Chapter 43
SHOCKING IN RED
“I missed you yesterday,” Jess said on Tuesday at lunch. “Where were you?”
“Oh.” Skylar pulled her leftover lamb stew from the microwave and lifted the lid. It smelled delicious. Even better than last night, when she’d dished it out of the slow cooker. Which had been three hours before Zane had come over and …
Focus. “I was, uh, busy.” She tried to make it airy. “Errand to run.”
Jess was squinting at her in the same way Scarlett had done on Sunday morning. Was she that transparent?
Probably.
“You never leave school during the lunch break,” Jess said. “Doctor’s appointment? That’s the only thing I can think of.”
“In thirty minutes? Of course not. I’m doing that after school today.
Gynecologist, actually.” She hadn’t meant to say it, but it slipped out.
She had to talk to somebody about all this, though, and Granddad certainly didn’t want to hear.
“Which is better, d’you think: an IUD or the implant?
” She said it softly; no need to advertise this.
Jess said, “Oh, my. Somebody’s been getting busy. About time, too. Come on. Tell. So it happened again? When? After his match, obviously. Good again, good enough, or not so good? Pity you’ve both got all those kids. Must be a bit hard to get together.”
“Excuse me,” Skylar said, “best method? Implant or IUD?” she added, when Jess looked blank.
“Oh. I thought you were asking me for position advice. Sex-act advice. How I wish I knew more than I do. Where are the men who actually do all that, other than in books?”
Skylar did not say, “Living in Zane’s house.” She said, “I’m thinking the implant. Simpler, and no painful insertion or weird strings. Apparently a man can feel the strings. That doesn’t sound comfortable.”
“Well, depending how big he is,” Jess said. “Nobody ever told me he could feel the strings when I had an IUD.” She looked at Skylar expectantly. Skylar took another bite of stew. There were limits.
“OK,” Jess said, “if you won’t tell. Though I could be thinking that means he has a micropenis.” Another expectant look.
“In which case,” Skylar said, “he wouldn’t be able to feel the strings. Excuse me? Opinion on method?”
Jess sighed. “You’re no fun. But I use the implant now myself, because you don’t have to think about it.
Dry spell, wet spell, doesn’t matter. No pills to remember, no messy jelly, and it’s dead effective.
It can also make your period mostly go away, and you can’t put a price on that.
Though you still have to use a condom, which is a pity. ”
“You do? I thought the implant was extremely effective.”
“Pardon? STIs?”
“Oh. Well, yeh.”
“You’re not telling me that you’re planning on doing it without one! Skylar. He’s a sportsman.”
“Does that make him a liar? A cheat?” She tried to say it objectively. It didn’t come out that way.
“Probably,” Jess said. “If we’re being honest. Where were you yesterday, then? Don’t tell me Zane came to take you out to lunch. Hard to see how you’d manage in that half hour. Also, he’ll be training. Pity.”
“Well, no,” Skylar said. “He has a few days off, because they’re off on that long tour to Safa in a couple of weeks.
So, yes, if you must know, he did come to see me yesterday.
” She forked up another bite of lamb and kumara.
That was the good thing about leftover stew; it tasted even better the next day.
“And what?” Jess asked. “Bloody hell, it’s like pulling teeth. He brought you a lovely sammie to eat in the car?”
Skylar waved a hand in the direction of her face, since she was chewing meat. Once she’d swallowed, she said, “Sex in the car.”
Jess screamed. Everyone looked around, and Jess said, “Sorry. Spider down my back.” She flapped her shirt a few times. “That’s got him. As you were, people.” Then stared at Skylar with near-radioactive intensity. “What?”
“Yeh. Silliest thing you ever saw. He’s too big for sex in the car.
I banged my head on the ceiling like mad.
Good thing it was padded. Fell off the seat at one point, too.
” She didn’t tell Jess about the way Zane had pulled her onto his lap, got his hands up under her dress—she’d worn the pretty yellow one, which was as impractical for teaching as she’d known it would be, but he had said he’d come take her for a very quick lunch, and—
Oh. Right. She wasn’t telling Jess about Zane’s hands on her bare bum under her skirt, or his mouth at her neck.
Not the gasping urgency of it, how hot and hard he’d been inside her, or her hopeless lack of control as she’d cried out, there at the end.
If her grandfather had come and found them, how embarrassing would that have been?
Unfortunately, that had only made it hotter.
Was she, in her secret self, actually kinky? Was that kinky? She had no idea.
“I can see the headlines now,” Jess said. “All Black and kiddie teacher cited for public indecency. What were you thinking? I can’t believe I’m the one saying that to you. I don’t talk to you for three days, and you’re running full-tilt into STI territory and committing illicit acts!”
“We were in his garage,” Skylar said, with an attempt at lofty detachment. “Five minutes away. Zane is very considerate.”
“Considerate? Zane Mahuta? If he’s not Beast Mode, what the hell was I watching on Saturday night? Is there no truth in advertising anymore? He’s a sensitive and gentle lover?”
“Keep your voice down,” Skylar hissed. “Honestly. I don’t want to advertise this to the world!”
“Well, I can imagine,” Jess said, “if he’s going to be that disappointing.”
“He’s not disappointing!” Skylar forgot to keep her own voice down, and Stacey Thompkins looked over.
Stacey smiled a bit, which was new. Rumor had it that she and David were an item.
Skylar smiled back in a sheepish way and tried to telegraph, You won, and Stacey’s smile turned satisfied.
Job done, then. “He’s not disappointing,” she told Jess more quietly.
“I meant that he’s considerate at making sure I … you know.”
