by Lark O'Neal
The thoughts are disturbing enough that I roll over on my back and look out the window at the starry sky. I didn’t even know he’d been to prison, that he was on parole, until he got into a fight with my old boyfriend and practically beat him to a pulp. I will say I felt that violence in him at times. Not directed at me, not ever, but simmering all the time like the fire inside a volcano, an anger that fueled him.
Tyler, Tyler. So mysterious, really, so many conflicting pieces that I can never seem to fit together just right. A lot of it is the fact that his childhood was so strange, that he carries a lot of wounds from it. But other things make me uneasy sometimes. He’s volatile and intense, which is both good and bad. Our connection is like that, too, hot and intense, deep and powerful from the very first day.
My body wants him. Wants his hands on me, his lips. I close my eyes and think of the way he touches me, holds me. I think of the peaceful way I felt in his bedroom, and the way his home welcomed me.
It’s enough to finally help me sleep.
Where I dream that Tyler is on the set, watching me and Kaleb frolic in the water, and although I know Tyler’s there, seeing everything, I find myself touching the tattoo on Kaleb’s hip, tracing it with my fingers, following the line of it down his powerful thigh.
Tyler just watches.
Chapter NINE
The dream follows me around in the morning, leaving a little guilty ache in my chest. The van is full of people being carted to the Abel Tasman Park, and our suitcases and duffle bags are piled up in a big stack at the back. We’ve all packed for three days, duffel bags with our pajamas and slippers and toothbrushes. I have books, of course, in case I get bored in the evenings. My hope is that there will be some kind of Internet connection once we get there, even if my iPad is broken. My dad said it will be fixed in a couple of days, but for now, I’m without again. Phone service is still patchy after the earthquake, and I haven’t been able to get a text out, either.
I sit next to Darcy, who slumps in a doze. Most everyone else does the same thing, but I’m used to being up early, and my body seems to have finally synched with New Zealand time. I had planned to read the script on the way, but it’s too dark, so instead I stare out the window and watch the big, dark, starry sky. Sometimes I can see a light in a house or we pass through a little town, quiet at such an early hour.
It’s peaceful and helps me feel more like myself. I’m used to spending a lot of time alone; since I arrived here, I’ve been with people nearly all the time. Sipping tea from the take-away cup Katy gave each of us, I watch the landscape go by and feel it settling in me—that hill in the crook of my elbow, that house with the glowing kitchen across my throat, the big salt-stars sky seeping into my forehead.
When it starts to get light I pull the scripts out and start to read them. It’s a simple little story, mostly told in images. Two sets of tourists—the young set played by me, Colin and Kaleb, and the middle aged pair—are exploring the wonders of the South Island. Meanwhile, elves and mermaids and other mysterious beings are watching them. Maybe are them, really, since we each play an Elvish or other mystical counterpart. The older guy, who is dark and curly-haired, is Tangaroa, god of the sea and fishing. I am an Elvin princess, and Colin is the king. Kaleb is Maui, another Maori deity of the sea who shows up several times, and the description intrigues me—half his face covered in ink.
He’s sitting one bench ahead of me, on the other side of the aisle, and I glance over at him. He’s bent over the scripts, too. We’re the only two people awake on the van.
As if he feels my gaze, he looks over his shoulder. “Have you read it all?” he asks quietly.
I shake my head.
He raises his eyebrows, sucks his upper lip into his mouth, touches the page. I give him a perplexed expression in return. He flips the pages, points to one, then flashes his fingers, three and four. 34.
I flip to the page. It’s a scene on a hiking trail, and the Elvin princess coaxes Kaleb the real guy into the woods to show him something magical. Charmed, he follows her to a grove of ferns, and there she kisses him.
Kisses him.
I’m going to have to kiss Kaleb. The idea makes my ears hot, which in turn makes me feel like the worst traitor in the world, and I can feel Kaleb watching me, waiting for my reaction. I look up, hoping that my blush doesn’t show. He mimes an exaggerated kiss, his lush lips turning into fish lips. Not sexy. I laugh softly, and he winks, turning back to his script.
