by Karina Halle
I think about what my grandfather has said.
I think about what my mother has said.
I think about what Josh has said.
And I start to paint.
New Year’s Eve has always been a big deal in my family. In fact, I think it’s a big deal to every Kiwi, and not in the same way it is elsewhere in the world. Our New Year is about being with family and enjoying the summer. It’s a weeklong event where people holiday at family baches and barbecue a lot of food, not just a one-night stand, as it seems to be elsewhere in the world.
At that, I look over at my one-night stand. He’s sitting on a log with Auntie Shelley and one of our neighbors, Jono, the lanky fellow who runs the campground and likes to take tourists out for bushwalks. Josh is laughing hard at something Jono has said, and Aunt Shelley leans over to smack Jono on the shoulder.
It’s dark, the stars are out, and the fire flickers and flames. We ate the hāngi a couple of hours ago, and as usual, it was delicious. It’s not just the fact that we used high-quality meats and vegetables but the fact that it’s such a process, such an event shared by many people, that makes it taste so good.
Josh seemed to love it. He ate everything he could before going back to drinking with my grandfather. It’s almost midnight now, but if it’s like any other year, we probably won’t notice it’s the new year until after the fact. No one here counts down. We just enjoy being with each other and slide into the next year that way.
Josh catches me staring at him. I was supposed to grab a beer from one of the chilly bins and come right back but I’ve been taking my time. I want to slow down. Time is going way too fast.
He excuses himself from between Auntie Shelley and Jono and strides over to me.
“Hey handsome,” I say and can’t stop myself from grinning. Even in the firelight, he steals my breath.
“Hi beautiful,” he replies, grabbing my hand and a beer. “Care to join me on a walk? I heard you like long romantic walks on the beach.”
He waggles his eyebrows in an overexaggerated manner and grabs my hand.
We walk away from the robust crowd until the firelight begins to dim and their voices fade. Occasionally you can still hear Uncle Robbie laugh. We go along the edge of the water, the waves gently lapping. Stars reflect on the bay. We don’t talk but we don’t need to.
I feel him in every part of me. I feel like we’re saying enough with each breath we take in, with the way we squeeze each other’s hand. We walk past our house and to the little cove I was at earlier in the day, when I sat down and made a pastel painting of the bay. It still hums with my creative energy, like it was waiting for me to return.
Someone in the far, unseen distance yells “Happy New Year!” and the sky behind us lights up with a few cheap fireworks.
“Happy New Year,” he says, pulling me toward him and planting a long, lingering kiss on my lips. It’s hot. The sand on our bare feet is cool. The sky is alive with light. The horizon is black.
I murmur it back to him, lost in his kiss, in the heat of his embrace.
“I was thinking,” he says when he finally pulls away. From the way he cups my face and the earnestness of his words, my pulse kicks up a notch.
“Yes?” I ask with shaky breath.
“Maybe . . .” he trails off and looks away.
“What?” I ask, even though I think I’m afraid to hear the answer.
“I don’t want to leave.”
I exhale and smile. “I don’t want you to leave either.”
“So what if I don’t?”
My smile falters. “I don’t understand.”
“What if I don’t go. What if I stay here.”
I nearly laugh. “Josh, you can’t. You have school.”
He pulls away briefly, and in the light of the moon I see him run his hand through his hair. “I know I do. I know. I just . . . Gemma. I can’t leave you. If I can think of a way to stay, to make this work, I will.”
I feel like there’s a brick lodged in my throat. He can’t stay here for me. I’m not worth it. He must know that, he must know the kind of person I am.
“Why would you do that?” I ask. “Why . . . I give you nothing. I’m just this girl . . . you deserve someone else, someone . . . better. Anyone.”
“Gemma.”
I manage to swallow. “What?”
“I’m in love with you.”
Those words. Those words still my heart. They reach into my chest and make a fist. I can’t breathe. I feel too much that it numbs me. The sharp stab of happiness sinks into me like a blade, but it’s the blood, the aftermath, that makes me so incredibly scared.
“Did you hear me?” he asks quietly. He comes over and slips a hand to the base of my neck, holding me gently. I can see the moon reflected in his eyes as he peers down at me, trying to see the parts I’m trying to hide. “I love you.” His voice is gruff and so heartfelt that it’s almost like he’s putting his heart in my hands. “I love you.”
It hangs between us, heavy and weighted, like a hook.
I don’t know what to do, how to handle it, absorb it.
I only know how to deflect.
I grab him and kiss him hard. Before he has a chance to react, I’m pulling his shirt over his head and tumbling into the soft sand with him. My shirt is nearly ripped off, the skirt I wore for the occasion is yanked down along with my underwear.
We’re both naked in no time and I’m under him and he’s in me and all I can think about is that this is what it’s like to be devoured. To be consumed. To be loved. It all feels like the same thing.
There could be nothing left of me when he’s through.
When we’ve both come, sated and breathing hard, we lie on the silky sand and watch the blackened waves roll in, their crests lit by moonlight.
