Just This Once (35 page)

“Do you see me that way? As some kind of bloody symbol?” he
demanded.

“No. Not at all. But that’s my point. When I met you, I
didn’t know who you were. What you meant to everyone in New Zealand. How big a
deal it all was. And now I do, that’s all,” she admitted wretchedly.

Drew stared at her, his gray eyes burning into hers. “I’m
not any kind of legend,” he said at last. “I haven’t saved any lives. I’m no
hero. I’m just a bloke who plays football. I’ve been lucky enough to play on
the best squad in the world. And to play in the professional era, so I get paid
well for it. Twenty years ago, I’d have had a regular job, be lacing up my
boots in the afternoon to play footy. That’s all that’s changed. And don’t you
see, it’s because they make such a fuss about it all. That’s why I need
somebody who knows me better. Who knows I’m a pretty simple fella, and who
wants to do those simple things with me. Somebody I can relax with, the way I
can with you. Be myself with. I know I get shirty when you won’t let me buy you
things. But at least I know you’re not with me because of what I can do for
you.”

“I want a simple life,” he went on. “A life like my parents
have had. And I’ve been thinking that I’d like to have it with you. I wasn’t
going to say
that
now, either. I know you’re not ready to hear it.
Reckon I’d better, though.”

Hannah drew back, startled. Then focused on the part of his
speech she could deal with right now. “But you don’t have a simple life,” she
pointed out. “You can’t say that.”

“Why not?” he challenged her. “So I travel, some weeks. When
I come back, though, how is my life not simple? I train, maybe do some
publicity. Afterwards, I want to have dinner with you. Sit on the couch and
watch sport on the telly. Go fishing, once the season’s over. Have a beer with
my mates. It’s a job, that’s all. And I won’t always be an All Black, you know.
Somebody else will be wearing the Number 6 jersey in a few years. I won’t be
forgotten, maybe. But my photo won’t be in the paper every day either. Kiwis
need their sportsmen to look up to. Somebody for the kids to admire. I’ve tried
my best to be that person. But it won’t last forever.”

“And what about after that? When you’re coaching, or
whatever? Whatever you say, you’re always going to be an important person, Drew.
And that’s wonderful. But it’s what makes me wrong for you. You’re always going
to be larger than life. And I’m not.”

“I’m getting pretty bloody tired of you telling me what I
need,” he told her, his anger rising. “Seems to me I know my own mind. But
that’s not what this is all about, anyway. It’s not about my being famous. So
I’m well known just now. So I make a dollar or two from it. Likely that’ll
continue, though I’m no David Beckham. But that’s not what’s bothering you.”

“What do you mean?” she faltered. “It’s exactly what’s
bothering me.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s that I want you to count on me. That if
you stay with me, if you marry me,” he said, overriding her shocked protest,
“you’ll have to say yes, Drew. I rely on you. I depend on you. I trust you to
take care of me. And you can’t stand the thought of depending on anyone.
Because if you do, if you let down your guard, you’re sure I’m going to let you
down. That I’m going to leave. With one of those stupid girls, maybe,” he threw
out in frustration.

He paced the room, came back to confront her. “Hasn’t it
occurred to you that
I
may bloody well need
you?
That I may need
someone to count on too? You’ve said often enough that you understand the
pressure this job puts on me. Don’t you understand that I need someone who
cares about me for myself, who doesn’t care whether we win or lose the game?”

“I do understand that,” she faltered. “And you must know how
much I care about you. But it isn’t good for me to rely on you. You’re so
strong, it makes me want to lean on you. And I can’t do that.”

“Damn it,” he exploded, “relying on somebody else doesn’t
mean you’re not strong! Even I can’t be strong all the time. I need to be able
to show you all of me, weakness and all. I need you to know the pressure
sometimes gets to me, even if I don’t say it. And I don’t want to see just the
pretty pieces of you either. I don’t want to know that you don’t trust me
enough to let me see when you hurt, when you’re weak. That you don’t think I
can take care of you.”

“But I don’t want someone to take care of me! I know only I
can take care of myself. I’ve always taken care of myself, and I can do it. I
can’t rely on anyone else to save me. We’re all alone, in the end. I have to
know that. That has to be OK with me, or I can’t survive. And it is. I don’t
need to be rescued!”

