Page 118 of Just Watch Me
“He has a week off at the start of the school holidays, and he wants us to take the kids and go for a holiday at the beach.”
“InFiji?”
“Apparently.”
“Love bombing,” Jess announced.
“A man who’s going to be gone five weeks,” Skylar countered, “playing all those matches far from home, who wants to do something enjoyable at the end of them. He hasn’t tried to talk me into anything at all. He just wants us to spend time together while we can. Exactly like I want to do.”
“I don’t know,” Jess said. “It looks bad.”
“Well, it’s not.” She was sure of it. Almost sure, anyway. Ten minutes left of her break, so she’d better get this stew down herself. “And no, he’s not buying my food or paying mymortgage. No sugar daddy overtones. Except for Wellington, but I told you, I was practically the nanny, and he felt bad. And the Fiji thing. And, OK, flowers at school yesterday.”
“Ah,” Jess said. “I saw you had a vase on your desk when I walked by your room. Again, love bom?—”
“It isnot,”Skylar said, exactly like one of her pupils would have. “He knows I never got them before, that’s all. Pale coral roses and white stock, and beautiful beyond imagining. He thought about what to buy, and thatisromantic. That’s the definition! So, yes, flowers, and he also said he’s ordered me some new sets of undies, same as the ones you and I bought on our shopping trip. He won’t tell me what colors, but they’d better not be red. I’m a ginger. I’d look shocking in red. That pale coral, though …” There, that sounded appropriately casual.
“And when something goes wrong?” Jess asked. “What then?”
“Like what? Like my sink leaking right when I’m about to cook a special dinner? Like a bloody enormousearthquake?Like me going Nato at him when he talked to Monica about moving Georgia to another class without talking to me first? Like Scarlett and Finlay throwing separateand equal wobblies over the whole idea of us, and us having to negotiate all of it? Like our grandparents taking a big step back and leaving it all to us? It’s happened already. So much has happened already.”
“Not as much as is going to happen, I’ll bet,” Jess said. “Just be careful. You heard it here first.”
Which was not what Skylar wanted to hear. Unfortunately, it was probably exactly what she’d have said if their situations had been reversed.
Well, bugger.
All the same, she knew she was going to be opening her door to Zane tonight with the same nearly unbearable flutter of excitement she’d felt the last two nights. That she wasgoing to fall asleep with his leg touching hers and all his warmth beside her.
And that she was going to have a bloody hard time saying goodbye in the morning.
For fiveweeks.
44
CAMP SKYLAR
At six o’clock on Saturday morning, Zane had been gone exactly three days. Not enough time to miss him, Skylar would’ve said, but she’d been missing him anyway. Especially because it was hard to talk to him on the phone due to the time difference, and anyway, Zane was not an excellent telephone communicator.
She knew that because he’d rung yesterday at six-thirty A.M. Auckland time, when she’d been rushing through her ten-minute hair and makeup routine and feeling much too tired from that Body Pump workout. She’d only skipped a couple of days! How could she slide that quickly? Nobody was ever going to draft her for the Black Ferns, that was sure.
Oh, yes, the call. Here’s what she’d got out of it:
The flight had been long.
The training was going well.
The All Blacks were in Cape Town preparing to play the Stormers, and that was easier than playing the Bulls in Pretoria or the Lions in Johannesburg, both on the Highveld, much less playing theSpringboks in those places. “We train for that, of course,” he’d said, “but it’s still an advantage for them to be acclimated to the elevation.” Which was information, but not exactly a heartwarming profession of love.
