tiny movement at the corner of his mouth betraying amusement, which was better than stony silence, anyway, “that any woman’s ever said, ‘Right, big boy, let’s go’ to me.”
“Because you say it to them first,” I said. “Obviously.”
He thought about that a moment. “Well, yeh,” he conceded. “Probably. I usually buy them dinner first, to be fair.”
I laughed, and he grinned, too, just for a second. “So you see,” I said, “it could work. You’re not looking for a commitment, clearly, or you’d be married already. And I need somebody kind, but … sexy enough. To get me excited, I mean. And that’s you. We’re here for a couple weeks, and I’m on night shift this week, which means I only have until eleven o’clock at the latest, and you have to get up early, so …”
“I don’t know whether to be happier that I’m sexy enough to get you excited,” he said, “or that this isn’t going to interfere with my sleep.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“We’ll call that a hard no,” he said. “I find I’m not sufficiently seduced by this plan. Oddly.”
“Oh.” I tried not to feel stupid and rejected. I failed.
“Normally,” he said, “I’d probably jump at it. If you hadn’t said anything and had just cuddled up a bit more, I’d be jumping at it right now. But …”
“I couldn’t do that,” I pointed out with my last bit of pride, “since you’d discover the truth pretty quickly. I told you. I’m not good at it. You’d be buggering off like both of those other blokes, except that you wouldn’t have anyplace to bugger off to, since I’m right here.” I got busy collecting the rubbish from my flower-arranging, stuffed it in the bin, and said, “Never mind. I tried. Just forget it, all right? Sorry about the … foot thing. I don’t know what I was thinking. I probably embarrassed you. Nobody does that, not at dinner. I realized that, afterwards. I never know the right thing, if you can’t read it in a women’s magazine. Never mind, though. No harm done, right? Time for me to go anyway. I need a nap before work. Actually, I need exercise, but I’m out of time and out of light, so it’ll have to be a nap. See you tomorrow.”
I fled.
Humiliation: 1. Daisy: 0.
Story of my sex life.
36
The Right Thing
Gray
I was fairly sure I’d handled that completely wrong.
I looked at Daisy’s yellow kowhai that she’d arranged in a vase for my mum and felt bad. At my feet, Xena whined. I said, “Yeh, girl, you’re right. I’m a clumsy bastard.”
A knock at my door, and my heart leaped. I headed out there in a fair hurry, opened it, and said, “Let’s try that again.” Or I started to say it, because it was Mum.
“Oh,” I said, and ran a hand over my hair. “Hi.”
She gave Xena a pat, since the dog had come forward, tail wagging, to say hello, then said, “I could go away again, if you like. Seems a bit hard, though, as I’ve traveled three and a half hours. And you asked me, of course, so there’s that.”
“No,” I said. “Of course. Come in.” I gave her a kiss, took the suitcase from her and headed for the stairs, then remembered the flowers and took a detour into the kitchen to grab the jar.
Mum said, following me up the stairs, “Never tell me you cut those for me, because I won’t believe it.”
I said, “I could be insulted, but I won’t be, because you’re right. Daisy did it.”
“Daisy, eh.” We made it to the pink-and-blue bedroom, and she said, “How are they getting on, then? More groceries in the boot, by the way.”
“All right, I guess.” I dumped the vase of flowers onto the wide windowsill and thought that I should probably do something with the dormers up here. Make nooks, or something. Women liked nooks.
“You don’t sound sure of that,” Mum said. “Why is that, I wonder?”
“Never mind,” I said. “You can ask them tomorrow. The girls, at least, because Daisy’s working nights. Midnight to eight. Sleeping during the day. Not sleeping enough, probably. She’s got a list. Trying to do everything at once.”
“And not letting you do anything,” Mum said.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. She’d asked me to do something, and I’d turned her down. None too gently, either. I couldn’t even go over there and say something marginally better, because she was sleeping.
Mum said, “Groceries. Boot.” So I went and got them.