Just Good Friends (32 page)

“Yeah. He’s been . . . I don’t know. Kind of distant. I
noticed it when they got back from Australia, but I figured he was just tired.
And upset about not getting to play more,” Kate admitted. “And since there were
only a couple days there before they had to leave for Johannesburg, I couldn’t
really judge. But since he’s been back from South Africa . . . he’s just
different. He still seems to want to spend time with me. But when we do, it’s
not quite the same. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but it’s there.”

“Have you asked him about it?”

“Are you kidding? This is me we’re talking about. Of course
I have. But I’m not getting much in response. Nothing that satisfies me. I know
everything isn’t about me. He could be upset about something else. But if he
were, I think he’d tell me about it.”

“It’s sure seemed like you two have been getting close
lately,” Hannah agreed. “Are you afraid it
is
you? That he’s cooling
off?”

“Yeah. I am.” It hurt to admit it, but it was a relief too.
She’d been dancing around the idea for the past week, not wanting to confront
it directly. It was time, though.

“I don’t understand it,” she said slowly. “Things were
really good in Australia. He took me to meet his family, too. No, that’s not
quite true. He was going to dinner at his family’s and he took me along.”

“That isn’t casual,” Hannah said. “That does mean something,
whether he set it up in advance or not. Have you had a fight since then?”

“No. Everything was great, like I said. At least it seemed
like it to me. But since the Championship started, there’s been this distance. Like
he’s slipping away from me. I don’t know, maybe he met somebody he liked better
in Australia,” Kate tried to joke.

“I doubt that,” Hannah said seriously. “But it could be he
got a little scared, felt like you were going too fast, and he’s pulling back
now. He might not even realize that’s what he’s doing.”

“You could be right. If that’s the case, my going down to
Wellington doesn’t feel like a good idea. I’m not going to chase around after
him if he’s not interested any more. I’d force the issue, but I’ve tried
already, without any result. It seems best for me just to back off right now.
If he’s feeling pressured, I’ll take the pressure off. We’ve only known each other
for seven months. It’s not like I need a commitment.”

“And if we’re going to break up,” Kate forced herself to
say, “well, I’ll deal with that if it happens. Better now than later. And I
have a feeling something
is
going to happen, pretty soon. This is either
going to get better, or it’s going to get a whole lot worse.”

Her heart sank as she said it. She knew it was logical. But
it hurt to say it out loud. She’d been confused at first by Koti’s retreat,
then angry. Now, though, she needed to know, one way or the other. “If it’s
still like this next week,” she decided, “maybe I
will
force the issue. I
can’t keep walking on eggshells.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Hannah told her firmly. “If
the guy can’t see what a prize you are, he doesn’t deserve you anyway. You can
do better.”

“Oh, Hannah,” Kate said with a shaky laugh. “I don’t think I
can. But thank you. You’re such a good friend.”

“Did you see the ABs game Saturday night?” Brenda asked over
Monday lunch in the building’s cafe.

“Mmm-hmm,” Kate nodded as she finished a bite of sandwich. 
“Pretty good one, I thought. Argentina plays with a lot of passion, don’t they?
Some of those guys are awfully handsome, too. They might even have been worth a
trip to Wellington to check out in person, don’t you think?”

“Yeh. Pity Argentina’s so far away. That’s too much of a
long-distance romance, even for me,” Brenda complained. “They need to select a
few more good-looking boys for the Wallabies squad. Every time I have a look at
those fellas, I wish I hadn’t. Pity. I could commute to Australia.”

 “Pity about Koti, too,” she continued in a more serious
tone. “I’m guessing that was a bit of a stunner. Unless you two have other
plans.”

Kate put down her sandwich, her mouth going dry. “What?” she
asked. “What was a stunner?”

 Brenda faltered. “The long-distance thing, I mean. With
England.”

“You don’t know,” she realized, seeing the stricken look on
Kate’s face. “I’ve put my foot in it. I heard it, so I thought it couldn’t be
news to you.”

Kate found herself drifting off, as if her head were
floating somewhere above her body. She forced herself to focus, to ask the
question. “You need to tell me now, Brenda. What is it you’ve heard? What is it
I don’t know?”

