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“Russell.”
“Oh. Robert,” she jokes, and it makes me growl a little in response. “Just kidding.”
She jabs her elbow into my side.
I try to move my torso out of the way. I’m ticklish there. “Please don’t do that while I’m driving.”
“Jeez,” she says slowly. “Has anyone also told you that you’re a grump?”
I don’t need to answer that.
“So, in Russell,” she goes on after a moment, dashing any hopes I had of her shutting up, “have you lived there your whole life?”
“Yes.”
“And Richard was your neighbor?”
I exhale as loudly as possible. “Yes. Yes. We’ve been over this.”
“I’m just making conversation. I’m trying to get to know you.”
“Well, please don’t.”
“About the conversation or about getting to know you?”
“Both.”
She crosses her arms, her tits pushed up.
I will not look at her cleavage, I will not look at her cleavage.
“You’re a grump,” she says after a moment.
“Fuck yeah I’m a grump. You would be a grump too, if you were in my shoes.”
“I wouldn’t know what it’s like to be in your shoes since you don’t talk about yourself.”
“I meant I’m grumpy today, because I had to backtrack and pick your unappreciative ass up.”
“I appreciate it,” she protests, but it sounds rather weak.
“Do you really?”
She waves at that dismissively. “Fine. Be grumpy. Doesn’t mean I can’t get to know you. You’re the best man, I’d like to find out why. How do you tie into all of this?”
I shoot her a loaded glance, eyes resting ever so briefly on her tits, and then look back to the road. “I was born in Russell. Richard moved next door when he was six. We went to school together. All the kids picked on Richard because he was a skinny nerd who was always falling down and always crying and couldn’t swim. But because I was Richard’s neighbor, I started to feel sorry for him. I started standing up for him. With my fists. We’ve been friends ever since.” I pause, briefly raising my fingers off the steering wheel. “Happy now?”
She nods thoughtfully. “Figures Richard was a nerd from the start. I mean, you’d have to be to be marrying my sister. Plus his last name looks like boner.”
I almost laugh. “It is Boner.”
“Yeah but it’s pronounced Bon-air,” she says.
I rub my lips together before I look at her. She’s serious.
“You think his last name is Bon-air? It’s not. It’s Boner. It’s Richard Boner, AKA Dick Boner, reason one million why he’s been made fun of his whole life.”
She shakes her head, her eyes wide. “It can’t be. When he added me on Facebook, I immediately started making fun of his last name and Lacey insisted it’s pronounced Bon-Air.”
“Lacey is lying,” I tell her. “Haven’t you figured that’s why she’s hesitant on taking his last name.”
“I thought it was because of our Lewis legacy.”
“Legacy? Aren’t your parents apple farmers?”
“So…she might become Lacey Boner.” She giggles for a moment, and then sobers up. “If she’s lying about Dick Boner, what else could she be lying about?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. You’ve got your issues.”
“What does that mean?”
Why did I open my mouth? I should have stopped talking hours ago.
“What does that mean, Tai? If that is your real name.”
I give her a look. “Why wouldn’t it be my name?”
“It sounds made up.”
“It’s not. It’s Maori.”
She’s silent for a moment. “Oh. Are you Maori?”
I nod. My skin gets pretty dark in the sun, and it’s the end of summer now so I’m pretty brown, but perhaps it isn’t obvious to her.
“Yeah. Maori on my mother’s side.”
“So what does Tai mean?”
“It means ‘Great Extreme’.”
She rubs her lips together as if she’s trying not to laugh.
“What?” I ask testily.
“Great Extreme what? Great Extreme Grump?”
My eyes roll back. “Whatever you want to call me, it makes zero difference to me. Anyway, you’re named after a weed.”
“I don’t know what you call them here, but at home a daisy is a flower. A pretty one.” She’s so indignant, I’m almost smiling.
“Yeah, they’re weeds.”
She practically jumps in her seat. “Daisies aren’t weeds! They’re flowers!”
“They’re weeds and I mow them down every spring.” I give her a smirk. “Pretty fitting name if you ask me.”
The glare returns to her eyes. “Forget grump, you’re a full-on dick.”
I shrug. “As I said, whatever you want to call me makes no difference to me.”
And at that, she seems to shut up.
I glance down at the dashboard clock and sigh internally at how slow this has been going. It’s been a hell of a day so far.
I woke up early having spent the night on one of the boats I had to sail from the Bay of Islands last week, down to Auckland Harbor for a client. I met the client, handed off the boat, and then started up on the motorway back up to Russell.
That’s when Lacey called me in hysterics, saying her sister Daisy had arrived a day early and she hadn’t arranged any pickup for her. I guess tomorrow Daisy was supposed to arrive at the same time as another guest was passing through and they were going to give her a ride or something. At any rate, I thought it was odd that Daisy was arriving on the day of the wedding rehearsal, as if she was trying to cut the trip as short as possible. But from the way that Lacey sometimes refers to Daisy as being flakey and pampered and distant, I figured it was normal.
