Page 66 of Wide-Eyed
“This business has been years in the making. I was planning it when I failed economics in high school. Maths too. I failed pretty much everything, actually. Every single skill that I am going to need for this venture, there’s proof I don’t have it. Worse, I have every personal shortcoming that will make it likely to fail.”
The punching, the whoring, the fooling-around-with-my-sister’s-friend … ing.
Lyssa was still stroking my face. “ ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths,’ ” she recited. “ ‘The valiant never taste of death but once.’ ”
“If you say so.”
“Caesar does.”
“And he lived a long and happy life, did he? Got everything he wanted?”
Her eyes slid from mine. “Forget about Caesar. I don’t know where you got such a poor sense of your skills when your confidence in most other areas is?—”
“Bulletproof.”
“Inspiring. But if you don’t believe it, I will. I’ll be your own personal cheerleader. Figuratively!” she added quickly. “Not literally. My cheer skirt is retired.”
That was a fucking shame. But I didn’t say so, because I didn’t need the conversation veering back onto dangerous ground.
“I don’t think you should be here, Lyssa.”
Hurt flashed across her face. I stopped her when she made to climb off me, putting one hand on her smooth thigh. “I just mean don’t spend all your time here in Aotearoa in boring old Woodville. Go travel the country. Be a proper American tourist—walk in the middle of the footpath and talk ten times louder than anyone else.”
She elbowed me in the ribs and I pretended it hurt.
“At least people can hear what I’m saying,” she said. “You should come with a slider bar, so I can turn the volume up and at least hear your jokes to decide if they’re funny.”
A laugh ripped out of me. “Fair shot, Princess.” I patted her thigh.
Two minutes ago I’d been calling her mate and swearing I wasn’t going to let the fact I knew what face she made when she came change things between us. Now look at me.
Not only was it a good idea for her to explore some of the country for her sake, it was quickly becoming essential for mine.
“Why don’t you see if Lia will take you with her down to Wellington this weekend? She’s going down to pick up a desk, I think, and I’m sure she’d love the company. She’d drive you both down, then after that you could fly to Queenstown, explore a bit down there. It’s very pretty, and there are lots of other tourists, so you can take charter tours instead of driving. Or, do you like Lord of the Rings? You could do one of those tours where they go to all the places they filmed the movies.”
“The movie where dudes in earth tones wander through a forest for six hundred hours?” Adorable wrinkles appeared on the side of her nose. “Hard pass.”
After racking my brain, I made a new suggestion. “Wellington has a big international design competition and stage show thing. People make outfits out of weird stuff and then parade around. It’s called World of Wearable Art, or WOW. I’m not explaining it well?—”
“You’re not explaining it well,” she said at the exact same time. “I need to look this up.” Still sitting on my lap, she pulled her phone out of her pocket. When she saw the search results, her jaw dropped.
She looked back at me with reproach. “Why didn’t you tell me about this the second I arrived? This is so me.”
“It’s so Cilla too. She’s going down to see the matinee this Sunday, I think. You could try to get a standby ticket and meet her down there? Even if there’s no nosebleed tickets left, there’s usually a free exhibition of the past winners’ designs on at the same time.”
I knew all this because when Cilla broke her arm last year, I’d driven her down there so she didn’t miss her show, and she’d yapped about it the whole time.
Lyssa’s thumbs were already flying over her phone.
“Done! I got us three VIP tickets. Surely Cilla will like these seats better than whatever ones she has, and maybe Lia will want to come too.”
It took a second for me to process this. Those seats were fucking expensive. I knew Lyssa had money, or her mother did, but apparently, she had money, money. Enough to drop a couple grand on some tickets without knowing for sure if the people she was buying them for could even come.
“I should get going.”
Awkwardly, she clambered off me. I got to my feet and took our ice cream plates into the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Lyssa trailed after me, her bare feet making little slapping noises on the floor. “I thought we could spend the afternoon together.”
