Page 48 of Just for Me
“Well, obviously,” Craig said.
“Obviously what?” Luke asked. “Because I’m half English and we beat the All Blacks last meeting? Yeh, that could give them pause, but if the boys could have a beer with us afterward anyway, reckon the rest of the country may forgive me, too.”
“He means because you’re gay,” Isaiah said. “New Zealand isn’t just for straight people, Grandad. It’s for everybody. If you’d learned the anthem in Maori, you’d know, because that’s what it says, but I guess you’re probably too old.”
“How come?” Casey asked. “Dad’s old, and he knows it in Maori.”
Rhys smiled, and Isaiah said, “Uncle Rhys isn’toldold, though, not like Grandad. He’s only about forty or fifty or something. Plus, he’s Maori, like us, so of course he knows how to sing it in Maori.”
“Forty-one, actually,” Rhys said, the smile fully in evidence now. “Cheers for the ‘fifty’ idea. Of course, I did find a gray hair the other day, so decrepitude could be just around the corner.”
Tania shot Craig a meaningful look down the table, and he didn’t go on to defend his age-spotted, memory-losing self. Luke did go on, to Hayden’s surprise. “I’m keeping my apartment, though. An apartment in Paris is never a bad thing. I could want to walk with you by the Seine, too,” he told Hayden. “In winter. In summer. Anytime.” And Hayden thought,Thanks. In front of my dad, too. And you’ve got mana to burn, mate. If your dad can’t see that, ifmydad can’t see that, I can, and I do. I want you so much, I don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye to you.
“So if it’s not that,” Hayden decided to ask his father, because this was rubbish and he was, suddenly, so tired of it, “What? Is it me that’s bound to cheat, or Luke? And why, exactly? Because all men cheat if they can, unless women are keeping them from having their fun, so how wouldtwomen be able to resist? I can resist. Let me tell you, I can resist. Maybe some men can’t. I can.”
Maybe not perfect on the “light and cheerful” thing. Casey and Isaiah were sitting still now, their eyes going between Hayden and Craig as if they were watching a tennis match.
Craig said, “If things are so much better in Paris, maybe you’d rather stay there.”
A frozen moment that seemed to stretch out forever, and then a crash that reverberated through the room and made everybody jump.
“Oh, no,” his mum said, her hands over her mouth. “Oh,no.My Royal Copenhagen Full Lace serving bowl! How could I have knocked it off like that? How could I havebeenthat careless? Don’t get up,” she told the kids. “Porcelain splinters, and you aren’t wearing shoes. Craig, could you help? I’m sorry, everyone, but … I may be going to cry. My beautiful, beautiful bowl. It was a wedding present. Can you just …”
“I’ll get it,” Rhys said. He was on his feet already.
“I’m sorry,” Tania said. “But please, just … go on home, all of you. I need a bit of time.” She tried to laugh. “Never mind. I’ll be all good by Christmas, and Casey and Isaiah—we have something very special for each of you. Just wait and see. Go do your decorating, anddon’tsend me photos. I want to come in and be surprised. We are going to have the verybestChristmas, all together. And please, Luke—do come. It wouldn’t be Christmas without Hayden, and we want you, too. Of course we do.”
“I’m sorry, Nana Tania,” Casey said, her big eyes troubled. “I’m sorry you broke your bowl, and that you’re so sad. It’s extra sad to be sad at Christmas time.”
“Oh, my darling,” Tania said, “thank you. And never mind.” She dabbed at her eyes with her festive holly-and-ivy cloth serviette, took a breath, and let it out again. “A bowl is just a thing, and things don’t matter, not really. We’ll have our Christmas together, and it will be lovely. I’ll have a wee cry for my bowl tonight, and then I’ll let it go and be happy I’m with my family.Allmy family. Aren’t I lucky?”
19
NOT QUITE HALLMARK
Three days after Christmas,and Hayden was in the stands in a domed stadium that was still managing Arctic levels of cold, or maybe that was just his pampered summer-in-New-Zealand body. He hunched into the folds of his pale-blue-and-white-striped Racing 92 scarf and wondered whether he was indeed in the WAG section. Yes, everybody around him was good-looking and extremely chic, but as most people in Paris were extremely chic and most of them were good-looking, that didn’t tell you much.
