Just Come Over

by James, Rosalind

  “Because he’s her brother,” Rhys said. He kicked another ball back to Casey and tried not to sweat. Was he meant to get into a discussion of incest taboos here? He’d better not be supposed to explain sex. Did you do that at eight years old? He’d known by then, but he’d learned from his cousins. Also, their information may not have been precisely accurate.

  “But you’re kind of her brother too,” Isaiah said. “You’re my dad’s brother. That’s almost the same.”

  “But not,” Rhys said. “We don’t share blood.” Seemed he was talking about incest taboos.

  “Yuck. People don’t share blood. Except if they’re vampires, and that’s not sharing, either. That’s drinking.”

  Rhys had to laugh, but rearranged his face when Isaiah looked affronted. “Means we’re not in the same family,” he explained. “We don’t have the same mum and dad, and we’re not cousins, either, whose parents—or their grandparents or aunties or uncles, if you’re Maori, which you are—had the same mum and dad.”

  “Oh.” Isaiah considered that. “Like Casey.”

  “Exactly like Casey.” More than you know, mate.

  “Aiden still says it’s gross, though,” Isaiah persisted. “If you’re kissing Mum, I mean, even though he says it’s probably good, because you’re famous, and because you’re richer than her, and boyfriends sometimes buy things. But Mum is very busy. She always says she doesn’t have time to do fun things at the weekend. She has to go to bed early, and then she has to clean the house and go grocery shopping and do paperwork and lots of other things when she’s done with the flowers. I don’t think she has time to have a boyfriend.”

  Zora might know what to say about that, but she wasn’t here. Rhys was, so he took his best shot. “Could be you’re the one missing some time with her,” he said. “Sharing her with Casey, and with me. Could be that your Saturday isn’t looking like you think it should.”

  “Yes. Because I wanted to ask Aiden to come over today and build robots with me, but Casey’s still going to be there, and she can’t go home, because of your game.”

  “Oh. Huh.” Rhys considered that, then had to sprint for a wild ball from Casey. “Here,” he told Isaiah, flicking the ball to him from behind his back. “Talking and training’s better. Keep your head up and your eye on Casey while you’re kicking it. She’s your target. Your foot goes where your eye does.”

  Isaiah kicked. “Better,” Rhys said. “Always think about where you’re sending it. You’re never just booting it off into space. You always have a plan.”

  “OK.”

  “Here’s another idea. Why don’t you tell your mum that you need some time with your friend?”

  “Because Casey will be lonesome if I say she can’t come in my room, and she’ll be more lonesome if Aiden’s there. I have to be nice, because her mum died, and she’s only six.”

  “It’s hard to be nice when you’re feeling narky,” Rhys said. “And the narkier you feel, the harder it is to hide it, until you can’t be nice at all anymore, and you explode, which is no good for anybody. At least that’s what generally happens to me. Your mum’s a pretty clever lady. If you tell her what you told me, I reckon she can think of something that will work for everybody.”

  Which was, yes, booting the ball into space without a plan. Fortunately, Zora was good at picking it up and running with it. He’d have a word with her when he dropped the kids off.

  One step at a time.

  So all that wasn’t bad. When he was in the glassed-in coach’s box high above Eden Park about ten hours later, though, and the game clock had ticked down to seventy-six minutes? Things were a little more tense.

  The score was thirteen to ten, and the Crusaders had the thirteen. A defensive battle, but his defense had mostly held. On attack, they hadn’t gone quite so well.

  Just now, though, he was sitting rigid, his pen forgotten in his hand, while they held again. The Crusaders were inside ten meters, their forwards smashing into the line time after time, and being met and driven back, over and over again. A surprise cutout pass, then, a long one, to one of the backs on the wing, and Finn was leaning forward beside Rhys, the tension all but quivering in him.

  The wing took four steps toward the inside, his halfback running at his shoulder, pitched the dummy pass toward the tramlines at the edge of the field, making Kevin McNicholl move that way, then passed it back inside to a lock. To Kane Armstrong, all six foot eight of him, with a wingspan like an albatross, four meters from the line.

