Epic

by Lark O'Neal

  He gazes down at me steadily, clearly. “There’s something real here. You feel it, too.”

  I nod. “But—”

  “I don’t care about him. That guy.” His eyes are shiny in the darkness. “That’s who you’re worried about, yeah?”

  I drop my gaze. Nod.

  “He let you go.” He pulls my palm to his mouth and presses a kiss to the very heart of it. “You’re here.”

  It’s true. And there’s nothing more to say, because Kaleb, who has shared with me the most magical day I’ve ever known, bends in and brushes a soft kiss over my mouth. In it is promise and hope and more magic. Then he lifts his head, asking no more, and we go back inside.

  * * *

  We all head upstairs pretty quickly after that, even Darcy. We take turns using the bathroom down the hall and slipping into pajamas. I thought it would be weird, sharing this room with them both, but it’s okay. Like being back at my dad’s house and watching TV. Darcy chatters about the crew, sharing tidbits of gossip as she settles into her pillows. Kaleb is wearing the same red and black plaid pajamas he had on the first morning at my dad’s, and I stick my leg out. “We match.”

  He smiles as he climbs into bed. “Night, Jess. Night, Darcy.”

  “You’re going to sleep already?” Darcy asks.

  “I’m knackered.”

  She says something else, but I close my eyes, and sleep washes over me like a wave, sucking me under almost before I realize that I haven’t heard a word that Darcy said.

  * * *

  Somewhere close to morning, I wake before the others. Light spills through the high window, just enough to let me know it’s not quite dawn. I turn over, trying to go back to sleep.

  But now that we’re all settled, I can smell Kaleb, that watermelon and summer scent of him filling the air so richly that it’s almost a living thing. Why can I only smell him, not Darcy? If I were a guy, would I smell her instead?

  I turn on my side and face him, looking into the dark where his body is stretched out. As my eyes adjust, I can see him very clearly, barely three feet away. He’s sprawled on his belly, and he must have shed his shirt overnight, because it’s lying on the floor in a tangle. His torso is bare. Light comes in from the window, barely glossing his shoulder blades and the dip of his waist. A deep shadow swoops down the channel of his spine, pointing toward his high round butt, and I let myself linger there, imagining he’s completely nude and I’m a different person than I am, someone who acts instead of thinks. If I were that other person, I would rise from my bed, shed my t-shirt and PJs, and lie down on top of his nakedness, pressing my breasts and belly against his bare back and sexy ass. I’d wake him up with kisses to those broad brown shoulders, and my hands on his arms and sides.

  I pull my pillow over my head, and after a while I fall back asleep, but the vision follows me—and then there are three of us. Kaleb sleek and dark, Tyler blonde and intense, all of us in some restless bed. Me and Tyler, me and Kaleb, kissing, touching. Tyler and me, me and Kaleb, all four hands, so much skin, tongues, touching me everywhere.

  Insane. I wake up sweaty and tired, and lie on my back, staring at the ceiling. Wow.

  Just wow.

  * * *

  After a while I slip out of bed and creep across the room to pull my hoodie and sweats on over my PJs, then quietly slip out of the room.

  Downstairs, the kitchen staff is starting breakfast, but I don’t even stop to see if I can get coffee, just head outside and wander down to the water’s edge.

  Standing there in the mist and the cool, with rocks rising out of the glassy water and the knowledge of dolphins swimming out there somewhere, and my dad asleep in a town not so far away, I think of everything that’s happened in my life the past few months and feel dizzy. I went from working in a two-bit diner and hanging out with my boyfriend at bars where he played music to falling in love with Tyler and finding out he had way too many secrets, including that he’d been on parole, to finding my dad again after years and years of no contact, to actually coming here. Now the commercials, something I’d never, ever imagined I’d do.

  And Kaleb. Kaleb, who is Tyler’s opposite in almost every way. Calm where Tyler is volatile, optimistic where Tyler is brooding, steady and clear where Tyler is spiky with wild swings of mood. Both of them so sexy a single look can bring me to my knees.

