by Lark O'Neal
I recoil, feeling as if I’ve been slapped. “I haven’t been with him. Only you.”
“Sorry.” He takes a breath, his jaw going hard. “I don’t want to be an asshole, Jess, you know, and this thing is knocking me off center.” He rests his hands on his hips. “I’ve worked pretty hard to find equilibrium, to become the man my father wanted me to be. This thing with you is knocking me off balance.”
“You’re my best friend, Kaleb.” Tears spring to my eyes. “I don’t want to lose that.”
He bows his head, and for a long moment, he doesn’t speak. When he does, his voice is rough. “Maybe that’s all it’s supposed to be—friends.”
“Kaleb!”
“Just give me some time, all right? I need to think.”
There’s a tearing sensation right down the middle of my chest, throat to belly, as if he’s ripped me open. “What does that mean?”
But he holds up his hand and shakes his head and I think he’s too emotional to speak. He leaves me standing alone in the greenhouse, the heat of the day weighing on me like a wet towel. For one second, I’m too stunned to do anything.
Then I run after him. “How dare you!” I cry.
He turns. “What?”
“Now you’re going to lay down the law, like every other guy I ever met?” My heart is racing, fury making my breath come too fast. “Tell me what I should do, what I should feel?”
“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m telling you what I’m doing.”
He spins on his heel and grabs his scooter, yanking his helmet on without looking at me. I whirl away, turning my back so I won’t have to watch him roar away. I hear his scooter start up, and the sound of it peeling away.
I’m furious with him. What gives him any right to —?
Ugh. No. It’s been coming. I just didn’t want to deal with it.
I do the only thing that comes to me—wash my hands and pull on some gloves and start working with my own slips, experiments in grafting that seemed like fun to me, a little mini-competition with Kaleb, one that will actually take a very long time to play out.
All the while, tears are dripping down my face. Tears of fury and tears of loss and tears of confusion. I know girls are supposed to tough it out and all that, but when I feel things, I cry. I’ve been looking forward to his return, to telling him about the email from Mercedes and my worry over cutting my hair and sharing the excitement of getting cast in the movie together.
It’s such a big deal!
Surely this will blow over? Surely he won’t stay mad at me?
But Katie’s warning comes back to me—he’s tenacious but also unforgiving when he’s crossed.
Have I crossed a line?
The knife slips and slices right through the glove and into my index finger. Crap! I yank the glove off and suck on the wound, tasting my salty blood, and, suddenly, I’m furious. How dare he act like this when we’ve been waiting for Christmas for months? It’s like the day in Queenstown when he was impossible to please and hard to get along with, all surly and aloof and irritable.
He got over it.
I hope he’ll get over it this time. We have a lot of work to do if nothing else.
KALEB
I head for the water, for the beach, the only place I can ever really think. Is she right? Am I being macho, telling her what to do?
At the beach, I park the bike under a scrubby tree, twisted by the winds into a swirling sculpture, hang my helmet on the back, and take off my shoes to walk along the waves. It’s a hot day but this is not a beach that’s good for much, and there’s only a knot of teenagers hanging out, smoking weed by the skunky smell on the wind.
Just the freshness of the air clears my head, and I walk as far as I can to blow out all the darkness that’s been poisoning me, my thoughts, since she texted me that Tyler was here.
It’s been coming, this moment. She was in love with him before we met, but something true and real was born between us on the set of the advert. In the water, with the dolphins, when she came to me with nightmares and we slept side by side in a small bed, doing nothing, breathing together. We knitted ourselves together in the cabin at Milford Sound. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before, bright and hot and real. Deep. I know she felt it, too.
Tyler. White boy. Rich boy. College boy. Everything I’m not.
My hands ball into fists and I stop on the edge of the water, forcing myself to breathe deeply, take in the smell of fish and salt and sky. To remember who I am. I am not Jess’s lover or Tyler’s rival. I am Kaleb Te Anga, son of Jacob, grandson of Eli.
