Chapter 4
“Alright girls, it’s time to stretch!” Maria’s voice echoed around the multi-purpose stadium as though she were a goddess speaking on high. There was a general grumble of dissent. No one liked stretching.
“No bitching,” Maria snapped. “That means you, Gilly! Hit the floor!”
Kate dropped her ass onto the ground, thinking for the millionth time what a shitty derby coach she’d be. “Oh, you guys just want to skate around for a bit, do some tackling drills then get ice cream? Go ahead! Please! Here’s twenty bucks!”
She winced as she tugged off her skates. She’d pushed herself hard today and there were gashes on her shins where the edge of her shoes had rubbed her raw. She was drained, her body flickering with rubbery muscle spasms, but despite that she wanted to keep skating. She wanted to skate and skate and skate until she dropped to the floor from exhaustion, unable to think another thing.
Does unrequited love change your biology? she wondered, trying to tease apart her triple knot laces. Does it make your body work different from the way it did when you thought you stood a chance?
She recalled, as she had a hundred thousand times, the way Tyler Henderson had looked when he’d told her she was a nice girl, but it wouldn’t be happening between them again. As always, she shuddered with embarrassment. If only she could go back in time and tell her past self not to worry about the meringue incident because one day she would accidentally give Tyler Henderson a blow job and it would make every humiliating thing she’d ever done look as insignificant as the earth from Pluto. Or just show up, slap her past self in the face, and say ‘never suck anyone’s penis again!’
Maria skated up to her side with a whoosh. The coach of the Barbie Trolls was an imposing woman; six feet tall with blue-black hair and arms covered in 1950’s burlesque-inspired tattoos. When she played, her derby name was Frida Killho. Seeing as she was a gorgeous, bisexual, Mexican-born painter, it suited her down to the ground. “What’s wrong, Katie?”
Kate forced a smile. Maria was a good friend and a great mentor, but two weeks had passed since Bendigo and she was still in no state to talk about Ty. “Nothing.”
Maria looked utterly unconvinced. “Are you injured?”
“Just a bit sore.”
“Your family? They’re not bothering you again, are they?”
“They’re fine, everything is fine.”
Maria rolled her eyes. “Don’t waste your breath, I know you too well. What about work?”
You’re a nice girl and I enjoyed what we did, but it’s not going to happen again. “Work’s…fine.”
Maria narrowed her espresso-dark eyes. “I see. A problem with work. Does this have anything to do with the text message you sent me at 2 a.m. when you were in Bendigo begging me to call you? And then when I called you, you attempted to pass it off as a drunken accident?”
“No,” Kate said, trying to keep her voice even. “That was…about fondant.”
“Fondant?”
“Yeah, for strawberry jewel cupcakes. I was thinking that I’d start preheating it in the microwave instead of using the double boiler method because—”
Maria pressed a gentle finger to Kate’s mouth. It smelled, and tasted, like rosewater hand cream. “That’s enough. After this you and I are getting a coffee.”
“What about your kids?”
Maria made a noise that sounded like ‘apishhh.’ “Marco can watch them for another hour. We’ll have a coffee and you can tell me all about what’s bothering you, okay?”
“Okay,” Kate agreed, ridiculously relieved. “That would be good, thanks.”
Maria smiled. “It’s what I’m here for my love, now come.”
In the stretching circle, Kate’s teammates discussed their plans for the weekend. General offers were made for people to join them at Goth yoga class, gastro bars, and in Rapunzel’s case, a field in which some pretty decent mushrooms were growing. As always, Kate stayed quiet. She wanted to attend Goth yoga classes and drink peach blood cocktails and maybe find out if Ritalin and shrooms went well together, but the offers felt so generic. Non-specific. What if they didn’t want her there? What if she showed up to these events and it was so uncomfortable she had to quit the team afterward?
Kate had joined derby hoping to find her girl gang, but the reality never jived with the fantasy Whip It had promised. Not that it was Whip It’s fault. Women didn’t like her, they never had. Not her mum, not her sisters, not any of the girls she’d gone to school with. They could smell the wrongness coming through her skin like garlic. She was an oddball. The kid your parents made you invite to your birthday party .
