Page 75 of Catch a Kiwi
He said, “I’ll run the numbers, see what makes sense,” and I tried to remember what we’d been talking about.
“Oh,” I said. “The salespeople. Obviously, that’s the big expense, although you could do strictly commission, I guess.”
He frowned in concentration and drummed his fingers on his thigh. “Yeh. That’s the question. There are different kinds of panels. Different product lines. The more efficient they are, the more they cost, but none of them are terrible. Thequestion is—pay more upfront and get more benefit, selling your excess energy back to the utility, or go lower-end, because that’s what you can afford. If you’re compensating strictly on commission …”
“You’ve set up an incentive to talk people into something too rich for their blood,” I said. “Which will hurt your company’s reputation as well as being—well, rotten. It’ll be an educational campaign as much as anything, helping people make that decision. An online calculator would help, public seminars, things like that. Maybe partnering with the government.”
“Ideally,” he said. “Unfortunately, though, I won’t be the only firm looking to do it.”
“You could still suggest some partnering,” I said. “While you’re having those meetings. There have to be commissions to investigate possible schemes. There are always commissions. Wouldn’t they be looking for people from industry to be on them along with politicians? That would be a great opportunity to figure out whether it makes sense, and I’ll bet that once you decide to move, you move fast. I can’t imagine anybody getting out ahead of you, or if they did, I can’t image them staying there. I lookedyouup, too.”
“Do you want a job?” he asked, a smile lifting the corner of his mouth.
“What, as a flatterer?” I asked, and he laughed. “No. Too awkward. Too unbalanced.”
“If we’re involved, you mean.” No smile now, just plenty of intensity.
It was so hard to think. My brain was telling me one thing, but my body was saying something entirely different. As for my heart—who knewwhatit was saying. But then, my heart had always been a confusing organ. I decided to say, “Same answer I gave you before. I don’t want to work for youorbe your fun-for-now girlfriend, and I definitely don’t want to doboth, but I think I owe you a better answer, because all you did was ask. I know I should probably get back in the game, do some casual dating, but I can’t. There’s just been too much …” I trailed off, wishing I had the right words.
“Too much hurt,” he said.
I swallowed. “Yes. And I can’t be … casual about sex. I thought I could, before. Felipe was?—”
“Yeh,” he said. “I don’t much want to hear about the bloke.”
It was as if he’d slapped me. I actually rocked back in my seat.
He didn’t say “Sorry,” or whatever I’d expected. He took my hand, the same way he’d done at the table a week ago, and wrapped it up in his. With his other hand, he touched my cheek again, a bare brush of his fingers, and said, “I’m a jealous bastard. Tell me.”
I said, “It’s on the show,” and tried to get my equilibrium back. Up this close, I could see the darkness where his beard would grow, and the smoothness of the skin on his neck below the whiskers, and I had a sudden, intense desire to kiss him there and feel him respond. To let his arm go around me, and to feel the comfort of that, to breathe in his heat and his sureness and his scent.
My stupid heart.
“I don’t want to watch the show,” he said. “I want to hear it from you.”
“Make up your mind,” I said.
He smiled. Rueful, that’s the word for that smile, and his thumb was rubbing down the side of my jaw. I could feel every single nerve ending lighting up, that was how much that touch affected me. “I have,” he said. “Tell me.”
“It’s so hard to explain,” I said.
“Try,” he said, his eyes intense.
I gave a shrug. “I can barely figure it out myself. It was likea fever dream. An out-of-body experience, except that I was so completely in my body. An out-of-mind experience, maybe. You can’t imagine what it’s like out there on a show like that. Yes, you’re being filmed, but that disappears into the background shockingly fast, because your physical experience is so intense. You’re barely eating—you lose a good fifteen to twenty percent of your body weight in six weeks, like your body is consuming itself. You’re hardly sleeping. You’re dirty and sore and so fatigued, you don’t want to get out of bed, except that there’s no bed and you’re sleeping on the ground. You have to turn to each other, but you’re competing with each other, too, so sometimes, you turnoneach other, or somebody you trusted turns on you. Your whole mind is upside-down. And for me, in that kind of situation, I tend to …”
“To help,” he said.
“Yes. That’s my go-to mode, and I didn’t have as many … as many boundaries then. I thought I did, but that was another thing I seemed to lose out there. Felipe was so physically strong. Agile, too. I mean, the guy became one of the best footballers in the world. He ran the fastest. Heswamthe fastest. Any kind of race, any sort of physical effort—he was the best. But he didn’t have … he didn’t have steadiness. He didn’t have the kind of perseverance that’s not about being flashy, that’s just about putting your head down and doing what you have to do, grinding it out. He didn’t have …”
“Grit,” Roman said. “Ticker. And you did.”
“Yes.” I admitted it, then, in a way I never had before. “He wasn’t used to doing something that emotionally hard, being cut off from everybody he knew, not being able to trust anyone. Being deprived of literally everything—it gets to you, and he didn’t have as much at … at the center of himself as I did when the chips were down. He needed me. More than he said he did. More than hethoughthe did. He needed me, andI needed to be needed. Then. It was my addiction. I don’t need it anymore. Because his need … it sucked me dry. It melded me to him until I hardly knew where he ended and I began, until half of me became that need, and feeding it. I can’t give in to that addiction anymore. I have to be enough in myself.Formyself. I know you don’t understand, and you’re not the only one. But how can you share yourself with somebody if you’re not whole? I need to choose myself now, until I can grow myself again. Until I’m whole. I know it sounds selfish, but I can’t apologize for that.”
“So you rescued your cousin,” he said, “and worry because you can’t pay for her to go to uni anymore, though I’m guessing you’re still planning to try. And you feel bad about every one of your husband’s bills that you couldn’t pay. Because you’re so selfish.”
“I was ashamed to go bankrupt, yes,” I said, keeping my voice steady with an effort. This was too deep. It was too uncomfortable. “Anybody with a conscience would be ashamed to leave people deprived through no fault of their own. Some of those creditors were small businesses, just trying to hang on. As for Delilah, maybe I just wanted company, so I dragged her along. Maybe that was selfish, too.”
“You tell yourself that,” he said, “if you need to. But I know the truth. Some things are buried too deep to overcome. The ones that have been burnt into you in the furnace? You’re not getting rid of them, because that’s the person you are. And why should you? From what I’ve seen, what’s been burnt into you is responsibility. Determination. Courage.” He paused, then said it. “Mana.”