  Tom Koru-Mansworth hadn’t been fooled by that dummy pass, not this time. The second the ball was in the air to Kane, he’d started moving, and Kane hadn’t pulled it in yet when Tom hit him hard.

  Six foot six, fifteen Kg’s of new muscle on him, and still growing. He smashed Kane straight in the chest, and you could practically hear the impact as he sent Kane backward. And released him, exactly like he should have done, before plunging back into the battle. Marko Sendoa was at the breakdown in a heartbeat, getting himself over the ball as the Crusaders did the same on the other side.

  Finn had his hands on the table in front of him. Rhys didn’t. He was just watching. Marko’s feet were planted, supporting his body weight, and he was still wrestling for that ball as Hugh barreled in behind him and Kors did the same on the other side.

  Marko pulled the ball out. Three meters from the line, but passed back hard to Nico, the fullback, in the time it took to blink, and it was off Nico’s boot and sailing, not toward the touchline, where the Crusaders would get their chance again in a lineout, but in a short box kick, high into the air, where the Blues could compete for it.

  No risk, no reward. Seventy-eight minutes on the clock, two minutes to go, and Nico was chasing his own kick, looking up, then leaping more than a meter into the air at the same time the Crusaders’ No. 10 went for the ball.

  A clash of bodies, and Nico went down hard onto the turf and stayed down as a Crusaders forward collected the spilled ball and Nico got to his feet, shook his head, worked his shoulder, and trotted back into position.

  Seventy-nine minutes and thirty seconds, and the Crusaders were the ones not giving up the ball.

  Twenty seconds.

  Ten seconds.

  The hooter sounded, a Crusaders player kicked the ball into touch, and the referee blew his whistle.

  Game over.

  Heading into the sheds after the game as the players sat on their benches, unwound tape from around wrists and thighs, and didn’t meet each other’s eyes. Nobody was going for the beer, which was good. Rhys shook hands, each in turn, spending a moment extra with Nico. “You collected a stinger there,” he said, and Nico said, “Yeh. No worries.”

  Tomorrow was soon enough. Rhys moved down to Kors. The kid was taking off his boots, all of him mud- and grass-stained, his cheekbone already swelling red.

  “That was switched on,” Rhys said, clasping his hand. “And then it was switched higher. Well done.”

  Kors nodded, but he didn’t look happy. Which was good, too. You weren’t meant to look happy, or feel that way, after a loss.

  A half hour later, he was saying the same thing from the coach’s table, sitting beside Finn at the postgame press conference.

  “What’s the mood in the sheds?” a journo asked.

  “What do you think?” Rhys asked. “They’re gutted.”

  “A good effort, surely,” the man persisted. “Especially from your bench.”

  “We made good progress on some things,” Rhys said. “Our defense, for one, which is mainly down to Finn, and the leadership on the field. But if you don’t hate to lose, you don’t belong here.”

  “It was risky, surely, going for the box kick at the end,” another man said. “Should you have kicked into touch instead and tried to steal the lineout, or held onto the ball, with that little time on the clock?”

  “If it had come off,” Rhys said, “you’d be telling me we were brilliant. I’m feeling pretty proud of the stand we made, down there
at the end, and the turnover, too. Full credit to the Crusaders, though. They played a good game tonight.”

  “How would you rate your own performance?” somebody else had to ask. “Three wins and two losses put you fourth on the table, if the Hurricanes win against the Brumbies tomorrow as expected. Are you thinking about your job?”

  Cheers, mate, Rhys didn’t say. I hadn’t noticed. “The season’s got a ways to go yet,” he said. “I’m not in charge of rating my performance, and I’ll worry about my job when somebody gives me reason to. We’ll take our learnings from this and get better from it. You can’t change the past. All you can do is move ahead into the future.”

  They should put him on a fortune cookie. It was what he’d told Zora. All he had was rugby wisdom.