At twenty-two Kate had joined the Barbie Trolls hoping her therapized and thoroughly medicated brain would allow her to make friends. Unfortunately, her ability to talk to women was as stunted as ever. She was starting to think her isolation had never been about undiagnosed ADHD, that instead she’d had an invisible female-deterring symbol burned into her skin when she was a baby. Like the Mark of Cain, but for chicks.
At least I have Maria, she reminded herself. One friend is better than none.
After training, Maria steered Kate into the nearby Tom Thumb café. It was a cosy little one-room place with a wood fire and a dozen mismatched vintage armchairs. Kate sat down on a mint green sofa and stared at the twee latte paintings on the wall. They were all selling for upward of a thousand bucks. “Do you think anyone buys those?” she asked.
Maria settled herself in the candy-pink armchair across from her. “I don’t care. Now, what’s wrong? And if you tell me nothing I will be forced to spank you.”
Kate blushed. Of all the humans walking the earth, Maria was the only one who knew the full extent of her secret kinkiness. She was the kind of person you wanted knowing that stuff, but Kate never quite got used to being teased about what she wanted in bed. She rummaged through her bag for a lip-balm, delaying the moment when she’d have to answer.
“Katie…”
She sighed. “This isn’t like usual stuff. You’re not going to like this.”
Maria folded her arms across her ample chest. “Katie May, are you selling again?”
Kate dropped her lip-balm. “No! God no!”
Unless you counted Tyler Henderson trying to give her money for her bra as ‘selling again,’ but she hadn’t taken it. She wondered briefly what he’d really done to her pink demi—set fire to it, probably.
Maria mimed wiping away terror sweat. “Well, that’s a relief. So, tell me what’s wrong.”
“Afternoon ladies, what can I get you?”
Their waiter was gorgeous. He had soulful brown eyes and a smile that said he was intimately aware of his own hotness.
“I’ll have a turmeric latte, thank you darling,” Maria said with a flirtatious pucker of her lips. Kate had tried to replicate her pout in the mirror once. She’d looked like a sick duck. “Can I please have a capp—”
“She’ll have a hot chocolate,” Maria interrupted. “Too much coffee makes you anxious and you’re already anxious enough.”
“Okay, okay,” Kate agreed, knowing it was easier not to argue. “Hot chocolate it is.”
They both eyed the waiter as he walked away, his butt was almost but not quite as nice as Ty’s.
“So, your work problem,” Maria said. “Tell me what it is.”
Maria and Ty had a lot in common, Kate realised. They were both sexy, charismatic and fond of short, bursting sentences in which they demanded you give them what they wanted. “I’m going through a weird thing with a guy.”
Maria arched a sculpted brow. “Who?”
“I’ve…” Kate swallowed. “I’ve told you about him before. He’s the hot guy I work with.”
The brow rose even higher. “I was under the impression that man was your boss?”
“He’s a manager but he’s not my boss-boss. He didn’t hire me.”
“But as far as the chain of command goes?”
“Sort of?”
The curiosity in Maria’s gaze vanished, snuffed out by a tidal wave of disapproval. “Katie, I know how you are about men in positions of authority, but please don’t tell me something happened between you and this person?”
“I…um…”
The waiter swept a tray through the air between them. “Your drinks have arrived, ladies.”
“Thank you,” Maria said, but she didn’t pout, didn’t so much as take her eyes from Kate. The waiter seemed rather pissed about this. He unloaded their drinks very quickly and swanned off in the hot guy version of a huff.
“So,” Maria said. “This boss of yours, he is giving you signs that he might be open to a sexual relationship?”
I wish. “No. It’s worse than that.”
“So speak.”
“Do you promise not to judge me too harshly?”
“Katie,” Maria sighed. “When have I ever done that?”
“I know, but this is different…”
“Enough.” Maria pointed a liquid red fingernail at her. She was the kind of woman who always had her nails done, her hair done, her make-up picture perfect. She lived every day of her life as if she were heading to the Oscars. Kate could only boggle at her dedication. Pre-Ritalin, she’d frequently forgotten to put on socks, deodorant and underwear, post-Ritalin, she still had to lay out all her clothes the night before and use an alarm to ensure she brushed her hair and teeth.
“Talk, my love,” Maria said. “Or I’ll bench you for the next two weeks.”
Kate resigned herself to the inevitable. “What do you remember me saying about Mr Henderson?”