Drew pulled his hands through his hair. “Everyone needs to
be rescued sometimes. Including me. And we’re not alone, in the end or any
other time. Not if we’re lucky, we’re not. We’re in it together. That’s the
whole point, don’t you see? But you won’t let me in. You won’t let yourself
need me. You have to be so perfect, there isn’t room for anything less in your
world. Not everyone leaves, Hannah. Not everyone is going to let you down. You
don’t let people down. Why do you expect less from everyone else? Why do you
expect less from me? What have I ever done, that you can’t trust me?”

“Nothing,” she answered, trembling. “You’ve done nothing
wrong. You’re wonderful.  But don’t you see, I can’t. I can’t. I can’t make
that kind of promise to you.”

“Then that’s no kind of strength,” he told her, his anger
replaced by sadness. “Not being able to take a risk. To keep yourself trapped
like you do. Not having the courage to show all of yourself, even to me. Even
to the man who loves you. You never even cry, do you know that? Women cry, Hannah.
I’ve seen my mother cry, and she’s a strong woman. But you won’t even let me
see you cry. And you won’t let me love you.”

“I’m sorry.” She was twisting her fingers together now in
her distress. “I care about you so much. But I’m scared. I can’t be all those
things you need. I can’t be more than this. I can’t trust someone else to take
care of me. It would be stupid, don’t you see? It just isn’t safe. And I can’t
do it.”

“If you can’t need me, though,” he told her in frustration, “that
means you can’t let me love you, don’t you see?”

“I can’t love you,” he repeated slowly. He started to say
something else, stopped. Shrugged once in defeat, then turned and left the
hotel room, closing the door behind him.

Hannah sank down on the bed and hugged her arms around
herself, trying to warm her chilled body. What had just happened? Why couldn’t
she be normal? Why did she have to wreck this?

If only they could have gone more slowly, she thought
miserably. She needed more time. She wasn’t ready. Not yet.

She shook her head in confused distress, her thoughts in a
jumble. She couldn’t even figure herself out. She didn’t even understand what
she wanted. And she didn’t know how to be what Drew needed.

In agitation, unable to sit still, she paced the room, her
arms wrapped around herself to hold in the pain, to hold herself together,
trying to walk off her confusion and the turmoil of her thoughts. But nothing
worked. His words kept echoing in her head, and her mind kept replaying the
sight of him walking out. Walking away. 

She stopped at last, exhausted from emotion and her pacing,
and sat down again in the side chair. Moving woodenly, she opened the minibar
and poured a glass from the bottle of red wine there. The first time she had
ever used a minibar. She had always resisted the overpriced items, and had
wondered why anyone would incur such unnecessary expense.

Alcohol wouldn’t solve her problems, she told herself. But
when the glass was gone, she poured out another one and drank that, and
followed it up with the scotch. It might not solve her problems, but it numbed
the pain.

She thought vaguely at some point that she should brush her
teeth and change for bed. But the effort seemed monumental, far beyond her.
Instead, she sank to the floor with her back against the bed, and stared in
front of her. Now she was drunk, she thought fuzzily. Four . . five big drinks.
That was just stupid. And she still felt terrible.

At some point during the long night, she lay down on the
floor, pulled a pillow to her and fell asleep, hugging it to her. She woke in
the morning with a headache, an upset stomach, and a memory of confused,
troubling dreams. Scratch alcohol off the anesthetic list, she thought. It had
only made her feel worse.

She suddenly realized she was due to spend a morning shift
in the VIP tent. She couldn’t do it. It was too much. And so, for the first
time in her stellar career, Hannah Montgomery called in sick when she wasn’t.
Instead, she took a hot shower and dressed, drank some coffee and several glasses
of water, and bought a box of Panadol from the hotel shop for her headache.

 Feeling a bit better, physically at least, she knew she had
to get out of her hotel room. Anything was better than that. She didn’t feel up
to changing into workout gear and using the hotel gym. So she just walked, all
the way to Pitt Street Mall, Sydney’s fashion center, looking dully into store
windows at the fabulous clothes and shoes. Partway along the street, she was
drawn into the Victorian ornateness of the Strand Arcade, and found herself
looking at even more shoes.

