by Karina Halle
Just barely, though.
It’s New Year’s Eve tonight, which means it’s a whole new year tomorrow. Which means eleven days from now, Josh is leaving. I can’t even comprehend the loss right now, and it’s not because I’m numb. It’s because I’m feeling too much. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know where to place these feelings, how to deal with them. I want there to be a cage where they can stay and not cause anyone any trouble.
But I’m struggling against my instincts. If I did that, locked my feelings away, then I wouldn’t have anything for the here and now. I wouldn’t feel like my soul is constantly in bloom. Every day it keeps getting prettier, feeling better, growing, and part of me is afraid it might never stop. It’s infinite, like the tattoo on my neck, like the pendant on Josh’s necklace.
When that first sun rose over that deserted beach on the East Cape and my fingers captured that moment, that feeling—hazy, grand, messy, warm—I felt like my heart rose as well.
I was shining on the inside.
It’s all because of Josh. All because of this funny, sexy, handsome, generous, adorable man who knows my body better than I do, who sees the real me underneath the ice and isn’t afraid of her. Who believes in who I am and what I can do, more than I can believe it myself.
That morning he showed me what he saw in me, and it was beautiful.
That morning I realized I love him. Deeply, desperately, dangerously.
I am in love with Joshua Miles, and it’s bringing me to life.
It’s killing me.
It’s making me crazy.
I think I love that part, too.
It twists and loops around us, tying us to one another. It steals my thoughts and makes me think of him. It steals my hands and makes me touch his skin. It’s brutal and kind and sharp and soft and warm and cold and freeing and imprisoning. It’s an incognito imposter taking over my world, spreading itself like a disease.
It’s a million and one things, and it’s real to the bone.
It’s in my bones.
It’s love. And I have no idea what it’s going to do next.
I can only hope that I’ll have the strength to keep it in line.
I stand outside, lost in my thoughts until the black fades to blue and the sun spears my eyes. I hear Josh stirring inside the bus.
“Baby,” he calls out, voice hoarse with sleep. I’ve started to love it when he calls me that. He doesn’t say it often, but when he does it is so sincere I can’t help but melt.
“Yeah,” I answer, sliding open the door. He’s sitting up with a mess of hair and my eyes dance over his bare chest, his tattoos, his wide, expansive shoulders. I drink him in, my hands itching to touch him.
I step inside Mr. Orange and climb back into bed with him. Now that he’s awake, I don’t have to be alone with my thoughts. Now I can breathe. Now he can distract me.
I run my finger over his forehead, down the bridge of his nose, stopping at his cushiony lips when he playfully bites me.
“Last morning of the year,” he murmurs around my finger. “What are you doing up so early?”
I grin at him. “Trying to figure out how to make the last morning of the year . . . memorable.”
His expression turns cocksure. He raises his brow and looks me up and down. My breasts are practically falling out of the flimsy camisole. “Sweetheart, just you here like this is already making a memory I’ll fall back on again and again.”
“Calling me sweetheart again, are you?” I tease.
“Only because it makes you wet,” he answers with a knowing smirk.
He’s right of course. But in this case, I love it when he’s right.
I take his hand and guide it down the front of my underwear to prove his point. I don’t mind feeding his ego. He deserves it.
Morning sex is the absolute best. We’re both so sleepy and slow that it’s like lazily discovering a new day. My hands find their way to his rigid cock and stroke it languorously. He sucks on my nipples while his fingers explore me in and out. We tumble into the bed, rolling, reaching, quietly yearning. It’s a slow dance of tangled sheets and warm limbs and easy smiles. He guides himself into me, eyes half-closed, mouth wet and open. We kiss through our stupor. He fills me to the brim and I expand to let him in. Push and pull. Give and take.
In the mornings we take our time, relishing every lick, pinch, stroke, squeeze. When I come it’s through shaky breaths and hushed groans, like it’s a subtle surprise. He’s louder but softer, and there’s a moment where it’s so easy to just fall asleep all over again, with him still inside me, and have another morning when we wake.
