“I had a brain tumor.” The words were quiet. She took my hand and moved it to the top of her head, but she was still facing away from me. “You can feel the plate here, under my skin. It’s metal, and it’s screwed in. You must have felt all of that, as much as you’ve touched me there. That’s why it feels so good to me when you do, because that was where I hurt. See? That’s another thing you somehow know. That’s what’s making this so hard.”
“Oh.” I felt stupid once again. “I thought you just had a lumpy head.”
A soft exhalation that was possibly laughter. “No. I was really sick for a long time. It took almost a year to get it diagnosed, and I got sicker and sicker. It hurt a lot. Pretty . . . pretty scary, actually. I wanted to be normal so bad. Sometimes, I still do.”
She paused, and I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know what to say. I just waited, instead, until she went on. “I was a freshman in high school. It was a very fancy school. Private. I was on a scholarship. I mean, totally on a scholarship. That meant I had to do well, or I’d lose it, and my head hurt so much, and I was so sick, it was hard to focus. I was poor, too, and almost nobody else was, let me tell you. I not only had glasses and no chest and no money for lattes or cute after-school clothes, I was also the only one puking all the time. And I couldn’t stand that Hope worried. I couldn’t let anybody worry, or it would be true.”
“It was Hope,” I said carefully, feeling my way, “because your mum was gone.”
“Yeah. Since I was nine. Hope was eighteen when she died, and she became my guardian. I didn’t think about that then, but how scared must she have been? She worked so hard. We were so broke. I didn’t realize how poor we actually were until I started going to that school. We never had a car, but that’s New York. I never had a bike, though. I learned how to ride one here. I never went to a restaurant, a real one, until I was sixteen. I never learned how to swim until we lived with Hemi. Hope and I shared a bed until we moved in with him. Before my mom died, we slept on a fold-out couch in the living room. After she died, that couch was still there, and it stayed there until Hope and Hemi got married and Hope officially moved out. Which was, by the way, twenty-five years from when our mom probably got it, because as far as I know, Hope always slept on it. I didn’t realize that people bought new furniture. I thought you bought one thing, and you used it forever. I slept with Hope my whole life. She rescued me. She always has. And then Hemi rescued both of us.”
“He paid for your surgery.”
“He paid for everything. He had ginger soup delivered when that was all I could eat. He got me diagnosed. He got me into the specialist. We didn’t even have insurance. I think he probably saved my life. I kept my scholarship, somehow or other, until we moved in with him, and after that, he paid for school. Even when they were fighting and Hope left, he kept me with him and let me know he’d always help me. I know he’s too protective, and he’s way too bossy. He’s not always good at boundaries. But you know—he’s almost like my dad. And he didn’t have to be.”
I couldn’t stand this. I couldn’t. The tears were there behind my eyes. “And that makes you not able to trust this, to trust me, how?”
It took a long time for her to answer. “I think maybe I’ve reached my limit,” she finally said. “I know how to work. I know how to figure things out. I have good ideas, or I used to. I don’t think I know how to . . . how to make somebody love me. I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me.” She said that fast, like being vulnerable was something to run away from. I might understand that, too. “I’ve been lucky. I had Hope, and then I had Hemi. I’ve got a good brain. I’m strong physically, other than right now. Strong enough to get over anything. I’m lucky.”
“Or maybe,” I said, “you could think that you’re absolutely bloody fantastic at making somebody love you. Maybe you could think that that’s why you did have Hope, and you had Hemi. Could be that Hope’s good at loving. I’m sure that’s true. But she got good at it by loving you.”
Her shoulders shook, and I felt it. She said, “I don’t . . . cry.” The words came out tight. Choked.
“Maybe you should,” I said, “if you’ve got somebody to hold you while you do it. It could make you feel better. That’s what happened to me. Somebody held me and told me I was strong. I think she even said I was beautiful. Maybe it’d help if I told you that.”
“But . . .” She was still fighting the tears, and I wanted to tell her not to. I wanted to tell her I was here, and I wasn’t sure how to say it. It was pretty bloody frustrating, if you want to know the truth. “It’s . . . dangerous,” she said. “Believing. Like the legend of Mauao.”
