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Luke didn’t say anything. He couldn’t.
“What if people like you,” Quentin went on, “are just as important? Doesn’t there have to be a … a foundation for things?”
Luke could see him out of the corner of his eye. Staring straight ahead, the same way Luke was. “Reckon that’s what I am,” he said. “A foundation.”
“Also,” Quentin said, “I think you want to kiss me. Of course, I could be horribly wrong, and you could beat me blind for saying it. I’m going to stand up now, ready to run. I’ll deny I said it, too.”
“I don’t—” Luke managed to get out over the sound of the blood in his ears. “I can’t— Don’t go. Please. Don’t go.”
Quentin had moved away before the next school year. Luke hadn’t cried. It was just another way life changed, he’d told himself, lying in bed dry-eyed, staring into the darkness, seeing those Southern Lights dancing across the sky despite himself. Another thing you had to move on from, because you were made wrong.
He hadn’t kissed anybody else for more than four years, and even then, only when he was on tour, in some big foreign city where nobody knew his name and nobody cared about rugby. And still, every single time he’d done it, he’d expected the walls to come crashing down on him.
Now, he looked around him as the music played. Zora and Rhys, standing together, Rhys’s big arm slung over Casey’s shoulders, his other hand holding Zora’s. Kane, watching Victoria play her cello as if he’d found what he’d always been looking for. Zora and Hayden’s parents, their dad, Craig, a tight-lipped, stiff-backed sort of fella, and their mum, Tania, deliberately gracious. A bit like Grant and Miriama, in fact. Not as extreme, maybe, but Luke recognized the species. And then there was Finn Douglas, his arm around his pregnant wife, his toddler son held in one big arm, his older daughter too cool for this, his younger one all in.
All these families. And three people standing a little apart, standing with nobody. Isaiah, who would always stand apart, who would never be sure where he fit, because, like Quentin, his mind didn’t work like everybody else’s. It worked faster and more logically, and it took leaps. And Hayden, his cheerful side in full display tonight, with a brittleness to him that hurt Luke’s heart. And, of course, him.
After that came more of all of it. Casey’s room, and the buzzing fairies, the upside-down winged horses flying onto the ceiling, the mining dwarves and bunnies and mice and trees and witches. Casey climbing up on her bed and bouncing there, unable to contain her joy.
It was all pretty good, even if Luke had only painted the trees. A successful Christmas present, he reckoned, for a little girl whose mum had died, a Maori girl who hadn’t known what that meant, who’d come across the world to a dad and a family she’d never met and a life she’d never imagined.
Who needed to know that somebody still loved her.
Rhys and Zora had given her that, and that was something, wasn’t it? That was kindness. More important than brilliance, possibly. Luke didn’t know much about parenting other than what he’d seen up close, but this way seemed better to him.
He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Hayden. He’d barely had a chance to say hello to him, and he still hadn’t when they went upstairs. Rhys was pulling sausage rolls from the oven, Finn’s wife Jenna was taking a quiche and salads from the fridge, and there was talking and busyness and moving tables and chairs out on the deck, and dishes and cutlery and glasses and things to drink. And Hayden, taking a seat across from his parents, while Luke hesitated until Hayden looked up at him and said, “Come sit by me.”
It was Quentin on the rocks again. It was the hopelessly exciting, impossible wonder of that first, awkward kiss, those first tentative touches, and the Aurora Australis in the night sky.
“OK,” Luke said, and did. And still, Hayden practically vibrated with tension. Rhys was looking at the two of them speculatively, and Luke tried to tell himself, He already knows. He’s said it’s OK with him, but he couldn’t quite get there, because something was off. Something was wrong.
Finally, when everybody was tucking into their dinner, Rhys told Hayden, “You’ve sacrificed a fair bit of your time to us this week, mate. I remember when you’d have had something to say about our general dullness. What happened to that?”
“Uncle Hayden doesn’t think we’re boring,” Casey objected, her hand wrapped around another sausage roll. The sausage rolls had been her idea, no surprise. “He helped paint my room, so he wanted to come and see.”
“Of course he doesn’t think you’re boring, darling,” Tania said.
“Or maybe,” Hayden said, still with that tension in his body but the usual smile on his face, “it’s all good, because for once, I brought a date. Well, I met my date here. Close enough.”
Luke went still, but he could see Kane looking up, the alert expression on his face.
“Oh?” Hayden’s mum’s smile looked pasted on, and his father wasn’t smiling at all.
“Luke and I are going out after this,” Hayden said. “Which is, yes, a fair bit of public announcement for very early days, and yet here I am announcing anyway. I’m going out with Luke. He is my date tonight. That noise you hear is the closet door banging behind him. Also behind me, possibly, in a way. Huh. Who knew? I’ve never brought a date around my parents, much less a boyfriend, and I’m over thirty. Isn’t that odd?”
“You know we love you, darling,” Tania said, her social smile still firmly in place. “But you don’t need to tell us about it, surely.”
“Not the time or the place,” Craig said. “I’m amazed you don’t know that. Social skills, the teachers always told us you had. Verbal skills. Girls’ things, because you were rubbish at science and worse at sport, but here you are, not using any of them.”
“And yet,” Hayden said, “I find, astonishingly, that I choose this time and place. You’ll have to get used to it, I suppose.”
“Bloody wonderful.” Craig muttered it to Tania, but Luke heard him perfectly. “Not just one rugby player in the family, or even two rugby players. We’re all the way to three now. Jesus Christ. Next we’ll have his brother.”
The last sentence fell into one of those sudden lulls you got in a gathering. Finn’s head went up, all the way at the other end of the table, as if he’d sensed it, and Kane’s face darkened.
Zora said, “I heard that, Dad.” Her voice was tight. “You can’t say that.”
“No,” Rhys said. “You can’t. Not in our house, and not just because I was a rugby player myself. Tough to tell them that, was it?” he asked Hayden.
