Chapter 8
“I’ve ruined everything,” Toby said for what felt like the millionth time.
“You haven’t,” Jessica A said soothingly, but he noticed Maisy’s eyes narrow over her Aperol spritz.
“What?” Toby pressed. “What are you thinking?”
“You might have, dahling.”
“Goddammit!”
He’d gone upstairs after Tabby left, so angry he couldn’t even pull himself off. Instead, he’d paced his house like a madman, arguing with her in his head.
Then he started jacking off. Three times in a row, gripping his dick with a fury he hadn’t known since he was fifteen and miserably guilty over every wank, convinced God was tallying them on his big ‘Going To Hell’ whiteboard. He pictured Tabby chained to his office wall, pleading to get fucked. Saw her crying while she tried to rub her clit, swearing she’d never be rude to him again. In his mind, he spanked her, choked her, screwed her ass, then her mouth.
“You want some dick?” he imagined saying as he rubbed it across her forehead. “Scream for it.”
And in his fantasies, she did. She screamed until the cops came running.
It scared him sometimes how dark things got in his head, and while he’d learned girls could get down with a lot of twisted shit, he had no idea if Tabby regretted what he’d done in his hallway. He’d texted her afterwards to ask if she got home safely, but she hadn’t replied. Her silence freaked him out worse than anything. At this point, he’d take a photo of a guy’s asshole over that.
“It’s not that bad,” Victoria said. She was four chardonnays in, and her eyes were a little unfocused. “Toby made her come, didn’t you, Toby?”
He felt himself flush to his collar. All the experience in the world couldn’t get him used to how open Maisy’s friends were about sex. “I, uh, yeah.”
“And she’ll be back to finish the tattoo.” Mary-Lynn smiled at him. “I think just give her some time, sweetie.”
“What does she look like, this girl?” Victoria demanded. “You said she’s alternative-looking, didn’t you?”
Toby shot a glance at Maisy. She’d advised him not to show pictures of Tabby to the gang, lest they stalk her on social media and slide into her DMs demanding to know why they weren’t already married with three kids.
“That’s just what they’re like, dahling,” Maisy had said, rolling her eyes. “Unless it involves microsurgeries, ‘discreet’ is not a word they put stock in.”
But Maisy was staring blankly ahead, unable to assist him.
“I mean, she’s got a lot of tattoos, and she’s big on Instagram?” Toby said, bunting as hard as he could.
“What’s her handle?” Victoria asked, almost knocking over her wine as she extracted her phone from her pink purse.
Again, Toby looked to Maisy, and again, she was out to the ballgame. He hesitated. He didn’t want the girls stalking Tabby, but he didn’t have many other options. And also, he wanted to look at her. That was the thing about having a crush: you tried to look at them as much as possible.
“TabbyDee,” he said. “Two E’s.”
Suzannah, Mary-Lynn, Jessica B and Jessica A clustered around Victoria as she searched Tabby’s profile. Maisy, who had known precisely what Tabby looked like since ‘The Night of the Negronis’, stayed right where she was, picking at her fennel salad. Toby wished they were alone. He had a feeling there was something Maisy wanted to tell him that she wouldn’t broach in front of the girls. She’d listened intently to his story of last night along with the others, pressing him for more details at times, but she hadn’t said anything definitive, which worried him.
“She’s lovely,” Mary-Lynn announced, looking up from the screen. “Blue hair!”
“Yeah,” he said, trying not to smile like an idiot.
“But these are all old pictures,” Victoria muttered. “Where’s something new… oh there’s a story from yesterday...”
The women all looked to the screen and then back at him.
“What?” he said as their smiles became a little fixed.
“She’s, ah, looking a little… ragged,” Jessica B said apologetically.
Toby remembered Olive and Lily saying something similar at the Village Belle. He wouldn’t have put it that way, but last night Tabby had been thinner and paler than he’d ever seen her, and her nails, which had once been perfect colourful points, were bitten down to nothing. “Can I see the story?”
Victoria handed him the phone, and he watched a short video of Tabby, Sam, and Noah unboxing something in the studio. He felt a low punch in the gut, not just at the sight of Tabby, but his old friends. Considering he’d never gotten a tattoo at Silver Daughters, he had a lot of nostalgia for the place. Tabby wore a baggy grey hoodie, and her hair was pulled into a tight bun. To him, she looked lo-fi and sexy, like she’d just rolled out of bed. But he understood why the perfectly groomed women on the other side of the table were squirming. They wouldn’t be caught dead looking that way.
“What happened?” Suzannah, the former model, asked. “All her other photos are pure Bettie Page.”