“Uh . . . you’ve stumped me here. What legend of Mauao? The mountain, you mean?”
“Yeah. Hope loves it here. I mean, right here. Mount Maunganui. It’s where Hemi proposed to her, on the beach. It’s where all her good things happened. I love it around here, too. It’s home, or almost, because I know it isn’t really. Maybe I’ve always felt a little like Mauao.”
“Which is what?”
“If I tell you . . . you realize I’m doing the thing you’re not supposed to do. Expressing negativity about myself to a potential mate. Off-putting and unromantic. Confidence is sexy.”
“Or,” I said, “allowing him to see all of you.” I kissed the back of her head again, below the spot where the metal plate would be. “In case you haven’t noticed, I enjoy looking at all of you, and you’ve got heaps of sexy confidence. Let’s hear this legend, then.”
“Mauao wasn’t always here,” she said. “That’s the story. He was in the Hautere forest, in the ancient days, and there were three mountains overlooking Makahei Marae. Koro’s marae, and Hemi’s.”
But not hers, because she wasn’t Maori, and this wasn’t quite her whanau, or she thought it wasn’t. “Go on,” I said.
“He stood in the forest then,” she said, “beside Otanewainuku, the tallest mountain, the strongest one. A male mountain. He stood with Puwhenua, too, the most beautiful mountain. The two of them were in love. Mauao didn’t even have a name then. He just stood there, year after year, being the little one, the fifth wheel, in love with Puwhenua and knowing he could never have her heart. It’s a Maori legend, so you’d think he’d fight, somehow, but instead, he decided to take himself away instead, because he couldn’t stand it anymore, loving and losing and having to know it every day. He decided to drown himself in the sea.”
“So far,” I said, “this is a pretty depressing legend.”
She laughed. “I know, right? So he called to the patupaiarehe, the people of the night, and asked them to plait a magical rope and haul him down towards the ocean, and they agreed. They came in the early hours of the night with their magic rope, fastened it around him, and chanted the hauling song, pulling him towards the sea little by little, like you pull a waka. They pulled so hard, they carved out the valley where the Waimapu River flows. That’s what the name means. ‘Weeping waters,’ for the nameless mountain’s tears as he was pulled farther and farther away from his home and his lady mountain. Also what formed the channel between the Mount and Tauranga, so you know.”
“Right,” I said. “So he’s drowned now. Very romantic. Not.”
“No, obviously, because he’s still right here, outside your window. They were almost to the sea when it got too close to dawn. The patupaiarehe had to flee back to the forest where they live, and when the sun rose, the mountain was fixed to that place forever. The patupaiarehe gave him his name before they left, though. Mauao. Means ‘Caught by the morning light.’ Now, he’s not nameless, and he has a job to do, being a home for the birds and the trees, watching over the people. He does his job, but he never got any of his wishes.”
“And you think that’s you,” I said.
Her shoulder lifted in a shrug. “No. Not really. He wanted to die, and I’ve never wanted to die.”
“Good,” I said, “because that’s rubbish. Why are Maori stories always so bloody sad?”
> “Because life can be sad?”
“It can be happy, though, too. That mountain sounds like a quitter to me. The very last thing you are, and I’ll bet the very last thing you’ve ever been.”
She rolled over, finally, and I said, “Take care of your arm.”
“I am.” I could see her face, just, in the moonlight from the window. A moon that shone on the mountain watching over us, over the sea and the trees and the birds. And the woman in the bed beside me. “You’re right,” she said. “That’s a stupid comparison.”
“You could think,” I said, “that he found his job, and he did it. Maybe that’s what he was meant to do all along.”
“Ah,” she said. “But that’s the other thing.”
“What’s that? If it’s the ex—I’ve already decided the ex is a wanker. If Hemi hasn’t already told you so, too, I miss my guess. Besides, I’m better than him.”
She laughed again, and I got a little closer and kissed her mouth. She said, “Yep. Hemi used the same exact word. And, yes, you are.”
“And how did we both know? Because we could see he wasn’t good enough.”
