Chapter 9
LYSSA
Mapleford’s sports field was in the middle of a nature reserve. Birdsong surrounded us and the air was so sharp and crisp I felt lightheaded. Everything was extremely green, like someone had edited the saturation way up.
There were white lines sprayed onto the grass to delineate the fields for the different sports.
Kev said people played rugby, football, and field hockey here.
New Zealanders didn’t play American football or baseball.
Kev said this with a wince, like he expected me to be offended, but the last time I’d seen either of those sports was by accident at a dive bar.
Not many of my fashion friends liked sweaty pastimes.
I’d assumed that Mike would be playing rugby the same as the All Blacks, Aotearoa New Zealand’s national rugby team.
I’d seen some of a game on a screen at the airport—players ran up and down the field and smashed each other into the ground.
Kev explained that touch rugby was different.
Instead of tackling each other, all the players had to do was touch (lol) the player who had the ball.
If you got touched (lol, lol), you had to pass the ball to another player.
If your team got touched six times without scoring—scores were called tries, which was adorable—then you had to give the ball to the other side.
It sounded simple enough, and I was pleased there was less risk of head injury.
A muddy field wasn’t very accessible for a man on a crutch, so Kev was going to watch his son’s game from the parking lot which bordered the field. He had a set of binoculars with him and seemed quite happy to sit in his car with his oversized thermos and the heat on.
I was going to stay in the car and watch with him—it would hinder my plan to seduce his son with my cheer performance, but I loved spending time with Kev—but he insisted I watch from the sidelines to get the full fan experience.
Along the white sprayed lines that marked the field where Mike was warming up, his team’s supporters were lined up in camping chairs. One empty but familiar chair sat in the middle of the row of people. It’d been the one Mike loaded in the back of his truck.
He’d set it up for me.
Feeling uncharacteristically self-conscious, I made my way over to the chair waiting for me. Tanz, the Māori woman with glorious hair who I’d met at Levitate, was in the chair beside it and she seemed to have been waiting for me.
“Kia ora, Lyssa. Coffee?” She held out a thermos.
“Kia ora!” I replied. I’d practiced saying this over and over last night, listening to a tutorial as I sewed. Tanz didn’t look offended, so either I said it correctly or she didn’t want to have to correct me. I hoped it was the former.
“I’m good for coffee, thanks. I came prepared.” I showed her the insulated travel mug that Kev had poured one of his flat whites into for me.
“Sweet. Do you want to level it up, though?” Tanz pulled a hip flask from her coat. “This is just coffee liqueur, it’s not strong, but it makes being here so early more bearable. I had to drop my kids off at their gran’s at six this morning. Six. ”
I held out my mug, and Tanz added a splash of something that made my coffee smoother and sweeter. We chatted as the referee blew their whistle and the game started.
The ball flew through the air as the players yelled things to each other.
I was totally unprepared for how collegial the whole thing was.
There was an undertone of competitiveness, like any game or, hell, any model casting call I’d ever witnessed; but largely, everyone on the field seemed to know each other and be having a good time.
Mike played with his usual wide grin. Some of the players cursed or scowled when they got touched and had to drop the ball, but when it happened to Mike, his grin only grew.
Mike wasn’t the fastest runner, but he dodged and wove better than anyone on the field.
The more tired he got, the happier he seemed.
He made good-natured jokes with his teammates and high-fived everyone who got a goal (a try, Kev had said), whether they were on his team or not.
I cheered loudly when his team got the ball.
Other supporters said things like, “Get in there!” or “What the fuck was that, ref?” and sometimes I said it too, just to feel involved.
Rugby players didn’t wear padding like football players back home.
Happily, this rugby variant had the same uniform of tight T-shirts and little shorts as the All Blacks, and Mike wasn’t kidding: His thick thighs were on full display, all rippling and…
ripe , if that was possible. I wanted to lick them. From his knees right up, up up?—
The ref blew their whistle and I jumped, thinking it was a personal admonishment, but it was a player who had done something wrong. Tanz elbowed me, waggling her eyebrows to show she knew exactly who I was drooling over.
The sun was bright, but the air was cold and the grass was still dewy.