There are a lot of kisses after that, actually. All very sweet. At sunset over Milford Sound (wherever that is). Over a fancy meal in Christchurch. There’s a kiss from an Elvin girl to real-boy Kaleb, and one with us as hikers and the kiss turns us into magical beings.
I close the script and look out the window. We’re getting close to the water now, and pink light glints and dances on top of the turquoise sea.
This is a job. They’re paying me a lot of money to get it right. The fantasy they’re selling is romance and adventure in New Zealand. To sell it, I have to feel it in my head while I’m doing it. In the story I’m a tourist with her boyfriend, falling more and more in love. I’m an elf seducing a human, and a human being seduced by a sea-god.
With a tattoo on his face.
I think of the guy at the airport when I first arrived, looking severe and handsome and strange with his whole face tattooed. Something ripples along my ribs.
There’s the problem right there. It would be one thing to do kissing scenes with Kaleb if I wasn’t feeling that pull toward him, but I’m worried about what kissing him will feel like. What it might awaken.
But wasn’t this the whole reason Tyler and I didn’t make promises to be faithful? Things—people—show up. He might have a thing with a bartender or a model or something. The idea burns against my belly, and I know I wouldn’t like it any more than he would like it if I gave in to my attraction to Kaleb. We aren’t prevented from seeing others, exactly, but I think both of us sort of planned to try to stick to each other.
In my dream, Tyler watched me touch the tattoo on Kaleb’s hip, trail my fingers down his thigh. Urgently, I call up Tyler’s beautiful face, the angles and the always-lurking sadness. I think of him painting me and kissing me and making love to me.
It grounds me.
I look across at Kaleb, who’s still bent over the script, turning pages. He’s my friend. I like him a lot, and, yes, I’m attracted to him, but I can be professional.
We’ll kiss. So what? It happens on movie sets all the time.
* * *
The minute we’re out of the van, Mika hustles us off to get changed. I’m grateful that it’s simple today, hair in a braid, make-up minimal, the same camp shirt and shorts I was wearing yesterday. I’m surprised that there are no wetsuits, but Mika says you get too hot.
And then we’re standing on the beach in front of a line of kayaks. A tour guide goes through all the steps, how to balance, how to paddle, how to get in, how to release yourself if you get knocked over. It’s a calm day, sun shining, and he doesn’t expect any trouble. All of us are going, in pairs, me and Kaleb, Darcy and Colin, the middle aged couple, and some of the grunts. The camera guys will be in two kayaks, and we’re supposed to ignore them.
“Are you nervous?” Kaleb asks.
“Kinda. I don’t want to look like an idiot.”
“It’s dead easy. I’ll steer, and you can be in front. We’re not going that far.”
“All right, people, listen up,” the tour leader says. “I’ll be leading, just follow me nice and easy. I’ve seen a pod of dolphins out there a few times recently, so maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Dolphins, really?” I ask.
The guy nods at me. He’s older, maybe thirty or so, with scruffy hair and a tattered beard. “Pretty cool if they show up, eh?”
“I hope they do.”
It’s a little tricky to get into the kayak, but then we’re moving away from shore, finding an easy rhythm of paddling after a few minut
es. The long narrow boat glides along the water, and Kaleb steers us into the lead.
“Slow down, you two. We need you on film.”
We paddle more slowly, and one of the cameramen comes around to the front of us. “Good, good. A little action now.” We steer around a big rock, just sitting in the middle of everything, and glide by it. From the water, the cliffs look high and rugged, hard to pass.
As we paddle by a cove, the guide calls out, “That’s where you’re staying, bros. In that house right there.”
It’s isolated and surrounded by cliffs, on a beach that’s long and deserted, but I don’t care about anything but the sensation of gliding through the water. “This rocks!” I call back to Kaleb.
“I knew you’d like it.”
“It’s like hiking, like being so close to the water you’re walking on it.”
“Yes.”
