Chapter 11
MIKE
Lyssa didn’t keep trying to bring up what happened.
At breakfast, she ate the eggs I fixed us one-handed while editing a video on her laptop—hopefully not the porno she’d filmed in my ute, although I couldn’t see her screen to confirm.
After breakfast, she surprised the hell out of me by collecting up all the dishes, even disappearing from the kitchen and reappearing with the mug of water I’d taken to the bedroom last night.
To reduce the risk of saying anything else about shoes or subway rats, I went and took refuge in my shed, where I was building an oversized dog kennel for Mini Mike.
I wasn’t hiding .
I was working .
I hammered some stuff and drilled some other stuff.
Honestly, I wasn’t a very good builder—measuring was annoying, so I eyeballed it.
The more time I spent on the project, the less the timber resembled an actual structure.
But I kept working. When it stood—admittedly with a Tower of Pisa kind of slant—I cracked a tin of red paint and started slathering it on.
This situation with Lyssa was cooking me.
In a few weeks I had an opportunity to present my business proposal for the ranch to the Tararua Rural Entrepreneurs Association.
This was make or break. I’d been working on the slide deck for three months (the first month was spent working out what the fuck a slide deck was).
I’d been serious about preparing for it by showing everyone I was NEW MIKE.
It had been going really well. Until yesterday.
Making a crumpet of myself over Lyssa felt like it had undone a whole year’s worth of work.
The moment I’d seen her twirl in that little cheer skirt, I knew I was in trouble.
Each spin gave a glimpse of her perfect ass cheeks—she had such nice, girly ass cheeks and I couldn’t explain it better than that.
They were round and high, just begging for a playful little slap or a bite.
I was fucked.
After that, there was the Oz thing.
Double fucked.
And the situation on the side of the road.
Triple fucked.
If my vet friend Carrie still lived next door I would have strolled over and asked her to tranq me.
I’d been sweating my ass off to prove to the Entrepreneurs Association that I wasn’t a hothead playboy anymore and could be trusted with investment and a high-profile tourism business. And I’d ruined all my progress in one day.
I was furious with myself. Oscar had needed a punch in the fucking nose so many times over the last few months, and each time I’d taken the high road because my business goals were more important. Then one crack about Lyssa and I’d popped him without a second thought.
My sister was right, I was a ham-fisted, ham-headed doofus.
Red paint splashed across my jeans.
“Fuck.”
There was a lot of red paint on the floor too. The whole shed looked like a crime scene.
I gave up and went and got a beer.
Sometimes you had to know when to stop thinking and start drinking.
* * *
My best mate Dean pulled up my driveway at about four that afternoon. I hadn’t been expecting him. He lived a few hours south of Woodville, but sometimes when he went up north for work, he stopped in for a night on his way home.
Dean wasn’t the most social kernel of corn, and these impromptu sleepovers were often the only time we got to catch up. Which was why he had absolutely no idea that Lyssa was staying here and ground to a stunned halt when he saw her sitting at my dining table.
“Whoa. What? Who?”
For Dean, that was a speech.
“Hey, mate.” I clapped him on the shoulder and offered him a beer. I was on my third and in the mood for some company—specifically, company I didn’t want to fuck.
“Dean, this is Lyssa.” I pointed to her with the mouth of my bottle. “Lyssa, this is Dean.”
“You’re Hannah’s husband,” she stood and offered her hand. “Hello.”
Dean was looking at her like she was an alien instead of a beautiful, radiant chaos queen. I nudged him with my shoulder, and he took Lyssa’s hand.
“Yeah.” He shook his head, “I mean, no, we’re not married. But Hannah’s my person.”
Dean was Han’s person too. Even I could admit that. When I first learned my best friend was dating my cousin, I hadn’t been happy. But neither of them had taken my advice to leave each other the fuck alone, and it seemed to be working out for them.
Maybe I should spend less time listening to my own advice.
We hung around my kitchen for a while before I suggested heading to the pub.
Dad was usually down there on a Sunday, and frankly, the less time I spent in my house with Lyssa right now, the better.
Dean was up for it—there were better dartboards there—and so was Lyssa, because she hadn’t been to the pub yet.
We waited while she charged her power bank and found an outfit.
I told her to wear whatever she wanted, thinking that would mean something casual.