  Part of that hadn’t been true, though. He was in charge of rating his performance and, if it wasn’t up to scratch, seeing what he needed to do to improve it. Which meant he had a couple things he needed to do tomorrow. Things he should have done weeks ago.

  He needed to call Zora.

  Eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, and Rhys was descending the plane’s staircase onto the tarmac of Christchurch Airport in the blowing rain, something he’d done about a thousand times before. This time, though, he wasn’t collecting a bag, or carrying one, either. Today’s was a day trip. Two day trips, actually. This was Step One.

  A stop at the car-hire counter, where the young woman said, “Here you are,” without a flicker of recognition, and handed over the keys, and he thought about fourteen years in this city, about not being able to go anywhere without posing for a photo on somebody’s phone, and didn’t mind the change a bit. Somebody else’s turn, and it had never been his favorite thing anyway.

  His favorite thing had been playing. Absolutely no contest. Playing was an ice cream at the beach on a summer day, or your first time out with the girl you wanted most, when she was smiling at you and letting you know that she wanted you, too. Playing was all the best things rolled into one.

  Except that days weren’t always sunny, and girls didn’t always keep smiling.

  He drove toward Sumner, his windscreen wipers struggling to keep up with the wind-driven deluge. The block of exclusive townhouses where he’d lived was still perched up there on a cliff, overlooking the sea. It hadn’t been damaged too badly in the earthquakes, so that wasn’t why Victoria wasn’t living in it anymore. She’d wanted a fresh start, and she probably hadn’t been able to manage the mortgage alone, even with alimony.

  Everybody had to move on, he guessed.

  He didn’t drive all the way there, because most of Sumner’s retail space was still missing. Instead, he headed to Ferry Road, and the new place where Vic had asked him to meet her. It was on the water, which was good. A sea view was always better for calming the mind, and she’d feel on home turf.

  His hands tensed on the wheel, and he flexed his fingers and drew his shoulder blades down his back with a deliberate effort. It was that same old thing. You couldn’t outrun trouble. Trouble had a way of catching up. If you were smart, you went to meet it.

  He spotted the place through the rain. Evil Genius, it was called. New since his time, or rather, an old building made new again, weathered brick and wood. He shrugged his anorak on and headed in, moving fast and getting wet anyway.

  It was a bit loud inside, and crowded, too, which was no surprise. Things were always crowded in Christchurch. Too many people wanting someplace to go on Sunday morning, and not enough places for them to be.

  He found Victoria instantly, his eyes going to the right spot in the way they did when you knew somebody that well. She was sitting at the end of the bar, having a chat with the fella behind it, looking poised. Confident, and not a bit dressed up for this, in loose cotton trousers and a snug top that showed off her slim, strong figure and the muscle tone of her arms. Her blonde hair was loose, but in a casual way rather than a sexy one. Showing him she hadn’t made a special effort for him. Fair enough.

  She didn’t look around. Not watching for him, then. He headed over there, waited until she noticed him, and said, “Hi, Vic.”

  “Hi, Rhys.” She didn’t stand, and he thought about kissing her cheek and decided, Better not. Instead, he sat down.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said. “How ya goin’? The personal training going well, is it?”

  “Going fine,” she said. “Going better once we’re divorced.”

  All right, then. He saw wariness in the set of her shoulders, thought about the vibrant woman he’d married, and set the thought aside. She could be that woman again. She might be that woman already. Just not today.

  She wouldn’t be seeing the man she’d married, either. He hoped she was seeing a better one. He suspected she wouldn’t care.

  “If this is about the property settlement,” she said, “I’m not discussing it with you. That’s why you have attorneys.” She took a sip of something that looked healthy. Green and thick, and he’d bet it had flaxseed in it. Victoria was disciplined. He’d liked that about her, and she’d liked it about him. Discipline gave you a place to go when everything else had failed to function, and that was comfort.

  Sometimes, though, disciplined people had trouble with barriers. Letting them down, that is. Just now, Victoria’s barriers were fully operational, which meant he needed to come out from behind his and take the flak, or there was no point to this.