Once, I lost myself in a girl. She made me forget who I was, what I wanted. To please her, I did things that shame me now. To win her, I let bloom the darkest, meanest parts of me, and when the earthquake ended it, when she was lost to me anyway, I was left to face the guy my father would have been ashamed of.
Last night, hearing Tyler’s name on her lips, the ugly part of me, the punishing, mean, hard part of me, arrived without warning. Instead of taking her in love, I took her in anger, as a way to punish her, and trump my rival.
I’m not going to be that man. And until Jess finishes with Tyler, the danger lurks. Until she is finished with him, until she decides, I can’t risk all that I’ve worked to build on something as ethereal as love.
JESS
It’s a couple of hours before he returns. I fling myself into making cookies, playing music loudly on my dad’s stereo, and forcing myself not to brood. I hear the sound of a vehicle—not the Mini, but a little truck, and a guy gets out bearing a thick package wrapped in brown paper. Kaleb rides in behind him, arms bare, shirt blowing against his body, and parks, looking on impassively as I sign for it.
“It’s from Ted,” I tell him, carrying it inside.
He pulls off his helmet and shoves a hand through his curls. “Probably the scripts and contracts.”
“You can do the honors,” I say, setting it on the table. I have to move around Kaleb, careful not to brush him, so I can check the cookies in the oven. They’ve filled the air with the scent of chocolate and sugar, and Christmas carols are pouring out of the radio. Wrapping my hands in the hot pad, I bend and take out the tray of fresh hot cookies, the chips all melty, and show it to him with a smile. “Want one?”
He glances over them. “Maybe in a minute.” He rips the package open and his prediction is right. The scripts are bound, with a red cover, and the contracts are thick, stapled at the top.
I scoop the cookies off the sheet to cool on a wire rack and put the hot pan down in the sink. “Let me see! I’m so excited!” Torches, it says on the cover. My hands are shaking a little as I open it, and squeak when I see the cast list on the first page. “Look! We’re there!”
He picks his up and can’t resist giving me an excited look, eyebrows raised. “Holy shit, right?”
“It’s amazing.” I flip through the pages, stopping here and there, reading a line of dialogue, a descriptor. My stomach is filled with butterflies. There is a first kiss. There is the dance. There is the love scene. I pause, my throat going dry. Jules is nude, waiting for Rome on a bed covered with a red velvet spread. He, too, is nude, and he admires her for a moment before he slides in beside her.
Jules: Wait! I want to look at you.
Rome, falling backward to give her full view of his body. She touches him by the light of a candle, very slowly tracing his shoulders and kissing his neck—
I flush. “How many people are going to be looking at us, do you think?”
“Millions.”
“I mean when we do the scene.”
“I looked it up. There are some pretty strict restrictions—like only camera and director. Closed set.”
I take a breath. “That helps.” I swallow. “It’s still going to be weird to do a naked love scene.”
“Yeah.” He tosses the script on the table. “But we agreed we’d do it.”
For a minute, he meets my eyes and I think about that night we were in Au
ckland, giddy on the audition, and drank too much ale with dinner. We headed back to the hotel and somehow ended up in my room, naked and practicing the love scene, slowly.
I look away, my face flushing.
“Guess I’ll go up and wrap the rest of this stuff,” he says, picking up a bag. “They’ll be back soon.”
Watching him go, I think, how are we going to get through all this?
Chapter SEVEN
Luckily, when Darcy arrives with my dad and Katie, she fills the house with her exuberance. She comes in through the front door with bags in both hands, her hair pulled into a knot on top of her head. She’s been in the sun, and her dress shows off her curves without being too tight or too short. “Hey, cuz!”
“Darcy!” I cry. “You look amazing!”
She drops the bags and spins around. “That’s what happens if you can live in the city and be with your people.” She halts, dropping her hands on her hips. “You, however, big movie star chick, look like a farm girl.”
