Page 3 of The Player in New Zealand
“You are causing trouble, is what you are doing. If our family could see you right now, our dad, how disappointed do you think he’d be, hm? The mighty Tane Taumata, yelling at a woman.” She scoffed and pushed his head. He leaned away, but went over too far and stumbled toward me. The drinks had hit him hard—I made a note to myself that the other bartenders had been overserving him—and I took a step forward to try to balance him just as he nose-dived into me.
His shoulder checked me right in my throat and we tumbled down. I gasped for breath and everything stopped. The Hulk was dead weight on me, but because we were at the end of the bar, we didn’t hit anything on the way down. The rubber floor mat even padded my butt, but it didn’t help me breathe with—I guessed—a 250-pound weight on my chest.
I froze, and so did Tane. The rest of the bar was unnaturally silent and Tane was stiff on top of me—for one beat. Our bodies aligned to put his breath in my ear, our legs wedged between each other’s. And in the next beat, Tane softened slightly, and the exhale of air rushed by my ear. One might have called it a sigh.
Muscles flexed against me, pecs and abs and others I couldn’t name as Tane tried to push off the ground. We both turned our heads, and Tane’s eyes were wide and a smooth dark brown. He focused right on me for a moment, until two sets of hands wrapped around his biceps and hauled.
And then he was gone, Ron and Nina quick to roll Tane off me.
“Not again,” Nina muttered under her breath. “Ron, help me get him upstairs. Claire, are you okay?”
I waved her off, sitting up and assessing my body. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” I stood and dusted myself off, inspecting my elbows and knees. By the time I looked up again, Nina and Ron were unlocking a door in the corner I had never noticed before, Nina shouting, “Be back in a sec!” Tane was slung between them, a beefy arm over each shoulder. I raised a brow. Behind the door was a narrow staircase that led to the second floor, above the kitchen. It was very narrow—how on earth were they going to manage that?
The door slammed shut and I had to trust that Nina could handle it. My heart rate was finally starting to slow down. I’d had more than enough drunken confrontations in my life, but they were never fun.
A few customers had left in the mayhem, colorful bills tucked under empty glasses. That included the young guys, so that was one problem taken care of. The remaining bunch had decided it was a good time to leave too, so I checked the rest out, apologizing for the scene.
I kept cleaning, putting away glasses and restocking. When the door opened again, Ron stepped out.
“Aye, Claire. Nina says you can go home. I’ll take care of it from here.”
I nodded. “Right. Okay. I’ll... be here tomorrow?”
I rolled my eyes inwardly at my own inflection. Ron wasn’t my boss—though I had questions about who my boss was, for that matter—and my schedule, or lack thereof, wasn’t up to him.
“Yup,” he said, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “See you tomorrow.”
* * *
I steppedout of the hall bathroom at the hostel, dressed and towel-drying my hair. I’d gotten it cut a few days before my flight, going from straight black hair down my back to a shaggy pixie cut, and it was times like these that I didn’t miss my long hair. Despite the late hour, the stress, and the hot shower, I was too wired to sleep. I crept down to the lounge in the hostel and took a seat.
Pulling my phone up, I squinted at the screen and did some complicated math. What time was it in Chicago? Two a.m., minus nineteen, carry the one...
Ugh. Time zones.
I gave up and just opened WhatsApp to message my sister, Iris, anyway. It was her problem if she didn’t have do not disturb on.
Hey. You up?
Yes! How’s the future?
Well, I am probably getting fired tomorrow. I lasted one whole week.
Instead of texting back, my phone vibrated and her picture popped up.
I answered and Iris screeched, “What do you mean, you’re getting fired tomorrow?”
I got an instant pang of guilt. Iris lent me the money for my flight to New Zealand, and while she was certainly doing better than I was, I knew she hadn’t factored in having to give her sister thousands of dollars so she could escape a stalker.
“I’ll find another job,” I said quickly. “I still plan on paying you back.”
She huffed in my ear. “I don’tcareabout that. Well, I mean, I do care,” she amended. We were raised too poor not to worry about money, even—or especially—if it was loaned to family. “What happened with your job?”
I recounted the story of the dudes at the table, how the biggest one tried to get behind the bar, and how I stood my ground.
“He said, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ and of course I didn’t. Well, it turned out,” I finished, “that he’s the owner of the bar. I think Nina, my boss, is his sister. So it’s like... a family thing?”
Iris got right to the point. “He sounds like a dick.”
