by Karina Halle
It’s weird to hear my name like that. It reminds me of my mom. It reminds me that I haven’t talked to her since I left home. I could be a better son, that’s what I believe. A better brother, too. I could be better, full stop.
“I believe,” I say slowly, “that everyone you meet leaves an imprint on you. By the end of your life, that imprint has shaped who you are and what life you’ve lived. So, I guess it’s kind of the same thing.”
“We’re getting awfully deep for a couple of blokes, don’t you think?” he asks with a smile.
“Blokes? You’re really turning into a Kiwi now.”
“So are you, bro. It suits you, makes you sound less like a dumb Canadian.” He places the empty bottle of beer on the table and spins it around. “Look, I figure I’m only a few years older than you and it’s not my place to tell you how to live your life or even prepare for it. But I will say this . . . if you find that person who makes you feel like everything going forward is worth living, hold on to her.”
“Is that what you had?” I ask.
“Yes. It was. And I don’t regret a moment of it, because in the end it was mine and she could never take what I felt away from me. I could turn to anger, and I did, but I had to admit to myself that I loved her because she was worth loving, no matter what happened.”
“And your brother?”
He shrugs. “Brothers are brothers. It’s blood. But it doesn’t mean anything beyond that. Just because I’m bound to him, forged by our parents, doesn’t mean I owe him anything more than a polite smile at family gatherings. My brother is dead to me and I’m sure I’m dead to him, otherwise he never would have slept with her. But that’s the difference that people don’t get about family. They think it’s their right to take them for granted when it’s not. I didn’t choose him, or my parents, and they didn’t choose me. Choice, in the end, is freedom and freedom is everything in life.”
I’m a bit shocked at Tibald’s revelation. From what I knew about him before, he was the fun-loving jokester. But there’s a serious side to him that I didn’t know about. He had been good at hiding it, especially around Schnell and Michael, but around me now, it’s a different story.
I have to wonder about Gemma. What was she hiding from me, Amber, Nick, everyone around her? What she said to me on Key Summit still rang through my ears. That night she was afraid and open and spilling her confessions to me. I took them in like water for a dying man. She was broken and bruised and aching for something she didn’t know.
I had my theories. Selfishly, egotistically, I hoped I could be the one to cure her ache, to make her feel fulfilled. But maybe it would take more than that; maybe she was harboring lost dreams. I saw it a lot, when I used to work at the restaurant. I would take my breaks and eat my hot fudge brownies out on the dining floor and watch the people around me. There were so many of them, young and old, alone and sad, eating to fill the void, being out in the open just to get the comfort of a polite server. It broke my heart, time and time again, to see these lost and lonely people. They seemed to have no one, and if they had someone, they seemed to have nothing to keep their days going. No passion, no dreams. Just a life in the wake of what could have been, discarded attempts at trying to live better.
I was no better. I had no one either, no life, no motives. But I had passion, even if it had to be excavated from me. I had a passion for the arts and the moments that made me love life. The buried passion was what got me going from day to day until my sister fucked off to Spain to live with some man she barely knew.
And that’s when I knew I was missing out. I wasn’t living at all. I was barely any better than the lost souls I saw at work, hiding their sorrows with beer and greasy burgers. So I applied to school, hoping to at least get that ball rolling, and then I met Gemma that fateful, drunken, horny night, and everything seemed to click, click, click into place, like a key turning a lock.
Now I’m here, transient, unsure of where the door leads and where I’m going next.
“Sorry to bum you out,” Tibald says. “I think I like smiling, stupid Josh a lot better.”
I glare at him. “You should like all of Josh.”
He shrugs, grinning. “I’ll leave that to Gemma.”
“Right,” I say despondently.
“You got to her once before,” he points out. “You can do it again.”
“By being a forward, cocky, horny-as-hell animal?”
“Whatever works.”
I clink my pint of beer against his and say, “Then here’s to whatever works.”
