Just for Fun (17 page)

“Yeah.” She smiled briefly at him, then was out of the ute
and ushering Zack to the front door. He popped the latch on the back, pulled
out the heavy piece of wood, then set it down to close the back again. She’d
been so quiet on the way back. He could tell she was feeling awkward. No more
of these outings without Claudia, he decided. It had felt too much like a
family. Too confusing for all of them.

By the time he’d made it into the flat with the driftwood,
she already had Zack in the bath. Nic shifted the load in his arms. “Where
d’you want this?”

She ran to the end table between the chair and the couch.
“Right here.” She moved the lamp, then pulled the table aside to make a space.

He set the piece down where she indicated. “Got a particular
way you want it?” He twisted and turned it until it was arranged to her
satisfaction, then stood up again.

“Mind if I wash my hands?” he asked.

“Of course. Go ahead and use the bathroom sink. Zack won’t
mind. He’s not that modest,” she told him, her smile returning at last.

   “Want me to take that other thing away?” he asked when he
came back, indicating the end table. “Not good for much.”

“No. I’ll take it back to the Op Shop. That’s where I got it
in the first place. Recycling,” she said ruefully.

“I’ll put it in your boot, then,” he decided, picking it up.

“You don’t have to do that,” she objected.

“I know I don’t. I will anyway. Walk me out, will you?”

She stood aside in silence as he stowed the table in the
boot of her car, then slammed the lid and turned towards his own car.

“That was a good day,” he told her as they walked down the
driveway together. “More fun than I’ve had in ages.”

“Too much fun,” she said. She looked up at him, eyes
troubled. “I don’t want to . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Yeh,” he agreed with a sigh. Stopped at the ute, fingered
the keys in his hand. “Too much history, I reckon.”

“That’s it,” she said with relief. “Anyway. Zack will see
you Monday. Have a good weekend. What’s left of it.”

“I’m home!” he called out, shutting the oversized entry
door behind him. “Claud?”

She came to meet him, pulled back at the sight of him. “What
have you been
doing
to yourself? Rolling in the sand?”

“Yeh,” he smiled. “Just about. It was brilliant, actually.
You should’ve come. Did you have a good day?”

“Had lunch with Cassandra,” she said. “We did some talking.”

“Sounds good. I’ll go take a shower, OK? And we can do some
talking ourselves. Or whatever.” He reached to kiss her, felt her withdrawal.
“Something wrong?” he asked, pulling back with a frown.

“Go take your shower,” she told him.

He came back downstairs afterwards, went to the fridge for a
beer. The game wouldn’t be on for a couple hours yet. He wondered if he
should’ve made plans to watch with a teammate. Claudia hadn’t been to a match
since before he’d found Zack. And she hadn’t seemed too keen on watching
tonight’s. He went and sat on the couch next to her, took a pull at the bottle.
Two was all he’d allow himself, with the semis coming up. He’d enjoy every sip
of this one.

“Wish you could’ve been there today,” he told her again.
“It’d be better, I think. Besides, you really do need to meet Emma, and Zack.
Because I want to get the visitation sorted, and she isn’t going to agree to
that if she’s never met you. I was thinking, when we go to the bach after the
final, maybe they could come up for a couple days.”

“To
stay
with us?” Claudia asked in disbelief. “No.”

“They could sleep in the Little House,” he suggested. “I
know it’s all a bit irregular, but it’s an irregular situation, isn’t it? All
you have to do is be civil to her. And get to know Zack a bit. That’s easy.
He’s a great kid.”

“No,” Claudia said again. “If he really has to come, it’ll
have to be without her.”

He sighed. “Remember what happened last time? She doesn’t
want him alone with me overnight. We’ll have them up for a couple days, and
that’ll do it, I’m sure. Just relieve her mind a bit. I don’t want to spend
time with them without you anymore,” he admitted, taking her hand. “It’s not
feeling like a good idea.”

“It’s not feeling like a good idea to me either,” she said.
She disengaged her hand, went and sat on the opposite couch. Settled into what
he thought of as her Lawyer Pose, perched upright, legs together, hands on her
knees. “You need to decide what’s most important to you, Nic. Your priorities
have shifted, and it isn’t working for me.”

“What d’you mean?”

