Chapter 22
LYSSA
On my way back from Cilla’s, I picked up a bottle of champagne and stopped by the café, hoping to find Mike there having a celebratory beer with his dad. But Kev was out back in the parking lot, raking over divots in the gravel, and hadn’t seen his son.
Kev waved off my concern about the absence of his crutches and leaned on his rake instead. “You’ll be here by six tomorrow, right, kiddo? Family dinner. All the trimmings.”
I swallowed the sudden lump in my throat and smiled my welcome back to my channel!
smile. “That’s okay, Kev. You don’t need to worry about including me.
I can fix myself something at home at Mike’s.
The Hollidays haven’t been together around a table for such a long time and I don’t want to intrude. ”
Kev looked stern. “It’s family dinner . Doesn’t matter what your last name is. You and Mike need to be here by six, and your job is setting the table.”
I beamed, and barely restrained myself from bouncing up and down. “Are you sure?”
“Of course. Be here at half five if you want to have a good gander at all the china,” he continued. “There’s heaps of it. Caroline and Mike’s grandmother used to nick china. It was a whole situation.”
I did jump up and down then, and I threw my arms around him.
Kev was surprised but patted my back. After promising punctuality—I’d have to set about six alarms as timeliness didn’t come naturally to me—I went back inside Levitate to find the silk scarf I’d left there this morning.
My plan was to share a champagne toast at home with Mike, then put together the perfect family dinner outfit.
Something with a knit. And a collar. With a bolero!
Ooh, but Mike and Kev always wore plaid shirts, so maybe I could do something in plaid?
Then I’d really look like part of the family. For family dinner .
I was so happy I could have jumped in the air and clacked my heels together. If I had the coordination, I would have.
“Lyssa?”
Caroline was beside Levitate’s counter, talking to Aroha through the hole in the wall that led to the kitchen.
“Caroline!”
Guilt suffused me, slow and thick, like a thick glob of nail polish sliding down the side of the bathtub, which I’d spilled because I tried to balance the bottle there while painting my toes.
I’d been so wrapped up in Mike—making out with Mike, being driven around in Mike’s car, having orgasms with Mike—and shooting content in Cilla’s garden that I’d forgotten that my best friend had traveled halfway around the world to be here at the same time as me.
I’d felt so abandoned when Caroline had first fallen for Chase, and now, I’d done the exact same thing—except worse, because I was doing it in her family home, while LARPing as a Holliday.
For a moment, I was lost in my panic and guilt.
This all abated when Caroline threw her arms around me.
We bounced up and down, hugging, screeching, until I tumbled over a chair, and Caroline, who was tiny, cleared all the sugar packets off the counter with one pointy elbow.
“I missed you!”
“I missed you more!”
If I hadn’t known for a fact that Caroline had traveled for about twenty-two hours yesterday, I wouldn’t have believed it. Her skin was smooth and glowing, her cheeks and lips the same shade of pink as her bouncy hair, which swooped dramatically from her deep side part.
Chase walked into the café then and kissed his girlfriend, then we hugged too. Part of me had wanted to hate Chase for luring Caroline out of mine and Root Beer’s home, but he was just too nice—sometimes boring. But always nice.
As ever, he wore his uniform of a tan sweater and a button down.
My fingers itched to get my hands on his Black Amex and dress him properly; but he’d never let me.
Chase was a creature of habit and would die in that boring sweater before he would let me dress him.
It just didn’t do him justice! Chase was handsome, in a nerdy-professor way.
If he and Caroline ever decided to procreate, their kids would be cute as hell.
Vertically challenged, because Caroline was tiny and Chase wasn’t much taller than me; but cute.
“How are you finding Aotearoa, Lyssa?” Chase asked.
“It’s beautiful. This is your second time here, right?”
He nodded. “I still can’t get over how calm everything is. Listen to that?—”
I obligingly stood still, ear tilted. A few cars went past. One of the ducks in the courtyard—probably Zachary, he always had something to say—honked.
Eventually, I asked Chase, “Hear what?”
“It’s the sound of nothing.” Caroline rolled her eyes. “Soon you’ll be missing late-night bodegas, cabbies leaning on their horns, and that subway busker who sings about rat genitals.”
“Jerry! Oh, I miss him.”
“He has a new song about a cockroach disco, and it’s honestly a banger.”
Chase, who had never taken the subway, looked confused.
