Just for You (10 page)

“Well, then,” Reka said, “want me to pack, or mind kids?”

“Pack, please,” Ana said. “It’s just…so
much
. I weeded down, and weeded down, and I can’t see how we still have so much. Most of it’s rubbish, I know that, but not rubbish I can afford to buy all over again. And how’re we going to fit it all into the flat?”

“Easy as,” Reka said bracingly as they moved into the jungle of pasteboard boxes and piles of gear, with Tai bang in the middle of it all. He’d dumped a pile of mini racecars out of a plastic bag, was sending them on a noisy journey around a pile of his baby brother’s clothes and up onto a stack of books.

Reka left him to it. He had to do something, and this was less destructive than some games he could be playing. She dropped to her knees and began to sort the haphazard piles into reasonable categories. “You’ve had most of their things in two rooms of the house,” she told her cousin as she did it, “and you’re moving into a two-bedroom flat. Same space. It just looks bad because you don’t have it shoved into drawers, that’s all. Got a marker for these boxes?”

“Um…” Ana looked around vaguely. “Desk, maybe.”

Reka didn’t waste any more time, just got stuck in. Ana’s man Joseph had insisted, on hearing the news about Tai’s near escape, that it was time for the family to be together
again, and Ana, despite her doubts and fears about leaving her native country, had acquiesced.

“Wish we didn’t have to go,” she sighed now, sitting cross-legged on the floor and beginning to feed Tamati. “But it’s too hard, being alone. Even though I’m not alone, because I’m with Mum and Uncle Matiu, and you, and all the cousins, and there I’ll just be with Joseph. Am I doing the right thing, d’you think?”

“Just with Joseph, and the kids, and half the rest of En Zed,” Reka reminded her. “Everyone’ll be in the same boat, surely. Missing the whanau, helping each other out. They’re still Maori, aren’t they. You’ll be having a hangi before you know it. Roast kangaroo.” She grinned at her cousin. “I hear it tastes like chicken.”

“Doesn’t,” Ana said with a reluctant smile. “More like venison, if anything.”

“There you go.” Reka had found the marker, was filling a box with books and toys. This wouldn’t be too bad, not really. A couple hours, and she’d have Ana sorted. It was a good move. Families were meant to be together.

Ana finished feeding the baby, put him down for his nap, and Uncle Matiu came in from his garden and took Tai back to the bedroom, and it went faster with the two of them working, though Ana was still quiet, subdued. Overwhelmed, Reka thought.

“Need to tell you something,” Ana said abruptly when they were nearly finished.

“Tell ahead.” She hoped Ana wasn’t going to confess something Reka didn’t need to hear.

“It’s about Hemi.”

“Hemi?”
Reka sat back on her heels, her box forgotten.

“You know he had a game last night.”

“Yeh. I saw it, at the Duke. Much as I could.” Because she’d had a shift, and the bar had been busy. “They won. Preseason, though, doesn’t mean much, he said.”

“Well…” Ana was fussing unnecessarily with a pile of baby onesies. “You know my cousin Joann, on my dad’s side.”

“Not so much.” Now Reka was confused.

Ana waved a hand. “Yeh. Third cousin, I guess she is. Well, she’s got a friend from school days, a bit of a party girl. Joann rang me today from Auckland, told me her friend
was meant to meet her for breakfast this morning, and begged off. Said she was out late at a party last night. Quite the piss-up, she said.”

“Uh-huh,” Reka said. “And this is about Hemi how?”

“It was a party with some of the Blues,” Ana said, still not looking her in the eye. “After the match, and Hemi was one of them. Joann was just telling me, you know, the way you do. Chatting. Gossip.”

“Oh.” Reka forced herself to start her packing again. “Well, I guess they do have some parties.”

“I hate to tell you this,” Ana said. “Been asking myself over and over what the best thing is. But if it were me, if it were Joseph…And knowing what happened before.”

“Just tell me,” Reka said, the cold beginning to seep in. “Come on.”

“She said, Joann said her mate said, that it was late, and she thought Hemi’d gone. And then she was upstairs, in the toilet, and two girls came out of a bedroom. Half-dressed, she said. Talking about him. About…being with him, in there.”

“Two girls,” Reka said, her hands still moving mechanically, heedless of the ice that had gripped her heart. “Not even one.”

“Yeh. Well, he’s a sportsman,” Ana said. “Worse, he’s an All Black. Could be they all do it. Could be their partners just put up with it, who knows. But I thought you should know. I thought I should tell you. I’ll never forget how he saved Tai, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that. But…”

“Yeh. Thanks.” Reka turned away, pulled another box towards her, and set her chin. “Let’s finish this. I have work tomorrow.”

“And Hemi coming, don’t you?” Ana asked tentatively. “What are you going to say to him?”

“Dunno. But I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

She’d done it again, she raged at herself as she walked home across the garden, when she permitted herself the luxury of thinking about it, and wished she hadn’t. Let herself fall, just like the last time, just like she’d done so many times, and how stupid was she, to
keep making the same mistake over and over and over again? Falling for a handsome face and a fit body, mistaking heat for warmth, urgency for connection, and paying the price. Always paying the price, because that was what happened when you led with your heart instead of your head.

She went to work the next morning as usual, put what she’d heard, what she knew, what she’d lost into the back of her mind, because her kids needed her. But by the time she walked home at four, the effort it had taken not to fall apart all day had taken its toll, feet felt leaden, and the thought of seeing Hemi, of telling him what she knew, saying what she knew she had to say, made her heart hurt with a pain so strong, she had all she could do not to clutch at her chest with it. And that made her even angrier. At him, and at herself.

