Chapter Ten
Danny
“All who joy would win.
Must share it—Happiness was born a twin.”
-Lord Byron
New Zealand is insanely beautiful, Sam is back to her old self again, and other than the fact that her family is threatening to disown her for dropping out of school, all is right with the world.
We head out of Auckland a little after ten o’clock, and by eleven, we’re in the middle of the most amazing fall color I’ve ever seen. Explosions of orange and red line the road by the highway, while in the distance snow-capped mountains warn that winter is on its way in and all this wild color will only be here for a little longer. But looking out the window at the crystal clear river winding beside the road, I can imagine how beautiful the north island is going to be with bare branches haunting the landscape.
I start thinking maybe I can make an extended trip, like Sam was talking about at breakfast, work after all.
“I think we should stay until December,” I say when Sam and I pull off at a roadside fruit stand to grab lunch halfway to Lake Taupo.
“You do?” She turns to me, grinning like she got her birthday presents early. “Really?”
“Really.” That smile makes me determined to find a way to make this work. It’s been too long since I’ve seen her smile like that. “I’d already planned on running the business in Croatia long distance, and I can call Gus and tell him I need to put off starting the location in Maui for six months or so. He’s been hedging anyway, wondering if he could afford to put up his half of the money. This will give him more time to save and I can add some of the cash I was going to invest to our travel budget.”
“Or we can get jobs so you don’t have to,” Sam says. “There are tons of beaches here. Come spring, we can teach surfing, and in the meantime I bet we can find work at a campground or something. I had a friend who came here last winter and got a camper to rent for free in exchange for doing odd jobs around the campground and cleaning up after the guests.”
“Sounds amazing,” I say, wrapping my arms around her waist and pressing a kiss to her neck before murmuring into her hair, “I can’t wait to shack up in a camper with you.”
Sam laughs as she spins away from me and wanders farther down the row of apples, plucking a juicy looking pink one from a tiny basket and checking it for bruises. “And you’re okay with missing the first six months of your new niece’s life?”
I shrug. “Babies are mostly sleeping machines for the first few months anyway. As long as we make sure to get back to Croatia for Christmas, I won’t feel like I missed out. And Caitlin won’t care. She knows how long we’ve waited to be together. I’m sure she’ll be—”
“Does that say seventeen dollars?” Sam asks, brow furrowing as she lifts the basket from the table.
I lean down to take a closer look at the handwritten card tucked between two apples. “Jesus Christ. For five apples? Are they made of gold?”
Sam places the pink apple carefully back into the basket and sets the basket back on the table. “My food budget won’t last long if that’s the going rate for apples.”
“The breakfast this morning was insane, too,” I say. “But I thought that was because we were in the city. You’d think a roadside stand would have better prices.”
Sam turns to me, worry in her big eyes for the first time all day. “Is this crazy? Are we going to starve to death in a foreign country?”
I laugh as I wrap my arms around her again, pulling her close as a cool breeze whips through the stand, making her curls bob around her face. “No, we’re not going to starve to death. We just might need to start looking for those jobs sooner rather than later. Maybe I can talk to the people at the cave expedition. That sounds a lot like the tours I’ve been doing already. They might have a guide position open I’d qualify for.”
“And if you have a job it’s easy to get a work visa here,” Sam says, leaning into me. “I read a little bit about it on the immigration website before we left.”
I shake my head. “I can’t believe you had this all planned out.”
“I wouldn’t call it planned,” she says with a crooked smile. “More like flying by the seat of my pants and hoping you’d want to come along for the ride.”
I let my hand slip down to cup her bottom through her jeans. “Anytime your ass is involved, count me in.”
Her breath rushes out as she squirms away. “Come on. Let’s see if we can find something we can afford for lunch. I saw a sign for a grocery store in one of the towns up ahead.”
The rest of the afternoon is as perfect as the start of the day. We find a grocery store and bulk trail mix that only costs a small fortune and grab a couple of Lemon and Paeroa sodas to drink. We eat on a park bench overlooking the river we’re going to kayak tomorrow and watch a group of rafters drift by, looking snug in their life jackets and thick sweaters.
“I guess no one falls in?” I ask.
“I guess not,” Sam says. “I bet that water’s freezing if you did.”
“Can’t be worse than the ocean in Porec this time of year,” I say, tipping my drink back, enjoying the way the sweet soda fizzes at the back of my throat. I stopped drinking beer a couple of years ago, when it became obvious I’d inherited Chuck’s weakness for alcohol and couldn’t stop with two or seven beers, but I miss that fizz. Most soft drinks can’t match it, but the L&P comes pretty damned closed.
Just another thing to love about our new temporary home.
