Chapter 13
MIKE
“What crawled up your ass and died, Mikey?”
“Your personality,” I retorted. “Call off the search; stay a boring dick for the rest of your life.”
My boss stopped what he was doing, which was stirring two teaspoons of sugar into his cup, and stared at me, eyebrows raised. The Pākehā farmer had grey hair that he wore a trucker cap over, making tufts stick out the sides.
“You asked,” I said defensively.
Brent Hodges wasn’t my favorite person in the world. I worked for him seasonally, but even one season had felt like too much this year. Hodges used to be all right (boring, but all right), but a few years ago something went down between his wife and his neighbor and it’d made him bitter.
Thankfully, this was my last week working for Hodges. The work was wrapping up as the weather changed, and with the café’s new owner footing all the big bills, we Hollidays weren’t as pinched for cash these days. I was looking forward to sleeping past four every morning.
Hodges had promised me a bonus with my final payment and was sitting at the table with his online banking app open, faffing his way through the transaction. I shouldn’t have been hurling insults at such a vulnerable financial time, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Proving my point, Mikey,” Hodges said, setting his teaspoon down with unnecessary care, like a politician readying themselves for a big speech. He steepled his fingers and stared at me. “You seem off your game.”
The annoying thing was he was right.
It had been a few days since my dad and my best friend had clocked me splitting nuts for Lyssa like we were an old married couple, and that plus one since I’d nearly fucked her on the side of the road.
The girl was well and truly under my skin now, and I’d been avoiding her ever since.
One stiff breeze would be all it would take to push me in her direction, then I’d either throw her over my shoulder and lock her in my room so we could fuck six ways from Sunday; or I’d confess I’d been obsessed with her since I’d first watched one of her videos a couple years ago. Both terrible courses of action.
Lyssa Luxe was my sister’s best friend, and obviously sexually inexperienced—she squirmed and panted under my mouth like it was her very first time. And obviously, I was a slutbag, so it was for her sake as much as mine that I stayed away from her.
Avoiding her wasn’t a manly tactic, but it was the only one I could survive.
Over my mug of tea, I studied Hodges. He wasn’t exactly known for giving many shits about his workers’ feelings. Was Hodges… trying to care? Had hell frozen over?
Everything made sense when he said, “You were much slower on the job this morning. Your head’s not in the game.”
I was going to say something about not needing my head to move cows, but Sharn came into the kitchen. Smiling brightly, she offered me a biscuit from the tray she’d just made.
Hodges scowled like his wife had just asked to sit on my face.
Sharn was a pretty woman, and I didn’t have any problem giving an older girl a good time, but married women weren’t my type—other than that one time which wasn’t my fault, because she lied by omission. Nowadays, I asked a bird if she was married before I let her ride the Mike Mobile.
Or I had, anyway. I didn’t do that kind of thing anymore. NEW MIKE.
God my balls were blue.
I took a biscuit, trying to ignore the cleavage Sharn was practically plating up for me; but Hodges still glared and my bonus probably lost a few digits.
I stood, biscuit in hand. “All right, Hodges, mate. I’ll leave you to it, shall I?”
“Sit back down, Mike,” he pointed.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him to go fuck himself, but I wanted to keep as many digits as possible in that bonus, and it was uncharacteristic of Hodges to want to chat.
“You know I’m part of the Tararua Rural Entrepreneurs Association, don’t you?”
I nodded. This was all the more reason I should have been stowing my fucking attitude, but I didn’t expect Hodges to vote in my favor anyway, so I might as well save my kissing for a more receptive ass.
Now, if Sharn had been on the board, ass-kissing might have yielded results.
But I was a squeaky-clean boy now, and I would not tongue hiney to make people like me. NEW MIKE.
“Are you ready for your pitch?” Hodges asked after a sip of his sweetened tea.
“More or less. I still need to make the slides look pretty, but my cousin Tessa said she’d help me with that.”
“Doesn’t matter how the slides look, Mikey, mate. Are you ready ?”
I considered his question properly. “I think so. I’m nervous, but the idea’s good, and my plan is solid. I think you’ll like it.”
Hodges nodded. “Good. I can’t tell you who, obviously, but you know there are some other people presenting to us that day?”
I nodded.
“They’ll have good ideas, just like yours.”
“Yeah.”
“And they’ll have good presentations too.”
“Yeah.”
“Some might even be better.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great pep talk, mate.”
“I just want you to be prepared,” the weather-beaten farmer said.
His eyes were earnest, almost like he cared.
“I know you’ve been working hard on this, and I think it’ll be good for you to have your own thing, not just working for me or your dad.
But we have to consider the reputation of the fund, not just the idea or business plan.
” When he tipped his head down to eye me sternly, I immediately shrunk to about two feet tall.
“You’re not doing yourself any favors by punching Oscar Wylie or getting arrested making out with girls on the side of the bloody road. ”
Fucking Keri and his big fucking mouth.
“I didn’t get arrested.”
“You know what I mean.”
“And we didn’t make out.”
I didn’t make out with her mouth , anyway. Much.
Sharn came back into the kitchen and tutted at me. “Fornicating on the freeway, Mikey. Naughty boy.”
Sharn looked as if she wanted to swallow me, not her biscuits.
It made me feel dirty and not in the good way.
What had happened with Lyssa was private.
Okay, I hadn’t chosen the most private place to get under her skirt, but good luck driving while Lyssa Luxe stared at your fingers like she was imagining fucking herself on them. I wasn’t made of fucking stone, was I?
