Just For You (Escape to New Zealand), page 8
“Right,” she said, walking back to the porch, sinking down onto the second-lowest step and wrapping her dressing gown around her. It was hard to be at your severest when you were wearing a yellow-flowered dressing gown, you had not a lick of makeup on, and your hair was rumpled around your face, but she pulled herself up straight and tall and did her best. “Tell me. Why’ve you come back? What’s changed?”
“Nothing, really,” he said slowly, sitting down next to her and taking her hand again, and no matter what, it felt good, warm and strong around her own, and he didn’t seem to care a bit about her hair or her makeup. “Guess it’s just that I was driving home, and I thought, do I want to be right, or do I want you? And I want you.”
That wasn’t what she’d expected to hear, and she struggled to find an answer. He waited a moment, then went on.
“I should’ve stopped, explained better, but I lost my temper. But here’s what happened. I drank too much, which I probably shouldn’t have done, and I went to sleep, and a couple girls, yeh, came into the bedroom, Joann’s mate was right about that. And like I said, I turfed them out again, because I wasn’t interested. Or I was, a bit,” he confessed. “But it wasn’t worth it.”
There he was, being honest with her again, and how could she stay angry when he did that, looked at her like that, like he cared so much?
His grip on his hand was urgent as he continued, his gaze steady. “It wasn’t worth losing you over, or feeling like I was cheating, or just feeling like I was…doing something I don’t want to do anymore. And I wish I could explain it better than that, but I can’t. Because I was pissed, and I was asleep. And when you didn’t even believe me, didn’t believe I’d said no, I lost my temper, because it’s a big change, and I’ve made it for you, and you didn’t seem to know it, or appreciate it, and I don’t know how to make you.”
“I appreciate it,” she said softly. And I need to say…” She blinked the tears away, and could almost hear the thudding of her heart. “I need to say that I should’ve listened. You were here, you’re right. You were here, you came all this way. It’s just…what Ana said sounded true.”
“Maybe it would’ve been true, a few months ago,” he said, and her hand jerked a little in his. “But it isn’t true anymore,” he went on quickly, “and I’d like to know why you thought it was. I would think I might’ve earned some trust by now. I can see why I hadn’t, there at the start, but now? Why not?”
“Because…” she began, then stopped.
“Because what? Why wouldn’t you believe me? It didn’t make sense.”
She sighed, looked down at their joined hands. “Because it happened before.”
“Somebody cheated on you.”
She swallowed. “Yeh.”
“And it was bad.” He was rubbing his fingers over her knuckles, and it was so comforting. He’d told her, he’d been honest. Time to harden up and tell him.
“You know that Ana’s man is in Perth,” she began.
“Yeh. Wait. Your partner cheated on you with your cousin?”
“No.” She frowned at him. “Think I’d be that forgiving? Trust me. I’m not that forgiving.”
“Course you aren’t.” His teeth flashed white in the darkness, and then he was scooting a bit closer, turning to face her. “Tell me.”
“My partner, Lachlan. A mate of Joseph’s. Well, everybody from here who’s over there is a mate of Joseph’s, aren’t they. Not like Russell’s a big place.” She was rambling. “He was my boyfriend in high school, and then we…reconnected again, after Uni, when I moved back here, and it was good again. Like you. We were apart, and we came back together, and I thought it was all good. And then when he went to Aussie a couple years later for the work, I’d visit him, you know, the way you do, and he’d come back for the family times. I thought we’d get married, one day. I had…dreams. Picked out kids’ names, all the things girls do. Stupid. I was so bloody blind, even when he said he had a shift so I couldn’t come after all, even when…I was so stupid.”
“Not stupid. Normal. And this bloke was a fool, what you’re telling me. Didn’t know what he had. When?”
“Just before I met you. The first time.” She forced herself to look him square in the face. “Why I did what I did. Trying to show myself I was still desirable, to think that a man would still want me. Stupid again. Stupid way to do it, because a man’ll shag anything, won’t he, anything as available as I was. Doesn’t prove a thing.”