But we always have places to go. I tear myself away from him, clean up, and slip into shorts and a singlet, pulling my hair back in a ponytail. Lately I’ve been going makeup free and he seems to love it, always counting the freckles on my nose.
Soon we’re hitting the road, stopping at a takeaway shop for coffees and sammies in the town of Whangarei and piloting toward my grandfather.
“Where are we going again?” Josh asks as he peruses a road map. “I mean, the name of the place.”
I eye it briefly. “It’s probably hard to find on the map. It’s up in the Bay of Islands, a place called Bland Bay.”
He snorts. “Bland Bay? How exciting.”
“It’s not so bland, you’ll see.”
Two hours later we’re coasting down a hill toward a small peninsula. On one side of us is the bay, with its beautiful crescent moon of white sand. On the other side of the narrow neck is the protected Whangaruru Harbour. There’s not much here except for a strip of road, a small store by the campground, and a scattering of holiday homes, all bordering the harbor.
My grandfather’s place, where he lives with Uncle Robbie and Aunt Shelley, is past the narrow isthmus and up a gravel road that takes you across a crop of rolling farmland to his house at the very end. It’s a large, isolated plot of land bordering the edge of the white-sand bay.
I put Mr. Orange in park beside my uncle’s car, an old, shiny Datsun. The house, a white, sprawling one-level, sits behind a row of spiky flax and ornamental wind grass. Two giant pōhutukawa trees, their flowers still a brilliant pinkish red, flank the house on one end.
“This is it,” I say. “End of the line.”
“Boring Bay,” he muses, taking in the wide green field rolling down to the beach.
“Bland Bay,” I correct him and get out of the bus.
The screen door to the house swings open and my uncle Robbie comes out with his pit bull, Barker, at his side. My uncle looks as he always does—red baseball cap, hefty gut, barefoot. I have honestly never seen him in shoes.
“Kia ora, Gem!” he greets me, pulling me into a hearty embrace. He smells like lime and beer and aftershave, his usual combination. Barker sits at my feet and whines for me to pet him.
I do so, scratching the soft spots behind Barker’s floppy ears, and say, “Hey Uncle Robbie. Look what I brought with me; Mr. Orange and Mr. Josh Miles.”
My uncle fixes his twinkling eyes on Josh and goes over to him for a hug. “Kia ora, Josh Miles.”
“Kia ora, Mr. Uncle Robbie,” Josh says amiably as he’s squeezed into a bear hug.
Uncle Robbie pulls back to assess him and then slaps him hard on the back. “Aye, you’re a good mate.” Then he goes to Mr. Orange and for a moment I think he’s going to hug the bus but he just pounds his fist against a front tire. “Still in one piece.”
I exchange a look with Josh. He won’t be able to tell the window was replaced, and I really hope he doesn’t notice the lack of porn because that conversation would be embarrassing.
“Gemma!”
I turn around to see Auntie Shelley coming out of the house, wearing one of her signature long sarongs, her curly black hair blowing in the wind. She’s always had this ageless quality about
her, and her cheeks have this rosy, freshly scrubbed look.
She hugs me and tells me she missed me, even though I just saw her in November to get Mr. Orange. She looks over my shoulder at Josh, who is talking to Uncle Robbie about Mr. Orange.
I quickly introduce them and Auntie Shelley gives him a warm if less boisterous greeting than Uncle Robbie did.
“How are you liking the winterless north?” she asks him.
“Winterless north?” Josh repeats.
“It’s a right lie,” Uncle Robbie says. “In the winter it will piss buckets for weeks on end.”
Auntie Shelley narrows her eyes at his language. She’s always been a bit of a prude, a bit churchy and proper, while her husband is the complete opposite. But somehow it works.
We’re ushered inside and there’s my grandpa sitting down on his recliner, watching the telly. I have a rush of trepidation as we stand in the TV room, wondering if he’ll like Josh. My grandfather is lovely as all out, but he can be a bit hard to please, and for some reason I really want his approval. He’s like the last test Josh has to pass before he’s really welcomed into the Henare family.