Maria’s crimson painted lip curled. “Mr Henderson?”
Kate ducked her head. “Please don’t, he’s scary. What do you remember me telling you?”
“That he’s scary.” Maria held up a hand. “He’s scary, older, authoritarian, distant, handsome, tall, he commands the respect of everyone he encounters…” She ticked each reason off on her fingers. “Did I miss anything?”
He has a penis the size of a baseball bat?
Kate decided not to drop the news of her seeing and tasting said penis so dramatically into the conversation. If Maria spat turmeric latte all over her, the orange colour would never wash out. “No, you pretty much nailed it.”
“How handsome is this man?” Maria’s voice implied such an observation was scientific, able to be placed on a measurable continuum, like heat or your body fat percentage.
“Do you mean like on a scale of one a ten?”
“Yes. And number him objectively, not just because you want to sleep with him.”
“Like a nine?” Kate lied. Tyler Henderson was a ten. Anyone who ever met him knew it.
“Hmm.” Maria tapped her nails against her latte glass. “If you had to pick a celebrity he resembled…?”
“Maybe like, Michael Fassbender?”
“That’s very impressive.”
“You have no idea,” Kate said, relieved she seemed to be getting it. “Mr Henderson should always be scowling at the ocean in a big white cable-knit jumper. He’s so beautiful, and you know how hot guys can be all peacocky?”
Maria gestured to their waiter, who was staring at his reflection in the side of the coffee machine. “I do.”
“He isn’t like that, at all. He doesn’t go around bragging, even though he’s been promoted faster than anyone at work. And he’s travelled to all these cool places all over the world. And he’s done so many amazing things.”
“Really?”
“Oh my gosh, yeah.” Kate tucked her knees into her chest. “Did I tell you he used to be a metro firefighter?”
“You did not, no.”
“Well he was! He only stopped because he got hurt saving a baby from a burning building. That sounds crazy, right? ‘Saving a baby from a burning building.’ It’s like the universe wants him to be as manly as possible. He’s probably also coached a winning football team and led a rag-tag gang of soldiers to freedom in a foreign country.”
Kate laughed at her own joke then noticed Maria’s indulgent smile and realised she was making a fool of herself. She untucked her knees and stared down at them, waiting for the burning in her cheeks to subside.
“So,” Maria said with infinite gentleness. “You’re infatuated with this firefighting, globe-trotting alpha male, or who you think this alpha male is, but now something has changed. What is it?”
“We…” Kate shook her head, still unable to believe it. “We hooked up. At the work conference in Bendigo.”
Maria put down her turmeric latte.
“It wasn’t like that,” Kate said quickly. “I got a bit drunk on vodka raspberries and couldn’t walk and he brought me back to his hotel room and geez this sounds bad—”
“Yes, it does.”
“I really promise it wasn’t like that! He put me on his couch, fully clothed, and when I woke up, I thought he was this other guy I’d been kissing at the pub—”
“You were kissing someone else at a pub?” Maria looked astonished, and with good reason. It had been over a year since Kate had kissed anyone, but she didn’t want her mentor to get all caught up in that fact.
“Yes, only, it wasn’t as promising as you want it to be. I wasn’t that attracted to him, and he was like, twenty.”
“I see.” Maria’s nostrils flared, reminding Kate of an angry horse. “So you left the pub with your—I’m going to go ahead and assume he’s in his late thirties—boss, instead?”
Kate decided that like the size of his penis, Ty’s age was another detail she could leave until much later in the conversation. “He’s really not like that, it wasn’t as sleazy as it sounds.”
“Of course it wasn’t.” Maria’s voice dripped sarcasm. “So he left you on his hotel couch and then…?”
This was the tricky part. “I, erm, got into bed with him thinking he was the other guy and then I…” Kate whispered the rest.
“Pardon?”
“I went down on him.”
“You sucked your boss’ penis?”
“Maria!” Kate hissed. “Don’t say that—”
“Me, don’t say that? You, don’t say that! Please tell me this didn’t actually happen?”
All around the café, people were starting to stare. Kate leaned toward her mentor. “It’s all right, you don’t have to yell. It was fun!”
“Fun?”
“Well, yeah… until I realised I was with him and not the twenty-year-old. Then I kind of freaked out, but not because I was upset! More because I would have tried a lot harder if I’d known I was with Mr Henderson.”
