Page 100 of Kiwi Gold
“No,” she said. “Just finished it, thank goodness, so all I have to do now is drag myself around like an enormous slug and wait for the bub. It was one of the graphic novels.”
“Ooh,” I said. “I can’t wait.” Poppy wrote sunny, funny books for kids that my girls had always loved, but the graphic novels were my guilty favorites. Featuring anthropomorphic but realistically drawn animals, they were a little dark and a lot sexy, but so heart-achingly romantic. They were also written for teenagers, but since my sexuality and my romantic inner life had possibly remained stuck in that zone, they worked for me.
“D’you want to read it?” she asked.
“Can I?”
“Of course. I’ll email you a copy.”
I didn’t say that I’d use the story to prepare for the first unwed sex of my life. Iwantedto say it, but it turned out that I couldn’t do it over the phone. She added, “And of course we can talk alone, if you like. Matiu will get Isobel to bed and get Oliviabackin bed.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeh. He actually likes it. Amazing, eh. Of course, he may have an ulterior motive. I’m about to have this baby, and he wants me rested for it. Or maybe he’s just awesome.”
That was why, the next evening, the girls were watching a cartoon with Olivia and Hamish in Poppy’s family room, Matiu was giving Isobel her bath, and Poppy and I had carried our mugs of herbal tea all the way upstairs, to the windowed eyrie that was Poppy’s studio, where we curled up on a squashy sofa and looked out at late-afternoon sunlight slanting over the blue harbor and green hills. I said, probably stalling, “This house is amazing. Good on ya for doing so well and being able to buy it.”
She smiled. “I had a head start, money from my grandad and all, and then there’s Matiu. Doctors don’t do too badly. No shame in struggling, either. I know what it’s like when you’re trying to get something new started, something mad, and your family feels free to tell you how foolish you are. Specially your dad.”
“Hey,” I said. “Quit looking into my life. Or—wait. Look into my life.”
She smiled again and took a sip of tea. “So. Want to tell me?”
Now that we came down to it, I was nervous. I opened my mouth and shut it again about three times, and Poppy said, “Not something with the girls, then. Either you want to borrow money, or it’s about sex. And since I’m guessing you’d ask your dad for money if you needed it that badly, it’s probably sex. Seriously? Who is it? The only man I’ve heard your girls mention is Lachlan, and he’s your neighbor.” When I didn’t answer, she said, “Wow. OK. You went ahead with that? That’s playing in the big leagues. Sorry, but …areyou actually mad? He’s as bad as Jax and Matiu used to be, from everything I’ve heard. Of course, that could be better, if what you’re doing is … what? Experimenting? Good on ya, possibly. I never managed to try experimenting. Until I met Matiu, of course, but he wouldn’t go along with my experimenting plan. He insisted on romance instead. Odd, but there you are. No accounting for taste. Still, heaps of sex happened anyway. Eye-opening, really.”
I’d started protesting halfway through that. Now, I said, “That’s the thing, though. I’m not experimenting, not yet, but we’ve … we’ve talked about it. He’s only kissed me a bit so far, though, and touched me a little once.” I didn’t mention him pushing that spaghetti strap off my shoulder, lifting me up with both hands around my waist, and taking my breast in his mouth. I wasn’t confidingthatmuch, and anyway, that was probably where a normal sixteen-year-old started out. I wasn’t exactly blazing new territory, sexually speaking.
“Really,” Poppy said. “So is this dating, or just …”
“It’s dating,” I said. “It’s … ah … real.” I wished I’d worn the bracelet, though it would have been all wrong for tonight. It was too fragile to wear around the house, the nearly pure gold too soft, and besides, it looked … sexual, somehow, at least to me. It was the way those strands wrapped around my wrist, maybe. Or the way Lachlan had looked at me in the mirror when he’d held my adorned hand at my breast.
Or maybe that was just my suddenly awakened and thoroughly uncontrolled libido.
“Are you sure?” The question was gentle. Poppy laughed more easily than anyone I knew, but her face was sober now.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure. He told me so.”
“And—sorry, but … you believe him?”
“Yes.” I now knew what Lachlan and my dad were going through, because how did you convince somebody of something they couldn’t see?
“All right,” Poppy said, and I couldn’t tell what she thought. “So you want to do … what?”
“Have sex,” I said. “He hasn’t been too keen, but now he is.”
“He hasn’t been too … keen,” Poppy repeated slowly.
“He doesn’t want to rush,” I said. “He wants to know I’m sure, as I wanted to wait for marriage originally.”
I’d managed to surprise her, anyway. “Formarriage?Laila, I’m sorry, but nobody waits for marriage. Certainly not a man like Lachlan. You’ve been dating him, what? A few weeks?”
“A month,” I said. “Tomorrow’s our third real date. And I know. I do know.” I wanted to explain, the same way I’d tried to do with my dad, but I couldn’t think how. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I’ve decided I want to do it. Oriana and Priya will stay to babysit, because, of course—the kids. Can’t do it in my bed, obviously.” Saying it gave me a twist low in my belly, and not just from the cramps that were always worst on the second day. “Unfortunately, I’m on my period, so that’s a wrinkle.”
“Oh,” she said. “So you’re thinking … not?”
“No. He says it’s fine. D’you think he meant it, though? Kegan hated it when I even leaked on the sheets. He said it made him sick. You wouldn’t think it, considering that he could be in the same pair of underwear for weeks at a time on a climb, but men are odd about menstruation. It’sharamin Islam to have sex then, but you’re not impure or anything. Other men mind more, I guess, which is surprising.”
“Depends on the man,” Poppy said. “If Lachlan said that, he’s good with it. You get a menstrual cup, that’s all. One of the disposable kind. It fits over your cervix, so it’s not in the way. Unless you’re still bleeding like a stuck pig, or you’re getting extra inventive. That can get messy. Ask me how I know. Good thing I’m married to an emergency doc. Unfazed, you’d call him.”
