Sweeter Read online

  Sweeter

  A Read Me Romance novella

  by Eve Dangerfield

  Sweeter

  Copyright © Published 2020, Eve Dangerfield. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Sweetest

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Act Your Age

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Dedication

  For Sarahjess. My American girl.

  Chapter 1

  Marley

  My sugar daddy is late. That’s fine, I guess—he’s the one with all the money. I sit, ignoring the numbness in my butt and rehearse the interview I’ll give about this, one day.

  The journalist will start with the usual questions; my critically acclaimed labia teacups, the actress photographed in my bone and silk ribbon necklace, the art programs I run for underprivileged kids. When we’re done fluffing my ego, the journalist will lean in with a conspiratorial smile. “Ms. Ellis, there are rumors you found an...unconventional way to support yourself while you were starting your career.”

  I smile mischievously. “You mean my adventures in Sugarbabyland? What would you like to know?”

  The journalist gives a shocked laugh. “You’re not...ashamed?”

  “Of course, I’m not ashamed! When I came to Montana, I could barely afford to eat. That’s shameful. The arrangement I had with Henry was lovely. We spent many wonderful nights together.”

  “And he paid you for the privilege?”

  There’s a slut-shamey intonation in the journalist’s voice, but I’m future Marley Ellis; successful, middle-aged and still Susan Sarandon hot. I don’t take shit from anyone. “He did, and I don’t regret a thing. Like my teacups, my relationships come in all shapes and sizes and each tells its own story.”

  Yeah, that’s the perfect way to end the conversation, by acting all classy and charming and French. Forget that I’m not classy and my charm—according to the bulk of my ex-boyfriends—is a very acquired taste and I’m not French. I can’t tell the journalist I’m trying to become a sugar baby because I’m so cold at night I genuinely fear losing toes, and my car and clothes and general wellbeing are running on borrowed time. Then she’ll ask why I didn’t ‘get a real job,’ and the answer is, I fucking tried, but waiting tables after ten hours of throwing clay turned me into a zombie. And I didn’t come to Montana to be a zombie, dammit, I came to make it as an artist.

  Yeah, yeah, I know a lot of hacks say that, but I am. I’m the youngest person to get a residency at the prestigious Blue Lodge here in Bozeman. I’ve had three gallery openings. People have wept over the things I’ve made. I was born to do more than pull beers at fake cowboy saloons, I just need a break. I need to not find my toes rattling at the end of my bed like a gift to the goddamn toe fairy. And if that means being in this bar in my tightest dress so I can convince a forty-seven-year-old to hire me as his lady companion, so be it. Even if we just have this one date, it’ll be worth it.

  I drum my fingers against my margarita tumbler. I hope Henry—probably not his real name—hurries up; I’m nursing the hell out of this drink and the bartender is giving me the ‘move along, cheapskate’ look. Plonk isn’t cheap, not the bar or the stuff the bar’s named for. I can’t afford another cocktail. I scan my surroundings. No tall, slightly balding dudes in sight, just the usual Thursday night crowd—young professionals, couples with intimacy issues...and a lot of attractive women. There’s a platinum blonde on her phone, a redhead with a beer, an Angelina Jolie type sipping a martini. I’ve worked at my share of bars and you never see this many hot chicks drinking alone. It’s strange. I glance at the woman on the next barstool. She’s another solo stunner, all brown eyes and lush hair. I’d kill for those waves. My hair grows in tornado tunnels and if I try to do anything to it, it looks like amateur hour at the bird’s nest.

  “Hi,” I say. “Are you here with anyone?”

  She frowns, not like I’m a creep, but like she’s finding this situation strange, too. “I’m supposed to be meeting a guy.”