“Aw, baby,” he said, the distress clear. “Don’t do that. You were beautiful, and you still are. So beautiful. Any man would want you. Any man would be a fool to let you go. I was, and so was he, if that’s what he did.”
“Thanks,” she said, and if it was shaky, well, so was she. “Anyway. He’d been telling me he was lonely, how bored he was, when he wasn’t on a shift, nothing to do.” She laughed, a sharp sound in the quiet night. “Yeh, right. So I saved up for a flight at the start of the summer holidays, thought I’d surprise him. Flew all the way to Perth with a chilly bin in the overhead compartment, kina and mussels and whitebait to make fritters, that I’d collected myself that morning, just for him, just to make him what he loved, just to make him feel loved.”
“He was a lucky man,” Hemi said.
“Yeh. Well. Got off the plane, got a bus to his flat, because I knew he had a few days off, wanted to surprise him.” Another short, sharp laugh. “And I did. His flatmate opened the door, and I surprised him, all right. Told me Lachlan wasn’t there, and I said, all right, I’d wait, and he looked so uncomfortable, I knew something was up.”
He’d looked more than uncomfortable, she remembered. He’d looked pained, had flapped his hands a bit as she’d come in, sweaty from heaving her burdens up the exterior staircase of the block of flats in the heat of an Aussie summer day, her chilly bin getting heavier with every step, her suitcase bumping along behind her. She’d moved into the lounge with him backing up the entire way before her, coming to a stop next to the grotty green couch, giving her a perfect view of the dirty plates and empty beer cans on the coffee table.
“Really,” Chazzer had said, a note of desperation in his voice, shifting from one foot to the other. “I’m about to go out myself.”
“No worries,” she’d assured him. “I won’t nick anything. I’ll just stow my things and tidy up a bit.”
She’d moved forward, giving him no choice but to step out of the way, had rolled her suitcase and lugged her chilly bin down the narrow passage to the room at the end, had let go of the suitcase to open the door.
And there they’d been. So engrossed, they hadn’t even seen her for a few long moments. Lachlan had had his eyes closed, and the girl, whose name she still didn’t know, had never wanted to know, had been…busy.
“Let’s just say,” she told Hemi, “that he wasn’t giving her a flute lesson.”
“Ouch. That’s not good. What did you do?”
She laughed again, and this time, it was real. “Know what I did? Want to know? You sure?”
“Oh, geez,” he groaned. “Weaponry. I’ll just say again, I didn’t do it. I promise.”
“No weaponry. Though if I’d had it, who knows? And it wouldn’t have been worth it, not for him. Nah. I had my chilly bin, and I used it. You should’ve seen his face when he got a bin full of kai moana, not to mention all that ice, bang in the nether regions. Screamed like a baby, because kina. Mussels.”
“Sharp edges,” Hemi said, and he was grinning now. “Spikes. How about her?”
“She was no fool. She’d jumped out of the way. Because I was screaming myself, and he was trying to brush it all off of him, tumbling out of bed, jumping up and down, and if I’d ever loved him, I couldn’t have anymore, not after seeing him like that. And then I took my chilly bin and my suitcase and I left him there, and came all the way home again. Cried all the way, raged for a couple days, buried my dreams and went to be a bridesmaid. And did it all again. As you know.”
“No,” Hemi said. “You didn’t. You slept with someone who saw what you were, everything you are, but who wasn’t man enough to appreciate it at the time. I came to my senses, though. I appreciate it now. I’d like to sample your kina and your mussels, and I’ll bet you make a hell of a whitebait fritter, too, and I can’t wait to try it. But I’ll take them in my belly, and I’ll make sure you want to give them to me that way.”
“Maybe I will,” she told him, a little smile trying to escape. “Maybe so.”
“So that’s that,” he said. “That’s why, and I get it now. And that brings us to our real problem, the one we need to talk about.”
“What real problem?” Weren’t they done? She just wanted to kiss him, and hold him, and know that she believed him, and know that he knew it too. She wanted to be done fighting. She wanted to make up.
“How are we going to do this, so it works?” he asked. “It’s not happening for us, not the way it is, because trust takes…time, and we don’t have time.”