We drink ours down, fast, and order another.
The amount of beer I’ve consumed in New Zealand has been pretty ridiculous. People always say that Canadians are the beer drinkers of the world—as in we drink a lot of it and all the time—but I think the Kiwis have us in a headlock over that one.
The next morning I wake up in a six-bunk dorm that seems to stretch on forever. There’s someone snoring in the bunk beneath mine and across the room, Gemma and Amber are just getting out of theirs. Gemma opted for a cheap hostel in Christchurch since we’ll be spending a few days at a nice one on the Banks Peninsula.
You get what you pay for. This place has weird stains on the carpet, bathroom doors that don’t lock properly and they charge you five dollars to use the Internet for ten minutes. And if I hadn’t come home drunk last night after being with Tibald and passed out right away, I would have been up all night listening to the backpacker bus group whoop it up in the shoddy communal lounge.
Needless to say, we’re all dressed and packed in record time and piling into Mr. Orange, with Amber worried she’s caught some contagious disease from the bed. Our trip to the Banks Peninsula is supposed to be a short one but I volunteer to drive anyway.
Gemma declines, telling me it’s not an easy drive, and thanks to the remnants of a hangover, I’m okay with that.
She wasn’t kidding. The peninsula used to be a volcano, and now it’s this massive, tall lump of land jutting out into the ocean, like a round thumb. The mountains in the middle are high, with rolling brown and green hills dotted with sheep and pockets of forest. The road winds back and forth, switchback after switchback, past deep valleys along the edge of the original crater. Occasionally you can see fingers of rich, jeweled blue as different harbors reach inland.
Mr. Orange growls and purrs like an angry cat as it motors up the hills and around the bends, but somehow we make it all the way to a place called Le Bons Bay and a backpacker’s hostel sitting at the crest of a long, wide valley.
After last night, I am more than happy to just spend the night in the bus, but I change my mind as Gemma leads us to the big red farmhouse and we’re introduced to the owners. They ask if we’d like to have dinner with them and the rest of the backpackers. I get this feeling that we’re at some weird communal hippie resort but then Gemma explains that this is what they’re known for. The wife is a cook and they do fabulous homemade meals. There’s just enough lamb for us to join them tonight, and tomorrow they’re doing fresh pasta.
We can’t say no to that—besides, we only have a little bit of food to last us for the next few days and it’s a long drive to the French-settled town of Akaroa to get groceries. They also ask if we’d be interested in a wildlife-viewing boat trip tomorrow, weather permitting. They have a small boat they can take about six guests on.
Amber shakes her head no, looking a little green at the thought. “I’m good.”
But the cost is reasonable and I don’t want to miss out. I look at Gemma. “Dare you to come with me.”
She gives me a look. “Oh, really.”
“We could see dolphins, your favorite.”
That’s when the owner, Hamish, speaks up, his eyes volleying between us. “Actually, we probably will see dolphins. Hector’s dolphins, the smallest and most rare species in New Zealand.”
“Oh, well, Gemma
here says she’s seen them all. She’s a bit of a dolphin hipster.”
She rolls her eyes. “Fine, I’ll go.”
“All right,” Hamish says. “So far you guys are the only ones signed up.” He smiles, as if he knew that would make us feel uncomfortable.
Little does he know, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all. I can’t wait to be alone with her. It’s she who looks a bit out of sorts at the thought, but at this point that doesn’t surprise me.
Instead of staying in the red farmhouse with the other backpackers, Gemma has secured us a cabin at the edge of their property. It’s rustic, just a wood fireplace, a small table and chairs, a full bed downstairs, and a full mattress in the loft above, accessible only by ladder. But it has a wide porch out front with sweeping views of the valley and the bay in the distance.
I take the bed in the loft because Amber said it looked “creepy” and we crack open a bottle of wine on the porch, sipping out of mugs, staring at the sun-drenched hills and killing time before dinner is served.