And then what? I think to myself. I tell my inner voice to shut up.
“Pops,” I say to him, and he slowly swivels around in his chair to face us. He’s not quite Dr. Evil and he’s not stroking a cat, but he’s got to be an intimidating sight for Josh. For one, he’s not smiling, and he’s a tall, massive man. His long gray hair is pulled off his weathered face into a ponytail and his eyes shine with suspicion. Two, he’s got the Maori tā moko tribal tattoos snaking up his neck and onto the sides of his face, making him look a bit primal.
Then again, Josh has ink everywhere.
“This is Josh,” I tell him, and my grandfather stares at him for a beat that seems to go on and on.
Josh stands his ground. “Mr. Henare.” He gives him a firm nod and then sticks out his hand.
My grandfather eyes his hand, eyes Josh, eyes his tattoos, and then looks at me. I can only smile.
“This your boy?” he asks me in a gruff voice.
Josh looks at me and I can tell he’s on edge; his hand starts to shake a little. I’m not sure how fast the news of Josh and I being “together” spread through the family, but apparently it was fast enough.
So I smile and nod. “Yes, he’s my boy.”
Well, man. Very much a man. But I keep those thoughts to myself. I’m getting a bit flushed.
“And he treats you well?”
“He treats me far better than I deserve, Pops,” I say honestly. If only he knew.
“All right then,” he says and he rises powerfully out of the chair. He may have a bad knee, but his moments are so fluid you can barely tell he’s limping.
He grabs hold of Josh’s hand and pulls him toward him to do the hongi. They are both the exact same height and Josh holds his own as my grandfather presses his nose and forehead against his. They shake. My grandfather smiles. “We’re not always so formal with each other like this but welcome to the whānau.”
Josh smiles back. He’s learned by now that whānau means family.
Pops breaks away and looks at me. “He seems like a good egg,” he says. He appraises Josh. “So how have you been enjoying New Zealand? You showing her her own country and all that?”
“Well, actually,” Josh muses with a cheeky grin, “she’s been showing me.”
“Aye, Gemma’s calling the shots again, is she,” my grandfather says and goes to sit back down. “Pushy little thing.”
“Hey,” I protest, throwing an arm out to Josh. “You try taking him and my cousin around the islands. Talk about indecisive. If it wasn’t for me calling the shots, we would’ve been going around circles in Auckland this whole time.”
Josh laughs. “It’s true. I’m just along for the ride. And I’ve been loving it.” He gives me a knowing look. “And I managed to get her to go dolphin swimming and jump out of an airplane.”
“Skydiving?” Pops says. “You’re crazy, mate.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Josh says.
After we go and get our stuff from Mr. Orange and settle into the tiny twin bed guest room at the end of the house, Uncle Robbie invites Josh to sit outside with him while I’m talked into helping Aunt Shelley and my grandfather with the hāngi preparations.
Our hāngi are held on the beach at Bland Bay, even though traditionally they’re held on a marae. I know a few of the neighbors probably started earlier today. Basically you dig a pit in the sand, start a fire, and then place hot stones on top. The stones heat up for hours and hours, then the food is added. Right now we’re preparing wild boar, lamb, mussels, kumara, potatoes, zucchini, and pumpkin. Then you cover it all with sand (naturally the food has been wrapped in aluminum foil) and the food cooks for a long time. By the time the meal is ready, everyone has been on the beach for a while, having a few laughs and drinking the night away. That’s why Auntie Shelley is preparing snacks; it’s going to be a long night.
“So Gemma,” Pops says while he cuts through the pork with a hefty knife.
“Mmmm?” I muse, pulling the disgusting hairy ends off the mussels. Blah.
“I had a talk with Jolinda the other day,” he says.
My heart starts to speed up a bit. “Oh yeah?”
“She told me you lost your job.”
I exhale sharply through my nose. “Yeah. That sucked.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do?”
