MIKE
I woke up early on Saturday morning to do chores before rugby. I was in the shed getting breakfast ready for my animals, a cup of chaff in hand for Mini M, when my phone buzzed. I stowed the scoop and fished my phone out of my pocket.
Dad
Make sure you take Lyssa out after your game, son. Make sure she has a nice time.
The kid needs a bit of cheering up, I think.
I grunted, annoyed he thought he had to tell me to look after Lyssa or point out that she was down in the dumps. No shit, Sherlock. People didn’t quit their jobs and fly across the world when things were hunky-dory. This would be obvious even to a person who hadn’t watched every video she’d ever made, as I had (or nearly every video—I skipped a few of the sewing ones because I didn’t know what the fuck she was on about). But I’d seen all the main ones.
Of course I would make sure Lyssa had a nice time. I wanted her to find whatever it was she was in Woodville searching for. I’d already resigned myself to spending most of my afternoon holding her silly camera stick and taking pictures of her with street signs.
It was seven a.m., way before her usual rising time, when Lyssa found me out in the paddock, moving the pigtail standards holding the temporary fence to give Baz a few more inches of grass. I was holding the standards in my hands and didn’t notice her until she tapped me on the shoulder.
My jump nearly electrocuted us both.
“Wow,” she said when I yelped (in a manly way). “You’re bad for a girl’s ego.”
“You’re bad for a man’s conductivity.”
With a wary look at Baz, which he ignored as he was enthusiastically gobbling the new grass, she asked, “I wanted to check it was still okay for me to come to your sporting game today?”
“You mean my rugby game?” I stuck the standard back in the ground and leaned on it, careful not to touch the wire. “Yeah, course.”
“I thought I’d leave my car here.” Her eyes were unusually serious. “I’m walking to the café to meet Kev for coffee this morning, then he’s going to drive me to your game.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to take you? Dad’s car is electric, which is cool for the planet, but it’s a bit hair-raising on these hills.”
She shook her head. “It’s okay. I know you’ll be busy doing stretches and burping and fist-bumping, or whatever it is athletes do in locker rooms before a game. I’ll see you from the stands.”
“Princess, this is the Mapleford Athletic Field, and it’s a social game of touch rugby. There are no locker rooms, just a few toilets. There aren’t stands, either. People set up camping chairs along the sidelines.”
Her nose wrinkled, making me grin. She thought we were barbaric, which was fitting, because she’d been making me feel fucking barbaric since she got here.
“You going to be okay in a canvas chair?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
I ran my eyes down the length of her, stifling a grin when she fidgeted.
“I know you’re used to the finer things. You’ve never had it rough, have you, Princess?”
“Wh-what?”
Stop it, Mike. Don’t tease Caroline’s friend. She can’t take it. You know she can’t. She’s a sexually inexperienced wounded bird, and therefore, not for you.
But as always, I ignored my better judgment.
“Sometimes, something rough will do you a world of good.”
Bad Mike, bad, bad Mike.
Lyssa’s cheeks flushed violently red and it didn’t stop there. Her chin and forehead warmed too. It called me. A siren’s song.
I stepped closer. “And in those instances, you’ve just got to stop thinking. Stop talking. And take what you’re fucking given.”
With a patented Mike Holliday wink, I stepped back. She exhaled slowly, looking rattled. I was smug.
