Page 45 of Night and Day
Chapter 17
Izzy pulled onto thequiet road, with both his stomach and heart full. He’d felt nervous going in, worried that the whole experience would turn intolerable, that he’d blurt out the truth at some point, disappoint everyone and embarrass Mia. The latter would have been worse, he realised. She deserved to get out of this with her dignity intact.
“Let’s drive around the lake,” he suggested, taking a sharp right onto the road that circled Lake Rotoroa. “It’s beautiful this time of day.”
He drove slowly, letting Mia soak in the view of gently rippling water framed by six-foot tall flax, with fat geese and blue pukekos lazing around on the surrounding strip of grass.
Mia pointed at the houses climbing the hill on the far side of the lake, their pitched roofs glowing in afternoon sun. “It’s almost like those postcards of Switzerland,” she said. “Only without the mountains.”
“Oh, we have mountains. I’ll take you to Tongariro if you’d like?”
She smiled, shaking her head. “I meant what I said. I don’t really mind where we go or what we do.”
Izzy tensed, the question hovering on his tongue. “Did you mean what you said about... me?”
Mia’s eyelids batted as she turned to look at him, her mouth ajar. Thank goodness he was driving, and could pretend to focus on that. “I meant the part about my film,” he added quickly, his brain frantically arranging memories of the last few hours.
Mia’s face relaxed into a grin. “Yes! That clip you showed me blew me away, and I’d love to read the screenplay, if you’re happy to share?”
“Absolutely. I’d love to hear your thoughts.”
Mia bit her lip, looking out the window. “I also have another song I might need some feedback on. It came to me yesterday and it’s not ready yet, but maybe you can show me what chords you’d use. I’m not a hundred percent sure.”
“I’d love to!”
They drove in silence for a moment, slowly crawling past the joggers and baby prams circling the lakeside track.
Ten minutes later, Izzy pulled into his driveway, noting the absence of Deke’s car. Good. He wanted Mia to himself, although he wasn’t sure he could trust himself. His hand had already got away from him at the barbecue and he’d nearly touched her again on the way home, almost instinctively. The easy intimacy of fake dating must have rewired his brain.
Izzy secured his misbehaving hand on his knee and reached for the door handle. This time, Mia waited patiently for him to open her car door. Maybe she’d given up the fight, pinned it on cultural differences or something. Izzy smiled. It wasn’t a New Zealand thing. It wasn’t even something he habitually did with every female. Only her.
He led her into the house, checking for bird poo on the way as they popped into the kitchen, storing away the extra salad and meat his mum had insisted on packing with them. She probably worried that their relationship would stumble on his dreadful cooking, but Mum didn’t know how much he’d practised in the last couple of years. The less he went out, the more he cooked in his own kitchen. He’d raised the bar, no longer happy with a cheese sandwich or instant coffee. Or maybe he was procrastinating. Whenever his creative work hit the wall, he learned a new recipe or invested in a coffee machine and taught himself to steam milk.
The distant sound of Casanova interrupted his thoughts, squawking his favourite line, ‘You’re gorrrgeous!’
Mia looked at him, mirth curving her lips. “Is that...?”
“Yeah. Deke’s out, so Casa must be feeling lonely.”
“Casa?”
Izzy winced. He didn’t hate the bird, in fact he quite like it, but that full name didn’t sit in his mouth. Every time he heard it, he thought of Italian guys with unbuttoned shirts, representing all that made him feel a little icky about being a man. Not because he wasn’t like that, but rather because he was. He wanted to take the woman standing in his kitchen, strip her naked, hoist her onto the kitchen table and drive into her with abandon. And the fact that he got there from a stupid parrot’s name told him all he needed to know.
Izzy took a step away from Mia, cocking his head at the doorway. “I’ll just check he’s got food and drink, okay?”