There’s no need for conversation. We paddle in synch, then out of synch, and it doesn’t matter. Seagulls wheel around over our heads and perch on the orphan rocks poking up like mini-islands all through the bay. The water is cold when it splashes us, but the sun is warm and the exercise is working up a lot of heat, especially with the lifejackets we have to wear again. My brain is blissfully still, my body warm and calm, and the moment is as close to perfect happiness as anything I’ve ever known.
But it’s about to get even better.
“Jess,” Kaleb says quietly. “Look to your right.”
There’s a little disturbance in the water, but I’m not understanding it until a body flies up into the air, twirls around and dives back in, and then another one follows. They’re dark gray, much smaller than I would have expected, but unmistakably dolphins. My heart leaps. “Oh, my God!”
Kaleb steers us in their direction, and as we get closer it’s plain that the group is enormous, hundreds and hundreds of them splashing and leaping out of the water, little ones and big ones.
“They’re so much smaller than I thought.”
“These are dusky dolphins, one of the smaller species,” says the guide. Behind him is one of the cameras, filming, but everyone else has stayed back. “They’re teaching the calves to do tricks. Watch.”
The water is alive with them playing, like a circus. It makes me laugh. One flies up higher than another, then somebody else tries to match it and falls on his side, and they make a funny buzzing noise and the odd whistle.
“Will it hurt them if we move in closer?” Kaleb asks.
“Nah. You might get knocked over is all.”
“Let’s go closer,” I say quietly. My heart is quivering as we edge into the midst of them, and it’s like they’re a bunch of kids on a playground, running around screaming and yelling and having a blast.
And all at once, in the friendliest of ways, a bunch of them surround us, noses coming up out of the water, clearly, plainly laughing. I can see teeth and blow holes, and they make eye contact, so intelligently. I hold out a hand, and one of them leaps up and slams his nose into it in greeting. It makes me laugh, and I try it again. Another one comes over, too, both of them smacking my hand, one, two. Tears of wonder are streaming down my face, and I glance over my shoulder at Kaleb, who looks as alight as I feel.
Then, as if to outdo each other, they start jumping. One jumps over the kayak and splashes down on the other side, and cold water soaks both me and Kaleb, who’s laughing with me. The guide has moved in among them, too, as awestruck as we are.
And then we’re completely surrounded by dolphins, embraced, the water alive with them swimming around us, jumping and splashing in front, behind, beside us. One swims right up to the boat, lifts his nose out and makes a buzzing noise that’s clearly an invitation. “He wants us to swim with him,” I say.
“You won’t last long in that water, sweetheart,” the guide says.
He’s right, and I know it, but as the dolphins continue to chatter to us, and splash and laugh and play, the desire builds and builds and builds. How can we turn down such a sacred invitation? “Kaleb?”
“I’m in.”
And then the kayak is tipping over, spilling us into the water, icy cold water that steals my breath but only for a second. I reach down and release myself from the kayak, feeling sleek bodies swirling around me. Under the water I can hear more noise, as if they’re having a big party. I rise to the surface, feeling more of them around me, swirling, brushing by me, and I reach out toward them, feet moving to keep me afloat, lifejacket buoying me. Kaleb swims up beside me. The dolphins nudge us, buzzing and clicking, and we look at each other in wonder. I laugh, and there are tears streaming down my face, and then a dolphin nose touches my cheek and I want to swim with them forever.
But humans are not dolphins. Very quickly Kaleb and I are both shivering. “We have to get out of the water,” he says.
I nod, and we swim for the kayak as the guide paddles along beside us, calling out directions. “Flip it back as fast as you can, then you each get on one side. Kaleb, you climb in first, then you, Jess.”
We are both very cold and shivering and losing strength, but following the guide’s directions, Kaleb makes it in within a few seconds, and I’m next. The dolphins are moving away from us now, but one keeps coming back, swirling against my legs.
“He’s flirting with you,” Kaleb says with a laugh.
“Come on, sweetheart,” the guide says. “You’ll get hypothermia if you stay in much longer.”
It takes everything I’ve got, but I manage to scramble back in. Kaleb braces me from the back so I can get my legs inside. The air isn’t too cold, and the sun immediately starts to dry my face.