It wasn’t new to have people talking about me like this, but didn’t they know I had changed? That I was NEW MIKE? And I didn’t like people talking about Lyssa at all. I owned my slut past, but this wasn’t hard when people celebrated me for it.
I shifted in my seat, feeling as if there were bees buzzing under my skin. The temptation to leap to my feet and cuss Hodges and Sharn out was strong. But it wouldn’t help. I stayed where I was and took another biscuit.
Hodges sighed. “Just mind your p’s and q’s in public, Mikey, mate, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Yeah, Mike,” Sharn chipped in. “Fool around with your houseguest all you want, just wait until you get home before you throw her over your shoulder and have your dirty, animal way with her.”
I tried to smile, but it was more of a grimace. It was one thing for Sharn to treat me like meat, because I was a sexy bag of beef, but it was beyond rude for her to be discussing Lyssa like this.
The bees buzzed faster around my head, making it hard to think.
“Righto,” I said, standing. I was trying to keep my shit together, trying to be cool, but it was agony.
Was this how everyone else in the world felt when they resisted the urge to punch someone?
It suuuuucked. “Thanks for the advice. You don’t need me for the rest of the afternoon, do you, Brent, mate? ”
“Well…”
I answered my own question. “You’ll be fine. Thanks for a good season. I don’t plan to be back next year, but I’ll see you soon enough at the Association pitch. Sharn”—I gave her a thumbs-up—“It’s been real.”
Flooring my truck, I sped out of the Hodges’ driveway, not caring that my tires left divots. To be honest, I did it on purpose. The whole drive back into town, I muttered shit about overbearing rich dudes and their sad, horny wives.
I had about an hour before I had to be at Levitate for my shift.
I was supposed to be meeting a mum to make plans for her son’s birthday party.
That left me forty-five minutes to calm my tits, because I wasn’t currently in a fit state to talk about spider-shaped cakes or sing-alongs, and the birthday boy deserved better than half-assed planning.
Forty-five minutes was enough time to get an ice cream and park to eat it.
Some alone time and sugar would be enough to push the Hodges’ voices out of my head.
They didn’t know what they were talking about anyway. They were stickybeaking.
If I told myself that enough times, maybe I would start to believe it.
There was a parking space right outside the ice cream parlor, which I took as a sign that things were looking up. But I’d forgotten about the ultimate law of the universe, which was that when you felt like shit, you would run into the last person you wanted to see.
Engrossed in the tough choice between salted caramel and hokey pokey, I didn’t see the white woman with curly blond hair, two ice creams clutched in her fists and a kid tugging on her jumper, until she backed into me.
Reflexively, I steadied her.
“Mike! Hi!” Monica Shailor-Chapman’s big blues blinked up at me.
I wanted to shake a fist at the ceiling and shout why me .
A lifetime ago, in our last year of high school, Monica and I had dated.
She’d meet me in the car park after I finished rugby practice and fuck me in the back of my truck.
It was great. Nowadays, Monica was a devout churchgoer, convinced everyone else could be as happy as she always claimed to be, if they thought the exact same things and lived their lives the exact same way.
Guess she hadn’t seen Jesus while riding my dick, so she’d had to look for him in more conventional places?
On Saturdays, Monica and a selection of her kids—there were a lot of them, I wasn’t exactly sure how many—stood outside this ice cream parlor and shoved Jesus pamphlets at people.
My sister hated Monica, and always had, not the least because Mon had regressive opinions on women’s bodily autonomy and shared them with anyone who would listen. She wasn’t much like the girl I remembered from school.
“Hey, Monica,” I said politely. “What’s up, how are you?”
“Wonderful. Loving life! Martin got a promotion at work, and the kids are wonderful. Nikolai here”—she pointed at the kid with her—“has just started homeschooling with me, and it’s amazing. He’s such a wonderful little man.”
Nikolai had smashed his birthday cake in Mini M’s face last year, which I hadn’t found very wonderful.
“That’s great, Mon. Hi, Nikolai, how’s it going?”
Nikolai muttered something, but I was saved from having to endure further conversation when the teen behind the counter, Michael Clarke’s son, asked me if I’d made my decision yet.
I hadn’t but compromised with a scoop of each.
Zeke said, “That’ll be six ninety. Thanks, Mike.”
Reaching for my back pocket, my hand met nothing but the sexy curve of my ass. No wallet.
I stared at the card machine with dawning horror. “Shit.”
“Mike!” Monica covered her son’s ears.
“Is there a problem, Mike?” Zeke asked, my two-scoop cone in his hand.
I wondered if Zeke Clarke had a better sense of direction than his pops, or if he got lost between his car and the shop every day. His mother was a church minister, and while I didn’t know anything about her ability to read a compass, I hoped for Zeke’s sake that he took after her. Navigationally.
I went back out to my truck to dig through the center console for six ninety in coins, but all I could find was three bucks, one of which was Australian.
I thought about asking Mon to spot me the rest, but she was on the Tararua Rural Entrepreneurs Association, so I didn’t want her thinking I was broke—she’d never vote in favor of giving me fifty grand then.
I promised Zeke I’d be back for my scoops in fifteen and got back in my truck.
My house was only two blocks away, and as much as I wanted to floor it, I carefully kept to the speed limit for the few minutes it took to get home.
I was used to living alone and distracted by thoughts of ice cream, so it didn’t occur to me to warn Lyssa I was coming home—she shouldn’t even have been at the house. She should have been out videoing an especially New Zealand tree or something.
She shouldn’t have been where she was.
Not doing what she was.