Page 13 of Wide-Eyed
“I love them.”
“I love your whole vibe!” Lyssa returned enthusiastically. “It’s like Vivienne Westwood but with a chic little nod to Edie Beale thrown in. I wish I was staying here with you!”
“You’re the American girl who booked here with me?” Realization spread over Cilla’s face. “Oh no, I’m so sorry! I fucked everything up!”
“You fucked up?” Lyssa asked, and her surprise was like a finger pressing into the dimple of my throat, decreasing my ability to breathe.
“I messed up the listing.” Cilla nodded. “I was supposed to set the window for next year and I set it for this year! By the time I fixed it, I already had bookings. I’ve had four people show up this week—they’d only traveled from Wellington, so who gives a shit about them, but you’ve come all the way from New York City! I tried to call you!”
Of course it hadn’t occurred to Cilla to email or to cancel the booking. She was even more technology averse than me, but I wasn’t the one trying to run a bookings-based business.
The urge to sigh was strong, but there was no way I could disrespect this woman. As a kid, she’d let me hide in her stables for four hours after I lit Eddie MacDougal’s trading cards on fire because he said something out of pocket about my sister and then I had to hide from his cousins.
Lyssa didn’t make a big deal about Cilla’s mix-up with the rooms. The two women stood on the veranda swapping stories about New York and I took myself on a wander around the house to avoid hearing anything I couldn’t unhear about Cilla’s sex life.
The renovation was ambitious. Cilla had vision, but things had ground to a halt. When I looked under the tarps by the old stables, there were pallets of unwrapped bricks, and stacks of long planks lay under the back veranda, along with cans of paint. Around the back, there was scaffolding by a large hole in one of the upstairs bedrooms, protected by a tarp that was flapping in the breeze.
By the time I came back around the front of the old Victorian villa, Lyssa and Cilla had arranged to have tea and were chatting like old friends.
“We’ve got to go, Lyssa. We need to get your bags.”
She looked at me, panic and reluctance tangled on her face. “I’m not sure about the pub hotel ….”
I didn’t blame her. It looked like what it was—a stopover for drunks and truck drivers. I knew all the regulars, and they were decent folks, (most of them), but it was hardly the kind of place for a princess like her.
“Where will you go?” Cilla asked, worried. “I have another twin bed in my room, if you don’t mind sharing a room with me? It’s the only part of the house that’s plumbed.”
Lyssa opened her mouth, and I knew she was going to say yes. She and my sister had shared a bunk bed in her little West Village apartment for months, so she was used to living in other people’s pockets. But she’d come all the way here because of me; because hasty, honest words had fallen out of my mouth before I could think better of them. She was my responsibility, and my asshole clenched at the idea of her being out here where I couldn’t keep an eye on her. As a responsible host, of course. Nothing more. Definitely nothing to do with how many of her silly videos I’d watched. This was just good manners.
But before Lyssa could reply, I said, “She’s staying with me.”
The reaction from my friends was exactly what I expected. When I loaded Lyssa’s bags in the tray of my ute, Aroha made kissy sounds through the kitchen window. While Lyssa was on her phone, Tanz stuck out her tongue and mimed pashing, which I think was supposed to be an impression of me, but I had much better tongue dexterity than that. Even Brittney, the mother of the birthday kid, waggled her eyebrows at me when Lyssa wasn’t looking.
All of them were subtler than Oscar, Brittney’s husband, who’d finally showed up to his son’s party while I was out.
“Magic Mike is at it again!” Oscar crowed while Lyssa was in the bathroom. He thrust his hips and spanked the air in front of him. Then he pursed his lips, which I think was his idea of looking like a girl, and mimed shaking his flat ass. He was far too white to pull off dancing like that.
“Shut up, Oz.”
Oz stopped dancing and took another pull from his beer. It wasn’t a brand we carried, so he’d brought it from home. It didn’t seem to matter how many times I told him not to do that. Or that it was only Wednesday. Oscar showed up to these parties late, got drunk, then overstayed trying to talk me into being his drinking buddy. I couldn’t fucking stand the guy, and I especially couldn’t stand that he thought he and I were cut from the same cloth.
“I thought something was suspicious when you turned Lizzie down last week. You were all, it’s not you, baby, it’s me, and talking shit about settling down, being a new man, blah, blah, blah. I should have realized you were just setting up a longer play. Same old Mike, aye?” Oscar grinned. “Knew it. A dog never changes its spots.”
“That’s not the saying.”
He shrugged. Oz and I had been in every single class together in primary school and most of high school, too, so I knew for a fact he had bricks where there should have been brains.
“Chuck that can in the recycling when you’re done with it, okay, Oz, mate? We’re closing up.”
“Come on, Mikey!” Oz wheedled. “Lighten up. You have to admit it’s funny how you said you were going to turn over a new leaf. I get it, bro! Players gotta play. That’s how we do!”
And this was the problem.
I had a dream to open a local petting farm, where families from big towns and cities could experience what it was like to live in the country. Mike’s Place would educate folks on proper animal care and welfare, where we could all cuddle some fluffy creatures and feel better about our lives. Every animal at Mike’s Place would be free range, fair trade, and ethical as fuck. It was a brilliant business idea. But I didn’t have enough capital to do it by myself, so I needed to convince the town investment group that I was a sound investment.
Because I’d grown up here, some folks had trouble seeing me as anything other than a loudmouthed horndog who punched people a lot.
If it weren’t for my dad, I would have moved and started over in another small town where no one knew me or the thing with the girl in the hot tub at Midwinter. Or under the bleachers after the rugby cup. Or the bed of my truck when—the point was, I wanted to stay close to dad. He was getting on now, and I didn’t want to live in a different town to him.
