Epic

by Lark O'Neal

  His brows pull down quizzically. The scar through his eyebrow points like an arrow to the edge of the cap, and I want to trace it with my finger. “You might, you know, with your dad.”

  “Kaleb!” I laugh. “I can’t believe I never thought about that! What if I do? A grandmother!”

  His teeth flash, white and strong. “She can make you bickies and tell you stories.”

  A gust of wind blasts over us, whipping my hair all around my face and sending skitters of dirt over our skin. “Enough,” he says, and takes my hand to pull me along. “Let’s go back and get some lunch.”

  His hand is cold, just like mine, but where our palms meet the flesh warms, and even after he lets go I can feel the imprint of his flesh there.

  Our sleeves brush. “This was a whaling village,” he says. “Now the ex-whalers run all the tourism, taking people out in boats to see the whales. The whales are still there, but now people just look at them instead of killing them.”

  “Better.”

  He snorts. “A bit.”

  “And they swim with dolphins,” I say.

  He looks down at me, eyes glittering.

  “They do.”

  “Do you know any Maori legends about them or anything?”

  “Not really.” He shrugs in a way that expresses his sadness. We’ve come back to the whale bones, and he pauses beneath one of them, running his big hand over the smooth bleached surface. “Imagine how that must have been, bringing in such a massive creature. And they killed so many that they nearly became extinct.”

  I’m not thinking about whales, though. I’m watching his mouth shape the words and his hand stroke the bone, and admiring the black curls that have escaped his cap. I think of kissing him under the tree fern, the fierce intensity between us, and all I want is to do it again.

  As if my eyes are lasers he can feel, he swings his head back toward me. “Your eyes,” he says quietly, “are exactly the color of the sea.”

  “Are they?” I manage, barely a whisper, because he’s coming closer. Close enough that I have to look up to see his face. He doesn’t touch me, but there’s barely enough space between our bodies for the wind to make its way through the gap.

  So close, I can see the small whiskers of dark hair he shaved from his upper lip, and a tiny scar under his chin, but it’s the beacon of his eyes that draws me, amber and gold and vividly bright in the dark day. It’s dizzying to look so deeply into anyone’s eyes, impossibly intimate. I want to drink in everything he lets me see and everything he keeps hidden. I want to know who he is.

  And I want him to know me, too. I want to show him everything I’ve hidden and uncover whatever things we don’t know about ourselves.

  His lids go sleepy, and then without touching me at all in any other way, he lowers his head and kisses me. I meet it with a sense of wild desire mixed with relief. It’s gentle, just lips at first, lips touching and playing, upper to lower and lower to upper, then back again. He slides his mouth slowly back and forth, and the light abrasion awakens everything in my body, toes to scalp.

  I open my mouth first, opening to let him in, to ask for entrance, and that’s when he makes a little noise and steps closer, wrapping his arms around me to pull me into his body, our jackets thick between our chests, but our hips locking close, along with our mouths. It sends shocks of hunger through me, the feeling of his height and broad shoulders and powerful hands.

  “I love the way you kiss,” he whispers. “So sensual, so alive.”

  “You too.” I raise my hands to his beautiful face. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  We slide back into our world, the place of Kaleb and Jess, ours alone, the world we are creating day by day. In it are the greenhouse and the day on Cloudy Bay and the motorcycle ride in the pouring rain, when I felt every shift of every muscle in his body because I was clinging to him so hard. The dolphins who coaxed us into playing with them live there, and the kiss beneath the tree fern, and last night, when I watched him sleep and wanted him so badly.

  And it’s now, kissing on a cold beach beneath an arching of whale bones in the city where I lived with my lost mother long ago and his aunties told him stories. It feels like I am somehow being woven into him or somehow weaving him into me.

  We’re both shivering, and finally I raise my head. “Are you cold?”

  He laughs. “Yes. I just didn’t want to stop.”

  “Me, either. But we’re going to get frostbite.”

  His eyes settle on mine. “We can do it again later if you want.”