I can’t help but grin. “This ain’t a bad life, is it, girls?”
“Hell no,” says Amber, raising her mug to the view. “I could stay here forever. Literally, just keep feeding me wine and I’ll keep sitting here.”
Gemma doesn’t say anything but she briefly catches my eye and offers me a small smile. It’s not a lot, but it’s something.
Naturally I want more. I’m grateful that Amber bowed out of the boat trip. I need to be alone with Gemma again.
I sigh inwardly and stare out at the endless view. It’s so strange to think that we’re here, one person from San Jose, one from Vancouver, one from Auckland, and we’re together, sitting in a valley at the edge of the world. There’s something about being on New Zealand’s east coast that I find a bit unnerving. It isn’t until after we’re done with the fabulous lamb meal in the farmhouse that I identify the cause.
With working flashlights this time, we make our way back to the cabin in the pitch dark and sit back down on the porch to finish off the rest of the wine.
Far off in the distance I see lights scattered near where the horizon line should be. They glow brightly in the black, artificial against the stars above.
“What are those?” I ask no one in particular. The crickets are so loud and intrusive here that I keep my voice to a hush, afraid to interrupt them.
“I think they’re prawn- or crab-fishing boats,” Gemma answers, her tone matching mine.
I stare at them for a few moments. It’s hard not to. They’re so far away and yet the brightest spots in all the dark. It’s frightening. The desolation feels real.
“What’s out there?” I ask.
Gemma pauses, seeming to think. “Antarctica.”
I shudder. “That’s it? Beyond those boats is Antarctica?”
“Maybe the Chatham Islands or something in between. I don’t know. But they’re small.”
I swallow uneasily, feeling like I’m about to slip off the edge of the world. “God, this is a lonely place.”
I can feel their eyes as their heads swivel in the dark toward me.
“What do you mean?” Gemma asks.
“Can’t you feel it?” I ask, knowing I can’t be the only one. “There’s nothing out there, nothing at all. Even at home, if I make it to Vancouver Island and stare across the Pacific, I know Japan and Asia and Russia are out there. Civilization. Here . . . it’s just waves of nothing and then a giant, uninhabited continent of ice. It makes you feel . . . alone. Like the earth could swallow you whole right here and no one would notice.”
We lapse into silence for a moment.
“It is kind of creepy,” Amber concedes.
“I like it,” Gemma says simply.
But how could she? I wonder about the whole country, these slivers of islands balancing at the edge of nothing, and if everyone thinks they’re this close to being lost.
It doesn’t help that I’m sleeping on the loft that night.
I have dream upon dream about falling.
I am falling.
Chapter Fifteen
GEMMA
I’m still not used to waking up in a different place each day. As soon as I open my eyes, it takes me a moment for my world to realign. Then, as I remember where I am and shrug off the blissful abyss of sleep, I have to wrestle with my crap reality.
Before all the shit went down with Nick, I was battling my growing feelings for Josh. Now, I’m still doing that and trying to figure out what I’m going to do with my life. It’s hard to adopt the same attitude as Josh and Amber. They weren’t just dealt a crap hand. They’re on vacation. I’m trying to put one foot in front of the other and I’m stumbling with each step I take.
I want to reach out to Josh so badly. I want to lean into him, feel his arms around me, hear those words he once whispered, that he understands, that he gets me. But I’m too much in my head, too far down the spiral, and I know that when our time is up together, he will be gone and I’ll still be trying to deal.
Time is flying, swooping past me, and I have no idea where I’m going to end up in the end.
Amber turns over under the covers, her butt bumping into my hip. I sigh and stare up at the ceiling, at where Josh should be sleeping on the loft above my head. I think about getting out of bed, quietly, and climbing the ladder to him.
What would he say? Would he kick me out of his bed or welcome me with open arms? Would he be wishing I was Amber, or someone else, someone who smiled more than smirked, who took in the world eagerly, like he did?
