Just for You (7 page)

I’m coming back
.

A
n endless two weeks later, and she was beginning to realize that this was going to be even harder than she’d thought.

He’d gone back to Auckland for a mere ten days, then had been off to Sydney for a preseason match against the Waratahs that the Blues had lost. When she’d texted him her commiserations afterwards, though, he’d told her it didn’t matter.

Preseason doesn’t count
, he’d texted back.
Just trying the boys out
.

She guessed it made sense, because he’d played a bare fifteen minutes himself, although he told her he’d wanted more.

“I always want to be out on the park,” he said when he rang her from the airport the next morning. “All the time. Every match. Most of us do.”

“But…aren’t you worried you’ll be injured before the season even starts? That must be what the coaches are thinking about.” She curled onto the couch, held her phone to her ear and wished she were holding him, but was happy just to hear his voice.

She could almost hear the shrug. “You can always get injured. Can get injured in training, can’t you. Strain a groin muscle, kicking over and over again to get it right, and you’ve lost weeks of playing time. Besides, match time is different to training time. The pace, the pressure.”

“Thought preseason didn’t matter,” she challenged.

She got a laugh in return. “All right. It all matters. Anytime you play, anything you play, you want to win. If you don’t burn to win, you aren’t meant for this game.”

Was that all it was about, then, with her? she wondered. Winning? But they weren’t talking about her, and she bit her tongue on the question. Needy didn’t suit her.

“I’m coming to see you after this next one,” he told her as if he could read her thoughts. “What time do you get off work on Monday?”

“Four.” He was coming, and the happiness fizzed inside her like bubbles in a Coke bottle. He was coming back.

“Unless you want me sooner,” he said, and she heard the hint of laughter in his voice. “I’d get a late start, for obvious reasons, and I wouldn’t get there till late on
Sunday, but I’m willing to put in the hard yards. Be able to stay up late with you then, keep you…company.”

“Monday,” she said, her smile huge. “Because I want you fit and rested for me. But don’t get your hopes up.”

“Aw, baby,” he said, “a man can always hope,” and she laughed.

The second game of the preseason, the Crusaders this time. A New Zealand derby, North versus South, and Reka was in the Duke on another Saturday night, the room buzzing once more with noise and laughter. Locals and holidaymakers both, the perfect February weather bringing no lessening of crowds here in the perpetual summer of the Bay of Islands.

She wasn’t serving tonight, though, because she wanted to watch Hemi. She waited impatiently through the first half at the big round table she’d got here early to secure, but he didn’t appear.

Everyone was here with her, as usual. Uncle Matiu, Auntie Kiri, Ana and Ella and a couple more cousins. Tamati sleeping in his carrier against the wall, Tai and the other kids busy scoffing chips and sausages, content for now. Nobody paying much attention to the game except herself and Uncle Matiu.

Reka forgot about the rest of them, though, when the adverts for DIY projects and manufactured homes, preventatives against parasites and Dry Cow Mastitis, and all the rest of the inevitable accompaniment to a New Zealand rugby match had played out, and halftime was over. Her attention was all for the big screen overhead, because Hemi was filling it, running onto the field for the kickoff in his tight blue jersey and little shorts, his hair cut close and crisp, every bit of his big body looking rock-hard and ready for action, like he couldn’t wait, and just looking at him like that made her shiver.

He gave the ball a quick bounce and sent it off his toe in a high punt aimed perfectly just the required twenty-two meters down the field and barely inside the touchline, forcing the men in red to waste time positioning themselves and allowing the Blues to sprint down and challenge for the ball, and the second half was underway.

It wasn’t all perfect, not at all. More than one pass went awry, more than one player was left grasping air as his opponent swerved out of his tackle.

“Dead sloppy,” Uncle Matiu said. “Off pace, both teams. Not clicking at all. They’ll need to get that sorted, specially the Blues, if they want to finish anywhere in the top half of the pack this year.”

Reka wasn’t listening, because the huge Crusaders lock carrying the ball had just charged at Hemi, thinking that a 10 would be a soft target, and Hemi had taken him on. She winced at the collision even as her heart swelled with pride at his courage.

The Blues’ massive No. 8, Finn Douglas, was there immediately in support, shoving against the Crusaders players who’d joined the breakdown to fight for the ball, and Drew Callahan, the Blues’ captain, was in there digging as well, going for the steal.

“Nothing wrong with their ticker, though,” Uncle Matiu said, and Reka agreed, but the next moment, she was leaping to her feet. Her eyes had never left Hemi, and it looked to her like somehow, he had the ball.

In the same instant, though, a player in a red shirt was coming across, reaching desperately to try to get it back. Hemi rolled, the arriving player’s knee caught him in the head, and Reka was still up, hands clasped at her chest, forgetting to breathe.

The referee blew his whistle to signal the change of possession and the teams set up again, a Blues player running with the ball, passing it a split-second before the arriving tackler took him down, but Reka wasn’t watching that. She was looking for Hemi.