“I’m going to be your wife. I should be the most important
person in the world to you. But you seem more interested in Zack, more
committed to him, than you are to me. And that’s not acceptable.”

“He’s my son. It’s not a matter of choosing. It’s fitting
him into our life.”

“But I don’t want to fit him into my life,” she said. “This
isn’t what I signed on for. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and this isn’t
going to work for me. Not the way you’re doing it.”

“What way, then?” he asked, his voice hardening. “What would
work for you?”

“If you saw him on your own, the way you’ve been doing. I
don’t want to know him. I don’t want to know her. Bad enough that you’re
planning to give away our money. But I don’t want them infringing on our life
together.”

“That’s too damn bad,” he said, the anger rising. “Because
he’s there. He didn’t ask to be, but he is. And I’m not going to shut him out.”

“Then,” she said, standing up, “we really have nothing else
to discuss, do we?” One elegant hand went to her left ring finger. She pulled
off the band, the brilliant stone flashing in the lamplight, held it out to
him. “We’re done here. That was my last gasp, just now.”

He stared at her in shock, got slowly to his feet and took
the ring from her. “You’re willing to give up everything we have, over this?”

“Come on, Nic,” she said impatiently. “It hasn’t really been
working for a while now. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

He shrugged helplessly. “Just thought, you know, the stress
of the wedding and all. Work. All that. Besides Zack.”

“You’ve changed,” she told him. “You used to be like me.
Disciplined. Focused.”

“Hang on, now. You can’t say I’m not disciplined. That’s all
I am. All I’ve done, for years now. Meet my bloody obligations. Training.
Meetings. Sponsorships. Public relations. What more d’you want me to do?”

“You aren’t excited about the wedding,” she said, beginning
to tick her reasons off on long, slender fingers. “You seem like you want to be
anywhere else, when I try to discuss it with you. You keep running off to spend
time with Zack, wanting to do things that are ‘fun.’” She made air quotes with
her hands around the word. “But mostly, you aren’t giving me the attention and consideration
I deserve. I need to come first. I look at our future together, and I don’t
like what I see.”

His jaw felt frozen. He could barely get the words out. “If
that’s how you feel. If you aren’t even willing to try. Go to couples counseling,
something like that, help us get through this.”

“I need to come first,” she said again. “And I’m not willing
to deal with all this . . . this complication. That’s the bottom line.”

“Zack’s not a bloody complication. He’s a child. He’s my
son
.”

“Well, now you can do all the bonding you like,” she snapped.
Then took a breath, shook her hair into place, gathered herself. What kind of
woman, Nic wondered, didn’t even get upset when she was breaking her
engagement?
He
was shaking inside, but she barely seemed flustered. How
could that be? He might have become more emotional in the past few years, but
surely she had got less so.

“I’ll move out,” she was saying now. “I’ll take some of my
clothes now, and come back later for the rest of my things. Thank God we hadn’t
combined our finances yet. But I’ll want to take the art that’s mine, the
kitchen things.”

“Whatever.” What did this matter? “D’you have someplace to
go?”

“To Cassandra’s. We discussed it today.”

“So you’d already decided.”

“I decided to give you one more chance to choose me. And you
didn’t. So . . .” She shrugged again. “We’re done, aren’t we? It’s been pretty
good. It’s gone now, that’s all. I don’t feel the same way about you I once
did. And I suspect, if you look down deep, you’ll say the same.”

“I was still trying, though,” he said. “Reckon that’s the
difference.”

“No point in trying when it’s over. Will you carry my
suitcases down for me, please?”

“You already packed?”

“I was pretty sure. They’re in my closet.”

He turned without a word, climbed the stairs to the bedroom.
Realized he was still holding the ring, shoved it into a pocket. Picked up the
two big cases and brought them down for her. Second heavy load he’d carried
that day, he thought fleetingly. What a difference a couple hours could make.

“How’d it go?” Emma asked as she opened the door to Nic’s
knock on Monday evening. “You’re early. Brrr. You feel so chilly.” She rubbed
Zack’s back, pulled back to hold his hands in hers. “Wet and cold, like a
little fish. Let’s get you straight into the bath.”

“Want to come in for a minute?” she asked Nic. “Cup of tea?
Because I’m sure you’re cold too. “

“I could do with a cup of tea,” he admitted.

