Page 43 of Just Come Over
“If it’s your first one in years, it probably does. Sit down, though. I’ll get them.”
He brought back the bottles and a glass, but she waved the glass away and said, “Bottle’s fine.” She’d sat on the couch, so he sat down beside her, took a sip of beer, and said, “So.”
She tucked her legs up under her, and, yes, her toenail varnish was deep red. “So. That’s me started, I guess. Back out there in the world. Was it hard for you to do?”
Was he supposed to lie? He said, “No.” Still rubbish at lying, then. He considered telling her that he was having a hard time moving on now, and didn’t. Very bad idea.
She said, “Oh,” and twirled the bottle in her fingers.
“Something wrong? Did he do something he shouldn’t have?” He tried to keep his hands from tightening, and failed.
“No. He kissed me a fair amount, that was all. And dropped his hand a bit low on my back, possibly. I didn’t give him any signals not to. Beforehand, at least. I wanted to... see, I guess.”
She sighed. What did that mean? She had her hand in her hair again, at the back of her neck this time, was looking away from him, and he could smell her scent. More than roses tonight. Something spicier and darker. Exactly how far down was “a bit low on my back?” He’dknownthere was something shady about that bloke. Doctors. Arrogant bastards.
He should get up and leave. He didn’t need this frustration. He had a game tomorrow. Instead, he asked, “And did you see?”
She looked down at her beer bottle like she’d forgotten she was holding it. “Maybe I’m just not in practice. I thought that earlier tonight, when I was getting dressed. Or maybe I’ve lost it.”
“Lost what?”
She raised her eyes to his. “Whatever it is. The spark.” A long moment. “Desire.”
He watched his hand move, willed it back, and for once in his life, absolutely failed to control himself. He was touching her hair, twining a curl around his finger. “Or maybe,” he said, “he wasn’t the right one.”
He wished she didn’t have those eyes. He was in big, big trouble. “I think that’s pretty well established,” she said, and, yes, she definitelywasbreathless, and his heart was thudding like a jackhammer. “He’s a nice man. He has beautiful office furniture, and I’m sure he could fix all my problem areas. Of course, for him to do that, I’d have to show them to him. Not happening. If I’ve got a spark, it’s not with him.” She shifted and looked away, he dropped his hand, and she stood up. Moment over.
“You know—” she said, “I don’t think I want this beer. I think I’ll go to bed. Come for breakfast tomorrow, when you come to get Casey. I’ll be running to get those arrangements done, but we all have to eat. If you want to help cook it—even better. You don’t mind showing yourself out, do you?”
Eight days later, and Rhys had officially made it through more than a week as Casey’s dad. It was getting easier with practice and discipline, exactly like everything else in the world.
You see?he told himself every single night.You can do this.
Eight mornings of hair combing and teaching Casey to read the names of the days, so she could choose the right undies. She’d learned to take a shower, and he’d learned to wash her hair, as well as the many other required steps. He’d even done two plaits this morning, which had involved parting her hair and creating something called a “French braid,” which may have required a YouTube video and a bit of coaching on the phone from Zora, but he’d done it, hadn’t he? He’d fastened the plaits with twin red barrettes with sparkly stars on. The whole thing made Casey, in her green-plaid uniform skirt, look cute and cared for, which would help at school, surely, especially as she’d made a friend, a girl named Esme who had a puppy. Which Rhys was hearing about constantly.
“No puppies,” he’d said, just last night. “Absolutely not. Hard line.”
Casey had sighed, and he’d been able to predict the words before they’d made it out of her mouth. There was no reason in the world he had to fall for those big eyes, either. “If I hadrabbits,”she’d told him, scrambling up onto her bed beside him in her Mickey and Minnie PJs to read stories, “I wouldn’t want a puppy, because the puppy might chase the rabbits. If I had rabbits, I would never be lonesome.”
Zora had smiled at him this morning, though, when he’d dropped Casey off at her place, and said, “Oh, well done on the plaits, Rhys. She looks adorable.” Which shouldn’t matter as much as it did, but there was something about winning a woman’s approval that got you every time.
There’d been eight evenings, too, of sitting against Casey’s headboard at bedtime with her cuddled up beside him, and having her read to him from the “hard books” she was working to master in Year Two, because she needed to get up to speed, helping her do it was his job, and he always did his job. After that, he’d read to her from the dinosaur book, which remained altogether too focused on combat, but which she loved anyway. A rugby girl through and through.