I look back over my shoulder, to the retreating pod, their splashes and laughter fading away. “That was the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me,” I say quietly.
“Me, too,” Kaleb says, his voice hushed. He takes my hand, squeezes it. “Me, too.”
Chapter TEN
Ian is ecstatic about the dolphin shoot and gives us extra time for lunch. It’s a hot meal, served in the isolated house on the beach. They’ve dropped our suitcases off in our rooms, but we all congregate quickly in the dining room, drawn by the mouth-watering smells. The table is piled high with meat and roasted vegetables and bread, and after all that exercise we dig in like crazy people, hardly even talking. I’m sitting between Darcy and the camera guy who shot the dolphins this morning.
“I’ve been doing this ten years, love,” he says, “and I never shot anything like what happened this morning.”
I can still hardly think of it without feeling tears well up in my throat. I feel marked and honored and—I don’t even have words for it. I glance over at Kaleb, who’s listening to the man on his left, the older actor. “It was the wildest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“They were water spirits,” Darcy adds, “playing with you. A blessing.”
I close my eyes and I’m back in the water with them, feeling their movement and swirl, the slick sturdiness of their bodies, the thrill of the one who touched my face. Every single cell in my body wants to do it again, every day, forever.
“Maybe,” I say, and eat my roast.
“You and your boyfriend are great on camera together,” the camera guy says. “How long you been doing this?”
Kaleb glances over at the guy, that divided eyebrow lifting ever so slightly.
I look at my plate. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
* * *
We were scheduled to film more kayaking after lunch, but we’re so far ahead that we’re going to get started on the magical segments, which mainly involve Kaleb emerging from the waves as Maui, a water god. Darcy and I are sitting on a blanket on the beach, drinking hot chocolate from paper cups, when he comes out of the tent in full costume.
I can’t help it, my skin prickles. For one thing, he’s not wearing a lot—a cloth draped around his lean waist and that’s it. His hair is pulled back from his face, showing the severity of his high brow and strong nose, and half his face has a tattoo
drawn over it. The sight electrifies me, sends a buzzing awareness down my spine, and my eyes drop, looking for the other tattoo, the one on his hip.
And there it is. Curving, stylized, clinging to his thigh and hip, and emphasizing the shape of both.
My ears are hot. My throat burns. My lips tingle. I can’t look at him like this. But I can’t stop.
Darcy laughs softly. “Look at my brother! Damn, he looks good, right?”
I can’t find any words. My mouth is too dry. My eyes are drawn to his throat, long and brown, the wings of his collarbone and the smooth, flat expanse of his belly, and that tattoo, that tattoo, that tattoo. I think of him standing in my room after the earthquake, knowledge blooming in his eyes. As he did then, he touches his bare chest and meets my gaze, and for a long moment there’s only Kaleb and me in all the world. His nostrils flare.
And this time I can’t tell myself it’s because I’m traumatized.
“Jess!” Darcy says. “They’re calling you.”
The bubble shatters and I jump up, brushing off my butt. Not looking at Kaleb, I rush over to my place, ears filled with my heart beating too loudly.
What is wrong with me?
* * *
The afternoon shoot goes badly. I’m stiff and uncomfortable, and I know it, but I also don’t know how to fix it. Every time I look at Kaleb emerging from the water, his skin slick and shiny, the fabric clinging to him, that tattoo like some kind of magic spell that snares me over and over, my skin buzzes as if I’ve been plugged into the Kaleb outlet. It makes me self-conscious, unable to meet his eyes.
Ian is frustrated with me, and that makes it worse. Kaleb comes over and takes my hand, pulls me away from the group. So close. I can smell his skin, see every grain of sand that covers his graceful brown feet, and I force myself not to look at that tattoo on his hip. When we’re out of earshot, he lets me go and faces me, raises that thick eyebrow. “‘Sup, girl?”
I close my eyes. Shake my head. A dozen things rise to my lips, then evaporate. “I just…” I take a breath. “It’s just—this—” I stutter and stumble and act like a total idiot. It’s really hard to look at him. “Sorry. I don’t know.”