So many shoes. They didn’t even have prices showing. That
had to be a bad sign. They were beautiful, though. She began to pay attention,
to distract herself from the pain and confusion in her head. She didn’t need
new shoes, she reminded herself. But they were certainly pretty. She stopped,
looking at a pair of beautifully shaped pumps in a black and brown zebra print.
Funky and sexy, they seemed to call to her.

Ten minutes later, she walked out of the shop carrying a
brand-new pair of Marc Jacobs Italian-made shoes in a shopping bag. Six hundred
dollars, she told herself dazedly. Australian. That was even more than U.S.
dollars, she knew. She would have to take money from savings to pay her credit
card bill. But her feet had carried her, and her hands had reached for her
wallet and pulled out that card. She hadn’t seemed to have any control.  

Suddenly she stopped, right in the middle of the walkway.
Someone bumped into her, muttered an apology. She found a bench in the middle
of the crowded arcade and lowered herself into it, holding the bag with her new
shoes in her lap and twisting its string anxiously, over and over, between her
fingers. Out of control, she repeated to herself. She was out of control.

She remembered Kristen’s questions. Didn’t she ever get
tired of being so responsible all the time? Hadn’t she ever wanted to buy a
pair of shoes she couldn’t afford, to drink too much, to sleep with Mr. Right
Now, to call in sick to work?

She had laughed, she remembered. None of those things had
seemed even possible, then. But she had done all those things now. Every one of
them.

Well, didn’t that prove that love wasn’t for her? She wasn’t
good at it. She couldn’t be enough. And other people wanted too much. That’s
why she had always held back. Because she knew, deep down, that when they found
out what she was really like, all the pieces she never showed anyone, they
wouldn’t want her. And that would hurt too much. She needed to keep her own
space around her, her own boundaries. Otherwise she wouldn’t be able to master
herself. Wouldn’t be able to cope.

She could do it, she told herself. She could be strong.
She’d always done it. She just needed to get over this, and she could be strong
again. But she didn’t feel strong. She just felt confused, and unhappy, and so
alone.

The rest of that day, and the following one, she spent
trying to pull herself together. She made herself do a workout at the hotel
gym, read a book to take her mind off her tumbling thoughts, eat in the hotel
restaurant. She knew she should go back to Auckland, not stay for the game. It
would be too hard to watch Drew and know she couldn’t have him. But she
couldn’t bring herself to leave. She had to watch him play, had to will him to
be all right. 

Perhaps nobody went to that World Cup final with a heavier
heart. The excited supporters of both teams turned up prepared to celebrate
and, as likely as not, wrapped in their team’s flag. Hannah saw the groups
sporting their black clothing, their black flags with the silver fern, amidst
all the Australian flags, the fans dressed in yellow and green, and her heart
lifted for a minute to see the support for the All Blacks. Faces were painted
and team gear was everywhere. Bands played at street corners, and the crowds
spilled through the streets. Those who didn’t have tickets were finding spots
at the outdoor Fanzones, or crowding into pubs to watch the game.

Hannah walked soberly through the crowd, handed her ticket
in, and found her seat. At least Reka wasn’t with her, she thought gratefully. Her
sharp eyes would have seen too much. Instead, Hannah exchanged pleasantries
with the women she knew, envying them their wholehearted devotion to their
partners. Then relapsed into a silence that went unnoticed in the tense
preoccupation gripping those around her.

If Drew had been distracted by what had happened between
them, she admitted as the team came onto the field, it certainly didn’t show.
He led the team out with even more than his usual intensity, radiating
determination. In the closeups on the big screen of the haka, his features were
contorted with what looked like genuine rage, his performance of the stylized
movements of the challenge ferocious and intimidating.

But from the moment of the opening kick, it became clear
that this game wouldn’t be easy. The Wallabies, on their own turf and in a
stadium mostly full of their raucous, hugely supportive fans, had come for a
fight.

The rugby was exciting, Hannah could see that. At least, it
would have been if she hadn’t cared so much. Both sides put on a blazing
display of kicking, passing, and tackling skills. Penalties were few, both
teams determined not to lose this game through a lack of discipline. At the
break, the score stood at 14 to 10, with Australia in the lead.