Then there were the eight breakfasts and eight dinners, most of the dinners, somehow, eaten with Zora and Isaiah.
It was too easy to say “yes” when Zora invited the two of them to stay, and so much cozier in her tiny, warm kitchen than in his own perfectly appointed one, helping her cook something that tasted better than he ever managed for himself. You could say that he was getting cooking lessons, which was helpful in his new role, and Casey was getting time with the whanau. He and Zora hadn’t had a repeat of the moment on the couch, because she’d obviously regretted it, and he didn’t stay past washing-up time, so what could be wrong with eating dinner with both kids at the table? They didn’t talk about Zora’s personal life, or about Rhys’s, or, ever, about Dylan. They didn’t talk about rugby, and the break was welcome. It was easy to get too caught up in it, for a player or a coach. The harder the pressure got, the more you needed time away. They didn’t talk about what Victoria would say when she learned about Casey, or what anybody else would, either. They talked to the kids, he had a chance to relax and to laugh and so did she, and it was quite possibly the best part of his day.
And if those dinners were what he thought about every single night when his car was aimed like an arrow, straight toward the little house at the edge of the hills, and what he resolved to put an end to every single night when he was driving Casey home? He had a plan for that, too. When he kissed Casey good-night and headed downstairs to get in an hour of thinking time before the next day’s training, he’d remind himself,It’s a transition period, that’s all, for both of you. Next week, you’re leaving for twelve days. Heaps of time to meet somebody pretty in a bar, or there’s that reporter over there, the blonde. Chemistry there. Invite her for a drink this time, and see how it goes. Sydney’s only a three-hour flight.Once you’ve got somebody else, you’ll be over this obsession. You can cook your own dinners, and Zora can find somebody to help her rekindle the spark. You’re not helping her do that, hanging about like this. You’re getting in each other’s way for nothing, just because it’s so easy to fall into that softness. After this trip, you’ll be able to start saying no.
For now, though? He never said no.
After the first couple of dinners, he’d begun stopping by the shops on the way home from his workouts—the ones Finn had been doing along with him every afternoon, “because nobody ever got more effective by losing their structure,” which was speaking his language—and buying a few things for Zora to make the next night. He had to pick up groceries for breakfast and Casey’s lunch anyway, he’d reckoned, and it only took a few more minutes to drop another item or two into the trolley. It was the least he could do.
The first time, it had been tender, buttery rounds of eye fillet that you barely needed a table knife to cut, baby potatoes, and asparagus. She’d loved those. Another night, a packet of just-baked ciabatta rolls together with ground Fossil Farms venison that had made the best burgers he’d ever tasted. That one had been a solid hit until Isaiah had let it slip to Casey that they were eating Bambi’s mother, which had produced stricken, accusing eyes, followed by a logical discussion initiated by Zora and taken up by Isaiah about animal welfare, the merits and drawbacks of vegetarianism, and free-range meats versus factory farming. If Casey had ended up deciding to be a vegan, Rhys would have put his foot down absolutely. Hard line. Fortunately, though, she’d eaten the burger, “because the deers had a happy life.” Casey was a practical girl.
There’d been the bag of avocadoes as well, that had cost two dollars apiece and had left Zora exclaiming helplessly, but had her face lighting up, too, which he called success. For tonight, when he’d texted her and said,Picking up something quick for us to make,because telling her ahead of time was surely better, it was a bottle of walnut oil, and another of balsamic vinegar flavored with herbs, along with a couple racks of lamb. He’d reckoned the vinegar had to be good, because it cost four times as much as the other kind, and the shop assistant at the gourmet place had recommended it and the walnut oil to go with his baby lettuces. He’d picked up a six-pack of craft beer as well, because Zora liked it as much as he did.
There was no side to her, he’d realized. She was happier with a burger and a beer on the deck, he’d swear, than she’d been going out to that flash restaurant with the plastic surgeon. And if he still burned to take her out himself, to have her put on that red dress just for him and to wonder what she was wearing under it, to be allowed to tell her exactly how smoking hot she looked, to smile down at her and put his hand lightly onto her lower back, but not too low, as he ushered her through the place—so what? He knew he wasn’t going to get it, and you couldn’t help your fantasies. His fantasies were unruly bastards. But he could cook the steaks or the burgers on the barbecue and eat them looking out onto the peace of her pretty garden in the lingering warmth of the day, drinking beer from the bottle and smiling at Isaiah’s efforts to teach Casey how to sing the national anthem in Maori. And that wasn’t bad at all.
