Page 52 of Just Come Over
Nora said, “I’m selling the hutch as well.”
It was a wooden affair, and none too flash. She probably had it priced at nine hundred dollars. “No, thanks,” he said. “We’ve got one.”
She said, “There’s an indoor cage, too, dead easy to clean, all plastic and wire, built on two levels. The deluxe size, that is. Good for if the kids want to have the bunnies in the house overnight. They use their litter box, of course, but you don’t want them running around the house unsupervised, do you?”
“I don’t want them running around the house at all,” he said. “No, thanks.”
Casey said, “Can’t we get an indoor house too? Please? They could be outside on the grass during the day, like we said, and I could bring them in when I got home from school so they could sleep in my room with me. If it was at night, and I had a bad dream, I could hear them munching their hay, and it would be very, very nice. Especially if you were gone a long way, to Nostralia.”
“Australia,” Isaiah corrected her. “I think an indoor cage is a very good idea, Uncle Rhys. Rabbits can chew on things, if you let them out. They can even chew electric cords and electrocute themselves. That would be dangerous. It could start a fire.”
“If you don’t let them in the house at all,” Rhys said, “your electric cords are completely safe, and so are you. How about that?”
When he was loading up the back of the BMW with a two-level wire and plastic rabbit cage with four twitching-nosed, hundred-dollar bundles of fur inside, he told Zora, busy putting a bag of hay, another of green rabbit pellets, and a collection of miscellaneous items into the boot beside him, “Don’t say it.”
“What?” Her own nose was twitching, he’d swear, exactly like the rabbits’, like she was restraining herself with immense difficulty from bursting into laughter. “That you paid full retail price for a used rabbit cage?”
“Because I don’t have to look for it. Get it all set up today, that’s the idea. I’m leaving Tuesday, in case I didn’t mention it.”
“Pity you didn’t buy the protective tubing for your electric cords, then,” she said sweetly. “Or the rabbit toys.”
“I am not paying higher than retail value for some plastic tubing and a half-chewed ball of sea grass. One trip to the hardware store, and we’re done. Besides, I was out of cash.”
“Mm.” She was trying so hard not to laugh. “Five hundred dollars. D’you want a flower subscription, by the way? My Supreme package is twenty percent off if you pay annually.”
“I’m opening the door for you,” he said, doing just that, and watching her hop up into his passenger seat with a pretty spectacular flash of thigh, “because I enjoy being a gentleman. Not because I enjoy being teased.”
“No?” She fluttered her lashes at him. “And yet I could swear you do. Four rabbits, Rhys. Four fluffy little bunnies, with an indoorandan outdoor home. What happens when I share that with Jenna? What happens when Finn finds out?”
“I may have four rabbits,” he said. “But he has four kids.” And considered the argument won. Or quit while he was behind. One or the other.
“So,” Zora’s mother asked that night, over a dinner of chicken, rice, and vegetables that wasn’t exactly gourmet, but that Zora hadn’t had to cook, at least, “what kinds of new and exciting things are happening in your life, darling?”
Hayden looked at her with the usual glint in his eye. Their mum never askedhimthat. She was of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” mindset when it came to Hayden’s much more interesting life. Anyway, Zora’s presence here with Isaiah, and the arrangement of hydrangeas, zinnias, and spray roses spilling out of a sterling-and-ceramic vase in the center of her mother’s starched white linen tablecloth, looking perfectly feminine and just bloody fine in shades of blush and pale green, represented everything about her life she wanted to share. She had a son, and he was awesome. She did flowers, and she was good at it. She was organized enough to bring one of those floral arrangements to dinner. Boom. Done.
She thought about saying,I kissed my brother-in-law,or possibly,I found out that every man in the world apparently cheats, including the one I thought had mana. I can’t figure out why I can’t stay angrier about that, or why I’m wishing I was cooking dinner with him tonight, that I was looking at him and he was looking at me with all that heat and humor, and that we were both wondering what would happen once we put the kids to bed. Why do I keep conveniently mislaying my grip on the truth, when the evidence is right there in thoroughly lovable six-year-old form, and nobody’s eventryingto deny it? Why is my body always so much more persuasive than my mind? What iswrongwith me?Or maybe she should say,I could be having sex tonight, for the first time in almost three years, with the only man in the world who burns me down, and who doesn’t seem any more able to resist me than I’m able to resist him. I’ll bet he knows exactly how to do it. I’ll bet he’d hold me down and make me come until my legs shook. I’ll bet he’d make me scream. But I can’t do any of that, for reasons listed above.
This was why flowers worked so well for her. Flowers were pure, like children. Adults, though? Adults were complicated. Also twisty, deceptive, and confusing. And once you added sex to the mix? That was when she got herself into real trouble. Every single time, like she’d never learned a thing.
She’d waited too long to answer, because Isaiah said, “I got a new cousin. That’s new and exciting. Her name is Casey Moana Hawk, which sounds very cool. Her name’s going to get changed so it’s the same as ours, though, and we’ll all be Fletcher then. I think it’s better to have your names the same. That way, you know which family you belong to. I kind of wish my name could be Hawk, though. Also, Mum’s earning more than a hundred and fifty extra dollars a week, and maybe even two hundred dollars, so we can probably buy her new van sooner. That’s very exciting.”
“Taking your points in order,” Hayden said, the mischief all but shining out of him, “there is the sad reality that having everybody’s name be the samegenerallymeans that one partner is giving up her name entirely. Unless their names are already the same, somehow, which would make everything so much easier. Is the price of inclusion too high, I wonder? What do you think, Zora? Although I agree. In fact, I think we shouldallchange our name to Hawk. Much cooler. Hayden Hawk. I sound like a brand. Definitely an option.”
“Oh.” Isaiah appeared to be considering that idea. “Is that how it happens? Does one person have to change?”
“Yes,” Zora said. Another somewhat dull subject that she could think about logically. Yay. “Uncle Hayden and I are the same family, but we have different surnames.”
“Because you got married to Dad.”
“That’s right. It’s a debate you could have, or you could decide that everybody gets to choose for themselves. You can hyphenate your kids’ names, so your name would be Isaiah Allen-Fletcher, and my name would still be Zora Allen. Or you can choose just the dad’s surname, or the mum’s. Casey has her mum’s surname. Some people even give the boys the mum’s name and the girls the dad’s, or the other way around, but then the kids have different surnames.”
“That would be weird,” Isaiah said. “I didn’t think of that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Zora’s mother said. “All this chopping and changing. If a tradition has been good enough for everybody for hundreds of years, it’s good enough now. Isaiah’s right. You’re one family, and a family has a surname.”
Hayden murmured on Isaiah’s other side, “Shot down once more, kid. Keep thinking it through, though. Much more attractive to the ladies.” He glanced at Zora, and she read the thought in his eyes perfectly.I need wine.There was never wine on offer, or coffee, either, at their parents’ house. Sometimes, it felt like a cruel deprivation. Orthopedic surgeons needed steady hands, though, and in this house, her dad’s needs ruled.
Their mother continued, “What cousin is this, Isaiah? A real cousin, or a Maori cousin?”