Would he take away the pain, the dull ache in my chest? For that night on Key Summit, he at least took the emptiness in his hands and held it. He shouldered it. Sometimes I think he keeps wanting to shoulder it.
But my thoughts can’t be trusted. My mind keeps thinking about him and Amber and how he could so easily put her aside. I know that Amber was really starting to like him. However he might’ve felt about her then, Josh is indifferent now.
How do I know that he won’t be that way with me? When I get back to Auckland, I have to find a job and I have no idea where I’m going to start, considering the one steady job I had for the few years is gone and my best reference is gone with it. Josh won’t be there to shoulder anything for me—why should I ask him to start now?
I sigh more loudly than I meant to, and I hear the wooden boards of the loft creak. Josh stirs and I see his long, lean legs coming down the ladder. I watch—unwatched myself—as his boxer briefs come into view, a hint of morning wood snug inside. Then his washboard abs and his tattoos. I want to ask him about them and wonder if we’ll ever have the time. Next is his firm chest, the black ink snaking over him. Then his arms, wide shoulders, kissable neck.
Then it’s his face, and I mean to look away before I see it, but I’m too slow, caught up in morning haze, and I’m staring into his eyes. He smiles with them, cocky but warm. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him look at me so fondly.
It unnerves me. A ghost of a smile traces my lips and I look away.
“Good morning,” I say softly, not wanting to wake Amber. Josh and I are the only ones going somewhere today; she deserves to sleep in.
“Morning,” he says. “Want to take a shower with me?”
I raise my brows to the heavens.
He grins. “I mean, come with me to the showers. We don’t have to shower together. Unless you’d like to.”
I give him the look, the one that says I’m so not impressed, even though I secretly am.
“Suit yourself,” he says and grabs a towel and clothes out of his backpack. It reminds me that I should do laundry tonight.
Then he’s gone and I realize that I’ve turned into a mute statue around him. No wonder he’s often approaching me like I’m a wild animal about to flee.
It’s a gorgeous, sunny morning with the valley lighten
ing from dark green to light green, bit by bit by bit. I stand on the porch, watching it all unfold, and once again I feel that strange pinch of envy about being unable to re-create this in the way I want to, and the fact that Josh can.
I close my eyes to it and wait a few minutes, then head out on the path after the showers. There are two in a little building between the cottages and the main house, and he’s waiting outside of them, talking to some girl with long willowy legs and no hips. She’s got flawless white skin—no cellulite on this chick—and blond hair braided down her back. She’s making him laugh and I’m struck, like a slap in the face, by how ridiculously handsome he is.
That envy strikes again. Not that I can’t make him laugh, because I can and I have and nothing sounded better to my ears than hearing his rich laughter and seeing that smart-ass twinkle in his eyes, but that this girl could probably sleep with him and not understand how fucking lucky she is, while I’m too fucked up to even let it happen again.
He doesn’t even notice as I walk past him, and I’m hoping there’s a shower free inside the farmhouse. There isn’t so I turn around, ready to go back. I wait though, paused in the doorway of the house, watching the showers on the ridge. One opens up and it’s the one that the blond chick is waiting at.
To my horror and surprise, she gestures to it and to Josh. And not in the, Hey you take it instead of me, but in the, Let’s shower together and “conserve water” kind of way. I hold my breath, watching what he’s going to do. She’s fucking hot, way hotter than me, and thin in that celebrity kind of way that I could never be. I’m either curvy with muscles or I’m a blimp.
He smiles at her and I’m sure that beautiful grin of his is saying, Yeah, why not, and my mind is flooded with the image of them naked in there together, her on her knees, putting his big cock in her mouth. It both turns me on and disgusts me and makes me feel afraid that I was nothing more than that to him.
But he waves at her dismissively, like, Thanks but no thanks. She seems taken aback and then starts pouting but he only laughs and wiggles his fingers at her. Bye-bye.