  I swallow. Take a breath.

  He gives me a sleepy, sexy look, one side of his mouth lifting very faintly. “What?”

  “It’s just this guy back home. We kinda broke up before I got here…” I pause. “Well, not exactly broke up, but we aren’t exactly together, either. I just want to be honest, I guess.”

  “I don’t care about him,” Kaleb says. With one hand he captures my neck and kisses me again, hard and soft at once, a brand, a mark, and something rustles down my spine. He lifts his head very slightly so that I’m caught in that engulfing golden gaze, and as he holds my eyes, he kisses me again. “I. Don’t. Care. About. Him.” A word, a kiss, a word, a kiss. As if he can erase him, or at least intends to.

  It melts my hips, my knees, my entire spine until I could dissolve into molten liquid.

  He lets me go, and we hunch back into our coats. It’s too bitter to hold hands, but there’s an easiness between us now. “I wish I recognized something,” I say. “My mom is this big mystery, and I feel frustrated that I never seem to get any closer to understanding her.”

  “What do you think you’re looking for?”

  “I don’t know, really. Something. Some clue to why she took me back to the States.”

  “You probably know, somewhere in your mind.”

  The words land in my solar plexus, a fluttering recognition. I put my hand over the spot. “Wow, not sure I like that idea.”

  “The truth isn’t always simple or easy to take, but it’s the right thing to chase.”

  I smile at him. “And people tell me I’m an old soul.”

  “I hear that, too, all the time.” His mouth twists. “Maybe it comes from losing a parent, or having to get through tough times without a lot of support.”

  “Like the earthquake.”

  He nods. “Like living on your own so young.”

  “Maybe so.”

  We walk a little farther in silence. Overhead, clouds are rolling in, snow clouds I’d say if they were over the mountains at home.

  Kaleb says, “What was she like, your mom?”

  I take a breath. It’s hard to sort out the memories sometimes. What was she like, really? “Pretty. Really pretty. That was the main thing people said about her all the time. She liked to cook, and she worked for an auto supply company, running auto parts to various garages all day long, talking to people.” I look at him. “She loved me and loved Henry, and she liked to read mysteries, out in the back yard so she could smoke.”

  That brings back a scent memory of her, Juicy Fruit gum and cigarettes. Her hair lifting on the breeze. “I just can’t think of anything that seemed out of order, except that she never saw her family again after she left as a teenager.”

  He’s listening carefully, nodding encouragement, looking at me when I pause. “That seems like something. Maybe your dad will know more about that part of her life.”

  “I’m going to be so glad to see him tonight!”

  As we’re coming up to the restaurant, he takes my hand. “Listen, Darcy is going to get weird in Christchurch. She just will. I wish we weren’t filming there, and I wish she wasn’t here.”

  “Weird how?”

  “That’s the million dollar question. She’ll just not be herself.” He shrugs slightly. “Sometimes she gets depressed or gets drunk, but she might just turn into a first class bitch.”

  “That could be fun.”

  “Not really.”

&n
bsp; “Ok. Thanks for telling me.”

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  It’s heavily overcast when we get to Christchurch, but there’s still no snow when we settle in. I’m relieved to see that it’s just me and Darcy sharing a room this time. Kaleb is paired with one of the younger grips. It’s an ordinary kind of motel, with rooms arranged around a courtyard.

  We’re all on our own for dinner tonight. My dad is coming for me, and Kaleb and Darcy are going to see friends in town, so I wander down to the office to see if there’s Internet. The old man behind the counter says they don’t have it, but he starts talking to me the way lonely people do sometimes. “This used to be my house,” he said, pointing to a photo of a tall, graceful-looking Victorian made of stone. Porches decorated with gingerbread circle the front and sides.

  “It’s pretty,” I say politely. He smells vaguely mildewy, like old people everywhere, and I step back a little, noticing there are other pictures on the walls, too. A clawfoot bathtub, a garden, a dining room furnished with a big table and antique plates. I point to that last one. “Is this it, too?”