I laugh, tossing my braid over my shoulder. It’s true. I’m wearing faded old jean shorts and an apron over my tank, my feet bare in the summer heat.
At the end of the filming in Queenstown, we’d had a falling out over Kaleb and I getting together. The chill followed us all the way to her going to Christchurch. I wasn’t sure how it would go with her today, but she gives me a big hug. “I’m so glad to see you.”
I have to bend to hug her. “Me, too.”
“Where’s my bro?”
“Right here,” he says, coming down the stairs. “What’d you bring me from the big city?”
My dad and Katie are moving toward the kitchen and my dad gestures, so I leave them alone, pouring through the bags. My phone buzzes with a text and I pull it out of my back pocket. It’s from Tyler.
Time to Skype?
A rock hits my gut, the same tangle of emotions that have been plaguing me since I fell into this crazy triangle. I glance over my shoulder, but no one is paying me any attention. And why should I feel guilty, anyway? I’ve been trying to be upfront with them both and it’s Kaleb who’s losing it now. I text: Give me three mins.
Kaleb and Darcy are still looking in her bags and I have to push by them to go upstairs. Darcy says, “Wait, where are you going?”
I look at Kaleb over her shoulder. “Upstairs for a little while.”
He shakes his head ever so slightly, his mouth making that disappointed expression. “Skype?”
I meet his eyes, lift my chin. “Yep.”
Darcy looks from me to her brother. “Trouble in paradise, kids?”
“None of your business, sis.” He grabs one of the bags. “Come on, let’s get these under the tree.”
By the time I get to my room and fire up my iPad, my heart feels like it weighs a hundred thousand pounds. My sheets are still messed up from last night and I can smell Kaleb in them—his hair, his skin—and without realizing I’m going to do it, I bend down and breathe in the smell of us having sex. Tears well up in my eyes and I want to have a big fat breakdown.
Is he serious about this? What would happen, I wonder, if I went to his room in the middle of the night, like he came to me last night? What then? Would he give in, or resist?
I think of his self-control the night I went to him after I had that terrible nightmare in Christchurch and I know he will do whatever he thinks is right. He will not just “fall to temptation.” That’s not his way. He might want to. He might be hard as a rock and dripping with hunger, but he’d resist if he thought it was the right thing to do.
Finish it with Tyler, Kaleb said. Can I just let him go, choose Kaleb, be finished with this exhausting triangle?
Closing my eyes, I feel tears sliding down my face. Imagining Tyler’s face as I tell him makes my heart hurt, too. I think of us sitting in the pub and drawing each other’s faces and of that shattered expression in his eyes that can make me think of the lost five-year-old he was. He has so much on the line.
And it’s Christmas!
My Skype rings and I wipe my face with the heel of my hand, trying to pull it together before I answer. “Hey, Tyler,” I say, smiling.
“Hey, honey,” he says, and inclines his head. He’s wearing a slouchy stocking cap on his head, his straight shiny hair sticking out beneath it. “What’s going on?”
Tears start pouring down my face, and I shake my head. “I don’t know. I think this whole triangle thing is getting to be too much for me.” I look at him. “I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“Hey, hey, hey.” His voice is soothing, deep, quiet. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Downstairs, a burst of laughter breaks out and I look over my shoulder. “I can’t, really,” I say, but the tears are still streaming out of my eyes—I can’t stop them. I hate that I cry, but it’s my outlet and I can’t stop it. “It’s all complicated. Kaleb is home and he’s mad at me and—” I shrug. “I don’t know.”
He looks at me for a long minute. It’s dark where he is. A television is flickering in the background and I can see some lights twinkling on a tree. “I read the book, Jess. Torches. It’s really good.”
Tears are still coming, but this lightens the sense of despair in my heart. “Did you cry?”
He gives me a wry twist of his mouth. “I refuse to answer that question, but it is possible my pillow was soaked because I was reading in bed.”
“So sad, right?”