  “Me too, who—”

  Plonk’s front door slams open. I’ve got my fingers crossed for Henry, but it’s some douche in a snapback cap and a puffy Patagonia jacket. He rushes to the bar and starts yammering, like his need for single-malt whiskey is a national crisis. I roll my eyes. The tech boom means Bozeman is slowly becoming Brozeman—bro capital of the United Bro-States of Bro-merica. ‘Entrepreneurs’ come here for the snow and the slower pace of life and they ruin it, because that is the nature of bros. They nudge locals out of the housing market, open pretentious, password-only speakeasies and flood the streets with expensive work trucks even though they need work trucks like I need a second anus. They are the worst.

  I turn to continue my conversation with my hot neighbour, but she’s eyeing Tech Bro like he’s not wearing a kid hat in a bar. Whatever. I hope she makes her move before his friends show up and start doing shots of Fireball and planning their trip to Machu Picchu.

  I prod my now-watery margarita. I’m no psychic, but this date seems like a bust and every minute I hang around, it gets colder outside. I blow out a hard breath, trying to shift some disappointment. I’m a happy person generally, but I’m getting tired of thinking things can change for the better when all they do is change for the—

  “Uh, excuse me ladies?”

  I blink. Tech Bro is standing in the middle of the bar, his hands clasped like he’s about to give a TED talk. He’s taken off his jacket to reveal a long-sleeved navy thermal. I instantly respect the hottie beside me much more. Tech bro or not, that is a fucking torso. He’s tall too. In fact his whole vibe is very ‘2009 Abercrombie and Fitch’—before the company tried to distance itself from shirtless beefcakes and aggressive preppiness.

  “What do you want?” the redhead with the beer demands. If her tone is anything to go by, her night has been as fun as mine.

  Tech Bro clears his throat. “Are any of you guys—women—here for a date with Henry Macintyre?”

  My insides whoosh, like I’ve sat in a chair much lower than I thought it was.

  “Why?” Angelina Jolie asks.

  “It’s...complicated.”

  The Glamazon beside me stands, revealing a super toned bod and a height that rivals Tech Bro’s. She glares at him, all signs of attraction gone. “What’s going on? Do you know Henry?”

  Tech Bro rubs a well-defined forearm. “So, my frien—roommate, Felix, got dumped and created an account on Sugarbabyland as, I dunno, some kind of asshole revenge move. I’m sorry, but Henry doesn’t exist. This whole thing was a scam.”

  Gasps echo around the bar. The platinum blonde slams down her phone and Glamazon snaps, ‘what the fuck?’

  I know I should be angry too, but ‘should’ has never held as much water for me as my parents, teachers, or boyfriends wanted. I’ve already lost hope this date was legit and the more I think about Henry being an embittered tech bro, the more I think this might be funny. It feels funny. Laughter is bubbling up inside me like champagne. I cup a precautionary hand to my mouth
.

  “You’re lying!” Glamazon snarls. “Henry and I have been talking for ages! He’s a beef importer from Raleigh! He’s divorced and has two kids and he’s meeting me here tonight!”

  Tech Bro raises his hands, the fingers spread wide in a ‘please don’t kill me’ gesture. “I’m sorry. I know Felix made a lot of promises—”

  “He said he’d take me to London for the Wireless Festival.” The redhead is on her feet, beer glass clenched in her fist. If I was Tech Bro, I’d be hoping my stupid hat had a secret steel lining.

  “What about the payment?” Glamazon asks.

  “Payment? You mean, uh, promising to be your sugar daddy?” Tech Bro loses momentum halfway through the sentence, practically whispering the word ‘daddy.’

  My laughter is swelling, burning my chest and lungs. I clamp my hand over my lips. I’m dying. I got catfished by a guy called Felix and now I’m going to die from unburst laughter.

  “I don’t mean that,” Glamazon snaps. “Henry said he’d give me five hundred dollars to meet him tonight. Cash.”

  “Me too,” says the redhead.

  “Me too,” chimes Angelina Jolie.

  Me four, I think.

  I’m still trying to breathe through my impending lolz coronary, but I can see what a brilliantly evil move that was. I was umming and ahhing about meeting Henry, but five hundred bucks sure got me out of the house on a freezing winter night.

