Page 70 of Just One Look

“Lazy date,” she said, and he laughed.

The wine was Pinot Noir, it turned out. She handed it down to him from the cupboard, said, “Find some glasses, will you, and pour this?” then grabbed the duvet from her bed and the smaller one from the other bedroom and took them outside, dumping the big one onto one folding chair and wrapping the smaller one around herself and sinking into the other chair. As for Webster, he must have decided that midnight was late for frisking even for him, because he padded out after her and sank down beside her with a sigh.

She put her feet up on another chair, huddled closer into the duvet, ignored the stream of car lights and the roar of traffic, and looked out to the bridge and the pinpricks of light from houses across the harbor. From behind her, music came on, something soft and sweet and low, drifting out into the night like smoke. Luka’d figured out the sound system, then. He handed her a glass of wine without a word, and she sipped it, tasted berries and pepper, drank half of it down in a way that wasn’t refined at all, and said, “Hardly any stars, though. Too much light here.”

“I’ll have to take you to Northland,” he said. “Oh. You’ll know that. You’ve been there.”

“Mm.” It was chilly out here, the breeze cold on her face, but she was warm in her jacket and the thick duvet. She drank some more of her wine, and Luka reached over with the bottle and refilled her glass. She told him, “With Piper. She made so many friends. So many barbecues and picnics. On the beach at night, with bonfires. There were stars then. I’d lie back and look at them while everybody talked and laughed. How do people always have so many things to laugh about, if they don’t know each other? I laughed in medical school. During my residency, too, but that was because we were always so tired, and things seem funnier when you’re tired. And because we were all in it together, and it was so intense. We’dsufferedtogether. How do you laugh like that if you’ve just met people?”

“Beer, I reckon,” Luka said, and she smiled.

“Do you laugh like that?” she asked.

“With my mates. Rugby mates. After games. On tour with the All Blacks, when you’ve been gone a month. Like you say. When you know each other that well, you’ve been in the trenches together, and you’re tired.”

“And have had too much beer,” she said.

“Nah. Got to get up in the morning and train. Alcohol dulls you the next day.”

“It does.” She sighed. Somehow, she’d almost finished her second glass of wine. The music shifted, got even slower and more sultry. A man, singing low. Bedroom music, this should be called. Presumably aimed at women who were wearing something other than jackets and jeans, not to mention duvets, and didn’t sleep through their hot dates with rugby players. “Fortunately,” she said, “I have a day off tomorrow. I’ve had so many days off already. The stars look different here, by the way. Southern Hemisphere. I don’t know stars. I don’t know a lot of things.”

“City girl, I reckon.”

“No. Busy girl. Indoor girl. Tell me about you. You grew up on a farm. You must know stars.” She was floating on the music now, her reactions delayed, so everything took more effort. She set her wine glass down on the table, careful with it, because her depth perception was off. Unusual.

He said, “I did. And I do, on the stars. Left when I was a teenager, though. Boarding school in Auckland.”

“Saint Kentigern.”

“You remember that.”

“Piper. I was supposed to … call Piper. Find Piper. Before I saw you again.”

“Mm.”

“So did you pick avocadoes?” She closed her eyes. No stars to see anyway.

“Some. Left for school when I was fifteen, though, and the farm’s a woman thing. My gran, my mum, my elder sisters.”

“They have the farm, and you have rugby?”

“Something like that.”

“Is that enough?”

“It’s had to be.”

She wanted to say,That doesn’t sound right.She wanted to ask him,Why? Why is it a woman thing? Why isn’t it a family thing?She wanted to ask,What about your dad? Where is he? What does he think?She’d ask him in a minute. She’d ask him … more.

She was floating away. She’d tell him … he should kiss her. That he should …

In a minute.