  I always thought you could only be in love with one person at a time, but that’s not how it feels. The powerful things I’m feeling for Kaleb don’t lessen the feelings I have for Tyler. At all. My love for Tyler doesn’t interfere with my falling in love with Kaleb.

  What do I do about that?

  Mom, I need you. What do I do?

  But she doesn’t answer, because she’s dead and it’s only my imagination that she’s somehow mystically helping me out from the other side. Dead is dead.

  Although I still delusionally think she was trying to get me to come here.

  Gulls wheel around overhead. My face is damp with mist. She’s not there, and I really need her. I need answers to what led her to take me away from my dad. There’s a rock of loneliness in my gut this morning, a sense of isolation born of…what?

  Maybe it was a bad idea to do these commercials. Maybe it’s the high drama of everything that’s going on that’s igniting these feelings for Kaleb. Maybe if we’d stayed at the winery we’d just be hanging out in the greenhouse, grafting vines and riding on his scooter.

  Yeah, like I’d hate that so much. I half-smile. It’s not the commercials. It’s Kaleb, and whatever it is between us that’s showing up on film is the same thing that’s been there since the day of the earthquake, growing every hour we spend together. Resisting it is the thing making me feel lonely. But giving in will probably make me feel worse.

  Footsteps crunch over the pebbles behind me, and for one wild second I’m freaked out, thinking my call has summoned my mother’s ghost. I whirl around, and there’s Kaleb, wearing a black hoodie. Mist has decorated his hair with tiny diamonds. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  We stand in the quiet, side by side, not saying anything. I think about the kiss beneath the tree fern and the sight of his long bare back as he slept, and have to take a breath.

  “We’re going through Kaikoura today,” he says.

  “Stopping there?”

  “For lunch.” He looks at me finally, his expression unreadable. “I asked Ian if he’d mind.”

  “Really?” I smile up at him. “That was very nice of you.”

  “I know it’s important to you.” He shrugs a little, looks back to the sea, then up to the heavy clouds. “We’re going to get rained on any second.” He closes his eyes. His velvety black lashes fan extravagantly over his cheeks and his throat is long and brown, and I think of him coming out of the sea practically naked. My heart leaps, and something flutters through me, weakening my knees, and I almost reach for him.

  Just then the sky tears open and rain pours out by the bucketful. As the rain slaps down on us, Kaleb laughs, the sound as big and wild and rich as the land itself, and opens his mouth to catch the rain. He sticks out his tongue and spreads his arms open, and for a long moment I’m lost in all of it, in the sea and the sky and Kaleb’s beautiful face and the rain soaking us both, as if we are fish on the shore.

  Then we run for the house, screeching. Kaleb goes upstairs to take a shower, and I beg a towel and some coffee from the kitchen staff and sit down to email.

  I have to face it.

  The connection is slow, but bearable. There’s a new email from Tyler, but I force myself to leave it unopened. I owe Henry and Electra a note first. Quickly, I type one to each of them, telling them essentially the same thing—I’m having a blast, filming a commercial for the tourism industry (!) and really enjoying everything.

  To Henry, I add:

  Haven’t really had any time to talk to my dad about my mom, but I’ve been thinking about her so much, and having these odd snippets of dreams. She’s very thin a
nd angry in them, and I’m worried and scared. You must know some of this story, Henry.

  Did she steal me from my dad? Is that why we never came back? If she did, why? I thought he must be a druggie or something, but there’s really nothing that points to that, AT ALL.

  Write soon and tell me how you are. Love you lots and think about you every day.

  Finally I open the new email from Tyler.

  To: jessdonovan@cheapnet.com

  From: tlsmith@greatmail.com

  Subject: re: Finally!

  24 July, 10:23 pm

  Dear Jess, my beautiful Kiwi baby,

  I’m so glad you’re okay and that nobody was hurt during the earthquake. Sounds like you’re having a blast filming and making friends. Send me a picture! It’s exactly the kind of adventure you deserve, and I hope you can pour your whole self into it. Don’t worry about me at all. I’ve got my hands full with something that feels pretty great. It’s a lot of hard work (I haven’t worked so hard in a really long time) and I’m feeling better about life than I have since—God, I don’t even know. A long time.