  Tech Bro looks from one angry woman to the next. He attempts to catch the bartender’s eye, but that motherfucker is ignoring him. Who can blame the guy? The expression ‘shoot the messenger’ feels very relevant right now.

  “Say something,” the redhead snaps.

  Tech Bro grips both his elbows, making his pecs flex through his skin-tight thermal. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Fuck sorry.” Glamazon points her finger like it’s the barrel of a gun. “I got a babysitter, I paid for an Uber, I’ve been sitting here for forty-five minutes, and you’re telling me I got catfished, Hat Boy?”

  My laughter is hardening into hysteria, rising in my throat like an unswallowed lump of bread. I try to choke it back, but, well, Hat Boy?

  “Hang on,” Glamazon says. “How do we know you didn’t pretend to be Henry and come here to freak us out?”

  “Because I’m not, I promise!” Tech Bro does the first sensible thing I’ve seen him do all evening and yanks off his cap. His hair is sandy, and his cheekbones are high. His overall hotness shoots up another ten points.

  I side-eye Glamazon, but she doesn’t seem swayed by his All-American beauty. Her lips are curled in a she-wolf snarl. “You’re Henry, aren’t you?”

  “No!”

  “You fucking are,” the redhead shouts. Does she worry about being a cliché, or just lean into the whole ‘angry redhead’ thing? There are angry mutterings across the bar. This thing has taken on the air of a witch hunt. I look at the bartender who pulls out his phone. I wonder if he’s already dialed ‘nine’ and ‘one’ and his thumb is hovering over the third digit.

  “I’m not Henry,” Tech Bro says. “I’m Will, William Faulkner and—”

  The laughter lump rises with the force of a nuclear warhead. I hold it in my mouth for a second, then eject it in a hysterical half-scream. I can’t help it, I’m cold and tired and hungry and poor and I got catfished and the person telling me I got catfished is William Faulkner.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Glamazon yelps, but William Faulkner knows why I’m laughing.

  He turns to look at me. “My mom didn’t know who William Faulkner was, okay?”

  This does nothing to calm me down. I’m laughing so hard I grab the bar to keep from falling the fuck over.

  “Seriously,” he says. “There are plenty of people called William Faulkner.”

  I open my tear-streaked eyelids to tell him there’s also one particular guy called William Faulkner, and our gazes connect. I have a single second to appreciate the deep, almost intergalactic blue of Tech Bro’s eyes and then my stomach drops like I’m on a roller coaster to heaven.

  No, I think. Please no.

  But it doesn’t matter what I want, time is already stretching all around me like glittery gold chewing gum, rearranging itself in the context of him. The tech bro. The catfisher’s friend. The new most interesting person in the world.

  I’ve felt this before in grad school, but I could pretend I wasn’t stunned by sheer physical attraction to Tom Trafford. That doesn’t seem to be an option here. I’m staring at William Faulkner like staring at William Faulkner is how you get oxygen into your lungs. And he’s staring back.

  We appear to be drowning in each other’s eyes without the splashing around that would literally entail. An impromptu cosmic stare-off probably isn’t the best idea, given the context. Glamazon is yelling something to my right and my hand slackens as she snatches my margarita tumbler. I turn, but before I can do anything, she dashes my margarita into Will Faulkner’s hot, blond face.

  Chapter 2

  Will

  “Hey, what’s your name?”

  The girl wiping the salt from my eyes pauses like I asked if she’s on birth control. “Why?”

  This kind of stumps me. I don’t think I said something weird, but I did just get brained by a margarita, a beer, two glasses of white wine, and a martini. “Uh, because you dived in front of fifty angry sugar babies like Costner in The Bodyguard and I want to thank you by name?”