“You’ve never even met him.”
“Don’t have to.”
“Anyway,” she said, “that isn’t the worst thing, no. I don’t miss him. That’s what’s weird. I miss work. I miss it like crazy, but I don’t miss him. I don’t think I ever really had him, so maybe I didn’t lose him. Plus, I hated him for what he did. A lot. I probably still do. I’m not too good at the love/hate thing. It’s one or the other.”
“Same with me,” I said. “Frustrated, yes. Hate, no. Not along with love. Could be we’re passionate, eh. Could be we see things in black and white.”
“The worst thing,” she said, like she hadn’t heard me, “is that I keep thinking I’ll know what to do next. That I’ll get an idea, like I did when I started Prairie Plus. And I just . . . haven’t. I’ve got nothing. I used to wake up every day with ideas. I had a notebook by the bed to write them down, because otherwise, I’d be blundering around in the middle of the night, trying to find a piece of paper so I wouldn’t forget. They were usually something bizarre, like ‘Banana garbanzo muffins,’ because I was eating them in a dream. That one doesn’t work, by the way. I tried making them, just in case I’d been subconsciously brilliant. The texture’s disgusting. But ever since that last day? I’ve got nothing. It’s like I took the money, and they took my brain. I signed a noncompete agreement anyway, so I don’t think I can even see if there actually is some way to make baked goods with legume flour. Brownies, maybe. Never mind. Anyway, when I try to think of an idea for something completely different, something I could do with the agreement, I’m just . . . blank. And I think—what if I’ve already blown my only lucky shot? What if I never do think of something else? I’ll have to join somebody else’s company, I know I will, and I won’t get to say what we do, but what am I even going to bring to the table if I don’t have any more ideas?”
I laughed, and she said, “Hey. It isn’t funny. I’m confessing here. You wanted vulnerable? There you go. Vulnerable.”
“Nah,” I said. “It is funny, a bit. Let me guess. You were lying in hospital, half dead, thinking about how you should be having brilliant ideas for a brand-new kind of product that’ll take the States by storm, and that you’d clearly lost all your mojo because it wasn’t coming to you somehow, between the IV and the infection and the pain and all. Have you ever heard of resting time?”
“What, like sleep? Of course. I’m hearing of it right now. Hey, I’m not the one who asked all these questions and kept me awake.”
Now, I was the one laughing. “Who was the one who said, ‘What are those?’ when I asked her about holidays, though? Farmers don’t plant the same thing in a field every year, do they? They switch it out, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “They plant a cover crop that they plow under. That was part of the idea of Prairie Plus. You have to use a whole lot less fertilizer and so forth if you rotate the right crops. Better weed control, less nutrient leaching, increased water infiltration, et cetera. If you plant the right cover crop, you can use it for things like, oh, for example, mixing with grass-fed meat to create a better burger, while you improve the land. And this is a worse metaphor than my mountain one. It’s making me really depressed.”
“No.” I kissed her again. “It’s a brilliant one. Wait and see. You know the right term, and all the benefits, whilst I exhausted my agricultural knowledge with the general idea. If your brainwaves didn’t get killed by having a tumor in there, I think it’ll take more than losing a job and a wanker boyfriend to do it. Maybe your brain just needs a cover crop, did you think of that? Maybe it needs to take a walk on the beach and feel the waves coming in. Have a swim, be a mermaid for a while. Take a walk up Mauao and hear those birds. Jump off some waterfalls. See some dolphins. Make some space for the ideas to come. Pretty hard to get that space when you’re in the depths of despair, or when you’re back in hospital, with all those feelings from before crowding back in the way they must have done.”
She sighed. “How did you get so smart? It’s like you’re in my head.”
“Dunno. I just am, I guess.” I sighed myself. “It’s my gift, eh.”
She laughed and hit me in the arm, and I grinned back in the darkness and said, “You’re pretty good at that yourself, being in my head. Could be that our pieces fit after all.”