“Yeah. It’s not perfect, you know, and I’m sort of not into all that over the top drama, but the whole time I was reading it, I was thinking of you in that role.” He pauses. “You are going to be so good, Jess. I can’t wait to see you on the big screen.”
“Thanks. We got the scripts today. It was such a thrill to see my name on the cast page.” I wipe my eyes with a corner of my pillowcase, something in me easing. “Also, guess what? I got an email from the author. Like she wanted me, in particular, for the part. Isn’t that cool?”
“It is. Did you write her back?”
I laugh. “Yeah. I probably babbled like a crazy fan girl, but I did and we’re going to get together in Aspen. We’re the same age, right? That’s insane.”
“Maybe you’ll be friends, like Taylor Swift and Lorde.”
“Maybe.” I realize that the heat in my lungs is subsiding. “How are you, Tyler? When are the next round of trials?”
“Couple of weeks. I’m in Snowmass this weekend, training. Pretty crazy with all the tourists, but I can’t lose the time.”
“You’re not going to see your family for Christmas?”
“No.” His smile is sad. “That’s not usually the best thing for me, you know.”
I think of his sister, the stories of cruelty he’s told about the family dynamics. “I guess that’s true. Did you get my present?”
“Yes.” He reaches out of view of the camera and holds up a wrapped package. “I will open it first thing. Did you get mine?”
I, too, reach out of the camera’s view and hold up the box. “Ditto.”
His eyes are serious as he leans in. “I made things hard for you by coming there, didn’t I?”
The heaviness of the situation rolls back over me. “It’s not you. It’s not Kaleb, either. He said I’m using you both like my puppets and that’s not fair.”
He raises his arms, letting his hands dangle and makes his head go limp. “Make me dance, I don’t care.”
It makes me laugh. But then I sigh and meet his eyes. “I really do think it’s getting too hard. I thought it would be okay, but—” I shake my head. “Kaleb broke up with me, or whatever.”
He waits, poised.
I take a breath, wipe away a tear leaking out of my eye and say, “And I guess maybe I’m breaking up with you, Tyler. None of this is fair.”
“No,” he says calmly. “Not today.”
I scowl at him. “What do you mean?”
“You’re upset. I knocked you off balance by coming there, and you have this big film role coming up and you’re wo
rried about making things right with Kaleb. I get it.”
Is that what I’m feeling? Maybe. Or is he putting words in my mouth, my head? “Tyler—”
“Don’t make any decisions right now. No pressure from me, I promise. I’d like to come see you when you’re in Aspen, but I won’t even hold your hand.”
I start to shake my head, thinking that putting off the decision will just make everything crazier. “I don’t think so, Tyler. I have to focus on work. Not romance. Not men. Not sex.”
“That’s fine. No sex, no romance. We can just be friends for now.”
I take a breath. “I don’t know.” Again the laughter breaks out downstairs and I want to be part of it. “My family is celebrating without me. I need to go.”
“No worries. Let me show you one thing before you go, okay?”
“Sure.”
He holds up a brochure, glossy paper, with a painting of me on the front of it. He opens it, accordion-like, and I see the painting of Lena, the one of Kaleb, and the strange, wild evocative paintings that are so much better than he’d been doing just six months ago. “I got this in the mail. The show in Soho.”
“Tyler!” I clap my hands. “That’s fantastic. I’m so proud of you.”
He lowers the brochure and looks at it, and I can see the quietness in his face. Something in him is healing over these paintings, something that’s been broken a long time. “Thanks. I’m kind of proud me, too.”
“Send me the details in email.”
“Yeah. Go, be with your family.”
“Thanks.” I reach for the off icon.
“Jess.”
I pause, looking into his aquamarine eyes. He really is calmer, more real. He’s growing into the man he’s always wanted to be.
“Nothing hasty, okay?”
I hesitate. “Tyler, I just—”
He shakes his head. “Not today.”
I nod.
“And you’re going to be amazing in the film. Enjoy the anticipation.
“I will. Thank you.”
* * *