“Orgasm?” Jess said. “You can say the word.”
“Not in the staff room, I can’t! Yes. He … We’ve had sex, uh …” She counted in her head. “Six times in the past three days.”
“It’s not how much you’ve done it,” Jess said.
“It’s how good it’s been. Of course he wants to do it all the time.
He’s a man. The question is, do you actually want to do it that much?
Is it worth it? It wouldn’t be a surprise if he was pretty selfish by this point—I can’t imagine he encounters many women he has to go out of his way for—and you don’t have much to compare him to, do you?
You’re much too liable to let people off the hook in general. Men, especially. Your husband, now …”
“I don’t need to compare him to anybody,” Skylar said, possibly hotly. “I’ve had so many orgasms in the past three days, I can barely walk. I think about him all the time, too. Like I’m sixteen. It’s bloody annoying.” Well, that or terrifying. What was she doing?
“How?” Jess demanded. “How are you having all this sex? You have six kids between you, and you said your granddad’s spending all his time with Zane’s grandmother!”
“He’s coming over after the kids are in bed,” Skylar admitted. “Although the first night was a hotel. After the match. But since then, he’s been coming over.”
“So not exactly Date Night,” Jess said.
Skylar glared at her. “Are you trying to rain on my parade?”
“No,” Jess said. “I’m trying to make sure you stay realistic.”
“Well, I can’t, OK?” Skylar took an angry bite of stew and nearly choked on it.
“I can’t stay realistic. He’s told his grandmother we’re dating.
He’s told his brothers and sister. He’s told our kids.
We did our grocery shopping together on Sunday!
It’s going so fast that I …” Her hand was in her hair now, her elbow on the table.
“I’m in over my head here, Jess. I am. And as soon as he leaves, all I want is to see him again. ”
“So he comes over for a booty call,” Jess said. “Sky. That’s not love. That’s sex.’
“No.” She took her hand out of her hair and sat up straight.
“He spends the night and goes home in the morning. He told his kids he was going to, because we want time together and they want his time too, so that’s the time he and I have, and he does.
Come over. We do. I know it’s too fast. I know it’s mad.
I try to tell myself it can’t last, but I … I …”
Her hand was shaking, and she had some tears in her eyes, too. She didn’t lose control of her emotions in public like this. What was happening to her?
Her phone dinged, and she pulled it out, because …
“Zane,” she said. “Text.”
“Bloody hell,” Jess said. “I’m still going to tell you to be careful.
It’s been, what, a few months? Have you never heard of love bombing?
It’s not true love, it’s an abuse technique.
A control technique. They come on strong, all the way over the top, get you hooked on them, and then it all goes pear-shaped, because once they have you, they start trying to dictate your every move.
The clue is boundaries. Respect for boundaries.
If he’s insisting on coming over every night … ”
Skylar wanted to say, “He respects my boundaries! I said the kids and I wouldn’t stay for dinner Sunday, and he said OK!
We didn’t have sex until I wanted to! And …
and …” How would that come across, though?
Like defensiveness, that was how. Anyway, she wasn’t thinking about it anymore, because she was clicking on a link.
And scrolling. And turning the phone on the table wordlessly.
Jess picked it up, and her eyes widened. “Is this—”
“He has a week off at the start of the school holidays, and he wants us to take the kids and go for a holiday at the beach.”
“In Fiji?”
“Apparently.”
“Love bombing,” Jess announced.
“A man who’s going to be gone five weeks,” Skylar countered, “playing all those matches far from home, who wants to do something enjoyable at the end of them. He hasn’t tried to talk me into anything at all. He just wants us to spend time together while we can. Exactly like I want to do.”
“I don’t know,” Jess said. “It looks bad.”
“Well, it’s not.” She was sure of it. Almost sure, anyway.
Ten minutes left of her break, so she’d better get this stew down herself.
“And no, he’s not buying my food or paying my mortgage.
No sugar daddy overtones. Except for Wellington, but I told you, I was practically the nanny, and he felt bad.
And the Fiji thing. And, OK, flowers at school yesterday. ”
“Ah,” Jess said. “I saw you had a vase on your desk when I walked by your room. Again, love bom—”
“It is not,” Skylar said, exactly like one of her pupils would have.
“He knows I never got them before, that’s all.
Pale coral roses and white stock, and beautiful beyond imagining.
He thought about what to buy, and that is romantic.
That’s the definition! So, yes, flowers, and he also said he’s ordered me some new sets of undies, same as the ones you and I bought on our shopping trip.
He won’t tell me what colors, but they’d better not be red.
I’m a ginger. I’d look shocking in red. That pale coral, though …
” There, that sounded appropriately casual.
“And when something goes wrong?” Jess asked. “What then?”
“Like what? Like my sink leaking right when I’m about to cook a special dinner?
Like a bloody enormous earthquake? Like me going Nato at him when he talked to Monica about moving Georgia to another class without talking to me first?
Like Scarlett and Finlay throwing separate and equal wobblies over the whole idea of us, and us having to negotiate all of it?
Like our grandparents taking a big step back and leaving it all to us?
It’s happened already. So much has happened already. ”
“Not as much as is going to happen, I’ll bet,” Jess said. “Just be careful. You heard it here first.”
Which was not what Skylar wanted to hear. Unfortunately, it was probably exactly what she’d have said if their situations had been reversed.
Well, bugger.
All the same, she knew she was going to be opening her door to Zane tonight with the same nearly unbearable flutter of excitement she’d felt the last two nights. That she was going to fall asleep with his leg touching hers and all his warmth beside her.
And that she was going to have a bloody hard time saying goodbye in the morning.
For five weeks.