Love Game

She shrugged slender shoulders. “I’m compassionate. Doesn’t make me a doormat.”

“You don’t like me, do you?” I heaved a dramatic sigh and laced my fingers behind my head. “I get that a lot.”

“I don’t need to like you for this to work.”

“So you admit you don’t like me? I’m so sad.”

She laughed. “No, you’re not. Now hush so I can concentrate.”

“What are you going to do? Summon the spirits of my ancestors to cast out my elbow pain?”

She cocked her head at me and rubbed her hands together as if to warm them up. “Mr. Lemieux told me that you’re part Samoan.”

Every muscle in me stiffened, and my winning smile hardened on my face. “So?” I snapped out.

“Well, it’s just that you’re so skeptical. Many Pacific Islanders have long, beautiful traditions of mysticism in their cultures.”

“I guess.”

“You aren’t familiar?”

“No. Hate to break it to you, but not all Samoans wear grass skirts and live in huts on the beach, praying to manta rays for guidance.”

“I wasn’t suggesting—”

“You’ve probably seen Moana one too many times. I don’t live on an island. I live in Melbourne. Big city. Heard of it?”

I expected Daisy to be angry with me or kick me off her table for talking to her so harshly. But her soft face peered down at me, not with pity or ridicule but that same gentle curiosity.

“I think it’d be kind of perfect to live in a hut on the beach and commune with a manta ray.”

I snorted. “That’s crazy.”

“Is it? Have you ever swum with a ray? Or seen a blue whale up close?”

“Sure.”

“And you haven’t felt that sense of awe?” she asked. “The majesty of them? Like there’s something so much bigger at work going on around us?”

“Of course, they’re big. They’re whales, after all…”

She gave a little laugh, her voice turning wistful. “I think what’s crazy is believing that all of the unexplainable things in this life can be chalked up to cells and synapses.”

“Explain.”

“Well…take for instance, Mozart. I don’t see how Mozart could write something like the Requiem. Or how Michelangelo could paint the Sistine Chapel without there being something intangible and beautiful involved that we don’t fully understand.” She glanced down at me. “I don’t know how else you explain love.”

I shifted on the table. I didn’t know how to explain love either, except it was something that made you weak. Susceptible to intense pain. I loved my mum because she was my mum, but after Dad died right in front of me, game over.

Daisy misread the dark expression on my face and nudged my shoulder with her arm.

“Sorry. I’m not trying to convert you to my brand of spirituality, I promise.”

Her smile was brilliant. I wasn’t a poetic guy but goddamn this woman was putting the wild Hawaiian beauty around us to shame.

Bloody hell, mate, get a grip. Don’t fall for this mumbo jumbo just because she’s got a pretty face. And body. And skin. And hair. And eyes of an unexplainable color that make you want to stare into them until the end of time…

“All right then,” I said, finally mustering the will to stop looking at her and shut my eyes. “Make my ancestors proud and commune with my elbow ligaments.”