The reason he wasn’t sure whether he was in the right place was that he hadn’t met anybody, because Luke had so far not come out here. Not that he actuallyknewLuke hadn’t told people, but he hadn’t said anything about it to Hayden and there hadn’t been a fuss, so he probably hadn’t. Of course, they’d only been here a few days, and Hayden couldn’t read French to know whether there’d been a fuss he didn’t know about, but he was assuming.
Had it been worth it to come? Absolutely, despite how cold he was right now, and despite the fact that he wasn’t getting to see much of Luke. Luke left the apartment at some ungodly hour of the morning when Hayden was just coming out of his twelve-hour-time-difference jet-lag coma. Luke brought him a flat white first, though, from the kind of espresso machine full of stainless steel and dials, which was, hello? Pretty bloody wonderful—and came home again at close to six in the evening seeming about the same as always, not like somebody who’d abused his body all day. After that, Hayden produced whatever non-French meal he’d managed to come up with in his visits to the neighborhood shops, and they … well, hung out and ate dinner and watched a cookery show, or an architecture one, which Hayden pretended to follow, and Hayden always fell asleep, exhausted from his day of exploring and the aforementioned jet lag, and possibly that bloody concussion, plus the attempt to understand a language he definitely did not know. Then they went to bed, which was thrilling as can be, every time.
That strength. Thatbody.
So far, there hadn’t been anything you’d call “nightlife.” Luke had said, when Hayden had asked, “I don’t really do nightlife. Not suited for it, I guess, and there’s training, and …”
“You might say the wrong thing,” Hayden finished for him. “Or look at some cute boy too long.”
“Yeh.” Luke had been packing his kit for the game at the time, as calm and focused as a hunter in a duck blind—yes, New Zealand reference, but that was what Hayden had. “I’ll be with the boys for a bit after the game tonight, too. Home around eleven, twelve, like that. I have my day off on Wednesday, though, if you’d like to do some tourist things. Good time for museums, midweek in January. The Impressionist one in the Musée d’Orsay is nice, and just across the Seine, so we could take a walk through the Jardin des Tuileries first. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs is meant to be good, too, in the Louvre complex. Art Deco, Art Nouveau, like that. You’d probably like it.”
“Sounds extremely gay,” Hayden said.
Luke smiled. “Probably. I’ve never been. We could go to a bistro afterward, if you like.”
“Suits me,” Hayden said, wanting to say instead, “When you come out, you won’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing,” but biting his tongue. This wasn’t up to him, and if Luke was willing to go to a decorative-arts museum with him, that was a step, right? “And I get to watch you play.”
So far, he was getting to watch everybody else play, because Luke was still on the bench. It was Racing 92 against Pau, whoever they were, and Racing had six points on two penalty kicks, while Pau had 15 on two tries, a missed conversion, and a penalty. Both the tries had been scored in the first half, though, and it was now … Minute 54. Twenty-six minutes to go, and play was back and forth, back and forth. Men running with the ball, passing the ball, getting tackled hard, until somebody spilled the thing or kicked it away and possession changed, or until the referee blew the whistle and there was a scrum, for some unknown reason. After that, there was a scrum reset, because the structure kept collapsing, the referee pawing with his foot on the grass and having a stern French word as the big screens replayed the reset, as if you cared. Meanwhile, Luke was sitting on the bench in an oversized jacket, hands on his knees, watching like there’d be a quiz later. Occasionally, the substitutes would take a wee jog around the edges of the field to stay warm, but that was the limit of the Boyfriend Activity thus far.
Hayden’s mind may have drifted. First to the impossible beauty of Luke’s apartment, which was more like Nyree’s description than Luke’s, no surprise. The herringbone wood flooring. The high ceilings with their dark beams. The huge, multipaned, arched windows, and the marble fireplaces in lounge and bedroom. The balcony with its wrought-iron railing, and the modern-but-cozy kitchen and bath done in white and cobalt blue, all of it somehow harmonizing with the ancient diamond-patterned black-and-white floors and plaster walls. And the view over the rooftops to the park. It was the best apartment in the world, no question.