I’m silent for a few moments, concentrating on the mussels, though I can feel Pops and Auntie Shelley’s eyes on me. “No,” I eventually say. “I guess try and start from scratch.”
“Personal training and all that?” he asks.
I nod. “Yeah. I guess. I mean, what else can I do? That’s all I know.”
“That’s not all you can do, Gem,” he says. “You can do anything you put your mind to. You’re only twenty-two years old. You’ve been out of high school for, what, four years? That’s nothing. You’re a baby.”
“I am not a baby,” I say, about to give him a look but remembering to rein in my feelings and show my respect at the last minute.
“Aye, I know that. What I’m saying is, you’re young. No one has their stuff together at your age. Believe me, I didn’t know anything at that age. It took years to know what I wanted, and years after that to know who I was. Take it from me, I’ve been around. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” he says pointedly. “I can tell. You’ve always been hard on yourself. Over time, it makes you hard. Get my drift? You’ll be all right, though, if you believe you’ll be all right.”
“Has my whole family banded together to give me pep talks?” I ask, giving the two of them incredulous looks.
“We’re your whānau and we’re worried, that’s all.”
“You never seemed all that worried before.”
He smiles calmly at me. “We’ve always been. Maybe now you’re finally seeing it.” He whacks his knife into the pork. “What was that saying again? When the student is ready the master will appear?”
“Sounds very Karate Kid.”
He laughs. “Gemma, you aren’t old enough to remember that movie. That’s how young you are.”
“Here,” Auntie Shelley says, pushing me gently out of the way to take over the mussel duties. “Go wash your hands and take the food out to Robbie and Josh.”
“Now who’s the pushy one?” I point out but gladly oblige, eager to run away from the serious grandfather talk. I go into the sunshine where Uncle Robbie and Josh are sitting in wooden chairs and staring at the bay and smoking, Barker spread out on the grass.
“Gemma, what’s wrong with you?” Uncle Robbie asks me as I bring over the tray of biscuits and fruit, setting it down on the driftwood table between the chairs.
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“What?”
And then I see that he’s not smoking a cigarette at all but a joint and passing it to Josh, who puffs back like an old pro.
“Josh here tells me this is the first New Zealand grass he’s smoked this whole trip,” he says. “You’ve been driving around our islands in a VW bus, listening to Pink Floyd, and you haven’t even had a spliff? You’re a disgrace to our culture.” But he chuckles. Josh only grins at me happily.
I give Uncle Robbie a look. “Well, I guess he needs to work up an appetite if he’s going to the hāngi tonight.”
“You ain’t wrong, girl,” he says as I sit on the arm of Josh’s chair. Josh wraps his arm around me, blowing smoke in the other direction.
I playfully pull at his hair and he momentarily closes his eyes in pleasure. “Is my uncle being nice?” I ask, shooting Uncle Robbie a wary look.
“Yup,” Josh says. “I’ve been filling him in about the trip.”
“Oye, Gemma,” he says, adjusting his baseball cap, “Josh here tells me that you had to give away all my old Penthouse magazines. Is that true?”
I eye Josh and grimace. “Yes. And I don’t regret it for a moment.”
“All right, all right,” Uncle Robbie says, relaxing back in his chair. “I thought maybe he was spinning a yarn and keeping them for himself.”
This conversation has the ability to get all sorts of weird, so I get up.
“Where you going?” Josh asks.
“You’ll find out later,” I tell him with a smile. I walk to the back door of the house near our bedroom and find his sketchbook. I tear a piece of blank paper out of it, pick up the pastels and some old book about New Zealand trees to use as a hard surface, and go back outside.
I walk to the edge of the lawn and jump down into sand below, then make my way along the beach, fine white sand at my feet. Further down, by the holiday park, there are people gathered, the hāngi pit starting to smoke, the air filling with the smell of burning manuka wood. I go the opposite way, rounding the corner of low, red clay cliffs and find an isolated pocket of beach with stunning views of the neighboring rocks and islands.