“We don’t?” She was reeling, made to pull her hand from his, but he kept hold of it.
“Nah, wait,” he said urgently. “Don’t. I don’t mean that.”
“Then what?”
“I mean, it’s not enough time together. You can’t see me, where I am, what I’m doing, and I can’t see you. You won’t sleep with me until you know me, until you trust me. Fair enough, but how are you ever going to know me and trust me if all we ever do is text, a few lines here and there, if we never see each other and don’t spend any real time together? How am I going to be able to trust you?”
“Me?” It was a punch to the chest. “Me?”
“Yeh, you. Why not you? Here I am, gone a couple weeks at a time even during the Super season, and if I’m selected for the ABs again, it’s worse. Girls get lonely too. Who says you wouldn’t be, and how do I know what you’d do about it? Who says I wouldn’t be lying in bed worrying about it in some hotel room in Pretoria or London, nobody to talk to but my ugly roomie, wondering who’s chatting you up in the Duke, how good he’s looking to you compared to some fella who’s never even around? Wondering just how lonely you are by now?”
“You’ve got some cheek, boy.” The anger was back again. “Thinking I’d do that. After what I just said?”
“But I don’t know,” he tried to explain, “just like you don’t. Not really, because we’re just getting to know each other, aren’t we. We both feel it. It’s here, in the puku,” he said, touching his belly, “isn’t it? For you, like it is for me?”
“Yeh. It is.” She was trembling a little now, the chill of the night air, the emotion. She’d been all over the shop tonight.
“We want it, but that isn’t enough. So what do we do about that?”
“What can we do? Sounds hopeless, if you put it like that.”
“Not if you move to Auckland.”
“What? Just like that? Now?”
“That’s what I’m asking. That’s what I want.” He went on quickly, his voice full of urgency, while she was still trying to digest everything he’d said. “It’s three and a half hours each way, and that’s too far. I’ve only got a couple days off a week, if that, and one of them’s Monday, and you work on Monday. It doesn’t work, don’t you see?”
“But…what would I do? Where would I live?”
“Work. And with me.”
“Oh, no. With you? Now? Not happening.”
“All right. I won’t push on that one. But you could live with somebody else. You went to Uni there, surely you know people, could find a flatmate. But you’d see me at the weekend at least, when I’m there, could stay with me then. You could know I’m coming home after the match, and give me something to come home to. You could see, and you could know, and I’d know that you were there too, and bloody hell, Reka, I’d like to know that.”
It was a mad plan, and he knew it, and he didn’t care.
“Thought you were meant to have a cool head,” she tried. “This doesn’t sound like a cool head.”
“I don’t think either of us has a cool head when it comes to the other,” he said. “Know I don’t. I know I want you. That’s what I know. And I know I’m ready to jump in with both feet, see how we go. How about you?”
“We haven’t even slept together, except once.”
He exhaled sharply. “Again with that? Here I’m meant to be the one obsessed with sex, but it’s you who can’t get past it. Why d’you think I can’t mean this if I’m not sleeping with you yet? Do you think we’ll do it, and I’ll find out I don’t want you? That’s not going to happen. I want you, and you want me, and when we do it again, it’s going to be so good. And then I’ll have you in my bed every night I’m home, and I can’t wait.”
“Not every night. Like I said.”
“Every night I can get you there, and I’ll be doing my best to make you want to be there, trust me. And you’re stalling. I’m asking you to decide. Right now. Right here. Either we matter, or we don’t. Either it’s worth the risk, or it isn’t.” The exultation filled him, the same thrill of commitment he felt when he backed himself, when he knew that stabbing the little grubber kick through was the right thing, when he took the risk and went for broke. “I think it’s worth it. How about you?”
He saw her still hesitating, still searching his face, and took her hand. “Come on, baby.” He softened his tone, tried to send the conviction from his hand to hers. “Come on and give me your heart. I promise to take care of it like it was mine. Better, in fact, because mine, I’m throwing out there. Yours, I’ll be holding close. I’ll be holding it so carefully. I promise. Let me prove it to you. Come to Auckland so I can. Give us a chance.”
