I had about an hour before I had to be at Levitate for my shift. I was supposed to be meeting a mum to make plans for her son’s birthday party. That left me forty-five minutes to calm my tits, because I wasn’t currently in a fit state to talk about spider-shaped cakes or sing-alongs, and the birthday boy deserved better than half-assed planning. Forty-five minutes was enough time to get an ice cream and park to eat it. Some alone time and sugar would be enough to push the Hodges’ voices out of my head.
They didn’t know what they were talking about anyway. They were stickybeaking.
If I told myself that enough times, maybe I would start to believe it.
There was a parking space right outside the ice cream parlor, which I took as a sign that things were looking up. But I’d forgotten about the ultimate law of the universe, which was that when you felt like shit, you would run into the last person you wanted to see.
Engrossed in the tough choice between salted caramel and hokey pokey, I didn’t see the white woman with curly blond hair, two ice creams clutched in her fists and a kid tugging on her jumper, until she backed into me.
Reflexively, I steadied her.
“Mike! Hi!” Monica Shailor-Chapman’s big blues blinked up at me.
I wanted to shake a fist at the ceiling and shout why me.
A lifetime ago, in our last year of high school, Monica and I had dated. She’d meet me in the car park after I finished rugby practice and fuck me in the back of my truck. It was great. Nowadays, Monica was a devout churchgoer, convinced everyone else could be as happy as she always claimed to be, if they thought the exact same things and lived their lives the exact same way.
Guess she hadn’t seen Jesus while riding my dick, so she’d had to look for him in more conventional places?
On Saturdays, Monica and a selection of her kids—there were a lot of them, I wasn’t exactly sure how many—stood outside this ice cream parlor and shoved Jesus pamphlets at people.
My sister hated Monica, and always had, not the least because Mon had regressive opinions on women’s bodily autonomy and shared them with anyone who would listen. She wasn’t much like the girl I remembered from school.
“Hey, Monica,” I said politely. “What’s up, how are you?”
“Wonderful. Loving life! Martin got a promotion at work, and the kids are wonderful. Nikolai here”—she pointed at the kid with her—“has just started homeschooling with me, and it’s amazing. He’s such a wonderful little man.”
Nikolai had smashed his birthday cake in Mini M’s face last year, which I hadn’t found very wonderful.
“That’s great, Mon. Hi, Nikolai, how’s it going?”
Nikolai muttered something, but I was saved from having to endure further conversation when the teen behind the counter, Michael Clarke’s son, asked me if I’d made my decision yet.
I hadn’t but compromised with a scoop of each.
Zeke said, “That’ll be six ninety. Thanks, Mike.”
Reaching for my back pocket, my hand met nothing but the sexy curve of my ass. No wallet.
I stared at the card machine with dawning horror. “Shit.”
“Mike!” Monica covered her son’s ears.
“Is there a problem, Mike?” Zeke asked, my two-scoop cone in his hand.
I wondered if Zeke Clarke had a better sense of direction than his pops, or if he got lost between his car and the shop every day. His mother was a church minister, and while I didn’t know anything about her ability to read a compass, I hoped for Zeke’s sake that he took after her. Navigationally.
I went back out to my truck to dig through the center console for six ninety in coins, but all I could find was three bucks, one of which was Australian. I thought about asking Mon to spot me the rest, but she was on the Tararua Rural Entrepreneurs Association, so I didn’t want her thinking I was broke—she’d never vote in favor of giving me fifty grand then.
I promised Zeke I’d be back for my scoops in fifteen and got back in my truck.
My house was only two blocks away, and as much as I wanted to floor it, I carefully kept to the speed limit for the few minutes it took to get home.
I was used to living alone and distracted by thoughts of ice cream, so it didn’t occur to me to warn Lyssa I was coming home—she shouldn’t even have been at the house. She should have been out videoing an especially New Zealand tree or something.
She shouldn’t have been where she was.
Not doing what she was.