It’s a lonely sight, all that black on the horizon, all that nothing.
He loves me.
He loves me.
How?
“How can you love me?” I’m surprised that’s what comes out of my mouth but it’s the truth and it’s out there, floating in the dark.
He’s surprised, too. He balks at the question, his head jerking back.
After a long moment, the silence filled by the lapping water on the shore, he asks, “Do you want the truth?” Of course I want the truth. Of course I need to hear it. But I steel myself against it all the same. “It’s not easy to love you, Gemma,” he says, his fingers sliding up through my hair, gently, affectionately, in contrast to his words. “You are not an easy person to love because you don’t seem to have any use for it. You don’t want it. But the more you push, the more I pull. I fell in love with you because it was like staring at the frozen sea. I only saw the surface but I knew there was more underneath, miles of depth that no one has had a chance to discover.”
“I thought it was because I’m a good lay,” I say, attempting to make a joke.
His eyes harden. “It’s a lot more than that. I fell in love with you because you made me crazy, and you were like this unattainable world that I’d never be able to get my hands on. And then I did get my hands on you. And you got your hands on me. And I saw into your depths and found what I was looking for.”
“What?”
“You,” he says, pushing the hair back from my face. “A funny, sweet, vulnerable little girl who hides from the world under a big sheet of ice. That’s who I found. That’s who I want. That’s who I have. The artist, the poet, the dreamer, the risk-taker. The lover.”
I feel like my lungs are being deprived of oxygen and my heart has too much blood to pump. I’m gaining and losing. I’m torn. I’m loved.
He plants a soft kiss on my forehead. “I know everything I’ve just said is scary. In fact, I think I’ve freaked myself out a bit. But it’s true. And you don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to say an
ything. Just let me love you. That’s all.”
That’s all, he says. But that’s everything. How is it that being loved is even scarier than being in love?
I swallow hard and close my eyes as he wraps his arms around me. He’s so good to me, too good to me. I don’t belong with this man, not me with my heart of ice and he with his soul of fire.
The breeze off the bay is coming in colder now and I’m suddenly aware that we’re both naked in the sand and not too far away from the house. I’d hate for Uncle Robbie to make a discovery with his flashlight.
“We should go,” I tell Josh as I pull away.
He can’t hide the disappointment in his voice. “All right.”
Even though it’s for the best, my heart sinks a bit and I feel bad that I can’t say anything that he wants to hear. I lean over, grab his face and kiss him.
“Happy New Year,” I whisper to him.
“Happy New Year,” he whispers back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
JOSH
I have the mother of all hangovers. It’s the kind that keeps you stuck to your bed, to the beach, to the grass, to whatever place you happen to wake up in, and you can’t move because you know if you do, all the painful parts that make up your brain will become dislodged, bouncing around like razor-blade pinballs, and you’ll soon wish for a swift and painless death.
I blink, staring at the ceiling. Gemma and I are in the small guest room at Pops Henare’s house. She’s squeezed in between me and the wall, sleeping soundly. I hate her for it. I know now that I’m up, I won’t be able to fall back asleep, and I’ll have to suffer.
My phone rings, the sound like bullets exploding in my head. Who is calling me? Why did I drink all that champagne and smoke all that weed?
Why did I tell Gemma I was in love with her?
She moans beside me, pulling the pillow over her face. I reach into my pockets because of course I’m still wearing my clothes from last night, all covered in sand, and pull out my phone.
It’s Vera. And holy shit, it’s already one in the afternoon.
“Hello?” I answer and try to get out of bed, lifting Gemma’s leg off of mine.
“Josh?” she asks. “Happy New Year!”
I mumble something into the phone and then shuffle my way down the hall and out the back door. I can hear people in the kitchen and someone, probably Pops, watching TV, but I can’t even begin to socialize. I walk outside into hot, blinding sunshine. It’s like knives to my brain.
“Josh, are you okay?” she asks. “Don’t ruin my buzz.”
“What time is it there?” I mumble as I make my way to the chairs overlooking the beach. I’m squinting so much I’m almost legally blind.
“It’s one in the morning. We’re twelve hours apart, remember? I thought you’d be up by now.”
“Well, as you can hear, I’m awake,” I tell her. “Are you with Mateo?”
“Of course! Want to talk to him?”
Before I can tell her that I can’t process his accent right now, I hear a muffled sound and then his voice on the other end.
“Happy New Year, Josh,” Mateo says. His accent is always a lot milder than I remember. “How is New Zealand?”
“Great. I’m hungover.”
“Well, I am sure Vera and I will be tomorrow. You are enjoying yourself, yes?”
“I think a little too much, actually.”
“Then you’re really living life now.”
I can almost hear his grin. I nod and wince at the pain my head causes me. I’m living life for once, and it’s a bit terrifying. “That I am,” I tell him.
“Then keep it up, it’s worth it. Believe me.” There’s a pause and I hear Vera in the background. “Okay, I shall let you go,” he says and we say goodbye. Vera comes back on the line.
“How are you and Gemma?” she asks.
