Page 59 of Catch a Kiwi
“You can’t keep your engagement ring in bankruptcy?”
“Nope.” I speared another delicate, tender piece of flaky salmon and looked at it. “You can keep a wedding ring, if it’s plain gold. Needless to say, my wedding ring wasn’t plain gold. Doesn’t matter, because I didn’t want it anyway.” I ate the salmon. Delicious. “The gumball-machine ring brought in more than the Lamborghini, though, and that was one fancy Lamborghini.”
“You had a Lamborghini?”
“Who, me? I had a Mini Cooper. I got to keep that. The Lamborghini and the Bentley went toward the creditors. I sold the Mini for plane tickets and part of the campervan and … and a few other things.” I shrugged.
“And you didn’t care more than that,” he said.
I set my fork down. “I cared extremely. But not about that ugly ring. And, no, I won’t pretend to be your fiancée, or answer questions about when we’re getting married, or lie about how we’ve been together for a year. I’ve lived enough of my life lying. Lying that my life was working for me. That Iwas happy. I have to—” I broke off, tried to pick up my fork again, and couldn’t do it. “I have to be real. I’ll go as your friend, and if people assume I’m your girlfriend, I won’t correct them. If you want to hold my hand or put your arm around me, I’ll go along with that. I owe you that much. I owe you more than that, but that’s as far as I can go.”
“And yet you kissed me today,” he said. “That didn’t feel like a lie.”
“That was …” I trailed off and looked outside, because looking at Roman had been harder since that kiss. He’d held me almost … tenderly, but he’d kissed me so hungrily. Like all that intensity I kept getting from him was real. Like he wanted everything from me, but he knew I wasn’t ready and was holding back. Another brush of his hand against my lower back as we came through the café door, and that was all. Was that caring? Or something else?
He was too complicated for me. He was toomuchfor me. When I was ready, I needed somebody else.
“Do you know any nice guys?” I asked.
He blinked. “What?”
“I was thinking,” I said, “that if I want to kiss somebody again, and clearly I do, or I wouldn’t have done it—if I’m having sexual feelings again, I should expand my dating horizons. Even in college, I went out with a football player. Astarfootball player. I went to so many loud, drunken parties. I was shallow, obviously, even though I’d have sworn I wasn’t, and then, of course, there was Felipe. I’m attracted to exciting men, but the problem is,I’mnot exciting, and I tend to end up being the steady support system. After your party, when Delilah and I have moved on, maybe I could try a nice guy instead. Maybe that would be a better match, and a nice guy might not expect too much too soon, the way—” I cut myself off. “If I can actually rent someplace in Dunedin and get a real job, that is, because no guy wants to date a woman who’sactually homeless, I don’t care how nice he is. Dunedin’s cheaper than Auckland or Wellington, right? I’m going to have to confront the bankruptcy sooner or later, so I’m thinking …” I took a breath. “Why not now? I’m living too much on the edge for Delilah to feel comfortable leaving me, and I’m running out of time. She needs to know I’m OK, that she can go home and go to college and live her life and I’ll be fine. And I need to get over my fear of people finding out and justletthem find out. What do I care, really? They don’t know me. And surely somebody would rent to me if I got a job first. Maybe. If I explained the reason for the bankruptcy.” I looked down at my salad. “Or not, of course. That fraud charge. Doesn’t matter that I was acquitted, not really. And how would I get a job without an address? If it doesn’t work, I guess I’ll try a roommate situation once I go home. It may be a dumb idea to try it now.”
“That’s not the dumb idea,” Roman said. The frowning intensity had started up as soon as I’d begun talking, and now it was here in full force. “The nice guy is the dumb idea. You don’t want a nice guy.”
“I don’t? Excuse me, but how do you know what I want?”
“A nice guy’s going to be intimidated by you. Every time.”
“Why? How? I have a pretty face and nice hair, but what else about me is so fabulous that a man can’t keep up? I grew up dirt poor, and now I’m broke again. I’m wearing shorts and a T-shirt and a ponytail. I’m a waitress and a cleaner, I’ll be a software engineer when I can get back to it, and I’m not one bit glamorous anymore and don’t want to be. I want to go to work and make dinner and be a … a normal person. I don’t want to be desperate for money, because it’s not fun, but I also don’t want to dance the night away in the VIP room of some overpriced club and drink too much champagne, I don’t want to be on any magazine covers, and I really, really don’t want press. What about me could possibly be intimidating?”
Now Roman’s jade eyes looked patient. Oh, man. It was always a bad sign when a man looked patient. “You’re not a normal person,” he said. “You need a man who can match your wattage, who’s not threatened by you, if what you want is marriage and all that. And I’m not just talking about your looks.”
“Right,” I said. “I’m so fabulous, I need somebody like you, is what you’re saying.”
“No,” he said.
“No?”
“Not me,” he said, “because I don’t want any of it.”
All right. I might be getting mad. “Wait a minute. Who keeps asking me to stay with him and pretend to be his girlfriend? Who just kissed me in a plunge pool? Who’s been staring at me from the start like he wants to … to do everything to me?”
“I don’t want to get married again,” Roman said. “Or have any kind of serious relationship, either. I told you, I’m bad at it. I don’t do things I’m bad at.”
“Pretty limiting,” I said, embarrassed about everything I’d revealed and trying to rally. “Where’s all that stuff about being in the moment and growing and so forth? ‘Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be.’ Sonia Ricotti. That’s supposed to be you, right? Well, you’re bad at surrendering. I’m going to point that out here, since you seem to think you’re doing it. You also might be bad at having faith, and I don’t see you letting go of your anger at your dad for letting you grow up like that.” Lashing out because I was embarrassed, probably, but how could I help it?
“You’re looking up these quotations to get the better of me,” he said. “You can’t have them in your head.”
“Oh, yeah?” I couldn’t think of any better retort. How arrogantwasthis guy? “You have no idea how hard I’ve worked for serenity. You havenoidea. I’ve needed all the helpI can get. Yes, I memorized things to tell myself during the hard times, and I have a good memory. What, I’ve been spending my time figuring out ways to impress you? I’ve beencleaning.”
“Right,” he said. “Message received.” Was he cowed? Clearly not, because he went on, “If I’m meant to accept who I am, that’s not a husband. Or a fiancé. Or anything close. But you’re right about one thing. I do want to do everything to you.” He didn’t smile, and I got a shiver right down my … well, it wasn’t down my back. “I’m happy to have you move in with me in Dunedin, if that’s what that was about, the bit about the flat and the job and the nice guy and all. If you were trying to make me jealous, you did it, so I’ll say this. I have two bedrooms, and I want you. Move in with me until Delilah needs to go home, and get a better job. You’ll have an address that you won’t have to pay for, and I’ll have the kind of relationship Icando, with heaps of sex and you cooking those dinners and a guaranteed end date. And I’ll promise not to buy you any rings.”
“So we move in,” I said. “And I pay for our keep with sex.”
“I didn’t say that.” He didn’t even look flustered!
I wasn’t sure if I was humiliated or mad. No, wait, I knew. I was both. I’d been clear, back when I was being a Disney princess, that it wasn’t real. Not true love, not Prince Charming, and not happily ever after. If I’d harbored any sneaky illusions, I’d been set straight when I’d realized that my international-superstar husband, for all his neediness and his half-million-dollar ring, was sleeping with every pretty girl he could get his hands on and didn’t think it mattered. And I hadn’t even known then that he’d exposed me to fraud charges!