A pan back downfield by one of the cameras, and there he was, still on the ground, the trainer bent over him with his black bag at the ready. Hemi was rolling, though, up on one knee, then getting to his feet, running back to join the play, and Reka tried to catch her breath as the camera showed a quick replay of the collision and the crowd voiced its noisy disapproval.

To no effect, because Hemi was straight back in the mix, carrying the ball now, powering forward off his muscular legs and taking a couple Crusaders with him before going down again, and Reka was sitting down and patting her chest.

“Got a hard head, hasn’t he,” Uncle Matiu said with a wheezy chuckle, and Reka turned to glare at him.

“That wasn’t right,” she said. “Kneeing him in the head.”

“That’s the game, my darling. That’s what he’d tell you. That’s the game.”

Hemi didn’t play the full forty minutes for all that, she saw with some relief. Seventy minutes in, and he was jogging to the sideline to applause from the crowd, accepting slaps on the back from his teammates on the bench—and then accepting a blue ice bag, sitting down and pressing it to his jaw, turning to his neighbor all the same for a smile and a quick word. Not fussed at all, Uncle Matiu had been right about that.

“A man who can do that,” she asked her uncle as the camera shifted back to the match, which the Blues seemed to be winning, “who can play that hard, be that fierce, get hurt like that and keep playing, that says heaps about him, doesn’t it?”

“Says he’s brave,” Uncle Matiu said. “But you knew that already. You saw him save Tai. You don’t need to watch him play rugby to know he’s strong and brave. That isn’t the part that counts most anyway.”

“It isn’t?” It counted to her.

“Nah,” he said with decision, lifting his beer to his lips with one leathery brown hand and taking a sip. He set the handle down, wiped his mouth, and Reka waited. What counted, if that didn’t?

“That he was
able
to save Tai, that isn’t the point,” her uncle continued at last. “Just like you were able to do it, because you’re a good swimmer too. You were able to, and you got stuck in and did it, because Tai’s your nephew, he’s your blood. But he isn’t Hemi’s. Strong is one thing. Brave is one thing. Heaps of war heroes who’re rubbish at home, though. What matters…” He thumped his skinny old-man’s chest. “Mana. That’s what matters. That he runs strongly, that he fights bravely, yeh. And that he can speak softly, that he uses his strength to protect, not just to hurt. That’s what you know about him. That’s what counts.”

A day and a half later, she was still waiting for him, and her kids seemed to have got together and determined to make her life difficult. All she wanted was for the work day to be over, to go home and get ready for Hemi, and she could swear they knew it.

She sniffed as she approached the little group at the corner table. Oh, bugger. She knew what that was. They had been happily coloring just a minute before, but there was some shrieking going on now.

“Ewww!” Mandy exclaimed, her voice shrill with excitement, brown ponytail bobbing as she jumped up. “Somebody has pee-pee pants!”

“Robby!” Beauden shouted. “Robby weed in his pants!”

Robby had stopped coloring and started to cry, rocking a little in his little wooden chair.

“He’s a crybaby!” Beauden said. “Robby weed in his pants, and he’s crying, because he’s a baby!”

“He’s a big baby,” Mandy echoed. “Robby’s a big, big baby.”

“Stop it,” Reka said firmly, gathering Robby off his chair, the telltale acrid aroma letting her know that Beauden had pinpointed the sufferer. “Just about everybody in this room has weed in their pants at school, and you all know it. Today’s Robby’s turn, that’s all.”

“I didn’t,” Mandy said stoutly. “I
never
did.”

“You spewed, though,” Beauden said with delight. “I remember. You got sick all over the doll corner! Miss Reka had to clean it all up!”

“Everybody has accidents,” Reka said, trying not to sigh. “Every single one of us. Stop crying, Robby. Let’s get your clean pants.” She nodded across the room to Heather, her aide, took Robby by the hand, and set off for his cubby as the little boy wiped a hand under his running nose, still sniffling. Geez. Mondays.

A half-hour later, she had the kids on the round carpet in the center of the room, singing the alphabet song. Calm and structure, she’d decided. Wouldn’t do her any harm either.

A sudden outbreak of four-year-old giggles, then a pair of strong brown legs at the edge of her vision, and that wasn’t something you saw much of in her classroom. She turned her head, and her voice trailed off. A few of the kids were still singing, plowing on to the end, and then they were all staring and giggling.

Hemi. Standing next to the bricks table, a grin on his face, an enormous bouquet of orange Asiatic lilies in his arms. Shorts, jandals, blue T-shirt stretching across that broad
chest. Hemi. With a jaw darkened and swollen with bruising, and she exclaimed aloud at the sight of it as she got to her feet, but he paid that no attention.

“Hi,” he said. “Decided I couldn’t wait another minute to see my favorite kindy teacher.”

Heather came over with a smile on her round face, gave Reka a little dig in the ribs, and eased her middle-aged body down to the carpet to take her place. “Come on, kids,” she said. “Zippety-zap! Get ready to wiggle your body!”

Reka barely heard the group starting to sing behind her, because Hemi had put his arms around her, flowers and all. He was holding her, and she was holding him back, loving that she was in his arms again, wishing he would kiss her but knowing it would hurt, and the kids weren’t zippety-zapping nearly as much as they ought to have been.