AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sounds good, though,” Hayden said. “Are you secretly sophisticated, Luke?”
“No,” he said. “I just like it.” His face went wooden, so, again, he’d seen.
No more flirting, Hayden told himself. He told himself that heaps. It usually didn’t work. He couldn’t seem to turn it off. And if the fella was this hot? He really couldn’t turn it off.
Never mind. He was insouciant.
“It sounds very fancy and very expensive,” Casey said. “You can still make your apartment pretty, but you can only have a view if it’s expensive, because views cost extra.”
“That’s probably because French rugby pays better,” Isaiah said. “It does,” he said, when Zora looked at him. “New Zealand rugby only pays about five hundred thousand dollars a year even if you’re an All Black for a long time, unless you’re a very top All Black, and French rugby can pay two million dollars a year. That’s four times as much.”
“I don’t get paid two million dollars a year,” Luke said.
“But you’re the captain for England, too,” Isaiah pointed out. “When you play on an international side, you make even more money. If you win a championship, you get more than that. That’s why Uncle Rhys is so much richer than my dad was, because my dad wasn’t an All Black very much and Uncle Rhys was always one. Also, Uncle Rhys is a coach, and coaches get paid the most of all. Maybe you’ll be a coach later, and then you’ll really have a lot of money. Then you could have a bigger flat where you don’t have to duck your head.”
“We’re not going to talk any more about what Luke gets paid,” Rhys said. “As it’s not very interesting. Beer. Hang on.” He went inside for it.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Hayden said. “Of course, I’m a lawyer, so I have an excuse, but I find money pretty interesting. Not having it can get interesting, hey, Zora.”
“It can,” she said.
“Being poor isn’t interesting,” Casey said, “because you can’t do as many fun things when you’re poor. You can do fun things that don’t cost money, though, so it can still be interesting that way. You’re supposed to say ‘broke,’ though, not ‘poor.’ ‘Broke’ sounds better, like you might be richer later on, so you just need school lunch for now. That’s what my mommy said when she was alive.”
“True,” Hayden said. “Though in New Zealand, you say ‘skint.’ Means you’re waiting for payday. And, of course, you can be broke no matter how much money you make. All you have to do is spend more than you make, and hey presto, you’re broke. Or skint. Or both. Also, Isaiah, you could consider this important detail. Rugby doesn’t last that long. If you’re a lawyer, your career can last until you’re seventy. Longer, if you like, and you’re getting more experience all the time, hence better compensated. That means ‘paid more,’ Casey. Whereas in rugby, you’re done when you’re thirty or possibly thirty-five, if you’re very lucky. After that, you have to find something new to do. Coach, maybe, like Isaiah says. Buy a restaurant, hang your old jerseys behind glass on the wall, and probably go out of business. Very unstable industry, restaurants. Or you could talk about rugby on TV. That always seemed like a good job.”
“Depends how well you talk,” Luke said. “You could do it, I reckon.” Hayden laughed in surprise, and then wondered if it was an insult. Luke’s face had lost the wooden look, though. His eyes were warm, in fact, and fixed on Hayden, and he lost his breath again.
His hopeful heart, turning toward that warmth and strength like a sunflower turning toward the sun.
Or maybe Luke was amused because Hayden had just implied that he was bound to fail dismally as soon as he retired. Which could be soon, now that he’d come out, because had any active player ever come out?
No. Whoops. Not too tactful, but Luke still looked amused, so maybe he just thought Hayden was charmingly clueless. Hilariously rude. Something like that.
“A scientist is more like a lawyer,” Casey said. “You can be a scientist until you’re old, because scientists in movies always have white hair, and kind of crazy hair. That’s good, Isaiah, since you want to be a scientist. You don’t like to brush your hair, either. Except that I don’t think scientists make very much money, and you want to make lots of money. That’s the bad part.”
“You have to be a scientist and also invest,” Isaiah said. “I think buying houses would be the best for investing, because people need houses to rent, and Auckland doesn’t have enough. You should probably invest,” he told Luke. “If you have extra money from playing rugby in France.”
Luke actually smiled. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Do you speak French?” Isaiah asked. “Because it’s France,” he told Casey. “And they speak French, not English.”
“I do,” Luke said. “My French is pretty good after eight years, actually.”
“You don’t talk very much,” Casey said. “So maybe you don’t need to know too many words.” And Luke smiled some more.
Definitely hot, strong, and kind. Hayden was going to be lost here pretty soon.
Get it together, he told himself. Have a drink or something.
“Fair point,” Luke said, just as Rhys came out again with the beer and held a bottle up to him. “No, thanks,” Luke said. “I’m good with water.” And Hayden thought, Wait, what?
“Keeping up your fitness, eh,” Rhys said, sitting down and offering one each to Marko, Tom, and Hayden. Hayden found himself waving it off, which annoyed him, but he couldn’t help it. He was a mirrorer. It was science. You had mirror neurons in your brain that responded the same way whether you did a thing, or watched somebody else do a thing. He had empathy. Why was that bad?
Or he was just an impossible people-pleaser, which was bad. He was going with the mirror neurons.
“Maybe you’d like to mention your giving up to some of the boys at the wedding,” Rhys said. “My players, anyway, though we’ll give Marko a pass as he’s getting married.”
“Cheers,” Marko said. Almost the first time he’d said anything. He’d mostly just sat there looking dark and amused. Well, he was a flanker, like Rhys had been, and flankers tended more toward action than words. Bashing the other fella and poaching the ball, seemed to be the idea. Fierce, you could call flankers. Or hard men.