  That makes her smile. Whoever this girl is, she’s got a great smile. Great everything, really; dark red curls, pale skin, and a wide rosy mouth. She reminds me of a pixie or some other pretty, fantastical creature. At least from the neck up. From the neck down, there are other comparisons I could make. Jessica Rabbit. Gigi Hadid. The girl from the Blurred Lines video who made everyone turn their safe searches off...

  “I’m Marley Ellis,” she says. “Not as good as William Faulkner.”

  She dabs at my salt-encrusted face with the napkin and her nearness sends a landslide through my chest. I close my eyes and try to return my breathing to normal. I’m not used to this. Being near hot girls? Sure. Flirting with them? Fine. Inviting them back to my place to play Mario Kart and get gone down on? Great. But I meet women on apps. I flirt with them through text. I take them on dates to Mexican restaurants and I let them express interest before anything physical happens. It’s scripted, but it works. It makes sense.

  Nothing about this makes sense. I don’t spot beautiful women across a crowded room, like in a fucking Journey song. I don’t wind up alone with them, barely able to string a sentence together. I just don’t feel this much. But then I saw Marley Ellis and my body temperature shot up fifty degrees. I almost thanked the sugar baby who threw the margarita at me for cooling me off.

  “So,” Marley says. “You’re friends with the catfisher?”

  I wince. “Would you believe me if I said we were friends but now we’re business partners who don’t really remember why we liked each other in the first place?”

  She laughs, a bright, sunshiny sound. “I could believe that. Are your eyes okay?”

  “Not as okay as they were before I took a margarita to the face, but I’ll live.”

  As though to disprove this, there comes a loud knock at the door. “Get out here, Hat Boy!”

  I straighten in the bar manager’s chair, which is now sticky from the drinks. “I need to get out of here.”

  Marley puts a hand on my shoulder and a wave of hot, almost nauseous, excitement swaps me.

  “Don’t jump out the window like an adulterous husband,” she says. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  I swallow, trying to keep my cool. “That’s never stopped an angry mob.”

  “It will. I can fix this.” She turns to the door. “We’ll be out soon, fellow catfish-ee. Just hang on.”

  There is a pause.

  “Hurry the fuck up!” the woman snaps and we hear her high heels click away.

  Marley lets out a low whi
stle. “She’s really pissed. Did you hear her say she wants to rip off your testicles and eat them?”

  I shudder. “No, although my ears were full of pinot at the time.”

  “It smells more like chardonnay.”

  We grin and for a second, everything feels like it might be okay. Then Marley’s smile fades. “You didn’t deserve to get wine-bombed, but what your roommate did was really shitty. Is he evil or something?”

  I sigh. “A bit. Especially since his girlfriend dumped him for a fleshlight entrepreneur.”

  Marley gapes at me. “That’s a thing?”

  “It sure is.”

  “What a time to be alive,” we say, then stare at each other in shock.

  Marley prods my shoulder. “That’s my thing! You can’t say it, as well.”

  “But I’ve always said it!”

  She throws her head back and laughs, her hair copper in the artificial light. “Okay, compromise? You say ‘what a time to be alive’ on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and I get the rest of the week. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I say, because I want Marley Ellis to like me.

  “Great. Now we have to get you out of here without starting another wine war.” Marley smooths her hands down her tight pink dress. I follow the line of her fingers along the flat of her stomach and across her hips. She turns slightly and I see the curve of her ass, soft and round as a peach. A throb runs down my cock and I shove a hand into my jeans pocket to hide the distortion.

  “Your business partner isn’t around?”

  I try to look serious and not like I’ve been staring at her ass. “No, he flew to Bali this morning or I’d have dragged him to the bar and let everyone pour their drinks on his head.”

  “Is he coming back?”

  Marley’s skin is so white, I can see the lavender web of veins beneath it. I imagine her pale and glowing in my bed, the way she’d bruise if I fucked her too roughly, spanked her too hard...

  I clear my throat, shove my other fist into my pocket. “I don’t know if Felix is coming back. This could have been his last fuck-you to Montana.”