Just Come Over

by James, Rosalind

  Rhys thought, You may be good at messing about with people’s knees, mate, but you don’t win any prizes for emotional intelligence. I know what “opportunity cost” means, too. He asked, “How many doctors in New Zealand? Heaps, is it?”

  “Fifteen thousand?” Craig said. “Somewhere around there. Why?”

  Rhys passed a hand through his hair, doing his best to look like he was trying to puzzle it out. “What do you need to get started with it? A University diploma?”

  “Of course,” Craig said, sounding stiff. “Ten years of training in all. More like fourteen, for a surgeon.”

  “That’s work,” Rhys agreed. “Reward, too, though, I reckon. What’s the percentage of Uni diplomas? In adults, that is?”

  “About twenty percent,” Nils said, starting to look interested.

  “And three million adults in the country, or thereabouts? So you’d have six hundred thousand of them with some kind of diploma?”

  “I’m guessing your own diploma’s in maths,” Nils said, with some more amusement. “Or statistics, maybe.”

  “I don’t have one. I was one of those fellas who started getting professional concussions at eighteen. I can compute twenty percent, though. Maybe you can help me with the percentage of diploma holders who are doctors. What did we say? Fifteen thousand out of six hundred thousand?”

  “Nothing wrong with your memory,” Nils said.

  “I’m feeling lost,” Candy said, which at least gave her points for honesty.

  Rhys told her, “If ten percent of diploma holders were doctors, that would be sixty thousand. It’s fifteen thousand, though, so it’s about two-point-five percent. Fair enough?”

  “That would be about right.” Craig sounded more than stiff now. “I’m sure there’s a point to this.”

  “Nah,” Rhys said. “I’m just running a couple of drills, making sure my cognitive function’s still hitting minimum standard.”

  “Interesting,” Nils said. “Let’s have the second half of it, then. You can’t judge the match by the first forty minutes. Two-point-five percent of diploma holders are doctors, we’ve got that established. Give me the statistics on the percentage of rugby players who become professionals.”

  “Maybe five hundred of them at any one time,” Rhys said. “Out of a hundred fifty thousand registered players. You could say it’s fortunate that only about a third of a percent of the people who give rugby a go will end up beating out the competition and facing that major concussion risk. Of course, there’s still the opportunity cost, that missed Uni and all, but every profession’s got its downside, eh.”

  Nils laughed out loud, sat back, and gave him a slow clap. “He’s got you there,” he told Craig. “You got me there, for a minute,” he told Rhys. “Well done.”

  Which was when the server came back with the wine and the others’ desserts, and also when Rhys felt a disturbance in the force, and looked around to see Zora charging back across the room.

  Nils wasn’t the only one who was going to be dealing with an explosion tonight. Also, Rhys may have failed to score in the “suck up to the girl’s dad” department. He’d done all right on the composure, but not so much on the respect, probably.

  But then, he was a competitive bloke. He may have had a few scores to settle for Dylan, too.

  Zora got back to the table and slid in opposite Rhys. Her dress rode up more than a few centimeters, and she wished she were alone with him so he could have watched it happen. She took a sip of her Mai Tai, and then another, and felt the rum burning its way down her throat, followed by the cooling touch of lime.

  She needed cooling off, and Rhys . . . maybe didn’t. The fire inside him was turned up to the max, he’d damped it ruthlessly down, and nobody did “controlled intensity” like Rhys.

  Her own fire, unfortunately, wasn’t controlled at all. Her mum’s wasn’t, either, and her dad, she realized, was looking seriously rattled, or seriously narky.

  You could call that “unexpected.” You could call it “unprecedented,” in fact. Candy looked expectant, and Nils looked coolly amused. What had been going on here?

  Rhys plucked her drink from her hand, took a sip, then said, “What the hell,” and finished it off, and she laughed. He smiled at her in that slow, sweet way that melted her bones, like there were only the two of them here, and asked, “Good chat? You look a little flustered, baby. But so good.” Which made everybody at the table sit up a little straighter.

  The waiter came over with the wine and went through his presentation, which fortunately gave Zora a chance to gather her wits. “Oysters and sweets in two seconds,” the server said. “Not together, of course.”

  Thank goodness. They were moving this thing on.

  “Can I offer anybody else a glass?” Rhys asked, holding the wine bottle aloft.