Five long days later, back at Eden Park in Auckland, and Hemi was bouncing on his toes, waiting to run out of the tunnel, seeing the readiness, the determination in the bodies and faces surrounding him.
Preseason was over, and this was it. Round One, and the boys were fizzing.
Drew gave a quick nod to the group. He didn’t speak, because he’d already said everything he had to say. Drew was a follow-me skipper, and it worked. An assistant handed him the ball, and he palmed it in one big hand, led his team out at a trot, and walked to the halfway mark with that assured stride that said he was here, and he was ready, and he’d brought his boys to play, and it was Game On.
It was a fast one, the Hurricanes flashes of yellow. It was obvious from the minute the first lean body leapt into the air, the fullback’s sure hands closing around Hemi’s opening kickoff, the ball off his boot again in a booming punt, that they meant to play this game at pace. They were a young team, a fast team, and there would be no lengthy back-and-forth exchange of kicks to test the opposition, not tonight.
Hemi was running, shouting to the backs, directing traffic, and it was a ding-dong battle, back and forth. Drew stealing the ball and the Blues on the attack, getting in a few good phases before Kevin McNicholl, the young Blues wing making his first start of his Super 15 career, went down hard in the punishing tackle of Liam Mahaka, and there was a desperate fight for the ball. The second-five got it back to Hemi, barely, and he sent it into touch far downfield, out of the danger zone, and jogged down with the rest of the boys for the lineout.
Fifteen minutes in, the game still scoreless, some hands on hips already on both sides, the forwards blowing hard, and the Hurricanes were past the halfway mark again and coming fast. Nate Torrance, the Hurricanes’ second-five, distributed the ball with his usual tidiness, and it was in and out of the hands of a center and off to Aleki Salesa. A hundred twenty kilos of Samoan winger came charging for Hemi, and he was ready, springing off his toes, calculating angles to take the big man down.
Instead, Aleki pivoted, the sudden change of direction catching Aaron, arriving at the angle to help make the tackle, off guard. Aleki put out a palm and shoved off Aaron’s chest, a hard fend, and Aaron went straight backward, dumped on his arse and no help at all.
Aleki was still going, clearly intending to tiptoe his way down the touchline, but Drew was too fast for him. The skipper launched himself like a missile, pulled the winger down, and was instantly over him to try to take the ball.
Aleki’s hands were too strong, too sure, and he had the ball back to Nate again. The Hurricanes switched tactics, were using their forwards, trying for brute strength to carry the day, crashing their way into a smothering Blues defense that rallied to meet them twenty meters out from the tryline.
Desperate defense now as the forwards bashed the line again and again, and were pulled down again and again, but they had numbers to the right, Hemi saw. He shouted instructions, sprinted to cover even as Aleki got his hands on the ball and was off that way, then, just before he was tackled, sending it behind his back. The ball went from one set of hands to another, and another still, so fast they barely seemed to touch it until, finally, Finn Douglas, the bruising Blues No. 8, managed to take the ball carrier down before he got the pass off. There was a mighty kerfuffle on the ground, and Hemi couldn’t see who’d come up with the ball.
He was aware of Aaron in the background struggling to get out of the hold of Liam Mahaka, who was making a nuisance of himself again. Aaron was clearly desperate to get to the breakdown and join the fight for the ball, and Mako was clearly not intending to allow it. Mako grabbed at Aaron’s leg from the ground and hung on, an illegal move if only the ref saw it, a penalty to the Blues that they sorely needed. Aaron kicked out to rid himself of the obstruction, and Mako still didn’t let go, and as Hemi watched, Aaron looked down, his face twisting and mouth moving, and sent his boot straight down with force into Mako’s jaw.
Even as it happened, Finn was rolling to his feet with the ball and the ref was blowing the whistle for the turnover, but the line judge was running onto the field at the same time, talking urgently, and everyone stopped and waited.
Mako was rolling a bit on the turf, grabbing his jaw, the trainer on the ground beside him, but the sturdy hooker was on his feet again, taking a squirt of water and rinsing his mouth, clearly determined to play on.