“Could be it’s just a rumor,” Brenda hastened to say. “But I
heard that Koti had been talking to a couple English teams. That he was
planning a move back there for next season.”

“Where did you hear this?” Maybe it was a mistake, Kate
thought, while the sudden chill, the prickling anxiety she felt running up her
arms, told her otherwise. She crossed her arms to warm herself, protect herself
against the blow she knew was coming.

“Publicists’ grapevine,” Brenda told her, real pity in her
eyes. “They’re talking, over there. I don’t think he’s signed anything, or I’d
have heard. But there’s been contact. And not just on the teams’ side.”

“And this has been going on for a while,” Kate said flatly.

“Afraid so. Couple of weeks, anyway.”

Kate nodded. “Excuse me. I have to get back to work now.”

She walked blindly out of the café and straight to the
ladies’ room. Locked the stall door, hung her purse carefully on a hook and
stood, hands braced against the wall, trying to force her mind out of its
stunned disbelief. To think the situation through clearly.

If it were true—if Koti were talking to overseas teams, and
had been for a while—he’d had plenty of time to tell her. How many evenings had
they spent together over the past weeks? How many times had she asked him what
was on his mind? Yet he’d never even hinted at it. She knew he’d been
frustrated with his limited playing time, but he’d never mentioned this option.
Why was that?

Not because she wouldn’t have been interested. That was
clear. No, it was because he was having a good time with her. And he didn’t
want his good time cut short. The way he’d have known it would be, if he’d told
her what he was planning.

She’d thought she meant something to him. That they were
going somewhere. Well, he was going somewhere, all right. The only problem was,
she wasn’t going there with him.

Her heart twisted with pain at the thought of him leaving
her. No, she corrected herself. Of her leaving him. Because she wasn’t going to
hang around and wait for the end. She was going to have it out with him. If it
were true, then the sooner it was done, the sooner they broke it off, the
sooner she could move on.

A tiny voice of hope whispered that perhaps it was all a
mistake. She’d let that little voice whisper. But somehow, she knew it wasn’t
going to turn out that way.

She had a sudden vision of herself, as if she were looking
down from above. Pitiful. Locked into a bathroom stall, propped against the
wall for support, close to tears. Trembling with shock and disappointment,
because her world had shifted. She straightened up. Took her purse off the hook
and opened the stall. Washed her face and hands, letting the warm water run
over her chilled fingers until they lost some of their tension. Gripped the counter
and looked at herself in the mirror.

“Time to cowboy up,” she said aloud to her dry-eyed
reflection. “Put on your big girl panties and cope.” Picked up her purse and
marched back into the office to finish her day.

“Hi, baby.” Koti gave her his usual cheeky grin as he
stepped into her tiny flat that evening. “Miss me?”

He leaned down for a kiss, but Kate hastily took a step
back, avoiding him. She reached around behind him and slammed the door shut. 

“Come in,” she told him, unsmiling. “We need to talk.”

His smile faded. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Kate walked into the middle of the lounge, then turned
around to face him, arms folded. “I heard some interesting news today. News
that surprised me.”

Koti began to look a bit hunted. “Oh, bugger. What did you
hear?”

“That you were talking to English teams. That you were
planning on a move back there. Sooner rather than later, I’m guessing. What do
you think? A month? Two?”

“Nothing’s signed yet. But yeh, there’ve been some
conversations.”

She nodded, the final door of hope slamming shut. “Over quite
a few weeks, I gather. When were you planning on letting me know about all this?”

He put his palms out in front of him. “Hang on. Before you
go off. I didn’t want to upset you when all I was doing was talking. I reckoned
I’d tell you when there was something to tell.”

“No.” She shook her head and stared him down. “That isn’t
it. You didn’t tell me because you didn’t want to upset your
nice little
arrangement. Your little friend who was always available for sex. Or a laugh,
or some sympathy if you’d had a bad day. You figured you’d string me along as
long as you could. Who knows, maybe you were planning to get somebody else to
tell me. I could even read it in the paper, how about that? Then I might just
have slunk away. You’d have had all the fun, and none of this unpleasant
emotion from me.”