  “I’d love to try some,” Candy said. “But you won’t want us drinking it up.”

  There was amusement lurking in Rhys’s hazel eyes now. “I reckon I can run to another bottle, if I need to.” The waiter came over with a tray and distributed tiny dishes, and Rhys asked, “Could you bring us four more wine glasses, please?”

  Zora wanted to say, What are you doing? They’ll be here all night, and all I want is for them to leave. Rhys looked back at her, and something about that look said, Anticipation is a beautiful thing. I’d like to make you feel it. And despite everything, despite her parents, despite her mum, she felt the shiver start low and move all the way up her body, and she thought he saw it.

  The glasses came, Rhys poured wine for Nils and Candy, Zora’s parents both refused it, and Zora’s mum took a tiny spoonful of her already-minuscule serving of sorbet as if it contained more calories than a celery stick and asked, “Who’s minding the kids while you’re out?”

  “I got a babysitter,” Zora said. This was the oddest dinner she’d ever attended. She tipped up an oyster shell, swallowed down the salty freshness, sighed, touched her mouth with her serviette, and told Rhys, “Delicious.”

  He wanted her to anticipate? Maybe she wanted him to as well. He tipped his head back, drank down his own oyster, and said, “Nothing like the taste of the sea,” while Zora’s dad’s face got, if possible, even tighter.

  “I didn’t realize you had more than one child,” Candy told Zora. “I thought there was only one, somehow. They must be a comfort to you.”

  “One of them is mine,” Rhys said, not a bit like somebody who was dropping a fifteen-kiloton bomb into the middle of the table. “My daughter, Casey Moana. I brought her back from Chicago recently, after her mum died.”

  “Oh,” Candy said faintly. “That sounds like a . . . change.”

  “It was,” Rhys said, “but a good one. I thought a move to Auckland, my first real house, my first Super Rugby team, and my divorce were pushing the limits. I’ve ended up with a little girl to come home to, and some rabbits as well. And then I fell in love with my sister-in-law. Life can surprise you, eh.”

  Bomb detonated.

  While everybody was still frozen in the fallout, Rhys pulled out his phone, clicked around, and handed it across the table to Candy. “That’s my little girl, Casey, along with Zora’s son, Isaiah, with the bunnies in my back garden.”

  “Oh,” Candy said, not looking witchy at all. Looking like her heart was melted all the way into a puddle. By Rhys, by Casey, or by both, who knew. “She’s adorable. What a look she has of you. Isaiah, too. They could be brother and sister. And the tiny bunnies with their ears hanging down. How old is she?”

  “Six,” Rhys said. “Year Two at school. She’s had some catching up to do, as they do their schooling differently in the States, but she’s getting on by leaps and bounds. Learning to play rugby, too. She’s good, and so is Isaiah, and they’re getting better.”

  “She is,” Zora said. “To all of it.”

  “She’s had to start again all over the shop,” Rhys told Candy, “losing her mum and meeting me for the first time, not to mention a new country, a new scho
ol, and a new auntie and cousin. Fortunately, she does have that auntie and cousin, she’s got courage to burn, and possibly a will of iron, too. I wouldn’t have said that rabbits were on my list before, and now, somehow, I have four.”

  “Got you wrapped around her finger, is what it is,” Zora teased.

  “Probably so,” Rhys said, his smile making it almost all the way out. “I have my own weaknesses, maybe. Seems I’ve just laid them on the table.”

  Candy showed the photo to Zora’s mum, and she started to say something, stopped, started again, and stopped again, then handed the phone back to Candy. “Beautiful little girl,” she finally said, then set her serviette on the table and asked Zora’s dad, “Are you nearly ready to go?”

  Nils and Candy exchanged a glance, and Nils said, “You’re right. We should leave Rhys and Zora to their evening,” and finished off his glass of wine. “Excellent choice,” he told Rhys. “Very nice.”

  Credit cards, then, and finally, good-byes. Nils shook Rhys’s hand and said, “It’s been illuminating. Good luck tomorrow.”

  “Cheers,” Rhys said.

  He bent and kissed Candy’s cheek, and she put her hand to it once he’d stepped back, laughed in a flustered way, and said, “Lovely to meet you.” After that, she kissed Zora and whispered in her ear, “Grab him,” then tucked her arm through Zora’s mum’s and said, “What a lovely dinner. I’m so glad you asked us.”