Toby didn’t know who that was, but he could guess. Tabby’s style had always been a little shambolic but never sloppy. As far as he’d been able to tell, her makeup, hair, and nails were important to her.
“I think she’s, uh, hard up for money, maybe?” he said. “She was planning a festival last year, and it went south.”
He’d followed the Sparkling Whine thing online and thought about possibly going and accidentally-on-purpose running into her. When it went under, he’d wanted to call her and ask what happened but hadn’t been ready to cross that barrier. Now he was thinking about it: her glamour Instagram shots and TikTok videos disappeared after that. She’d become as reclusive as anyone with a public-facing account could be on social media.
“Maybe she’s having a hard time,” Toby said more to himself than anyone else. “She did seem pretty closed off last night, and I thought it was because of me, but?—”
“Don’t blame yourself, Toby.” Victoria, who was forty-nine and always a little more flirty than the others, batted her lashes at him. “Are you sure this is the right girl for you?”
“Ahem,” Maisy said pointedly.
Victoria frowned, and Toby flashed a small smile at Maisy, who winked.
“If Tabitha is a little… strapped financially… maybe you could send her on a girl’s day out?” Mary-Lynn suggested. “A day spa, getting her hair done, that kind of thing?”
Toby hesitated. “You think she’d go for that?”
“Absolutely,” Jessica B said. “If my ex-husband had done that for me, I’d have absolutely sprayed for him.”
Toby choked on his bloody Mary, which made everyone howl with laughter.
“So, what exactly did she say when she wanted you to sleep with her?” Victoria asked. “And make it juicier this time.”
Another round of drinks arrived, and with a fresh Bloody Mary in hand, Toby found he could tell the story again, adding a little more horny details, though not as many as were demanded.
When he was done, Jessica A pretended to fan herself. “That’s so sexy.”
“So sexy,” Mary-Lynn echoed. “And she likes you, honey. She wouldn’t have come to your house if she didn’t.”
“Maybe,” Toby said, fishing a pearl onion from his cocktail. “I know she’s attracted to me; I just don’t know why our wires keep getting crossed.”
“Daddy issues,” Jessica B said knowingly.
Toby shook his head. He’d never met Tabby’s dad, but by all accounts, he was the nicest, most invested father in the world.
“Mummy issues,” Maisy said suddenly. “That’s the one that always gets forgotten. What’s her mother like?”
“I’ve never met her. She left when Tabby was little, and I don’t think they’ve ever talked.”
“And there it is,” Maisy said quietly. “There’s nothing worse for a woman than a terrible mother.”
Everyone around the table nodded soberly. Toby thought of his mum, thin and grey-haired, sometimes going days without speaking to him. Funny how so few people had a good relationship with their parents, the people who were supposed to love them more than anyone. Although, it wasn’t funny at all.
“Putting aside the subject of mothers,” Maisy said, toying with her tennis bracelet. “What are you going to do now, dahling? Will you call the girl? She does have to finish your tattoo after all.”
“I want to see this tattoo,” Victoria said mischievously. “Shirt off, Toby.”
“Put your hand in an ice bucket, dahling,” Maisy said. “Toby?”
“I should probably call. I’m just not sure what to say. I left the ball in her court. I was a dick about it too.”
“You were assertive, dahling, and from the sounds of things, that’s just what this girl likes. You should wait forty-eight hours and then ring and ask her out to dinner.”
“After you send her to a hairdresser,” Suzannah chipped in. “You can call my salon and make a booking, Toby. It’s upsetting for such a pretty girl to have such horrible regrowth…”
“After you pay for her to have a little makeover experience,” Maisy agreed. “Take her to dinner somewhere fabulous and tell her that you’ve had enough messing about, you’d like to make a life with her, and that’s all there is to it.”
A lump formed in Toby’s throat at the thought of saying something like that to Tabby. “You think that’ll work?”
“Well, you might have to fuck her first, dahling, but I’m sure that’s well within your wheelhouse.”
All the women at the table snorted, and Toby found himself smiling too. As Maisy resumed staring at the open restaurant window, he wondered again what she wasn’t saying. The conversation turned to Victoria’s daughter Suki, who was dating some dude who owned a million racehorses. Toby was grateful. As much as he wanted to talk about Tabby, the reminder that she wasn’t talking to him was fucking with his head. Yet, as he tried to follow the conversation, his thoughts kept swinging back to her and how she felt pressed against him. The way her gaze had flicked to his as she drilled the still-stinging ink in his bicep. Most of all, he thought about how she’d scratched him, marking him in a way that all the women at the table had instantly noticed.
