Page 18 of Just for Me
After that came more of all of it. Casey’s room, and the buzzing fairies, the upside-down winged horses flying onto the ceiling, the mining dwarves and bunnies and mice and trees and witches. Casey climbing up on her bed and bouncing there, unable to contain her joy.
It was all pretty good, even if Luke had only painted the trees. A successful Christmas present, he reckoned, for a little girl whose mum had died, a Maori girl who hadn’t known what that meant, who’d come across the world to a dad and a family she’d never met and a life she’d never imagined.
Who needed to know that somebody still loved her.
Rhys and Zora had given her that, and that was something, wasn’t it? That was kindness. More important than brilliance, possibly. Luke didn’t know much about parenting other than what he’d seen up close, but this way seemed better to him.
He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Hayden. He’d barely had a chance to say hello to him, and he still hadn’t when they went upstairs. Rhys was pulling sausage rolls from the oven, Finn’s wife Jenna was taking a quiche and salads from the fridge, and there was talking and busyness and moving tables and chairs out on the deck, and dishes and cutlery and glasses and things to drink. And Hayden, taking a seat across from his parents, while Luke hesitated until Hayden looked up at him and said, “Come sit by me.”
It was Quentin on the rocks again. It was the hopelessly exciting, impossible wonder of that first, awkward kiss, those first tentative touches, and the Aurora Australis in the night sky.
“OK,” Luke said, and did. And still, Hayden practically vibrated with tension. Rhys was looking at the two of them speculatively, and Luke tried to tell himself,He already knows. He’s said it’s OK with him,but he couldn’t quite get there, because something was off. Something was wrong.
Finally, when everybody was tucking into their dinner, Rhys told Hayden, “You’ve sacrificed a fair bit of your time to us this week, mate. I remember when you’d have had something to say about our general dullness. What happened to that?”
“Uncle Hayden doesn’t think we’re boring,” Casey objected, her hand wrapped around another sausage roll. The sausage rolls had been her idea, no surprise. “He helped paint my room, so he wanted to come and see.”
“Of course he doesn’t think you’re boring, darling,” Tania said.
“Or maybe,” Hayden said, still with that tension in his body but the usual smile on his face, “it’s all good, because for once, I brought a date. Well, I metmy date here. Close enough.”
Luke went still, but he could see Kane looking up, the alert expression on his face.
“Oh?” Hayden’s mum’s smile looked pasted on, and his father wasn’t smiling at all.
“Luke and I are going out after this,” Hayden said. “Which is, yes, a fair bit of public announcement forveryearly days, and yet here I am announcing anyway. I’m going out with Luke. He is my date tonight. That noise you hear is the closet door banging behind him. Also behind me, possibly, in a way. Huh. Who knew? I’ve never brought a date around my parents, much less a boyfriend, and I’m over thirty. Isn’t that odd?”
“You know we love you, darling,” Tania said, her social smile still firmly in place. “But you don’t need to tell us about it, surely.”
“Not the time or the place,” Craig said. “I’m amazed you don’t know that. Social skills, the teachers always told us you had. Verbal skills. Girls’ things, because you were rubbish at science and worse at sport, but here you are, not using any of them.”
“And yet,” Hayden said, “I find, astonishingly, that I choose this time and place. You’ll have to get used to it, I suppose.”
“Bloody wonderful.” Craig muttered it to Tania, but Luke heard him perfectly. “Not just one rugby player in the family, or even two rugby players. We’re all the way to three now. Jesus Christ. Next we’ll havehisbrother.”
The last sentence fell into one of those sudden lulls you got in a gathering. Finn’s head went up, all the way at the other end of the table, as if he’d sensed it, and Kane’s face darkened.
Zora said, “I heard that, Dad.” Her voice was tight. “You can’t say that.”
“No,” Rhys said. “You can’t. Not in our house, and not just because I was a rugby player myself. Tough to tell them that, was it?” he asked Hayden.
“Well, yeh,” Hayden said, “since you ask. Also, I’m drinking lemonade in order to be supportive. Very little liquid courage in lemonade.”
“You aren’t supposed to talk about people, Grandad,” Casey said. “And being gay, or LBTG … LBG …”
“LGBTQ Plus,” Isaiah said. “It’s normal.”
“Well, not quitenormal,darling,” Tania said. “But that’s all right, because we all love Uncle Hayden, don’t we? Anyway!” She clapped her hands. “Who wants dessert? I think I saw some yummy cookies in there.”
“Yes, it is, Nana,” Isaiah said. “For example, there are two male penguins in New York City who are mates. Once they even tried to hatch a rock like it was an egg.”
“Which would be,” Craig said, “unproductive, reproductively speaking. Unsustainable. And occurring as an exception. Abnormal by definition.”
Finn’s older son Harry, who was probably twelve or so, was frowning and pushing up his specs like a professor about to impart important knowledge. “Heaps of bonobos have bisexual behavior, though. There was a study that said seventy-five percent, which makes itnotthe exception.”
“Which would be more significant if we were bonobos,” Craig said. Arguing with a twelve-year-old. Not his best look.
“Bonobos are the most related to humans of any animal, though,” Harry said, absolutely unfazed. “We share 98.7 percent of our DNA with them, so it’sverysignificant. Also, there are male giraffes who do homosexual behavior sometimes. And female—a kind of antelope. An African antelope. And sheep right here in New Zealand, because some rams would rather mate with other rams than with ewes, even when there are ewes around. There are heaps of other examples, too, but those are the main ones I remember. If you like, I can look all of them up and email you the results.” Veering dangerously close to disrespecting your elders, but Finn wasn’t objecting.
