Page 8 of The Player in New Zealand
Tane’s forehead thunked against the bar and a low groan was muffled by his arms. When he sat up again, he took a fortifying gulp of coffee and looked down the bar at me. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, Claire. It was just me and my mates having a good time and...”
Nina crossed her arms and cleared her throat.
“Right, just... sorry.” Tane flushed, chagrined. The corner of his mouth crinkled, an effort through the haze of a headache to look charming, I was sure. I’d bet plenty of professional athletes had the charm nailed down to get them out of all kinds of trouble when they wanted to.
Too bad for Tane I was immune to his charms already.
Nina looked at me, eyebrow raised. I wondered if she would do more poking and ear pulling if I still wasn’t happy, but I relaxed my arms to my sides. “Thank you,” I said stiffly. “I just want to do my job.”
“Right.” Tane saluted me with his mug while standing up. “You do your job and I’ll stay out of your way. Fair?” He held out a hand to shake.
“Fair.” I reached across the bar, fitting my hand in his and firmly shaking it. Tane glanced down, holding on to my hand a second longer than necessary.
He shook whatever thoughts he had—probably hangover-related with hopefully a dash of embarrassment—and came around the bar to refill his coffee. Nina moved aside to let him through. “We good, bro?” she said.
“We’re good.” Tane poured his coffee and said something in Maori that had Nina rolling her eyes and slapping his shoulder. He grinned at her and walked back around to the door upstairs. Before he disappeared, he met my eyes and raised his mug at me again.
Nina’s face was lit up with warmth and affection for her brother, and I tried to swallow down the homesickness that rose inside me. My job was safe, and that was what mattered.
FOUR
A senseof relief washed over me as my bank confirmed the transfer. One hundred dollars sent to Iris Bailey.
It was a pittance. A drop in the bucket of what I owed her, but just the fact that I was starting to pay her back was a big deal to me. I shouldn’t have to depend on my little sister for money.
The next deposit would be a thousand dollars, I vowed.
New Zealand hadn’t been my first choice for places to go, simply because I hadn’t wanted to go anywhere. I loved Boston. It was a perfectly sized city, with nice public transportation and a great bar scene, and it had been my home for my entire life. In fact, this was my first trip away from the US, and honestly, I hadn’t wanted to go.
But I’d felt like I’d had no choice.
Running out of options and beginning to be truly scared, I had sat down one early morning after the bar I worked at had closed. I had little money, since living in Boston was so fucking expensive, and because I’d changed jobs three times in the past year, my reputation and bank account had taken a hit.
As long as Devon was in Boston, I wanted to be as far away as possible. So I searched the internet. How far could I get?
Turned out the farthest point on the other side of the world was a Podunk little town in Australia called Augusta, but a quick search said they had limited bartending options for their population of one thousand. I was picturing it like the Wild, Wild West with me rolling up in my short hair, nose piercing, black boots, and nerdy T-shirts, and someone with a really bizarre accent telling me they “don’t take too kindly to strangers around these parts, mate.”
But then I searched “how to move to Australia” and, lo and behold, there was a visa perfect for me—anyone under thirty could come to the country for a year and work. And oh, New Zealand had one too.
I started emailing bars, researching walkable cities. All my money wasn’t enough—I had to prove solvency for the application and that I had the funds to get myself in and out of New Zealand. I had called up Iris, desperate.
“He was here again,” I started.
“Did you call the police?” Iris asked, immediately on alert.
“My manager wouldn’t let me. He said that twice was one too many times, and it didn’t look good for the bar to have police around all the time.”
“Claire, you’ve got to go.”
At the time, she just meant leaving the job. I sucked a lungful of air in and I asked Iris, my little sister with a better job and home life than I had, if I could borrow thousands of dollars.
Of course she had said yes.
I still felt shitty about it.
But here I was, halfway around the world. After my plane ticket, my application, and proof of funds, I couldn’t afford a car. I’d hunted online for jobs in the bigger cities.
And Haft & Hops had been perfect.