  At least one of them was enthusiastic.

  Rhys waited until the waiter had moved their table back over, until Zora had tucked her skirt under herself and sat down again, crossing her legs, one hand going to her hair, as if she could tame it. As if that were possible. Her cheeks were still wonderfully flushed, and she wasn’t quite looking at him. Instead, she was taking a bite of whitebait fritter, as if that were easier than the rest of it. Which was true.

  “I love these,” she said with a sigh. “My mum’s horrified.”

  “By whitebait?”

  She smiled, finally, reluctantly, and lost a bit of her tension. “By everything. My slutty dress. My undisciplined body. My unrestrained dining choices. Your pearls, and the way I’m wearing them, like I’m advertising to the entire world exactly how much I want you.”

  He was still reacting to that when she said, “And most of all . . . by you. The way you look tonight, so hard and so dark. The way you look at me. That you and I are out here for everyone to see. And you know what? I don’t care. Told her so, too.”

  “Well,” he said, his tongue feeling too big for his mouth, “that’s good.”

  She was starting to smile now. Getting her confidence back, maybe. The sway in her step, the fierce in her curvy body. “You know what I call unfair, though?” she asked him, and he thought, No, but I know what I do. She said, “How easily men get off the hook. All you had to do was show Candy that photo of Casey and the bunnies, be that sweet about her, and she was melting. She didn’t care about anything she’d heard about you, or that you’re sleeping with your brother’s widow. She cared about those muscles of yours, how you look in all that black, the dimple in your chin and the look in your eyes, and how you talked about your little girl.”

  He said, “I know what I call unfair. Having to watch you eat oysters in front of your parents. Having to waste all this time when I was planning to make you feel beautiful, and to show off how much I want you. Have I mentioned that you knock me out?” He had hold of her hand, somehow, and was running his thumb over her knuckles. “I don’t give a damn what your mum thinks of your food choices. I know that I love the way you look in that dress, the way you wore my pearls down your back, and the way you bought the shoes I wanted. I love how soft and mussed your hair is right now, I love your gorgeous mouth, and I love your sweet body and every single thing it can do. And I want to take off your clothes right now.”

  She shuddered, because she couldn’t do anything else. Long, slow, and rolling all the way through her, like a wave tumbling her, helpless, in the sea. His voice would never be smooth, and the edge of roughness only added to the thrill. He wasn’t smiling anymore, and now, the fires weren’t banked. He said, “Yeh. That’s it. That’s what I want. Tell me what you’re wearing under that. Whisper it in my ear. Get me through this dinner.”

  She’d never been a woman who made a man’s breath catch, but she was that woman tonight. She said, “I’ve been wanting to tell you that all night. It’s all I want. But first, I need to tell you something else. Something I told my mum.”

  “Did I mention,” he said, “that I’m feeling a bit tired of your parents?”

  She had to laugh, and to drink some more wine, which made her realize exactly how good it was, bursting with dark fruit and exotic spices, with veins of chocolate, tobacco, and smoke running through all of it. She took another bite of fritter, too, savoring its richness and the lemony sauce, and Rhys said, “And now I’d say you’re stalling. If you need to tell me—tell me. Just don’t tell me that thing again about how it’s once, and then we’re done. It’s not once. It’s never going to be once.”

  She had a hand on her heart, because it was racing. She waited to be able to breathe again, but it wasn’t getting better, so she just said it. “Right. Here I go, then, because I need to say it. I hated that I couldn’t tell my parents the truth about you. That I couldn’t explain that you didn’t cheat on Victoria, and exactly why and how you lied, and who you were protecting when you did it. I wanted to tell my mum that you took Casey when you didn’t have to, and I wanted to tell her all about the man you are underneath that scary surface. And it hit me so hard to realize. It knocked me flat. I keep thinking about how you make my knees weak, how much I want to feel you kiss me, but it’s so much more than that. It’s how much I admire the man you are. How far you’ve brought yourself, how hard you’ve worked, and then how much harder, every time you think you’ve fallen short. How hard you are on yourself, and what that says about you. And maybe I realized how much trouble I’m in, too. The way I nearly stumble when I’m around you, because my feet stop working and I lose my train of thought. The way I feel when you look at me in the kitchen, when all I want is for you to put your hand on my waist and lean over and kiss me, and dance me around the room, just because you want to hold me. The way I need you, like it’s an addiction. The way I . . . love you. That’s the main thing I realized, and it’s the scariest thing of all.”