  The judge gave me a weird sentence. That’s all I’m ready to say at the moment. It has the potential to be really good, but I could also humiliate myself completely. Not ready to tell you all about it yet, especially not in email, but maybe we can figure out a time to Skype once you get your iPad back. Or can you Skype some other way? The timing is really hard, but I can maybe work it out around 8 am, or maybe 10 or 11 pm, your time.

  If we can’t, no big deal. Maybe I can get to Queenstown eventually or something.

  Love,

  Tyler

  He sounds almost cheerful, which is not exactly the Tyler I know. There’s also a sense of openness or casualness there that eases some of my inner conflict. I remind myself yet again that we deliberately didn’t promise to be exclusive while I was in New Zealand. Maybe he’s—

  Ugh. No. I don’t want to imagine him with somebody else. If he sleeps with somebody else, I just don’t want to know about it. Ever.

  But I find myself frowning over something else in the email—another secret. This was the trouble between us—he kept things from me, important things, and I don’t understand it. Why does he want to hide things all the time? I mean, I get it that his childhood closed him down, but this is the thing that worries me the most about him—he just doesn’t tell me enough about himself. Will he ever be able to be real with me? It’s one of the reasons I’m here in New Zealand, trying to figure things out.

  If he can’t learn to share, I’ll be lonely with him always.

  I feel almost like two people. The girl who loves Tyler Smith and is afraid she can’t trust him, and the one who’s falling for Kaleb, who’s straightforward but maybe too nice. The girl who loves Tyler wants to protect him from anything painful, and I’m not sure I can Skype with him at the moment. If I want to be spared the knowledge that he might be attracted to somebody else, I should spare him that knowledge about me, too.

  So where is the line? Why is it okay for me to keep parts of my life to myself and not okay for him? What part is honesty, what part kindness, what part hiding?

  I don’t know the answers right now. What I do know is that I still have strong feelings for him. I love him, even if it seems weird considering that I’m falling for Kaleb, too.

  Taking a breath, I type:

  To: tlsmith@greatmail.com

  From: jessdonovan@cheapnet.com

  Subject: re: Finally!

  25 July, 05:34

  Tyler! How mysterious you are! I’m dying to find out what you’re doing. Please give me more hints! I have no idea when we can Skype. 8 am, I’m always working. Maybe I can stay up until 10 one night, but honestly, we’re working 12 and 14 hours every day, doing a lot of physical stuff, hiking, kayaking, all that stuff, and the minute we get back to the house and eat, we’re all fast asleep.

  I’d LOVE to see you in Queenstown if you can get there, but remember, we are working tons. Might be better to wait until we’re done with the commercials. After August 16, I think they said. Something like that.

  Gotta go! Xoxoxox

  J

  It’s not perfect. I wish it was better. I wish I didn’t feel conflicted, but I do. Staring at my inbox, I think of Electra and wonder what she’d tell me right now. Restlessly, I pull the necklace out of my blouse and hold it up to the light. Yellow with red, red with blue, red with green. All beautiful.

  What she said to me at the airport was to dream big and enjoy the company of men, but not to let their plans become my plans. How does that apply to this sudden twist in my life?

  I’m having an adventure right now. For the first time ever, I have some real money of my own coming in, I’m in a place I love, and if I can stop the whole dithering thing over Tyler and Kaleb and let things happen however they’re meant to, I might enjoy myself.

  How is it possible to feel so exactly torn in half? To be so drawn to two different people with so much intensity?

  Everyone starts pouring down the stairs, and I turn off the computer, turning to see Kaleb trotting down at the back, his hair damp and curling. He sees me at the computer and shakes his head slightly, and I blush, knowing that he knows I must have been writing to Tyler.

  Whatever. Seeing Kaleb, my entire being leaps toward him, and, as if drawn by a magnet, I head over to sit down with him for breakfast.

  Nothing has to be decided today. We’ve finished filming here and we’re headed down to Christchurch, and on the way I’ll see my birthplace. And my dad is going to meet us in Christchurch tonight. It’s all good.