  “It sure is. They all are. We imported antiques from England, three decades worth.”

  I follow the pictures along the walls, seeing the elegance of the stained glass and furniture and gardens. The last photo is a newspaper clipping of the house fallen down, not in a big crumble but knocked sideways, completely off the foundation. Some portions are pulverized, but whole windows are visible. Tears spring to my eyes as I imagine how it must have felt to lose so much all at once. Just…gone. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yep, it stood right out there.” He points. “My pride and joy,” he adds unnecessarily.

  In my pocket, my phone dings. It’s my dad, texting: I’m here. Where r u?

  “My dad is here,” I say. “I’m very sorry you lost your house.”

  I rush out, and there’s my dad waiting by his Mini, looking so normal and exactly how I always wanted a dad to be that I rush over and give him a hug. It occurs to me that the reason dads are like him in my mind is because this is my model for Dad. It pierces me that I remembered on one level, but not another.

  He laughs and hugs me back, hard, then plants a kiss on top of my head. “God, Jess, it’s so good that you’re here.”

  I let go and beam up at him. “I wish I was getting to see you more.”

  “Plenty of time. Hop in and I’ll give you a bit of a tour before we eat. What do you feel like? Pizza? Pie? Fish and chips?” He grins as he slams the door. “All of the above?”

  “Very funny. Because nobody ever teases me about my appetite.” I fasten my seat belt, and he pulls into traffic.

  The tour is a sad one. Everywhere there are shattered buildings, windows broken, sidewalks ruptured and growing grass. It makes me think of pictures after a war. All through the downtown, almost nothing’s still whole, and the place has the eerie, deserted feeling of a post-apocalyptic movie.

  “It’s hard to tell you how beautiful this city was,” Dad says. “People came to vacation here, and shop.” He peers through the windshield and shakes his head. “Sad.”

  But then he takes me to a whole shopping area made of shipping containers—blue and yellow and white, very festive. It’s bustling on a Friday night, with open shops and restaurants packed to the rafters. We browse the menus and settle on a meat and potatoes kind of place, sitting at a table by a window overlooking the sidewalk. In the distance, the sun is setting over a mountain range. My dad decides to order a steak, and I ask him to order for me. “I’m not all that sophisticated about food yet,” I confess, thinking about the night Tyler and I went to Nosh and sampled all kinds of amazing things.

  “Let’s see, then, my girl,” he says, frowning over the menu. He has to wear glasses to read, and I like the way they make him look smart. “Let’s go with the fish and chips, yeah?”

  The waitress comes over, and he also orders wine, a glass of his own Long Cloud Sauvignon Blanc and another brand, Cloudy Bay. It makes me smile to recognize the place name, and I think of the day I was there with Kaleb, my first sight of the ocean here.

  “Do you know wines at all yet?” Dad asks.

  “Not really. My friend and I did a tasting one night, but that’s the only time I really did anything serious like that, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t know what we were talking about.”

  “Good, I’m glad to be able to teach you a little bit.”

  While we’re waiting, he asks about the filming and how I’m getting along with Darcy and Kaleb. (Great, I say, willing myself not to blush.)). He talks about the wineries picking themselves up after the earthquakes. Nothing too bad happened to anybody. “It could have been a lot worse, after all.”

  When the wine comes, he shows me how to sniff and swirl, how to take a tiny, tiny sip and breathe over it, and he’s delighted when I can pick out the differences in the two glasses.

  “Is cat pee a real thing you smell?”

  “It is, Jess. That’s really good.” He butters his bread. “Maybe you’d like to learn the wine business, eh?”

  “I would like that.” I take a slice of bread out of the basket myself. “I love plants, and that greenhouse—oh, my God, to work in there every day would be a total dream.”

  “Well, maybe you’re going to be a big famous actress.”

  “I doubt that, Dad.”

  “You never know. You’re sure pretty enough.”

  I smile. “Thanks. That’s sweet.”

  Over our meal, I say, “We stopped in Kaikoura today. I was sort of hoping I’d feel something there, maybe, or remember something.”