I would much rather talk about her and Mateo. “We’re good.”
“Anything happen since Christmas?”
“Been doing a lot of traveling,” I tell her, which is true.
“Does she make you happy?”
I laugh. “She’s driving me crazy.”
“The good kind of crazy?”
I sigh and look at the sand where we made love last night. Where I told her that I love her. Where she didn’t say it back.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “All I know is I’m not ready to leave her.”
A weighty pause rests in the air and then she says, quietly, “So don’t.”
“It’s not so simple.”
“Sure it is.”
“Vera,” I warn her. “This isn’t like you and Mateo. You knew how you felt and you knew how he felt. That was easy.”
“It wasn’t easy—” she begins, but I cut her off.
“I know how I feel,” I tell her. “And I’ve told her how I feel. But she doesn’t seem to want it. She wants me but she doesn’t want me to love her. Does that make sense?”
Another pause. “You love her?”
I groan. “Ugh, it’s too hot to talk about this.”
“If you love her, then you have two choices,” she says. “You can either love her from afar, at home in Vancouver, or you can love her from there. Either way, the love part isn’t going away. You just have to choose what scenario makes you the happiest.”
I tug absently at my lip ring. “If she doesn’t love me back, both scenarios will make me miserable.”
She sighs. “When did you turn into such a pessimist?”
“I have art school to think about, Vera.”
“I had school to think about but it worked out. You can work it out, too. They have art schools in New Zealand, right? You could apply to one, get a student visa. Problem solved.”
“And the whole part about her not loving me back?”
“Love takes longer for some people than others,” she says. “But if she gets there in the end, isn’t that what’ll make it worth it? The answer to that is yes, Josh. It does. I say go for it. That’s what you once said to me.”
“All right,” I tell her. “I’ll see how it goes. We still have another week here together.”
“I bet it’s nice and warm and beautiful. Enjoy it.”
“I am.”
I’m about to hang up when she stops me. “Oh, by the way, Mom actually called me the other day.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, it was late in Vancouver and she sounded drunk. In fact, I know she was drunk. She started telling me that she missed me and you and wondered where she went wrong, why two of her children would want to go overseas, thousands of miles away from her. She thinks we hate her.”
“I don’t hate her,” I say.
“Neither do I,” she says. “But I don’t think she really knows how she can be, you know? Anyway, she might call you soon. Talk to her. It was nice to hear her talk like that.”
“All caring and shit?”
She laughs. “Exactly.”
After we hang up, I lean back in the chair and stay that way until Gemma comes out and sits down beside me.
I slowly turn my head to look at her. “How are you, Peggy Sue?”
She raises a brow. “I feel like death.”
“Well, you don’t look like death,” I tell her. “It’s actually pretty annoying.”
“I know what will cure you,” she says, grabbing my hand and pulling me unsteadily to my feet. “It’s about time you try marmite. In fact, a marmite chippie sammie.”
“So many words I don’t understand.”
We go back into the house and straight to the kitchen. Her grandfather is watching TV, something Gemma says he does a lot of since he injured his knee a few years ago. The man moves slowly and painfully but refuses to take medication for it, so that’s why her uncle and aunt live with him, to help out
. He’s a tough man, but a good man, and I like him. Once again, I find myself wishing I had the same family ties as she does.
“How are you two?” he asks.
“Been better,” says Gemma.
He, like Gemma, looks great, even healthy, though I know I saw him throwing back shots of what can only be considered Satan’s homebrew last night.
Within minutes, Gemma has thrown together a sandwich consisting of potato chips stuck between two pieces of bread smeared with brown stuff.
I start laughing and then laugh even more when she starts to eat it.
“That is the most white-trash thing I’ve ever seen,” I tell her.
Her grandfather chuckles from the TV room, though Gemma only glares. “Hey,” she says between mouthfuls, “the bread is to soak up the alcohol; the chips are for crunchy, greasy tastiness, and also for soaking up the alcohol; and the marmite is all B vitamins. It’ll cure you right up.”
I turn my head toward the TV room and yell, “Is this true, Pops?”
“It’s worth a shot if you’re that hard up, mate,” he answers.
Gemma smiles sweetly and pushes the sandwich in my face. “Trust me.”
I take it from her, not really sure if I do trust her or not. But I eat it anyway. It’s actually pretty good, though the marmite has this strong, concentrated soy-saucey beer taste going on.
We take our plates and sit down on the couch across from her grandfather.
“So where you two off to next?” he asks, shutting off the TV and giving us his full attention.
Gemma opens her mouth but immediately shuts it. She takes a bite of her sandwich and then says, “I don’t know. It’s up to Josh.”
They both look at me. I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Well, start looking at the guidebooks, boy,” he says. “How many days do you have left here?”
I swallow hard. “Ten.”
“Then make them count, aye?” He leans back in his chair and taps his fingers on the arm. He’s got tattoos on them, too. “If I were you, I’d go up to Cape Reinga.”
“Is that the northernmost part?” I ask, recalling its place on our travel maps.