By the time we reach our hotel in Taupo—a place that reminds me of an old fashioned hunting lodge with a view of Lake Taupo and more snow-capped mountains far in the distance—I’ve more than come around to the idea of living in New Zealand. I’m fucking thrilled and can’t wait to celebrate with Sam. I can barely keep my hands to myself as we check in at the front desk and get the key to our cabin, and the moment the door closes behind Sam, I drop my backpack and reach for my girl.
“Don’t you want to look around first,” she says, laughing as I sweep her up into my arms.
“I know where the bed is,” I say. “That’s all I need to know right now.”
“But what about dinner? Our reservations are in an hour. I need to shower.”
“We’ll shower after,” I say, tossing her onto the bed before reaching for my fleece and tugging it over my head. “I’ll wash your back, you can wash mine.”
“Danny, for real.” She pushes up to sit against the heavy wooden headboard and draws her knees up to her chest. “I’d rather wait until after dinner. Take our time.”
I pause with my belt halfway undone. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I know it’s been a long time, but is another couple of hours really going to make that much of a difference?”
I study her for a long moment, but she doesn’t meet my eyes.
She just wraps her arms around her knees, hugs her legs to her chest, and gazes uncomfortably out the window into the darkening woods, looking more like I suggested we get his and hers genital piercings than have sex for the first time in almost half a year.
A second ago, I was so hard my boxer briefs felt like they were cutting off my circulation, but as I stand at the end of the bed, half-dressed, with my girlfriend so disinterested she doesn’t even sneak a peek at my chest, let alone invite me to join her on the bed, my erection dies a miserable death and our perfect day takes a turn as I realize what must have happened.
The only time Sam has ever acted this way before was three years ago, when I came back to the island after her graduation from high school to find out she’d cheated with her best friend’s brother at the graduation party. They were both drinking beers in the hot tub when he leaned over and kissed her. She said she only kissed him back for a few minutes and regretted it immediately, but it had obviously fucked with her head. She was twitchy and weird for an entire week before I finally called her on it and she confessed to what happened one day while we were surfing.
Not trusting myself not to completely lose my shit, I paddled in without saying a word to Sam, hitchhiked over to Sherry’s, and drank beer with Bjorn until four in the morning before I threw up and passed out. My hangover lasted for two days—two miserable days that convinced me it was time to get on the wagon with the rest of the Cooney men who were halfway functional and stay there. During those days I spent praying to the porcelain god and begging the world to stop spinning, Sam had called at least fifty times to apologize, but I’d refused to take her calls and let her messages pile up until my mailbox was full.
By the time I finally felt good enough to ask her to come over to talk on day three, she was a wreck. She arrived at Sherry’s house looking like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket, with dark shadows under her eyes and her curls frizzing into a white girl afro. She’d started crying the second our eyes met, devastated sobs so heart-wrenching I couldn’t hold on to my anger or hurt for another second.
I’d just pulled her in for a hug on Bjorn’s front porch, told her I loved her, and that was that. We never did get around to talking about the stupid kiss, but we didn’t need to. We both knew she wouldn’t do anything like that again.
That was the kind of mistake you make one time.
Or at least that’s what I’d assumed…
But looking at Sam now, seeing the tension in her jaw and shoulders, and remembering the way she pulled away from me every time I tried to touch her today, I keep adding up two and two to get four. Cheating would explain why she’s been so strange and distant for the past few months. It would explain why she didn’t want to talk dirty on the phone anymore, and had practically run to the bathroom after I got her off on the airplane.
Cheating might even explain why she’s decided to leave school. Maybe the affair ran its course and things are weird between her and the mystery guy. Maybe she dumped him, and he’s trying to win her back. Or maybe he dumped her and she finds it too painful to be around him. Maybe that’s why she came running to me. Not because she loves me or wants to be with me anymore, but because she needed someone to make her feel better after she got dumped by whoever she was fucking behind my back.
A rational voice inside my head tells me I’m letting my imagination run blindfolded into a condemned building, but my gut is twisting with the certainty that I’ve found the answer to the mystery.
It would explain everything and I’ve been a fool not to suspect something like this before.
A part of me wants to confront Sam right now, but instead I reach for my fleece and shrug it on. “Whatever you want, babe,” I say in a neutral tone. “Why don’t you take the first shower? I’m going to go for a run and do some push-ups and sit-ups on the porch, get some exercise after being cooped up in planes and cars for two days.”
“Okay,” Sam says, her shoulders visibly relaxing as she’s spared the unpleasant task of fucking me until later in the evening. “I’ll start a fire, too.”
“Sounds good,” I lie as I head for the door.
Nothing sounds good right now, but I’m not going to rush into a confrontation like I would have when I was younger.
I’ll let it lie for now, try to enjoy my last meal before everything goes to shit, and then tonight, after the sun has set and we’re tucked into our cabin alone, Sam and I are going to have a long talk about what’s really going on and where we go from here.