Page 31 of Just for Me
“I don’t know,” Hayden said. “Why did you decide to do it? Why didn’t you wait, at least until you retired?”
Luke looked down at the remains of his coffee, swirled them in the porcelain cup. “Dunno, really. I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. I couldn’t lie anymore. It was making me numb. Separating me from myself, I guess.” He tried to smile, and couldn’t. “Makes me sound like I’ve got some kind of mental illness. I’m pretty sure that’s what my dad will say.”
“Ah.” Hayden was the one eyeing him much too closely now. Luke much preferred that the vulnerability stay on the other side of the table. If he could have sex with Hayden, it would be easier. He’d be in control then. Gentle, because he tried hard to be gentle, but in control. As it was …
Hayden went on, “Day after tomorrow. On the other hand, it’s going to be a big wedding, and your brother will be there. Zora and Rhys, too. And Nyree, of course, though she’ll be a bit busy. How was Marko about it when he found out?”
Luke shrugged. “Hard to tell what Marko’s thinking. If he had a real problem, though, he’d say so. Not a very devious fella, Marko.”
“What’s he like to play against?” Hayden asked. Possibly steering the conversation away from the shoals. Hayden wasn’t devious, but he was … tactful, Luke guessed. Socially skilled. Something like that. Something he wasn’t.
“Like you’d imagine,” Luke said. “Battering ram. Heaps of mongrel in his game. Tackles like a bloody locomotive, and is none too gentle about it.”
“So he and Nyree are …”
“Well suited,” Luke said. Yes, definitely a better topic.
At that moment, Hayden’s phone rang. He was pulling it out of his pocket whenLuke’sphone rang. Luke looked at it.
Marko. Speaking of the battering ram.
He couldn’t help it. He got a lurch of the stomach, like it was flipping over, and not in a good way. Marko didn’t want him there. Afraid it would spoil the day if his dad got wind of the gay thing. Which was fair. More than fair. It was Nyree’s day.
And if it was Marko who had the problem?
Luke would do what was best for Nyree, he guessed. He’d make an excuse. He’d go back to Paris. His life wasn’t here, and his family was … a bit fractured. That was all right. He was used to it, and everyone lived in the world alone, as far as he could see. They just pretended they didn’t.
Harden up. Be a man.Hayden was talking to somebody, being bright and cheerful and funny again, like he wasn’t concussed and hadn’t been bashed. Luke was willing to bet nobody but him would ever know.
More than one way to be strong, he guessed.
There was a Maori thing his stepmother Miriama had used to say. “He toa taumata rao.”
Courage has many resting places.
He answered the phone.
13
CHANGE OF PLAN
Marko said,“Change of wedding plans, mate,” and Luke thought,Here we go,and tried not to care.
It was hissister.
That’s why you have to take it.
Oh. Marko was saying, “My grandmother’s pretty crook. Down in Tekapo. That’s—”
“I’m from Otago,” Luke reminded him. Tekapo. Barely a dot on the map in southern Canterbury, but a wilder, more scenic place it was hard to find. The Mackenzie Country. The high country, in the shadow of Aoraki Mount Cook, beside a glacial lake of an astonishing cloudy turquoise. Barren, some would say, but a place where your soul could find peace if you were a quiet man. An Otago man, and somehow, his dad notwithstanding, Paris notwithstanding, he was still that.
He thought about that, because he wasn’t sure what was coming next.
“Oh. Right.” Marko laughed. “Sorry. Of course you are. Things are a bit fraught at the moment. Anyway—the flash wedding in Northland’s out, and we’re doing it at my parents’ instead, so my grandmother can be there. Much smaller group, obviously, mostly family, and whatever we can cobble together for the rest of it. Hoping you can still come, because it’d mean a lot to Nyree. It’ll mean last-minute bookings, of course, and we don’t know yet where everybody will sleep. Not going to be much accommodation available just before Christmas, so it’s likely to be a tent. Fair warning. Sheep farm, also, though you won’t have to sleep with them.”
“OK,” Luke said. He was standing at the edge of the patio, looking at the ducks on the pond. A mum, followed by her babies. Calm on the surface, and paddling like mad underneath. A bit like him.
“Good,” Marko said.