  Chapter THIRTEEN

  It’s a long drive, all morning, to the town where I once lived. I read the whole way, looking up sometimes to watch the swirling blue and green sea passing by the windows. Next to me, Darcy sleeps. She sleeps more than anyone I’ve ever met, actually, at least in the daytime. In the evenings, she’s always with the skinny camera guy, Mike, who got her the job.

  The van is quiet, everybody listening to music or playing games or sleeping. Kaleb is two rows behind me, and I don’t look back. He spent breakfast talking with his stylist, who clearly wouldn’t mind a bit of a tumble. He barely talked to me at all, even though I was right there next to him, and I’m not actually sure what to think about that. It hurt my feelings a little, not that I have any right to feel that way—I spent most of yesterday afternoon running away from him, so fair is fair.

  As the van approaches Kaikoura, I put my book down and feel my heart going thready. So far we haven’t been in any of the exact places I once lived with my parents, but surely if I remember anything, it will be from Kaikoura. My dad said we lived here until I started school.

  It’s beautiful as we drive in, mountains curving to match the curve of the sea. It’s a sleepy place, a tourist town, maybe. Signs tell us that there are whale watching tours and you can swim with dolphins. When I see that, I look back toward Kaleb, pointing. He lifts his chin with a grin, and it’s hard to look away, the topaz color of his irises capturing me. He looks away first, giving me one more second to stare at him, at his big hands loose in his lap, at the way his hair falls over his collar.

  The van stops and we all pile out, the others all pulling on their coats. I carry mine, but the second I step out I know why they’re all bundling up. The wind is sharp and cold, the kind of icy winds we get in January back home.

  “Listen up, everybody,” the project manager says. “You’ve got two hours here. Have some lunch, walk a bit, and be back here by 1:30. Got it?”

  Darcy shivers. “It’s too cold to wander around. Let’s just find a nice warm pub and have a pie.”

  “You go,” I say, looking around. We’re stopped in a parking lot near the tourist center. Behind us is the main street, lined with shops and cafes, ahead is a strip of grass fronting the restless sea. Around us rise high mountains topped with snow.

  But nothing looks familiar.

  “I’m going to take a walk. I’ll meet you la
ter.”

  “Cool.”

  Kaleb joins us then, cap pulled down over his head. “You want to be alone?” he asks.

  “No. You can come.”

  It really is cold, and I pull my own hat—the one he gave me the other night—out of the pocket of my coat, wrap my scarf around my neck. We walk along the sidewalk for a little ways, then to the park along the sea. It’s pretty empty at the moment, and the only sounds are the wind and the waves swishing onto the rocks, and our breath.

  “The Colorado mountains are like these,” I say, gesturing toward the snowy peaks. “Very high. How high do you think those mountains are?”

  He inclines his head. “Not sure. Maybe 2500 meters? How tall are yours?”

  “Pikes Peak is 14,110 feet. Most of them are 13000 and 14000 feet. But I don’t know what that is in meters.”

  “You Americans and your imperial measures. It’s crazy. Hardly anyone else does it that way, you know.”

  “Really?”

  He nods. “Metric is easier, too. Tens, straight across.”

  We walk at a good clip, and I don’t really know what I think I’ll find—a memory of my mother carrying groceries home?—but it isn’t there. We wander through some whale bones set up in arches in the park, and past a public pool closed for the season, then just a little farther. I stop and shake my head. “Let’s go back. It’s freezing.”

  He pauses with me, hands in his pockets, and looks around. “It’s brilliant, right? Love it. We used to drive up here for picnics when I was a kid—my dad’s sisters lived here.” He looks around, mouth turning down at the corners. “Probably still do.”

  “You don’t talk to them now?”

  He shakes his head. “They never liked my mum. When Pop died, that was that. We didn’t see them anymore.”

  The sea is restless and dark gray, unsettled, and above it the mountains look like giants. “I wish I had aunts and uncles and cousins and all those relatives. A grandmother, maybe, a grandpa.”