Where Sea Meets Sky (26 page)

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 backpackers 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 lightening 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 recreate 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 smartass 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
.

She shrugs, like it was no big deal being rejected by the tall, dark, and handsome guy covered in tats, and goes inside. Maybe she hides it well. Maybe she’s got enough armor around her that it doesn’t hurt at all.

That’s what I need, what I want. That kind of armor. The kind that lets me go into battle and walk out with my heart still intact.

I’m impressed, beyond impressed, that he turned her down, but it doesn’t stop the fear. In fact, it makes it worse. Because Josh is a good guy, the best guy, but he’s still just a visitor in my life. That’s all he will be, all he can be.

I suck in my breath, needing to get a grip. I need to see a shrink again, like I did after the accident. I’m running out of time and may be throwing away the next few weeks out of fear of getting hurt. Everything has been horrible and lovely these past few weeks, alternating every other day at times, occurring simultaneously on others. But I know, I know, that if I followed my instincts, my hormones, my body, that the rest of the time could be nothing but orgasms and strong arms and the support of someone who truly understands me.

I hate that I’ve become so afraid.

I hear the door open behind me and see someone emerge from the indoor showers. I quickly snap it up before anyone else can. When I emerge, less than ten minutes later, utterly conscious of other people waiting for it, I feel better.

An hour later Josh and I are gathered in the parking lot of the backpackers and waiting for the owner, Hamish, to show his face, as well as any other people.

But when Hamish appears, it’s apparent that Josh and I are the only ones going. My pulse quickens in my wrist, excited, scared, but also relieved for some reason. There’s really no one I’d want to experience this with more than him. There’s no one I’d want to experience anything with more than him.

“So I’ll meet you at the bottom of the hill,” Hamish says.

“Uh, what?” Josh responds for the both of us.

“I have to get the tractor and then get the boat,” Hamish says as if he has to say this every day, which I’m sure he does. “Unless you want to wait up here.”

I look at Josh. He’s trying to put together the words
tractor
and
boat
and they aren’t making much sense.

I put my hand on his shoulder and give him an affectionate squeeze. He stares down at me in shock and then at my hand. I suppose I haven’t been very touchy-feely lately.

“It’s a Kiwi thing,” I say. “There’s no dock.”

He looks like his mind has been blown but he manages to shrug. “All right, so just walk down the hill . . . how far?”