  The words fell out, and they took her breath with them. Across from her, Rhys was frozen, his eyes locked on her. She said, “Maybe this is an . . .” Her voice trembled, and she could no more help it than she could help going on. “An affair, and I don’t know how to do an affair. If it’s that, if it’s a . . . a hookup, or—a series of hookups, whatever you call that, because I don’t even know—I don’t have any ammunition for that. I don’t have any armor. So if it’s that? Could you . . . could you tell me, so I can try to stop? Because right now, I’m so far gone, it scares me.”

  “Zora. Stop.” He’d put his hand over her mouth, straight across the table. The couple next to them was looking over. Zora could see it, and she couldn’t care. Rhys took his hand away, brushed the back of it over her cheek, and said, that edge of roughness still there in his voice, but so much warmth in his eyes, “Don’t you remember, baby, that I already said it? I’ve already jumped in. I’m right here, ready to catch you, and I’m one hell of a swimmer. I’m not going to let you go.”

  “I . . .” Her hand was shaking on her fork. Too many emotions tonight, and no defenses left. Her heart was laid bare, and her blood felt too hot in her head, like she could actually feel it pulsing at her throat, her temples. She had nothing to cover herself with, not anymore. “I didn’t know if you . . . if you meant it that way.”

  “I meant it that way. You’re my Bathsheba, you always have been, and I need you like a needle in my vein. I don’t care about right or wrong, or maybe that’s not it. It’s that I can’t see how my feelings for you could possibly be wrong.”

  It was s
o hard to believe in him, but he was asking her to believe anyway. “This scares me so much.” She tried to laugh, and couldn’t. “I’d run away, but I can’t.”

  “You don’t need to be scared. Not while I’m here.”

  Surely, no man’s voice had ever carried such assurance, or such tenderness. “And you won’t lie to me?” she asked. “Please, Rhys. Promise me. I can hear the truth. I can take the truth, no matter how hard it is. I’ve done it so many times. I can’t take any more lies, though. I can’t.”

  She didn’t cry in front of people, but she was holding Rhys’s hand across a table in front of too many curious eyes, and the tears were right there on the edge of her lashes. One of them trembled there, a drop of silver at the edge of her vision, and she felt it travel slowly down her cheek, warm and wet, and more of them came after it. She sobbed once, pressed her serviette to her mouth, and tried to stop.

  Rhys’s thumbs came up and wiped the tears away, and his voice was gentle when he said, “I’ll never lie to you. You have my word.”

  “And your word’s . . .” She tried to get herself steady again, and failed. “Good.”

  She asked him with her eyes, and he answered.

  “Always.”

  He asked the server to put their steaks and sides in a box. He asked for the chocolate fondant, too, and he took the rest of the wine. And then he took Zora home.

  Twenty-five minutes once again. The middle-aged woman behind the wheel was Maori, cheerful, and not chatty. Of course, maybe that was because she’d seen his face. She asked him, when she’d swung the car around a corner and onto the quiet, dark streets of Herne Bay, “Would you like music?”

  “Yeh,” he said. “Thanks.”

  Her hand hesitated on the dashboard knob. “Sounds of the heartland OK? Relaxing, eh. Good for driving at night.”

  “Uh . . . sure.” He didn’t care. He needed some cover while he got his equilibrium back, that was all. He had Zora’s hand in his again. Her left hand. She was wearing no jewelry but his pearls, and he laced her bare fingers through his, thought how much better it would be if she were wearing a ring there, and touched the pulse at her wrist with his thumb as the haunting melody of the bone flute wove its way through his body, its only punctuation the breath of the musician. The car picked up speed, and the flute mingled with the resonant click of percussion instruments, all of it sounding, somehow, exactly like a waka full of warriors rowing in perfect unison down a nighttime river. The fern trees and vines hanging low on either side, the water rushing beneath them, hiding the sounds of their passage. The harshness of their breath, the muscles of shoulders and arms standing out in fierce relief with their effort.