Page 7 of The Player in New Zealand
“Only friends with cars, of course,” I bantered back.
A customer called me down to the other end of the bar and I poured them one of the craft beers on tap. Okay, so I had no money. But surely, I would be able to afford a trip sometime before my year was up. And yeah, I hadn’t wanted to leave Boston, but odds were very, very good that I’d never have the opportunity to travel to New Zealand—or anywhere else on this side of the world—ever again.
I closed out the tab for the next customer and, seeing no one else demanding my immediate attention, walked back toward Nina.
“So,” I said, resting a hand on the cooler next to me. “Where would you recommend that I visit?”
Nina’s face lit up, and she told me to wait a minute. She scampered to the office and returned with a pad of paper and a pen. “Okay, which hostel are you staying at?”
I told her I was staying at Whakahoa and she clapped a hand over her mouth, suppressing a laugh. “What?” I asked.
“Thewhis pronounced like anf.” She said the name properly and I tried to repeat it.Faka-hoa.
I looked up at the ceiling. “So I’ve been saying it wrong this whole time?”
Nina nodded.
“I’ve been here two weeks, Nina! Two weeks! No one said anything!”
She laughed, and bent her head over the paper. “Okay, here are my favorite places.” The list ended up being about twenty items long. Some of them, Nina had explained, were near impossible to get to without a car, but all of them were within a day’s driving distance on the North Island and were free or very cheap.
Opportunities I’d never considered suddenly seemed possible. Maybe this could be about more than an escape.
A door opened upstairs and I heard the clomp of footsteps coming down. Nina and I glanced at each other and then at the door to Tane’s place. Happy thoughts of traveling the country rushed out of my mind and I held my breath while the door creaked open.
Tane lumbered in, shoulders slumped and lips turned down in a hangover frown. He placed his forearms on the bar top and heaved himself onto a stool across from Nina. He blinked and rubbed his hands over his face and head, delaying confronting the glare Nina was giving him.
Finally he slumped down farther and met her gaze. “Sorry,” he said quietly.
Nina sighed and pushed away from him, stepping over to the coffee machine to pour him a mug. “You need to be more careful, Tane.”
“I know,” he said, resigned.
“Somebody is going to get hurt, and your name will be tied to it and what kind of role model—”
“I know. Iknow.” The last word echoed around the bar, and the few patrons we had in the early afternoon dipped into a hushed silence for a beat.
Nina placed the mug in front of him while he took a few deep breaths directly into his hands. When his palms dropped, he held Nina’s gaze, and the moment held a certain sibling intimacy I was all too familiar with. Iris and I had shared that look enough times.
I tried to turn my attention elsewhere, to give Nina and Tane space, but the bar was only so big and they sat between me and the rest of the room. As Tane and Nina spoke quietly, I eyed the pass-through—the scene of the crime last night, as it was—and considered ducking through to give them more privacy.
But Nina stepped back from the bar and raised her voice. “You owe Claire an apology too.”
Tane sipped from his mug and blinked at her. “Who’s Claire?”
Nina gestured at me and when his eyes met mine, they widened. I cocked a hip against the bar while Tane’s gaze flittered over my features.
“Did I”—he swallowed—“hit on you?”
Nina choked out a no and I narrowed my eyes. “Excuse me?”
He held his hands up. “It’s a compliment.”
“Like hell it is,” I shot back.
“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t.”
“Oi!” Nina interrupted. “You wanted to go behind the bar and she—very reasonably, I might add—stopped you. You yelled some not very nice things at her and tried to force your way back before passing out.”