“The dairy here—that’s like a bodega, or a corner store,” I explained to Chase, “closes at five. You have to make sure you’re totally stocked up on stuff like chocolate, because if you get a late-night craving, you can’t do anything about it until nine the next morning.
One time I had to pull all of the chocolate chips out of some cookies Mike had in the cupboard. ”
And Mike hadn’t even been mad when I forgot to clean the unwanted cookie bits off the counter. He was a good man.
Chase checked his watch. “Sorry to dash, Lyssa, but Caroline, we should get going. We have to get to the supermarket over in Pie—um. Pie…? Floss, how do you say it again?”
“Pahīatua!” I jumped in. “It’s a te reo Māori word.
It means—well, kind of, because English translations of te reo are never exact—it means resting place for the gods.
Atua is god. There are lots of gods in Māori culture, but I don’t know them all.
Actually, Pahīatua has a really interesting history.
It was home for a lot of Polish children during the Second World War.
After the war, the USSR tried to, um, I think take them back…
?.” I was soupy on some of the finer details.
“But the New Zealand government said no because all their homes were destroyed and nothing good awaited them in the Soviet Union.”
Too late, I worried it was a mistake not to save this fact for dinner.
Caroline frowned. She knew the only things I usually cared to memorize were fashion related. And Shakespeare, but that wasn’t on purpose, that was involuntary osmosis.
“When did you become New Zealand’s Wikipedia?” she asked.
Chase saved me. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we really do need to go, Floss, if we want to pick up dessert ingredients for tomorrow.”
I was about to ask why they weren’t going to one of Woodville’s cheesecake shops or Lia’s bakery, which Chase anticipated. “Caroline’s cousin Hannah can’t eat cheesecake, and the bakery is shut today and tomorrow. So Caroline’s going to make apple pie.”
It was my turn to stare at my friend like she’d grown another head.
“You can’t bake.”
“I’ve been learning.”
Now that would be a good video: Apple pie disaster (feat. Summer Holliday)! It was bound to be very visual, messy, and endearing.
I didn’t suggest filming this though.
Friends ≠ content.
Apple pie disaster (feat. Summer Holliday, who doesn’t know I’m banging her brother)!
That video would be a disaster, but the views would be excellent.
Chase pulled me from my thoughts. “Would you like us to get you some chocolate while we’re at the store, Lyssa?”
“I’m good. After cookie-gate, I bought enough chocolate chips to last me six months.”
Caroline’s hand flew to her clavicle and her jaw dropped. “Six months? Exactly how long are you planning on staying in New Zealand, Lyssa?”
“You should get going!” I said in a singsong voice. “I have to find Mike, and I have to plan an outfit for dinner tomorrow! Got to rush, much to do! See ya round!”
I kissed their cheeks, then pulled my scarf out from the cushions of the window seat and hightailed it out of there like my ass was on fire.
Caroline’s stare burned a hole in the back of my head.
* * *
Mike’s truck was in the drive, but he wasn’t in his armchair or his room, and the bathroom door was open. No Mike.
The counter was clean, and the dishes I’d left there this morning were done, which made me curse, because I hadn’t done them, despite trying to be better about that.
So I did what I always did when I felt guilty about being a chaos goblin: I went around the house looking for mugs, and sure enough, I found three.
Washing them drenched my Birth of Venus sweatshirt, so I took it off and draped it over the stool Mike kept handy in the kitchen to reach the tops of the cupboards—I’d put my chocolate chip tub up there at first, but Mike took one look at me teetering on the ladder and insisted it be moved down.
I was staring out the window over the sink as I dried the cups, looking at the garage without seeing it, when I remembered the house Mike had been building for Mini M.
Once out the door, I noticed a rhythmic thumping sound. It wasn’t a sound my brain had any existing neural pathways to make sense of, but I knew it wasn’t from painting a horse box.
The sight I found stopped me in my tracks.
A large red bag hung from the ceiling. Mike was shirtless, his hands wrapped in gloves, and he was beating the crap out of it.
My jaw dropped.
This man had been naked over me, under me, and right behind me.
I’d seen and felt all of him. Yet seeing him like this made my mouth go dry.
Mike was incredibly strong, but his muscle definition wasn’t apparent unless he was flexing or doing fun things like lifting me onto counters.
I knew for a fact he was strong. But I’d never seen his strength like this before.