Page 66 of Kiwi Sin
“Oh, well,” she said. “You know where I live.” Still perfectly cheerfully. She left, and I watched her go, thought again that she was pretty, and also thought,If you saw the state of my ute and my kitchen, you might not be so keen. Not to mention that I don’t have the first idea how to have sex.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to. I wanted to, at least part of me did, and it was a pretty insistent part.
I’d hit two x’s one after the other one night this week on my phone by mistake, as if the Devil reallywereguiding my hand, and things had started appearing on the screen. Things I couldn’t believe. Tiny videos I could still see as if they were burned into my eyes, titled with names I could still remember.Girl in white dress getting …I didn’t want to finish the sentence, even to myself.
I’d gone on and watched them, to my shame. I’d spent hours when I should have been sleeping watching them, in fact, and had ended up with every part of me hot and aching, feeling as dirty as I’d been told I would. Also bleary-eyed and heavy-limbed at work the next day, with those images still in my head.
I’d learnt something, I guessed, but I was even more confused now, everything stirred up together inside, the thrilling excitement mixed with the shame, and I didn’t know who to ask about it. Not Gray, because what would he think of me? He’d be rescinding that dinner invitation pretty smartly. And the thought of asking my dad made me go hot in the face. Who else was there?
One thing I knew, though. Whatever other men and women did Outside, I couldn’t be rough with a woman. I couldn’t push her around, even if that was what she expected. I’d seen too much roughness and too much pain already. The last thing I wanted was more of it.
But the rest of it? The kissing, and the touching, and … everything else?
I wanted that.
26
OUT ON A LIMB
Gabriel
I lay awake too long that night, thinking about those videos I’d seen, my hands and my body itching to watch more of them. Thinking about Oriana, and trying not to connect the two.
Finally, at one o’clock in the morning, I sat up in bed anddidwatch videos. Not that kind. Another kind. And the next afternoon at three, once the shorter Saturday workday was done, I sent a text, then drove to the top of Maori Hill, where I rang the bell on an anonymous white gatepost and got buzzed in. I still knew the code, but I’d never use it, not now that I wasn’t living here anymore.
As the ute chugged up the drive, Jack shot out of the house, then slowed to an amble as if he’d remembered it wasn’t cool to be excited, especially once you were ten. He was the one who’d explained “cool” to me, too. When I got out of the ute, in fact, he just said, “Hiya.”
“Hiya,” I said back. “Here to see your dad.”
“I know. He told me. D’you want to play basketball afterward, though?”
I started to say,I don’t have time,because I needed to take a shower, shave, and change before I headed back to Gray’s, but instead, I said, “Sure. I’ve got fifteen minutes, anyway. I’ll come find you when I’m done, OK?”
“OK,” he said, but looked a bit anxious, like I might not do it. The family had just got back from Wanaka, I knew, as the Super Rugby preseason was starting soon, and the team would be back in training. Drew’s family had been living in Dunedin only a couple of years, and I wasn’t sure how many good mates Jack had here. Jack could be a bit guarded. He tended to observe and think before he spoke, like me, and also like me, he had an odd family, people were too interested in it, and he was old enough now to notice.
He said, “Dad’s in the back garden. Come on. I’ll take you.”
When I got there, it was to see the little girls in the sandpit, building roads. Grace was talking a mile a minute, making up a game, while Madeleine listened, round-eyed and enthralled. As for Drew, he was walking circles around the garden in a determined sort of way, carrying baby Peter, who had a fist in his mouth and was grizzling. Drew said, when I caught up with the circling, “Hi, mate. Good to see you. I’d shake your hand, but …”
I said, “No worries. He’s got a tooth coming in, maybe.”
“Yeh,” Drew said. “Second one. We were up and down with him all night. Hannah’s got a cold as well, so she’s taking a nap, and the rest of us are headed to New World in a bit for some grocery shopping, then gearing up to make something exciting for dinner. It’s a thrilling life, eh. Aren’t you sorry you moved out, and weren’t over here hoovering with me today instead?” He grinned when he said it, though.
“Sometimes I am,” I said. “When the grease in the kitchen gets too bad. Doubt my flatmates even know what a hoover is.”
“Offer’s still open,” he said.
Oh. He thought I was fishing for another invite. “No, thanks,” I said. “I’m working on my independence and all.”
“Mm.” He studied me out of appraising gray eyes. Peter began complaining more loudly, and Drew started the walking again. “What happened to the hand? Work accident?”
I explained again. The stitches were coming out in a few days, and I’d be glad not to have to tell this story anymore.
Drew smiled, but he didn’t laugh. “Well, they say most accidents happen in the home. Unless you’re a rugby player, of course. Ute still running OK?”
“Sweet as,” I said, pretty proud of knowing the right slang. “Actually, though, the question I need to ask you … it’s a bit awkward. Why I came in person. I need to tell you first that you can say no.”
His eyebrows rose, but he said, “Go on and ask. I know how to say no.” Calm as always. “Are you asking to borrow money? Is that it?”
