD, apartment, and job. If he hadn’t been worried about what they’d say if he wasn’t there, he’d have locked himself in the toilet and readNew Statesmanarticles on his phone. Afterward, he and Kate went back to their Airbnb and she’d downed two shots of whiskey and asked him to spank her until she bled. He’d done it, then he’d held her as she sobbed and promised that, funerals aside, they were never seeing her family again.

“Promise?” she’d asked with so much wonder, you’d have thought he was offering her a spaceship.

He’d kept that promise. For the last year, he and Kate had been McGrath free, but Ty could understand Kate wanting to put even more distance between herself and her relatives. Still, they didn’t need to go to Paris to ghost on family Christmas. Ty returned his gaze to his emails but saw nothing. He was picturing the look on Kate’s face if she knew the Paris offer had gone up by another twenty thousand dollars. Howitzer weren’t taking no for an answer. They wanted him managing their vernacular housing team, and they wanted it bad.

The offer was tempting—not to mention fucking flattering—but a fat paycheck wasn’t going to cut it. Not if it meant Kate was left sitting alone in a rented apartment all day. She’d struggled to make friends her whole life; what if snotty French assholes upset her? What if she turned into the happy little girl-doll she’d been when they first worked together?

I’m your daddy, he thought, looking at Kate’s photo.It’s my job to take care of you.

No, if he and Kate really needed a change, there were other adventures they could have together. They’d found each other in sex, and they were still having plenty of it, but there was no reason not to expand their horizons. They’d danced around the idea of fucking in public for a while now. Kate found the idea of being watched hot, and while he didn’t want to swing, he’d love to go down on her in front of a group of good-looking people. Watch her struggle to contain herself in front of an audience, feel her come around his cock while she moaned in that humiliated way that set his blood on fire. That, unlike Paris, he could handle. And when it was over, they’d be less than an hour from their apartment.

The challenge was finding the right place, somewhere not full of weirdos. Melbourne was apparently the swinging capital of Australia; how hard could it be? He looked around the empty office and pulled out his phone. The early results were promising. There was a place called Kittens that boasted a metropolitan location, a fancy looking dungeon, and a rigorous screening process. Ty clicked through the onsite photos. The place looked good—a clean and classy townhouse full of Japanese art and dark wood furniture. He checked the dates and saw there was a couple’s party in a month.

“Amazing.” With a bit of luck, he could book them in and tease Kate with the knowledge tonight. He hit the screening application link and his gut turned over. At the top of the page, in big, bold writing, wasadults aged 18-35 only.

Thirty-five? Thirty fucking five? He’d passed that shit while Middleton was in high school. Swearing, he exited the website. He kept searching, but he had a bad feeling. Within ten minutes, his worst suspicions were confirmed; every remotely classy sex club had an age limit, and that age limit was thirty-five.

He groaned and sat back in his office chair. In a lot of ways, it made sense; beauty was fleeting, and, in that regard, age mattered. You didn’t want old guys circling a sex party like horny vultures, freaking the twenty-somethings out. But he was still good looking, wasn’t he? Didn’t that count? Age was just a number. Time wasn’t real. And if he could remember shit from forty-five years ago and was almost a literal half-century old, was that relevant to him fucking his hot girlfriend in a room with other hot people?

Apparently, it was. He could lie, maybe. But what if they checked ID at the door? He bet they would. Christ, the humiliation of having to lie or produce a licence showing he was a clean decade above the age limit would kill him. Ty rubbed his forehead. He could just hear what his best friend Georgie would say if she knew how he felt.

‘Oh, no one will let you bone in the group playpen. Cry me a river, Tyler. Some people have real problems. I’m going through menopause. Every day I sweat more than the day before. Fuck you.’

Imaginary Georgie had a point. Everyone got older and no one gave a shit about his insecurities; in fact, they gave even less of a shit when they knew he had beautiful girlfriend half his age. He needed to get over himself. Fuck the sex club idea. Places were probably full of airborne HPV anyway. Fuck worrying about his birthday. He’d get through his fiftieth the same way he got through everything—work, gym, half a bottle of Laphroaig and making Kate scream ‘Daddy’ so loud the neighbours called child services. That was what a man was supposed to do. Not go whining to his menopausal friends or piss off to Paris.

Ty forced his attention back to his computer screen where two emails had arrived in the time he’d spent Googling sex clubs. Jesus. Why the fuck were these people trying to contact him on a Saturday? In fairness, hewasat work. When had he let his work/life balance get so fucked up?

It would be better in Paris.

“Don’t push it, Middleton,” Ty muttered, opening the top email. He’d barely read anything when his phone buzzed, Georgie’s name flashing on the screen. He wasn’t surprised. She was mildly psychic like that. He put her on loudspeaker. “Hey, Gigi.”

“Hi,” she said, sounding breathless. “Where are you?”

“The office. What’s up?”

“I just saw...” Georgie lowered her voice. “Are you alone? Can you talk?”

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