  Not easy.

  “Can I get you something?” the fella behind the bar asked, and Rhys said, “Flat white, please. Single.” He didn’t need any more jitters.

  “It’s not about the settlement,” he told Vic once the man moved off, “and it’s not about the divorce. Two weeks, and it’s done. I didn’t come to talk about that. I came because there are a couple of issues in my life that are bound to come out pretty soon in the press, and I wanted you to hear about them from me first.”

  She’d been starting to take a drink of her smoothie. Now, she put the glass down, every line of her taut body saying she was holding it together with an effort.

  He hated that he had to say all this. He needed to say it anyway. It was hard for him to do? It would be harder on her if he didn’t, and he owed her this much.

  “What issues?” she asked.

  He’d assumed he’d get something to eat while they were here. Probably not happening. “First,” he said, “that I have a daughter. Casey. She was living in Chicago, and now she’s with me, because her mum’s died. She’s six years and nine months old.”

  He’d thought about which thing to discuss first. He’d decided it didn’t matter. Neither of them was going to be any fun for her to hear.

  Her fingers shook on the glass, and he wanted to grab her hand and hold it. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t true, that he hadn’t just swept the rug of her life out from under her and told her that nothing about the two of them had been real.

  He had to keep this secret, though. Nothing else was going to work for Casey. What would Vic have said anyway, if he’d told her the truth? If he’d said, “It actually wasn’t me. It was Dylan. He told her he was me, you see, and then he put my name on the birth certificate, and . . .” Who would believe that? Then he’d not only be a cheater and a liar, he’d be a coward, too. She didn’t need to think she’d been married to a coward, and he couldn’t stand to have her think it.

  Which didn’t matter, because he couldn’t say it.

  She grabbed the edge of the bar, and he said, “I’m sorry.” Which wasn’t nearly enough to say, but what else did he have?

  She swallowed hard, and then her blue eyes met his. A world of pain in there. She took a breath, then asked, “What’s the other thing?”

  Nothing wrong with her courage, then or now.

  He said, “I’m seeing Zora, and I plan to marry her as soon as we can.”

  It took her a moment. Shock, was what that was. “Your sister-in-law? Dylan’s wife? That Zora?”

  Now, he saw something else besides hurt. Anger. Fury, in f
act. That was good, though. Better to think he was a son of a bitch than that something was wrong with her. That was how Zora had felt—that she wasn’t desirable enough for Dylan to stick to, that she didn’t mean enough to him to matter.

  Anger was definitely better.

  “Yeh,” he said. “That Zora.”

  The fella behind the bar set his flat white down in front of him, probably considered whether to ask about ordering food, and prudently decided that the answer was “No,” because he headed to the other side of the place instead. Explosion imminent, his posture said. Which was what Vic’s said, too.

  “Were you . . . sleeping with her?” Vic was barely getting the words out. “While we were married? Was that why it was so awkward? Why you went so odd while he was dying? Just waiting, were you? I thought it was me, but it was you, wasn’t it?” Her fingers shook on the bar, and he knew that if he did grab them, they’d be ice. When she took too much emotion on board, her body went cold. Trying to shut down, or to send the blood to the parts that needed it. Her heart, and her brain. Trying to stay in control.

  She couldn’t stand to lose control, because it meant letting the hurt in. He knew how she felt. He’d had forty years to find out.

  Stay calm, he told himself. Show some maturity. Show some bloody compassion. Take what she has to dish out. She’s going to need to know she said it. “No,” he said. “Not before we were married, and not while we were married, or while she was, either. I didn’t sleep with anybody else while you and I were married. Not until I moved out, anyway. Didn’t kiss anybody else, for that matter, from the time I married you.” He could give her that, anyway. Maybe.

  “And you expect me to believe that.” She stood up, nearly stumbling over the stool in her haste, not a bit like cool, collected Victoria. “You were in love with her all along. You were holding back all along. That was what was wrong, not me. Do you know how much I thought it was me? You bastard.”