  His eyes look suddenly less bright. “Nothing, huh?”

  “No.” I taste another bite of the fish. “Why did she leave, Dad? I can’t seem to put the pieces together—like, I always thought there was something terrible.”

  “Terrible?”

  I lift my shoulders. “Drugs or abuse or betrayal. You know, the usual awful stuff.” I hesitate. “I thought it must have been something bad you did. But now I don’t think so.”

  He takes a sip of wine, not looking at me, and seems to consider. “She disappeared, Jess. One day she was there, and the next she was just gone.” His blue eyes meet mine, and I think about the first time I saw his face on Skype, how happy I was, how I knew him right away. “I won’t lie and tell you we were happy. She hated New Zealand after a while, said it was claustrophobic and boring. She wanted to move to Auckland or Christchurch, but I’d already bought the winery.”

  “Did we live there? I don’t remember it at all.”

  “We were living in Seddon at the time. The house was in no condition for a family then, so we were fixing it up.” He turns his glass in a circle on the wet mark it has made on the table, gaze focused in the past. “Your mum was drinking more than she should, staying out with some pretty shady characters. We had a fight about it, not for the first time, and I threatened to take you to your nan. I went to work, and when I got home that night, you were gone. Both of you.” His eyes are so bright I know he’s fighting tears, and there’s an echo of them in my throat. “That was it. I couldn’t find her. And I never saw you again until you stepped off that plane in Nelson.”

  For a long time I absorb that. He ducks his head, his fingers restless, and I know that he’s struggling to stay composed.

  “And I was seven?”

  “Just turned. We had your birthday the week before, with all the family and birthday cake, and you got a Barbie dollhouse.”

  As if a shutter has been flung open, I suddenly see it, the pink house with furniture and a Barbie with long black hair, and—“And a pony, a pink horse with a white mane.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You remember?”

  I close my eyes, letting the house become solid in my mind, then seeing if I can expand from there. I can see a green lawn, and streamers and balloons and a bunch of people. “It was a big party, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He pauses. “You don’t remember leaving, going back t
o the States?”

  I open my eyes. “No. I don’t remember a single thing about it. I didn’t remember much about being here until recently. I knew the ocean when I went to Cloudy Bay with Kaleb, and there are things about the sky or the trees or whatever that I kind of remember now that I see them.” I think about the dreams I’ve been having, about my mom in a bikini, skinny and mean. “Not much else.”

  His eyes are troubled. “I wish I knew what happened. It had to be traumatic for you. I wonder what she said, what made you—” He frowns. “—blank it all out.”

  A rumble of warning moves in my gut. “I don’t know. But maybe it’s better that way.”

  He nods. “Right. Eat your supper, girl. Let’s talk about happier things.”

  “Kaleb and I were talking this afternoon and he was telling me about his aunties in Kaikoura. Do I have any cousins or aunties or grandparents still?”

  His grin is broad. “You do! A bunch of them. Your nan’s been away in Australia visiting her sister for the past few months, but she’ll be back in a couple of weeks, and she’s dying to see you, girl. I have three sisters and a brother, and they all have children of their own, so, yes, you have cousins.”

  Tears spring to my eyes so fast I can’t stop them, and I look at him with both grief and excitement. “I can’t wait.”

  “Oh, love.” He reaches over and takes my hand.

  The tears are so fast and quick that they’re sliding down my cheeks. I brush them away with my other hand, embarrassed, but unable to stop crying. I whisper, “You just don’t know how lonely I’ve been. Like, always.”

  He stands up and comes around the table, then bends down to hug me, hard, right in the middle of the restaurant. “You are not alone anymore,” he says and I can hear the break in his voice, too. “Not ever again, Jess, you hear me? Never again.”

  * * *

  When he drops me back at the hotel, he reaches into the back seat. “Surprise. Your iPad.”

  I’m so happy, I kiss it. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  “It’s actually not the old one. This is a new one, but I got the settings right for Skype and all that. Should be seamless.”