Maria pressed a hand to her forehead and muttered something in Spanish. Kate watched her, wishing she’d rehearsed what she was going to say ahead of time. Then again, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. She probably could have hired a young Emilio Estevez to tell Maria she’d accidentally sucked Ty’s penis and her mentor still would have been furious.
With a final spattering of what were probably curse words, Maria uncovered her face and shot Kate the kind of beleaguered look Dutchy gave her whenever she told him the bakery was out of custard tarts. “So what happened after you freaked out? What did Mr Henderson do?”
Threw me out of his room like old towels. “He…took me aside and said it couldn’t happen again.”
“Good,” she said with visible relief. “That’s very good. Wait, so then what is the problem? Why have you been so upset ever since?”
Kate wriggled nervously against the couch. “I…well…”
Her mentor’s face grew stony again. “He’s harassing you, isn’t he? Trying to blackmail you into more blow jobs?”
Before Kate could answer, Maria reached for her Coach bag and pulled out her phone. “I know a barrister who works in sexual harassment,” she told Kate as she tapped the screen. “Give me one week and I’ll make sure—”
“Maria, you’re not listening to me! Ty isn’t the problem, I am!”
Maria paused, her phone still aloft. “What do you mean, you are the problem?”
“Ty is the one being all professional. I’m the one who keeps sexually harassing him. I’m the one who wants to give him more blow jobs. And other things.”
The admission filled her with so much guilt she pressed her face into her hands. She’d known it was true, but knowing and saying it out loud in a packed café were two different things.
She felt cool fingers run through her hair. “Katie, I’m sorry for getting carried away. Don’t be ashamed, just tell me what you’ve been doing?”
“It’s so embarrassing…”
“Still, please talk to me?”
Kate tried to roll her eyes and realised it was impossible with her fingertips in her eye sockets. “It’s so ridiculous, I’ve been asking him if he wants coffee and bringing him proofs for no reason and dressing sexy.”
“Dressing sexy?”
Kate looked up from her fingers to see a supremely confused Maria. “I know,” she said miserably. “I know it sounds stupid but I blew a month’s pay on all these pencil skirts and high heels and boring silk tops and Ty didn’t even notice. You know who did notice?”
“Who?”
“All the other engineers. And not in a good way. At first they were like ‘do you have a job interview? What’s with the dress?’ and when I told them I was trying a new look some of them actually frowned at me. I tried to laugh it off, but they were seriously—and I know how this sounds—spooked by it.”
When Kate bought her new clothes, she’d hoped she was buying a ticket to another life and she had; the life of a biblical leper. She had no idea why everyone at work was so offended by her wearing neutral colours, but they were. Yesterday, Collins, who Kate had barely even spoken to, eyed her burgundy shift dress and said, “I like your old look better.”
“So did you stop?” Maria asked.
“No! I spent way too much money on clothes! But it’s like the only time anyone at work can stand being around me is when I dress like a…” Kate struggled to think of a word.
“Cabbage patch doll?” Maria suggested. “One of the girls from that band Emmy likes, what is it called again?”
“High-Five,” Kate said miserably. “Maybe, I’m just not sexy.”
Maria scoffed. “That’s not true and you know it. You present yourself a certain way on purpose. You want people to think you’re girlish and sweet and helpless.”
“I know,” Kate said, looking at the floor. She’d discussed these things a hundred times, first with her therapist and then with Maria, but change required more than talking. It required years of unlearning fundamental behaviours, unravelling them the way you’d unravel a jumper knitted for an elephant. “I thought the sexy clothes would help with my overall human development.”
Maria blew out a loud exasperated breath. “When you change, it should be because you want to, not because you’re trying to attract your boss’s attention. The other men in your office don’t appreciate you climbing down from the good-girl pedestal they put you on. They didn’t have to think about you as a sexual being and now they’re having a hard time keeping their erections to themselves.”
“Maria!” Kate said, aghast. “I’m not wearing G-strings and leather miniskirts, it’s just regular office clothes.”
“But you’re not a regular office girl. How many times do I have to tell you how beautiful you are?”