He flushed with anger. “What’s wrong with me waiting? So
what if I’m leaving? You’ve never made any secret of the fact that you’re only
here for a year or two yourself. And I’ve never got hysterical about that.”

“Exactly,” she pounced. “I’ve never made any secret of it. Normally,
and I’m telling you this because you seem to be ignorant of it, when you date
someone, you aren’t putting an expiration date on it. You’re seeing where the
relationship is going. You’re open to the possibility that it might grow. And
then, guess what, maybe you’d stick with it. Change your other plans to do
that. But if there’s no future because you’re leaving in a month, that’s not a
relationship at all. That’s recreation.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you, though,” he protested.

“Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “Because it doesn’t hurt at all
to have you betray me. To let me go along like this, knowing how I feel about
you. Knowing you’re going to dump me as soon as it suits you. As soon as you
don’t need me anymore.”

“Hang on. I’ve never made any promises to you.”

She stared at him. “Wow. That’s pretty cold. But you’re
right, of course. You didn’t promise me anything but a good time. And I had
plenty of warning signs, didn’t I? Even Hannah told me you were a player, and
not to get involved with you.”

“That’s nice, isn’t it?” she continued as she saw the shock
on his face. “That’s what your dream girl thinks of you. Then there was Dena.”

“Dena? What does she have to do with it?”

“She thought she had a relationship with you too, remember?
I was so smug at the time. I even thought it was funny, heaven help me. Because
I can see now, you never bothered to tell her she didn’t. God forbid you’d have
to say something she didn’t want to hear, lose your Mr. Charm title. Instead,
you just let them find out the hard way. Then you can walk away. No strings, no
scars. You’re like Teflon. Nothing sticks. And it’s their problem for thinking
there was more to it than there really was. They’re not just left alone.
They’re ridiculous too. Because you never promised them anything.”

She stopped, feeling deflated. After all, it was herself she
was talking about. She was alone. She was ridiculous. Because she had wanted
him too much. Had imagined something that had never really been there at all.

“You can’t help making women fall in love with you, I guess,”
she went on more slowly. “And you caught me at a vulnerable time. I knew
better, and I did it anyway. Well, poor me. I made a mistake. I thought there
was more to you, more to us, than there really is. I was wrong.” She shook her
head. “But never mind that you’ve let me down. You’ve let yourself down too. That
hurts almost as much. I thought this was your dream. Now, because you’ve had a
setback or two, because it’s going to take some hard work and you might not
succeed, you’re just going to run away, and avoid all that? Wow, you really
take the easy road, don’t you?”

“How do you know so much about what I want, or what’s right
for me?” he shot back. “It’s a perfectly rational decision to go overseas,
where I can make more money. I’m marketable just now. I may only have another five
or six years to play football. This is my chance to get myself right for the
future. I’d be a fool not to take it.”

“It would be perfectly rational if it was what you wanted to
do,” she agreed. “But it isn’t. You’ve told me so. That you want to live here,
in your own country, near your family. And that you want to be an All Black.
What happened to all that? Your dream?”

“I’ve tried it though, haven’t I? I’ve been trying all year.
And I’ve had bugger all playing time. You’ve seen that. Why beat my head
against the wall if I can’t make my dream come true?”

“What if you can, though? A couple months ago, you weren’t
selected at all. You worked on that. And now you’re on the team. So you’re not
starting yet. You’re still playing. It seems to me you’ve made a lot of progress.
You played almost forty minutes the other night. Why would you give up just
when it looks like you might achieve your goal? It’s as if you don’t believe,
deep down, that you have what it takes to succeed at this. At something that
would be a stretch for you.”

“You’re better than this, Koti.” She looked up at him
searchingly, hoping against hope that she could reach him. That she could make
him see what she saw in him. “You can ask more of yourself. You have it inside
you, and you can do it.”

“You seem to be an expert at who I am, what I should do,” he
said angrily. “But I don’t believe it. That isn’t what’s bothering you so much.
It’s that I’d be leaving you.”