He wasn’t into receiving pain so much as inflicting it, but it was something, being with a girl so pissed off and frustrated. Like a red rag to a bull, stoking him. Firing him up. He’d heard about tops who got whipped so they knew how to do it to other people. Maybe this could be like that? He showed her he could take pain so he could give it back.
As everyone talked, ate, and ordered more drinks, he couldn’t help but fantasise about Tabby in a little maid costume, brushing a feather duster up and along his cabinets. She’d sometimes dressed like that at Silver Daughters, not in a maid costume but in tiny skirts and long socks. He’d love to have her bend over in stockings, her perfect ass framed by a frilly little skirt. He pictured himself eating her ass as she pretended to ignore him and keep dusting, her breathing getting louder and faster.
“I’m almost finished, Mr Tennant,” she’d pant. “Is there something else you need me for?”
He’d tell her yes, then sit on his couch with Tabby’s face in his lap, one hand on the back of her head, a glass of whiskey in the other…
“Are we done?” Maisy asked, jolting him out of his fantasy. The girls agreed they were, and Toby excused himself to secretly pay the bill. He felt guilty for being so distracted, and besides, he could afford it.
“You’re such a good boy,” Victoria sighed as she gave him a one-armed hug. “You make sure that girl treats you well, okay?”
“Sure,” Toby said as she pressed her big tits into his side. He wondered if she was doing it on purpose or had no idea.
“God, she’s relentless,” Maisy said once everyone else had left. “Join me for one more, dahling?”
“Sure, why not?”
As she ordered a vodka rocks from a passing waiter, Toby’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket, his pulse spiking. Sure enough, it was a text from Tabby. In the moment it took him to open the message, crazy thoughts ran through his head: She was telling him to fuck off and find someone else to finish his tattoo; she was going to the cops because of what he did to her last night; she’d gone and fucked the bar guy, and it was the best sex she’d ever had. Then he read what she’d written.
What have you done to me that I’m actually *considering* this sugar daddy thing?
He stared at the words for a minute, then laughed aloud, turning heads around the still-packed restaurant.
“What?” Maisy said sharply. “Good news?”
“Great news,” he said, tucking his phone away again. “Tabby. She’s, uh, it seems like she’ll be keen to meet me again.”
“Wonderful! You’ll have to call her to arrange a date, dahling. If you want to proceed with some obscene power exchange, that’s the kind of arrangement you lay out in person.”
Toby winced at her frank understanding of what he and Tabby might get up to, but at the same time, he was glad to have a woman’s opinion on the issue. “I agree. Anyway, what’s up?”
Maisy tore the corner off a paper napkin. “Who says anything is up?”
“Don’t give me that. You’ve got something on your mind.”
She sighed. “Wait for the vodka, dahling. I need reinforcement.”
Toby obliged, still grinning like an idiot. So, Tabby was thinking of him, too, and she was interested in the little arrangement he’d floated. Maybe his French maid fantasy wasn’t out of the question….
“Bless you,” Maisy said to the waiter as he handed her the vodka rocks. Toby, who’d gotten a Coke so he wouldn’t be plastered on a Friday afternoon, took a sip and tasted nothing. He wasn’t sure he’d care about tasting anything that wasn’t Tabby DaSilva ever again.
“Dahling, are you happy here?”
Toby looked around at the white linen tables. “Where? At Bellinis?”
“No dahling, here.” Maisy waved a manicured hand through the air. “This place, this… world.”
“How day drunk are you?”
“Not at all! Well, a little.” Maisy sighed. “Perhaps I’ve had too much liquor, and it’s turned me melancholy, but this has been on my mind for a little while, dahling.”
“What has?”
“Oh, I don’t know, the sense that perhaps I haven’t served you well this last little while.”
Toby frowned. “You don’t think I’m holding my end up?”
“Oh no, dahling! I think you’re a positively gorgeous little shark, but when you talk about work, or your house or anything that isn’t little Tabitha DaSilva, I get the feeling, well, it just seems to me that you’re not as happy as I’d like you to be…”
“I don’t?—”
“Before you say anything, let me get this off my chest.” She took a small sip of vodka. “I know you didn’t always like how things were before you came into money, dahling, but such a large part of that was being trapped in that ghastly house with your ghastly parents. And I know you wanted to become Prince Charming and win your princess, but sometimes it seems to me that turning you into this man took you away from the people and places you loved.”
Toby sat, trying to process what Maisy was getting at. As much as he wanted to reassure her that everything was fine, that he’d chosen to do this, and he appreciated all her help, she had a point. He hadn’t really settled into his beachside home, and as much as he got on with the guys at Prestige Management, it wasn’t as satisfying as it had been working for Scott. And when he’d seen that video of Sam, Tabby, and Noah, it had pulled at him, that old world where everyone had liked him, regardless of his awkwardness and the fact he never had two cents to rub together.