But when she came out of her room in a miniskirt that looked like Christmas wrapping paper folded up and glued together, I wanted to groan.
After yesterday, the sight of her in a miniskirt was no bueno for me.
Every time I blinked, I saw her in my truck, her skirt pushed up over her hips and her legs spread.
The rest of her clothing consisted of a lace nightie over a T-shirt with a picture of sexy cats playing the drums, over which she’d tugged a coat that looked like she’d murdered Cookie Monster and put on his skin.
The outfit was a lot—way too much for Woodville—but very Lyssa.
When we walked into the pub, the outfit set off a chain of whispers I hoped she didn’t hear.
We made our way to the bar, Lyssa teetering in platform boots. I got us some drinks and a coke for Dean, who was our driver.
Sundays at the Woody were busy in a low-key kind of way.
Rugby or racing played on the overhead TV, and there was always someone to play darts or pool with.
There were a cluster of gumboots at the door underneath Jase’s sign ( Boots Off or Fuck Off ), and all the regulars were at their usual spots, beverages in hand.
My dad was in the corner talking with the guy who technically owned Levitate, Nolan Watson.
When dad got pneumonia last year, we’d hit a bit of a rough patch.
Caroline had come through with money before we went into receivership, but Dad still decided to accept Nolan’s offer to buy the place.
Apparently, Nolan collected rural cafés.
Dad ran the place and everything had stayed the same, but it technically wasn’t his anymore.
Having that financial burden lifted from his shoulders had taken ten years off him.
Maybe twenty. I hadn’t seen a lot of Nolan since the deal, but that was good as far as I was concerned.
A silent moneybags partner? Grand. I’d already asked Nolan if he wanted to give me money for Mike’s Place too, but he’d said no.
Said farm animals weren’t his thing. Monster.
We pulled up seats. Even though Lyssa was going to go back to New York soon and Dean lived at the ass end of the region, so it didn’t matter if they got on, I made a stab at finding some common ground.
“Lyss, Dean’s an interior designer. He loves fabric and all that shit. Dean, Lyssa used to work at Bossi. She was their youngest intern, and some of the shoots she styled were their highest viewed ever.”
Lyssa should have been impressed by my awesome social skills.
Instead, she looked shocked. “How did you know that?”
I compulsively watch every video you make.
Quickly, I cast around for a lie. “Maybe Caroline said it once? Dunno. Is that wrong?”
“No.” She took a sip of her wine and didn’t wince. I’d got her a sauvignon blanc because that’s what the blackboard said they had, but ten to one, the liquid in her glass was a mix of everything white that vineyards had left over and sold to Jason for cheap.
The Woodville pub was nothing fancy. The food was burgers, and the drink options were a miscellaneous white wine, miscellaneous red wine, beer or soft drink.
Although these days we also had nonalcoholic beer because it wasn’t the twenty-tens anymore, and most of us tried to base our personalities around more than drinking.
Most —Oz was usually pickled before noon, but so was his dad.
Remembering this made me kinda bad for hitting him.
“So, what brought you from Bossi to Aotearoa, Lyssa?” Dean asked.
I’d never seen Dean make conversation before and was taken aback—until he shot me a look over his beer when Lyssa wasn’t looking. It was knowing and pitying all at once.
I’d hoped Dean would have forgotten that I’d once mentioned watching a few of Caroline’s roommate's videos. But that look told me that not only had he remembered, he had guessed I was up to my neck in hot water having her stay with me. I wasn’t exactly famous for my restraint, and Lyssa was testing it like it had never been tested before—all of which Dean had worked out, damn him.
That was the annoying thing about having friends who knew you well.
You couldn’t pull the wool over their eyes.
Lyssa told Dean the same generic thing about wanting to visit our beautiful country that I’d heard her say in her videos. She didn’t mention her internship, the livestream video, or why she didn’t go home to her family to lick her wounds after that, like anyone else in her shoes would have.
“I think I spoke to Hannah on the phone once,” she said to Dean. “When Caroline was last here.”
Jason slid two dishes over the bar to us, one heaped with pistachios and the other empty and ready for the shells, and he waved off the tip Lyssa tried to make him take. People thought she was trying to trick them when she did that. No such thing as free money, and all that.