I was glad I’d brought my metallic gold puffer jacket with me to New Zealand even though I had to use a compression bag to fit it into my luggage.
It fully hid the outfit I’d made last night, which I was going to reveal at the perfect moment—maybe at halftime.
That was when the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders came out.
Tanz and I chatted happily. Her girls were looked after by her mother every Saturday during games, as her wife, Eloise, played on Mike’s team.
She pointed out the extremely fast woman whose long blond pony swung behind her as she ran.
Watching her made me think of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war.
Fun fact: Athena was name-dropped as Pallas in Titus Andronicus and as Minerva in the Taming of the Shrew . Bonus fact: Titus was my most hated Shakespeare play, and Taming was one of my favorites (although often productions butchered it and didn’t correctly layer the text with irony).
I said hi to a few of the other supporters, most of whom I recognized from around town. They all returned the greeting, but it was surface level. I wasn’t able to strike up deeper conversations with anyone. I tried to be extra friendly, but the harder I tried, the more people avoided me.
At least I had Tanz. I suspected Mike had told her she had to look after me, which was embarrassing, but, as my failure to connect with any other Kiwis showed, necessary.
When a heated debate about a contested try paused the game, I opened social media to share a few shots of the players on the field—distant, none identifiable beyond universally sexy thighs—and of me wrapped up with my mug in the early morning sun.
Instantly, my phone started buzzing with notifications, making it hard to post without accidentally reading any of the persistent harassment.
have you seen the guy’s woman? no one’s throwing her off for this slop
fame hoor
nothing says innocent like storming a man’s office and screaming the place down
But also:
look at the tiny pony! brb booking flights
i’m obsessed with daddy kev and his lil coffees, he’s sooo clooney coded
Lulled into a false sense of security, I stayed too long, and saw:
women like you are why theres a male suicide epidenmic #teampaul
And the worst one of all, which was under a pic of me and Root Beer in my apartment.
someone should take out a mercy hit on her cat
I deleted the most awful comments, then double-checked all social notifications were turned off before closing the app again.
As the rugby players ran around, I sat on the sidelines with a rock in the pit of my stomach, clutching my mug with hands that weren’t quite steady.
It was weird and cruel and unfair that I was expected to endure relentless hate like this just because I shared my life on the internet.
When had I last genuinely enjoyed something the way Mike enjoyed rugby?
I loved fashion influencing, but the way people just said whatever cruel thing they wanted to was beginning to get me down.
I tossed my phone down on the grass and refused to think about it anymore. Under my breath, I practiced the cheer I’d come up with on the walk to Levitate this morning.
When the referee (there was only one) gave one long whistle, the players all stopped chasing the ball and jogged to the sidelines.
Tanz popped open the mini cooler she had to reveal a selection of cut fruit and bottled water, which she handed to Eloise. It was a lovely way to show support.
Not as good as what I had planned though.
Mike’s grin widened when he saw me on the sidelines. He jogged toward us. I stood and with flourish, unzipped my gold coat, revealing my bespoke cheerleader’s outfit. Mike stumbled, his expression slackening.
I gave him my cheeriest cheerleader wave and skipped past him onto the field, turning to face the crowd at the sidelines.
“Ready?” I called, putting my fists on my waist. “Okay!”
Everyone was watching. Tanz’s mouth was open, and I had a brief second to wish I’d given her a heads-up so she could have prepared a cheer of her own for Eloise, but it was too late now.
I also wished I’d set up my tripod, but the main goal was for Mike to think this show of support was sweet and sexy, so content would have to wait. Just this once.
I clapped a few beats for my introduction.
The choreography was simple—simple enough for me to have come up with it while I was sewing last night.
A few steps, lots of claps, a couple of twirls to make my skirt flare.
I had zero idea how to cheer, but I was full of pep and my legs looked good in a pleated miniskirt, which was the most important part.
In my biggest, loudest voice, I started.
“ Kia ora! Hello! Let’s hear it for our team!
We’re strong, we’re fierce, living the Kiwi dream!
From the kickoff to the final score,
We’ll give our all and then some more!
Let’s cheer loud,
Let’s cheer strong,
With Mike on our team, we can’t go wrong! ”