Page 8 of Just Say Christmas
The club let them in, not that he’d ever had a doubt. She might think it was confidence. It was just experience. His dancing form was rubbish, and hers was silly, but that only made them laugh some more. And when the music slowed down, he put his hands on her, carefully, so she wouldn’t feel grabbed—his hands were too big, otherwise—and she gave a sigh he felt all the way through his body, put a hand on his shoulder, possibly like she wanted to feel its solidity for herself, or even like she’d wanted to do that all day, the same way he had, and let herself be pulled in closer. And he felt everything. A slow, tingling thrill like he’d been brushed by electricity, and a lightness in his heart that he hadn’t experienced for so long, he’d forgotten it existed. The moment when you closed your front door and set off into the world to have an adventure, and not because you had to. Because you wanted to. Because this moment was your life, and you wanted to liveit.
They danced through a couple of hours and a couple of beers for him, a couple glasses of sparkling wine for her, because, she told him, “I want bubbles. This feels like it should have bubbles.” And when he asked, “Want to go home?” at the end of another slow, sweet song when he could feel every bit of her body pressed against him, and he could tell she wanted to be there . . . she said yes.
They didn’t talk in the car. He wanted to say everything, and he couldn’t think of what to say. When he walked her to her door, though, at the end of the drive, he knew he needed to say something. She had her keys out, which meant this was the moment.
“Can I see you tomorrow?” he asked, and she looked up at him, clearly startled. He thought about what he’d said and couldn’t think of anything wrong with it. “Why?” he asked. “No good?” He felt exposed, stupid, so he tried to make a joke. “My dancing too rubbish after all?”
She was holding her key, but she wasn’t moving to put it in the door. She said, “Oh,” then turned to him, and he braced himself and waited for it. There was a reason only one fairytale wasShrek.That wasn’t really how fairytales worked.
“Could you kiss me?” she asked, and he could feel her nerves. “Do you . . . think?”
The moment when he touched her cheek for the first time, when he ran his fingers down it just to feel the texture, and he could swear she shuddered. The tenderness when he put that hand behind her head, leaned down, and brushed his lips over hers, felt the tingle through his body, then waited a moment before he did it again, tasting that sparkling wine, and she put her hand on his shoulder again, like that first dance, and said, “Oh,” on a breath. Like it was a surprise. Like biting into a new fruit that you’d never tried before, and discovering that it was passionfruit, sweet and tart, and that you loved it. Like she was nervous to take the next step, but there was no choice, because her body had decided a long time ago, when he’d taken her hand on the dance floor, then put his hand on her waist. When she’d put her hand on his shoulder, and that buzz had jolted through her, maybe, the same way it had done through him, so sweet and so hot.
They got her door open eventually, and he fell against it the moment he’d slammed it behind him, with no more form than he’d shown at any other time today. Kissing with open mouths, then, fumbling with buttons, with hooks, with zips, until he could touch more of that skin, could feel all of her. His hands greedy, his fingers on her nipples, which hardened the second he touched them, then holding her, hands splayed over her sides, up high, his thumbs nearly meeting in the dip of her spine. When he bent his head to taste, because he couldn’t wait a second longer, her own hands pulled at his T-shirt, then, the moment he let go of her, yanked it over his head.
Haste, and need that was burning you alive, all the time in the world and no time at all. Holding her against him, in the dark still, feeling his way, kissing over her cheeks, her neck, then dropping to his knees and holding her waist in his two hands again, kissing her navel, her belly, and feeling her own hands closing around his head, her sudden intake of breath loud in the silent house, her body tightening.
Inevitable.
They’d stayed awake together, afterwards, like two kids under the covers, talking in the dark as if the stories had no choice but to spill out, until the wee hours of Monday morning. He was a responsible man with a responsible mind, but he’d taken Marko’s car that night, had left it parked outside Victoria’s house, and hadn’t given it a thought. He’d fallen asleep mid-sentence, or she had. At any rate, at one point he was talking, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up, and it was almost noon. And, still, he hadn’t returned Marko’s car for hours.
And after all of that, and the next three months, when every day together had been better, on that night in Dunedin, she hadn’t come.
He only found out after the match, when he texted his stepmum and she’d told him the seat beside her had been empty, and he got that tightening in your chest and roiling of your gut that happened when you feared the worst. He texted Victoria, his heart hammering, wondering what could have happened, and heard nothing. Her plane had been scheduled to land at two o’clock that afternoon, and she’d texted him that she’d arrived, but five hours later, she hadn’t turned up? It wasn’t anything like Victoria. You could ask how he knew that after only three months, and he’d have said that he was sure.
The rest of the boys went out after the match, and he didn’t. He waited at the hotel instead, and at two o’clock in the morning, when he was still waiting, he rang the police and found out exactly nothing, and the anxiety got worse. The fella was first bored, then exasperated, and finally, after Kane had given his name and asked again, sympathetic. He’d have rung off, Kane knew, and told his mates, “Know who just rang up and asked why the girl didn’t turn up to meet him, because surely she must be in hospital, victim of a vicious mugging, or worse? Kane bloody Armstrong, that’s who. I may not be an All Black, but at least I know my wife will be there when I get home. Count your blessings, boys.”
He finally got his answer at six the next morning, when he emerged from shoving his head under the cold tap in the hotel bathroom, trying to get some focus and some perspective. It was the team hotel and not his dad’s house. He’d thought that was a bridge too far, but now, he was half wishing he’d stayed with his parents last night. He needed to stay here and find out what had happened to her, that she was all right, and his dad’s name would help more than his, in Dunedin.
His phone chimed while he was toweling his hair, and he grabbed it, the water dripping onto the screen, and read the blurry letters of the text.
Sorry couldn’t come. Something came up. See you next week?Like it was casual, like he hadn’t spent the night awake, imagining the worst.
He waited, but nothing else appeared, and he left the hotel with the team, when it was time, his bad ear throbbing from where it had been abused in the scrum, his knee aching from where he’d twisted it, the niggles as usual after a match, and followed the tracksuit of the man in front of him onto the bus and off it again. He sat in the Koru Lounge at Dunedin Airport for thirty minutes, or fifty, or however long it was, until the flight was called, then followed a tracksuit again to the plane. Nobody asked him why he was quiet, because he was usually quiet. No difference. Just his life.
Nearly a week later, he was sitting on a bench in the sheds in his own stadium, getting his mind right for the next match. There was always a next match, and you had to turn up and perform, no matter what else was happening, or you didn’t belong here. No matter what had happened to your heart, or to your hope. The next match was your present, and your future, and you turned up. No choice.
His abused knee was strapped and the strip of black tape wound around his head, protecting his ears, for what it was worth, when the next text came.
Good luck tonight. Do you want to get together when you’re in Auckland next week?
He held his thumb over the thread, hesitated for a long moment, then hardened up and deleted the thread. And did the same to her contact information.
There should have been a chime, or a puff of smoke, but instead, she was just gone, as if she’d never been there.
He thought,You knew it was too soon. After three months in different cities? In different islands? In different bloodycountries,often enough? You’d been together, what, parts of four or five weekends, all told? And you thought she was the one, that she felt you like you felt her? It’s not going to be a bloody fairy tale. Quit looking for it.
And that was it. That was all. He’d gone out and played the game, like he played all the games. Work was what you had, and his work, his family, was rugby. He’d been part of a team since he was nine years old, and he was part of one still.
That was enough.
5
Fish Out of Water
VICTORIA
She’d been cool, and he hadn’t. That was good, right? That was what she’d planned. Or, rather, it was what she’d hoped, for the first time she saw him again. She hadn’t thought she could pull it off, and she’d done it.