Kate looked back down at the floor. It was such a cliché, the girl who couldn’t take a compliment, but it wasn’t as though she thought she was ugly, it was that she thought she was strange. Well, she didn’t think it, she knew it. You only needed to look at her history to see it was true. No friends, no good family relationships, only one boyfriend who’d broken up with her when he found her little packets of Ritalin. ‘So, this is why you’re…’
He couldn’t finish the sentence, but he hadn’t had to. Kate knew what he meant. “So, this is why you’re weird. Why you talk too fast and boil the kettle ten times without remembering to make tea. This is why you say you need to pee, then sit on the couch for another hour. This is why you’re not like everyone else.”
Kate didn’t think she was beautiful but she knew that even if she was as gorgeous as Maria, it wouldn’t have mattered. Looks were only one part of the attraction/revulsion equation. You needed to be able to walk, talk and think like normal people. When someone looked at you they had to see themselves. She was too odd, too left of center. Her not-quite-rightness was ever-present in the flutter of her hands and the quiver of her voice. She learned to be sweet, because that was the easiest way to be dismissed but she never learned to be normal. She didn’t know if that was something she could learn.
She reached for her untouched hot chocolate, wondering if that was the reason Tyler Henderson said it would never work between them. If he’d smelled the strange below the sweet and decided to make tracks.
“You know,” Maria said loudly. “If you were a civil engineer in an office with more than one female, your colleagues’ ridiculous attitudes would be much more diluted.”
It was an argument she’d made many times before.
“I know,” Kate told her. “But engineering is a tough field, and GGS gave me my first job. I owe them at least another year.”
Maria made another irritable huffing noise. “So, has Mr Henderson noticed you at all?”
Kate didn’t like the way she kept saying his name as though it was spelt ‘Adolf Hitler’ but she decided to let it go. “No, he hasn’t. I thought that would discourage me but it just makes it worse. Today I went to the photocopier outside his office, bent over and pretended to ‘fix it.’”
Maria gave her a thin-lipped smile. “Bad girl. Tell me something, during your encounter, did this man control you in the BDSM sense of the word? Could he tell you were a submissive?”
Kate hesitated. Maria was an out and proud sexual dominant with loads of connections to the Melbourne fetish scene. She ran workshops and hosted rope parties and believed some people were born wholly dominant or submissive, the way others were born gay or straight. Kate didn’t know where she stood on that. She’d had submissive impulses ever since she was a little girl, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to make the word ‘submissive’ an integral part of her identity. There was a cloak and dagger aspect to the kink scene, an ‘ordinary people will never understand us’ vibe that didn’t appeal to her. At times it seemed more like a cult than a fun way to meet people and hopefully get your butt smacked. But she couldn’t tell Maria that, it felt too much like a criticism of who she was and what she’d dedicated so much of her time to.
“Yeah, I think he could tell what I was. He was rough with me and I, um, called him ‘daddy.’”
Maria stared at her for so long that Kate was glad of the noise of the café. It told her time hadn’t stopped. “Is everything okay?”
“You called him Daddy?” Maria said, her face completely expressionless.
“Yeah, he, erm, liked it. I think he might be that way, too. And, another amazing thing, he almost made me, y’know, finish .”
She expected Maria to look impressed, she of all people knew that was a personal win, but her friend only continued to stare blankly at her. “So he treated you as you imagine being treated in your fantasies?”
“Exactly. It was perfect. He was perfect.”
“He’s not. No man is.”
Kate waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t. She merely tapped at her latte glass again, her features as frosty as a Melbourne morning. That didn’t make sense. Maria had found her crying in the bathroom after her first derby practice, and instead of being disgusted that a grown woman was weeping next to the tampon machine, she’d pulled her into the best hug of Kate’s life. From that day on they’d been friends. Maria had her over for dinner, took her to sex clubs and helped her set up an account on Kinkworld, a singles site for the sexually complex perverts of the world.
Kate had known she wouldn’t like her hooking up with her boss, but she thought Maria would be pleased she’d almost come with another person and had been brave enough to try and make it happen again. Instead, she looked like Kate had told her she was stomping on cats for fun. After several tense minutes she made herself ask, “Are you mad at me?”
“Katie!” Maria took her hand and squeezed it tight. “Of course not. I’m sorry if I seem strange. I’ve had a long day.”
Kate smiled, relieved there was an explanation. “That’s okay. So, what do you think I should do?”