“Even though I said the absolute wrong thing today, which you haven’t given me a hard time about yet, because you’re being careful. OK, I’m putting it on the table, because I’m not careful. I was tactless. About the real-estate thing,” she clarified, when I didn’t answer. “And how you should have known. Which I said in front of everybody. And don’t say you didn’t care, because I know you cared. You walked off. Besides, Hemi told me I shouldn’t have said it.”
“Oh. Yeh, I did care. On the other hand—that’s you, eh. If it’s a choice between waiting for the right moment and choosing the right words, and blurting it out the second it occurs to you? Reckon you’ll blurt it out every time. Also, I was pretty stupid, obviously. But then, if we hadn’t both been stupid about that, we wouldn’t be here, and yet here we are. Maybe we should take advantage of it and go make some more room for ideas in that brain of yours.”
“What will we be doing for you, though?” she asked. “I’m not the only one at loose ends here.”
“And there you go, blurting it out again. Well, on Monday, I’m going to Dunedin, to the Limb Centre, for my next appointment. That’s not too exciting. I could show you my house, though, maybe. We could also have some more sex. There’s an idea. That could help pass the time while we wait for inspiration to strike.”
Karen
When I opened my eyes, it was to the comforting sight of my lonely guardian of a mountain, because the blinds were open. The doors to the terrace were open, too. I knew that because I could feel the touch of the breeze and hear the faint roar of the sea. Possibly my favorite sound in the world, so I closed my eyes and dozed a little more, drifting on the ebb and flow of that roar, the call and answer of the seabirds.
The next time I woke up, I was a little more with it. I rolled over, looked at the digital clock on the bedside table, sat up straight, tried to blink the sleep away, and remembered about four things at once.
One: That Jax had seriously rocked my world last night. I was still a little swollen and sore from an excess of usage, in fact, and all it took was remembering the look on his face when he’d told me, “Shut up and do what I tell you,” to set up some major throbbing. Two: He hadn’t woken me up to do it again, so maybe all of that hadn’t been as hot to him as it had been to me. He’d said he hadn’t had sex since before he’d gotten injured, and before that, he’d been in the Special Forces. In Afghanistan, where I couldn’t believe there’d been tons of opportunity. He wasn’t any more eager for me than that? Three: That I’d somehow spilled absolutely everything to him in the aftermath, li
ke he really was my star twin, or possibly like I’d been drunk—on half a beer—and that I couldn’t remember quite what he’d said in response to all that oversharing of my seriously not-hot weaknesses. I’d told him about my head. And my early poverty, probably in a woe-is-me way, which I never did. Nobody wanted to hear that. And then there was my business failure. I wasn’t sure which of those was worse, and the memory made my skin flush. Not in a sexy way.
Oh, and four. Wait. Four was that it was . . . eight-eleven, and we were meeting Hemi and Hope, and Jax’s sister, whose name I somehow couldn’t remember right now, plus five kids, in nineteen minutes. I stumbled out of bed fast, caught my foot in the duvet, and nearly crashed to the ground. Which was when Jax came through the door. He was across the room, somehow, before I’d hit the floor, his hands under my arms, setting me on my feet.
I said, “Thanks.” My head was still fuzzy, and I was a little dizzy, too. “How did I sleep that long? That had to be ten hours at least. Why didn’t you wake me up? Wait. I’m naked. Shoot. Where are my clothes?”
I was searching in my duffel, which was sitting on the dresser. I’d never unpacked it, since I’d spent almost all my time in this apartment in bed. Jax said, “Those may be rhetorical questions, but in order: Because you were tired, because you were tired, and your clothes are right there under your hands, except for the things you’ve been wearing, because I did your washing along with mine this morning and hung it on the rack. Sorry, baby, but your pretty dress is all wet. Almost as wet as you were last night.”
I’d found a pair of bikinis and a seriously not-hot sports bra, and now, I pulled on the underwear and tried to get the bra the right way around. “And, see,” I told Jax, “it’s hardly awkward at all having you say that, and having you look at me naked and messy in the, uh, genital area, after only the second time we’ve had sex, or the first, depending how you count, while you’re all cool and dressed and ready to go. Also, I have a bad feeling that I overshared.”
Kiwi Rules (New Zealand Ever After Book 1) Page 28