Page 102 of Kiwi Sin
“Daisy gave birth control to women at Mount Zion,” I said. “I just found out about that. Secret, eh.”
“Yes,” Oriana said. “She did. That’s why Frankie didn’t have a baby. But men don’t—”
“Heaps of women there asked her for it,” I said.“Dadasked her for it. Anyway, it doesn’t feel like a sin to me. I’ll love every baby that comes, no worries. I just don’t want them to come so often that we can’t …” I wasn’t quite sure what I meant. I thought about my project, close to done now and waiting for me at Drew’s. About Drew and Hannah and their four kids, from ten-year-old Jack to baby Peter, and the look of Drew walking Peter around the garden. How he’d said that four kids was heaps. “I want us to be able to care for them,” I finished, “and I don’t want it to be … too much.” It wasn’t exactly what I meant, but I wasn’t sure how to say what I meant.
“I do, too,” Oriana said. “I want to have a baby, but I want other things, too. You get tired when you’re pregnant, and when a baby’s small. If you’ve just had one and you get pregnant again … I watched my mum do that. I watchedeverymum do that, and I want to enjoy our life.” She got up from the bed, came over to me, pulled my head down in the way that made my heart pound, and kissed me. “I wish it could start now.”
“So do I.” I’d never meant anything more.
“Your flatmates were surprised,” she said. “That you brought a girl home.”
I laughed. I had both arms around her again, somehow. “Yeh. They were. They said, “‘How’d you get somebody that pretty, you ugly bastard?’”
“No, they didn’t,” she said, but she was laughing, too. “You’re prettier than I am anyway.”
“They did,” I said. “And you’re not meant to tell a man he’s pretty.”
“I’ll tell you you’re beautiful, then,” she said.
A knock at the door, behind us. Tentative, more like a bird tapping. I opened it and told Priya, “Just going.”
She said, “I live here too, Oriana. Also, Daisy and Gray are moving things back into the new house, carrying their bedroom furniture and all that out of the basement. Daisy says she wants to sleep there tonight.”
“I’ll come help, then,” I said.
“So will I,” Oriana said. “I’ll just get changed first.”
Priya hesitated, then said, “I didn’t mean to— It’s notbadthat you’re here. It’s just—”
“Yeh,” Oriana said. “I know. School tomorrow, eh. Frankie’s right. It’s better to have somebody to ride the bus with, and to eat lunch with.” And then she stopped.
It was the least forgiving speech I’d ever heard her make.
I was pretty bloody proud, to tell the truth.
43
NOWHERE CLOSE ENOUGH
Gabriel
Daisy didn’t say anything else about Oriana and me, at least not when we were moving furniture, and Oriana didn’t press it. She told me, when I said goodbye to her by the ute later that morning and kissed her, too, even though Daisy was probably watching, “I know you probably think I should’ve said something about us, but I didn’t want to spoil Daisy’s day. I’m going to invite you to dinner, though, from now on. Friday and Saturday night both, don’t you think? That’s what people do, right? They have dates. That can be our date, and how can your family or my family object to it, if I’m cooking and we’re eating with them?”
I said, “They can’t. Well, other than the fact that it’s still Gray’s house.” Oriana and Priya were moving back into the yurt tonight, but it didn’t matter much, because all three places—house, yurt, and caravan—belonged to Gray.
Oriana said, “His and Daisy’s now, he says. They want to be married soon. Next month, maybe, or as soon as she can get time off and he can leave work. She wants to go on honeymoon to the North Island, because she’s never been. They’re going to spend it tramping and kayaking and surfing and scuba diving and probably doing some kind of adventure race, for all I know, because she’s been talking about wanting to train for one that’s three days long. You barelysleep.You just race. That’s not whatI’dwant to do for fun, but they’re mad that way.”
“Whatdoyou want to do?” I asked. “On a honeymoon? I’d better find out.” She was still in my arms, and now, I kissed her again. I could see that Daisy was indeed looking, and so was Priya, and I didn’t care.
“I’d like to go somewhere,” she said, rubbing her cheek against mine in a way that raised my pulse rate even higher, then kissing the spot under my jaw. “Neither of us has ever been anywhere.”
“Neither of us has ever had a holiday,” I pointed out. “Reckon we won’t know what to do with ourselves.”
“Oh,” she said, “I reckon we will.” She kissed my neck some more and ran her hands over my shoulders, and … yeh. I was going to have to get straight into the ute the moment I let her go, and then I was going to have to do some deep-breathing exercises just to get home. “I wish it could be now,” she said, “but if it can’t, I’m still going to cook you dinner.”
Two weeks like that, then three, of eating Oriana’s dinners—gloriously tender steak, succulent lamb curry, salmon baked with thin-sliced potatoes and courgettes in parchment, and so much more, and, always, a sweet—doing the washing-up with her afterward, and then walking with her in the garden. Kissing her down there, too, away from her sisters’ judgmental eyes, and beginning to touch each other, trusting to the flowers and the sky and the wind not to betray our secret.
Her hand under my shirt, stroking up my side, exploring my back and my chest, leaving a trail of fire behind it. The evening when we sat on our bench and ended up with her in my lap again, when my hand went up her leg, then inside her dress. That night, I got my hand on her bare breast for the first time. I kissed her neck while I did it, she moaned, and I felt that taut little nipple under my hand, wondered what color it would be, thought,Somebody could come down here any minute and see,and it didn’t matter, because that thought didn’t have a hope of stopping me. In fact, I was pretty horrified to discover, that thought just made it all that much more exciting, and if I could’ve got away with driving off with her in my ute, I couldn’t have answered for what would’ve happened in there, because all I wanted in this world was to be inside her.