Maria let go of her hand and settled, businesslike, back into her chair. “These clothes you’re wearing to work, the way you’ve been acting, you’re trying to tempt Mr Henderson into touching you again, aren’t you?”
Kate felt her cheeks burn. “Yeah, um, pretty much.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Really?”
“We both know you’ve craved a man like this your entire life. Now that you’ve got one in your sights, there’s no going back. What is your HR policy about workplace dating?”
Kate didn’t even pretend she didn’t know the answer. “There’s nothing in my contract about having sexual relationships with your colleagues and nothing in the employee guidebook. I don’t think there’s ever been enough women at GGS for it to matter.”
Maria made a noise somewhere between a huff and a snort. “So sleeping with him would just be frowned upon and bad for your career and reputation?”
“I know, trust me, I know,” Kate said. “I’ve told myself all of this and worse, but it doesn’t stop me from wanting him. I can’t think of anything else. I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“And you won’t consider getting another job?”
Guilt squirmed in Kate’s stomach like a particularly unhappy tapeworm. “No.”
“Well, then there’s only one choice. You need to stop this. Now. No more bending over or sexy clothes unless you want to wear it because of how it makes you feel, understood?”
Kate nodded, feeling miserable. She’d been expecting this, but it didn’t make hearing it any easier.
“If you want to begin a sexual relationship with this man,” Maria continued. “You need to go to him as an adult, proposition him and then let him make up his mind.”
If Maria had suggested she walk up to Ty and punch him square in the face, Kate wouldn’t have been more surprised. As it was, she choked on her lukewarm hot chocolate. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. If I told you to stop trying to seduce Mr Henderson and let things go back to the way things were, would you do it?”
“Yes!”
“Really? Or would you continue dressing provocatively and bending over in front of this controlling, authoritative man until he snaps and fucks you on his office floor?”
God, even the mere suggestion made Kate feel like someone had turned on a washing machine in her lower abdomen. “Probably that second thing.”
Maria smiled icily as she folded one long leg over another. “Sexual attraction is one of the most powerful forces on earth. Your body will keep trying to get you into his bed and if you’re not careful, it could do a lot of unnecessary damage. You need to take your attraction out of your office and into one of your homes, or better yet, a hotel.”
Kate pictured herself checking into a hotel with Ty, smiling knowingly at one another before slipping into a locked room to do unspeakable things. The image had a glossy, surreal quality, as though she were imagining herself sleeping with an Oscar award winning celebrity.
“So, how do I approach him?”
“You said he likes what you like; is he on the scene?”
Kate imagined the look on Ty’s face if he was made to attend one of the campy fake-slave auctions Maria took her to. “I don’t think so.”
“Is he the kind of man who thinks such things are silly?”
“Very much so.”
Maria huffed. “Is he on one of those dating apps? Tinder or Blumble?”
“Bumble,” Kate corrected. “No, I heard him tell a guy that dating apps are too much work.”
“Lord, well then it’ll have to be your workplace.”
Kate began to process and discard ways of approaching him at work. Email? Too risky. Wait in the car-park? Creepy. Telegram? No idea how they worked. Trick him into going to a meeting in which she was the only other attendee? Also creepy.
It was only when she heard Maria say her name that she realised she was zoning out.
“I’m sorry, what was that?”
“Oh, Katie.” Maria checked her gold Cassio watch. “It’s getting late, how about you come back to my place for dinner?”
Kate hesitated. She’d been looking forward to going home, having a long hot bath and watching the football, but Maria had taken the time to talk to her she’d feel so rude if she just bailed. “Okay, sounds good.”
Maria paid for their drinks, swatting away Kate’s proffered twenty dollars and they left the café. It had been twilight when they entered the café, but it was pitch black now. They walked toward Maria’s BMW and Kate was suddenly glad she’d accepted the offer of dinner; it would be warm and cosy at Maria’s place and whatever her husband whipped up it would be better than what she had lurking in her fridge. Baking aside, she wasn’t a great cook.
As they reached her car, Maria turned to her, her mouth tight as if she were tasting lemons. “How old is Mr Henderson, by the way?”
Oh dear. “He’s forty…”
Maria raised her eyebrows. “Forty?”
“Forty…like…erm, five?”
A long stream of Spanish swear words filled the frosty air.