Page 102 of Just Come Over
The next morning, everything got more complicated.
The first part went fine. Rhys got up at six, pulled on a T-shirt, shorts, and trainers, and headed up the road a few kilometers for a dawn run on a track in the Waitakeres, the one he hadn’t taken on that evening when he’d come back from Japan. When he’d sat on a bench instead, held Zora, and told her he loved her for the first time.
Six o’clock had come early after finally getting to bed at one, but as always, pushing his way up the first incline through his muscles’ initial resistance, feeling his breath and his legs settling into their rhythm, then picking up the pace, did the business. No sound but birdsong, the pounding of his feet on earth and of the blood in his ears, and the snaking thoughts in his head had begun untwisting themselves.
He was a one-track man who was on about four tracks just now, between rugby and Casey and Isaiah and Zora, and Finn was right. A sportsman needed his workouts to make that kind of adjustment. You needed emotional balance to do his job, and more for the rest of this, but it came from the same place as physical balance. From knowing what tools to use and working to use them better. Which he knew how to do.
By the time he’d left the first few kilometers of bush behind and was headed across a windswept stretch at the top of the bluffs, with the wild waters of the Tasman foaming against the rocks below, the pink light of dawn had turned to glowing blue, a fresh breeze was blowing the mists away, and was stretching out and finding his stride, things were settling into place.
The air was chilly, but it was clean. You could breathe it deep into your lungs and collect your thoughts. That was the reason he’d come home. The connection to this place, to his mountain and his river and the spirit of his ancestors, was like no other.
He might not be an All Black anymore, except that you always were. That never left you from the minute you pulled on the black jersey, the first time your feet stamped the ground in the haka, connecting you to the earth beneath you and the mates around you.
Everyone he loved was here, and everything he loved, too, and he was going to make it work. Zora loved him, he was learning to be a dad, and surely he could learn to be a good husband, too. There was nothing like practice and determination to make you better at something. You made a plan, and you executed. It was trickier when somebody else was making the plan with you, but by the time a man was forty, he ought to have learned something. Maybe even to work on four tracks at once.
So that was good, and so was sluicing his body down in a shower that was too big for one, thinking that pretty soon, Zora’s bottles of nail varnish would be lined up in the empty drawers under the sink, in a pretty basket, maybe, her perfume and shoes would be on the dressing-room shelves, and his house would smell like flowers.
He could need some better towels. The big, fluffy white kind. Another warmed towel rack, too, on the wall by the bath, so all she’d have to do was reach out for it afterwards. She’d enjoy that.
When he got to her house at nine-thirty, though, it was all a bit different than he’d expected. Zora was in the flower shed, dressed in stretchy black leggings, a long T-shirt, an apron, and jandals, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, her hands deft and quick as she put together an arrangement about the size of a bus. Isaiah and Casey were sitting on the floor at her feet, picking leaves off flowers and sticking them into buckets. Pop music was playing on a portable speaker, but Zora didn’t look relaxed.
“Hi,” he said, leaning against the open door.
Casey stuffed a pink rose into a bucket and ran to him, and he swung her up, gave her a cuddle, and said, “Morning, monkey. Did you have a good time last night?”
“Yes,” she said, “except not really, because Isaiah said I couldn’t do his robot, so I had to do a puzzle instead by myself. And I wanted to read a story with you, but you weren’t there, and Auntie Zora wasn’t there, either, and you won’t be there tonight, because you have to do your job.”
“Because I was at the hard part, and you don’t know how,” Isaiah said, still taking leaves off flowers. “Hi, Uncle Rhys. Mum’s very busy.”
“What can I do?” Rhys asked Zora. They weren’t going to be having a talk with the kids this morning, clearly.
“Get me a very large coffee at the shop,” Zora said, “and cook a better breakfast for the kids. Bring me a couple eggs on toast out here, and I’ll be your slave.”
He laughed out loud, then set Casey down, came over to give Zora a kiss on her smiling mouth, and said, “Done. What is that?”
“Wedding bouquet.”
“Looks as big as the bride, eh.”
“Trailing bouquet. It’s a thing. Big’s a thing, too. Dahlias, hydrangeas, roses, hypericum berries, calla lilies, greenery. The bride wanted a cottage garden effect.”
He inspected it doubtfully. Well over a meter long, and, geez, almost that wide, too. The feathery greenery would nearly reach the floor. He said, “She’s got the garden, anyway. Maybe if it was all one color.” Peach, white, pink, lavender. It was all pale, which he guessed was good, but...
“You’re not supposed to tell her it’s not nice,” Isaiah said. “That’s not helpful.”
“You’re right, mate,” he said. “No excuse.”
Zora said, “Not my favorite, either, but she wants what she wants, and she saw a picture. I shouldn’t complain. She’s got six bridesmaids and six groomsmen, and the bride and groom each have a mum and stepmum. Flower bonanza.”
“It’s three thousand seven hundred dollars,” Isaiah informed him. “Because there’s an arbor, too. Arbors cost heaps of money. Mum did that yesterday, though. The other wedding is only six hundred dollars, because it’s just little.”
Those would be the deep-purple and white bouquets on the other table, Rhys guessed. And she’d done an arbor yesterday besides all her deliveries?Andgone out with him? “I like those other ones,” he said. “The six-hundred-dollar ones. What are they?”
“Eggplant calla lilies, white roses, dusty miller leaves,” Zora said. “Elegant. Striking, but soft. Nice, eh. And you say ‘little’ like it’s a bad thing, Isaiah. I’m glad to have the big orders, but I‘ve delivered too many flowers on wedding days to think those huge events are much fun. Too stressful, I’d say. Nothing like the view from the inside.” She sounded weary, and she looked it, too.
“Right,” Rhys said. “Very large latte, coming up.” He told Casey, “Come with me to get Auntie Zora’s coffee.”
“OK,” she said. She was wearing herGirls CanT-shirt with leggings, and she looked as cute as a bug. “I’m very hungry, too. We went to the flower market before it was evenlight.We had to get up in the nighttime. If we went to Café Vevo, we could get those kinds of special muffins that have chocolate inside. Muffins are breakfast. That would give Isaiah and me energy.”