She considered getting made up for him, but what was the point? She changed into a sundress, because it was warm, left her hair in its knot, her feet bare. And when he knocked on the door, she opened it, and the anger and sorrow and trepidation over what was coming just about knocked her down.

The broad smile that met her turned cautious as he read her expression. “Something wrong?” he hazarded. “Something happen? Your family?”

“Something’s wrong,” she said, stepping back to let him come inside, wishing that he weren’t so big, that he weren’t so strong, that he didn’t look so good to her, that she didn’t wish she could fling herself into his arms and have none of this be true. She didn’t want to have this conversation, she wanted it to be the way she’d dreamed it would be, and yet she wanted to tell him, to fling the words at him like spears. She wanted to wound him the way he’d wounded her. “But it’s not my family,” she told him. “You thought I wouldn’t know. Do you think because I don’t know, it’s all right? It’s not all right. It’s. Not. All.
Right.”

“What’s not?” he asked, standing still, barely inside her doorway and looking nothing but confused. “What’s not all right? What the hell are you talking about?”

“That you’ve been telling me all this, about how you feel about me, being so special, all that, then going off and shagging somebody else. Whoever you can find. Whoever’s there,” she spat, heedless of the tears in her eyes. “Just like before. Just like always. You
told me you’ve changed, and you haven’t. How stupid do you think I am? How bloody stupid?”

“Right now,” he said, and his face was grim, set, nothing like the cheerful, charming Hemi she’d known, “I think you’re pretty stupid. Because you’re talking rubbish. I haven’t been shagging anybody, and I’d like to know why you think I have.”

“Nobody you thought I’d find out about. You didn’t know that one of the girls at that party last night was Ana’s cousin’s friend, did you? You didn’t know I’d hear. You thought I would never know, and that made it all right?”

“Whose
friend? What?”

“My cousin. Ana. Her cousin Joann has a friend, and the friend was there, one of those girls at that party with you. And she told Joann about those girls in that bedroom with you. And what I want to know,” Reka said, not able to help the anguish in her voice, “is why? Why tell me you cared? Why make me believe, if you didn’t mean it? Why hurt me like this?” She was crying now, and she was raging, and she couldn’t help any of it. “Why, Hemi? Why?”

H
emi stared at her, struggling for words.
What?
How?

“Why?” He finally managed to echo her question. “I could ask you why, too. Why would you think that could even be true? And how am I meant to defend myself against something like that? Some…story?”

“I don’t know,” she said, the tears gone, the sarcasm all but dripping off her tongue. “Maybe you could start by telling me you didn’t do it. Just as, you know. A suggestion.”

“All right. I didn’t do it. Satisfied?”

Her chin went straight up at that. “No. I’m not. So Joann’s friend just made it up, then? She’s not like that, not from what Joann says.”

He blew out a frustrated breath. “Joann says. Somebody who wasn’t there. She told you what her mate said the mate saw, and that sounds reliable to you? I’ll tell you this, if she saw me doing anything with those girls, Joann’s mate was doing more than drinking, because it didn’t happen. All that’s coming to you, what? Third-hand? Fourth-hand? And you’d rather believe that than me telling you?”

“So tell me what happened,” Reka insisted, and actually made a beckoning motion at him that had the anger rising higher. “Come on. Tell me.”

“What happened is that I got pissed.” He saw the roll of her eyes, and he didn’t know if he wanted to cuddle her or spank her. Both, probably. Both, definitely. “That’s right. I did. It happens. Occasionally a person drinks too much, especially after that person’s just played a rugby match, especially if that person might be a little lonely. People have been known to do things they regret later. Even you might’ve had that happen from time to time, if you cast your mind back.”

“Like I did with you,” she flashed back. “Thank you
very
much. And, what? You telling me you got pissed and did some other girl like you did me? Oh, wait.
Two
girls. Even better. Goodbye.” Her hands were on her hips, and then she reached around him for the door and yanked it open.

“No,” he said, not moving from the spot where he was planted, because he’d be damned if he was going down without a fight. His hands curled into fists, the anger going
straight there, the tension holding him rigid. “I’m telling you I didn’t. I’m telling you I drank too much, and because I’m
not
a fool, not anymore, I didn’t drive home. I went to have a kip first, and then I woke up because a couple of girls wandered into the bedroom and decided they’d give it a go, and I threw them out, least I think I did, because they left again. A bit stonkered at the time, though, wasn’t I. I could recite the flow of the conversation for you, what I said, what they said, what bloody Joann’s bloody mate probably said, except I couldn’t, because I don’t remember it well enough. Because it was just exactly
nothing
.”

“And that’s it?” she demanded. “That’s what you’ve got for me?”

“That’s it. That’s what I’ve got, and that’s all I’ll ever have, and I’m sorry you don’t like it, but what am I meant to do about it? It’s going to happen. I’m going to be someplace, maybe someplace far away, there are going to be girls around, and some of those girls are going to think it’d be nice to take a tour round the park with an All Black, and I’m going to tell them no, for some reason I don’t understand myself at this moment.” His voice was getting a little louder, and so what? “Why the hell d’you think I’m coming all this way to see you? If I just wanted to have sex, I could have sex, and I could have it without all this agro. Easy as. Thank you very much, twenty dollars for a taxi and see you later. There you are. Sex. I know how to get it if I want it like that, and what I’m wondering right now is, why the hell not?”