“I get what you’re saying,” he told Maisy. “But change is good, right? Growth is good?”
“Sometimes, dahling. Sometimes it’s cancer.” Maisy downed the last of her drink. “I’m sorry, I’m more than a little morose today. I’m positively downcast.”
“Is there something specific that’s wrong?”
“No. Though I suppose having little Mopsy last night reminded me that when she’s not there, I am… alone most of the time.”
Toby put a hand over Maisy’s bejewelled one. “I’m sorry to hear…”
She pulled her palm out from under his and swatted him. “Oh, stop that. I’m not dying.”
“Fine, you’re not dying. Although you could try dating, you know?”
She shuddered. “I couldn’t think of anything worse. Three divorces are enough, dahling.”
“You don’t have to get married! You could just… you know?”
She fixed him with a beady eye. “Know what?”
Toby felt heat climbing his neck. “I… uh...”
“And there you go, squirming again…” her smile faded slightly. “All I’m saying is I don’t want you to feel isolated. I know what that’s like, and it robs your mental health so slowly you don’t know it’s being stolen.”
Toby wondered if it was safe to ask what she meant. Maisy was pretty closed off about her past. She dropped hints occasionally, but mostly, she talked as though she was born a thirty-year-old woman in the nineties. He decided to risk it. “When did you start feeling isolated?”
She tapped a finger against an empty vodka glass. “You know I’m from Oxford, dahling?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you don’t know that when I was twenty, I married Bruno Collins, moved to Australia and lost all my friends. Bruno was so sure we’d have children right away that he wouldn’t let me work. Then we didn’t have children, and he started sleeping with his PA because he’s a very boring, unimaginative man. Then it was over, and I was alone in a new country with no career to speak of.”
“Oh, Mais…”
“Not a great disaster,” she said lightly. “Especially since I was remarried within a year, but still, no children. And I did… I was very much hoping to become a mother.”
The back of Toby’s nose filled with pressure. He wanted to say how sorry he was, but he knew that wasn’t what Maisy needed and would probably make her feel worse.
“I tried so many times, dahling,” she said quietly. “Did acupuncture and visualisations and all the science-y things. I thought I’d die from all the needle pokes at one point, but it just never came to be. I wanted to adopt, but none of the husbands would hear it. It had to be their blood, you see, their DNA. And then it was over. The last one ran off, and I just… stopped hoping, really...”
Maisy stared out the open window. She was embarrassed at having revealed so much to him. Deciding to do something useful, he flagged down a nearby waiter. “Hi, can we get two more vodka rocks, please?”
“You charmer,” Maisy said, stirring from her reverie. “Anyway, that’s my sad tale. And if I can now segue it back to you, a subject I actually want to discuss, you should think about what you want from your life, dahling, because it seems to me you’ll have little Tabitha DaSilva soon enough, and you don’t need to work anymore, so you’ll have to have goals and hobbies to bide your time while you’re not in bed together.”
“You’re counting a lot of unhatched chickens there, Mais.”
“We’ll see. Anyway, I’m not saying give all your money away, but you should be doing something you care about, something that interests you.”
“Finance interests me!”
“Finance interests no one, dahling. Money interests people, but only vulgar people. You’re a good man, and you should aim much, much higher.”
“Should I, though?”
“Yes,” Maisy said fiercely. “Don’t get me wrong, I love having you around, gabbing with us old hens and the little Zoomer boys at the office, but I want you to be properly happy. I’ve watched far too many lively, beautiful boys throw their lives away on nothing more ambitious than crude entertainment, and you’re the best I’ve met in thirty years. I don’t want that for you.”
She smiled at him, a softer smile than she wore at work and around her friends, and something occurred to Toby. Something he couldn’t believe he hadn’t said earlier.
“You are a mother,” he said. “You’re my... you know. You’re my…”
Maisy frowned as much as her Botox would allow, and Toby’s ears went red-hot. “Sorry. If you want to be. If that’s okay. You don’t have to?—”
“Dahling,” Maisy said quietly. “Please shut up.”
“Yeah, fair. I understand?—”
“You don’t.” Maisy pushed a fingertip into the corners of her eyes. “I got my lids done in December, and crying is terribly painful for me.”
Toby’s face broke into a huge smile. “I forgot.”
“Of course you did,” Maisy said, still dabbing at her corneas. “I mean, you’d think my own son would know such an important piece of my medical history, but…”
“Sorry, Mum.”
“Oh really, Toby.” Maisy turned her back to him, pinching each tear away before they could fall.