“Can Nic stay for dinner?” Zack asked from inside his shirt
as Emma pulled it over his head. “We didn’t have it. Because we got wet.”

“Can you?” Emma asked him. “Or do you need to get back?”

“I’d like to stay, if you have enough,” he said. “I don’t
need to get back. And I could use the company tonight.”

She looked at him sharply. Started to say something, then
went into the bathroom to help Zack get started.

“Put your pajamas on when you’re done,” she told him as she
pulled the bathroom door mostly shut to keep the heat in. “Get all cozy.”

“Come into the kitchen with me while I fix something,” she
said when she rejoined Nic in the lounge. He’d shed his jacket and shoes, was
standing in track pants, hoodie, and socks. “I wish I had something warm for
you to wear. But I suspect my dressing gown wouldn’t work as well as yours
did.”

“Probably pink as well,” he said with a little smile. “Or it
has flowers on.”

“How’d you guess?” She flipped the switch on the electric
jug, pulled out the mugs. Then went out into the lounge again, came back with
the afghan.

“This isn’t pink, anyway,” she told him. “Wrap up a little.
You’re making me cold, looking at you.”

 “Not too bad.” But he spread the warm yellow wrap across
his lap, accepted the tea she was handing him.

“It’s just going to be leftovers,” she said apologetically.
“I wasn’t expecting you guys. Luckily, I have some chili and corn muffins in
the freezer.” She pulled them out, popped the plastic chili container into the
microwave and set it to defrost, switched the oven on. Then sat down across
from Nic, poured milk into her tea, and stirred.  

“Are you OK?” she asked hesitantly after a moment. “I hope
you don’t mind my asking. Because you look terrible, and you didn’t play this
weekend, so I know it’s not that.” He didn’t exactly have dark shadows, but the
usual gleam was missing from his eyes, and there was a weary look to his face
and a slump to his shoulders she’d never seen.

He stirred his own tea slowly, looking down at the milky
surface, before meeting her gaze. “Broke up,” he admitted. “Saturday, after our
beach day.”

“What?”
She set her mug down. “You mean, you broke
the engagement?”

“Nah.” He grimaced. “She did.”

“But . . . why? You’d been together so long,” she said in
distress. “It wasn’t me, was it? She didn’t get the wrong idea? Because I can
ring her and reassure her that there’s nothing between us, if that’ll help.”

“It wasn’t you. That is, it was Zack, partly. But partly . .
.” He shrugged heavily. “Reckon Zack was just the tipping point. That was when
everything turned to custard. Least when I noticed it. I didn’t realize
anything was wrong, before that. I thought she was just a bit narked with me,
over the wedding arrangements and that. That I wasn’t rapt about the whole
thing. But I guess it was. Wrong, I mean.”

“Like what?” Emma got up to give the chili a stir, put it
back in the microwave and started it up again. “What did she say?”

“That I wasn’t putting her first. That I wasn’t . . .
disciplined enough for her anymore. That I didn’t care about the wedding, like
I said. But really, I think it was the putting her first thing. It wasn’t what
she’d bargained for, she said. Being a stepmum.”

“It wasn’t what I bargained for either,” Emma pointed out.
“Or you. That doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing. Anyway, if she loved you,
wouldn’t she want to support you?”

 “She’s always been what you’d call . . . high-maintenance,
I suppose. Comes from being an only, maybe. All that focus from her mum and
dad. I liked that, though, before. Her confidence. She’s always known what she
wanted, what she deserved. No insecurities. I admired that. Course, no need for
me either, as it turned out,” he added. “No need for support. And she didn’t
understand why I’d need it either.”

“Doesn’t sound that good, tell you the truth,” Emma said.
“To me, anyway. Not my idea of a partnership. Isn’t that the point, that you
help each other through the tough times, as well as enjoying the good ones?”

“I thought so,” he said. “But I’m probably being unfair. It
was a big ask, changing the rules like this.”

“Huh.” Emma didn’t trust herself to speak. She got up again
to stir the chili instead, wrestled an ancient, sticky drawer open to pull out
a box of aluminum foil.

“So did you leave? Move out? Or did she?” she asked, tearing
off a flimsy sheet and dumping the muffins onto it, beginning to crimp the
edges.