Where Sea Meets Sky (43 page)
Read Where Sea Meets Sky Online
Authors: Karina Halle
She sighs and nods. “I do. Just say you’ll try.”
“I will, Mom,” and I mean it. “I just can’t believe these are all here. How did she even know where to send them?”
“Who is sending you these? Seems like promotion from a winery.”
“It’s a girl, Mom. One I . . . she’s in New Zealand.”
She studies the art. “Did she make these?”
“Yes,” I say proudly, as if I had something to do with it. “She’s very talented.”
“Very,” she says. Her eyes flash. “Oh, I forgot, someone came this morning with something for you. But there’s no return address on it.”
She disappears around the corner and comes out with a thick package in her hands. She places it on the counter, and just from the shape and the weight I know what it is.
“When you say someone . . .” I say, my eyes glued to it.
“I don’t know. A girl dropped it off. Not the regular postman. Must be a courier.”
I feel my face growing cold. I can barely speak. “What did she look like?”
“Like a girl,” she says. “Pretty. Long hair, tanned. Healthy looking. She looked a bit mixed.”
That would be my mother’s way of saying “not totally white.”
“Didn’t you ask her questions, like where this came from?”
She taps her long nails on the package and nods. “I did. But the girl just turned and ran down the steps. For a second, I thought maybe it was a bomb.”
“It’s no bomb,” I say.
I start unwrapping, slowly at first, then fast.
Mom pats my shoulder. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
When I rip all the paper off, my sketchbook is in my hands. I marvel at it, turning it over, and I start flipping through it. I see the inscription,
If you lose this, please return to Josh Miles
, and my address on the inside cover. I flip through, hoping to see something new, but all it does is bombard me with a million memories.
Each page is a trip back to New Zealand—every beautiful day, every moment captured. The clear, pale water and golden sand of Abel Tasman. The cold, dramatic ice of Franz Josef Glacier. Dawn at Key Summit. Foxgloves and milk-blue Lake Tekapo. Dolphins. Gemma’s attempt to paint in Kaikoura. Christmastime. The sunrise at East Cape.
This is where I pause. Her painting is glowing brilliantly off the page, like I’m seeing that sunrise all over again in her saturated, waxy lines. I feel just how messy life was at that moment.
But the painting is a bit different now.
Across the horizon she has written, in orange,
This where I first loved you
.Note
My throat closes up, my nose growing hot. I blink my eyes fast, trying to move through the love and pain competing for space in my heart.
She loved me.
I don’t even want to look at the rest. But I do. It’s more of my work, reflections of a journey and love that were slowly winding down.
I get to the last page. It’s the picture of a cold, cold sea.
She has written,
I’m sorry
.
I close my eyes and hold the book to my chest.
I’m sorry, too.
I stand there for a few minutes, in my mother’s kitchen, trying to absorb it all. The courier has to have been Gemma. It just has to be.
I whip out my phone and start Googling Vancouver backpackers. She has to be here; I can feel it. I know it. She delivered it this morning in person, she just had to. She wants me to see this, to have this. She wants me to know she’s here.
Yeah, I’m probably thinking like a lunatic, but at least when you’re nuts you take chances. I remember her saying she stayed at the Hostelling International on Thurlow Street when she was last here, so I call them up.
They don’t have anyone called Gemma there.
I call another backpackers nearby. They can’t give out info.
I call another and another and another. No leads, no answers.
No Gemma.
I log on to Facebook and search for her, hoping I can unblock her. She’s there and her picture is of one of her paintings, which thrills me in a weird way, but her privacy settings are high and I can only send her a friend request.
After all the paintings have been carefully stacked, I put them in my car and drive them back to my place. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all of them, but while I wait to get her to accept my friend request, I end up placing them all over my room.
Toby steps in and tells me it’s like living in an art gallery. He knows all about Gemma and doesn’t bug me about her. Apparently the same thing happened to him and some girl he met at his parents’ place in Shanghai. We’ve become quite good at commiserating.
My evening class on illustration starts soon and I have no choice but to go. I’m tempted to leave my cell at home, just so I’m not checking Facebook every five minutes in class, though let’s face it, that’s what everyone does anyway.
Class drags on. My palms itch to take out my phone. I can’t concentrate and I need to. My computer is slow and Adobe keeps fucking up.
A war wages inside me. I’m all kinds of messed up.
But I feel alive for the first time in a while.
I feel a sense of hope I didn’t even know was missing.
When class is over, I stay a bit later, just to finish up what I should have. I take my time, giving the drawing the concentration it deserves. I have nowhere to be, no one to see. A beer sounds good, though.
I grab my stuff and make my way down the hall toward the back doors, where I parked.
There’s a familiar melody filling the air the closer I get to the end.
Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.”
It unravels me.
It’s coming from a classroom at the end of the hall, and I slow as I pass by the open door. I peer inside. It’s empty and filled with canvases of all shapes and sizes. I can hear a tap running in the background.
I wouldn’t normally stay and linger but there’s a painting in the middle of the room, staring me in the eye.
Actually, it’s
me
staring me in the eye.
It’s a black and white pastel drawing of me with a wild teal background, painted with blue watercolor.
My mouth gapes. Thoughts dislodge. My heart shrinks and swells.
What the actual fuck?
What kind of dimension did I just wander into?
I walk into the room, quietly, as if I’m going to scare the painting, scare the
me
staring back at me, with its lip ring and asshole smile.
Suddenly the water turns off and I hear the
tap tap tap
of a paintbrush against a sink. There’s movement behind one of the canvases.
I hold my breath.
Gemma emerges into the open.
She’s wearing a white tank top, black jeans, tall boots. Her hair is piled onto her head. She has teal paint everywhere, on her chest, her arms, her face, her hands.
She doesn’t seem surprised to see me, not like I am to see her. She just smiles and stands still and gestures to the painting.
“Do you like it?”
I can’t even look at it. I can only look at her. And that’s when I see the line of fear across her brow, the uncertainty in her eyes. She wants me to like it, she needs me to like it.
But I don’t care about the painting.
My mouth feels full of sawdust. I’m surprised I’m still standing on my own two feet. “Gemma,” I manage to say. I can’t say any more.
She swallows and nods, perhaps expecting a different reaction. “Surprise, right?” She sighs and walks over to the painting, standing in front of it. I can’t believe her ass is within touching distance again, her hair, her skin.
“I moved into the vineyard, worked there part-time, saved up money. Then I took a leap of faith and enrolled in school, here,” she says as the questions linger on my lips, her back turned toward me. She touches up something on the painting. “I followed my passion. And my passion led me here. To you. I’ve only been here for a few days. I’ve been wanting to find you, say hello but . . . I’ve been shy.”
She shoots me a look over her shoulder, slightly embarrassed, her cheeks flushed beautifully. “I don’t expect anything from you, just so you know. I’m here to find out what I want from life.” She licks her lips before turning her face away. “I just wanted to give you my art. I owed you at least that much.”
I reach out for her and touch her gently on the shoulder, just to make sure she’s real.
She is. Her skin feels soft enough to sink into, though she’s still got her muscle. She’s still got everything I love about her.
And now she has art.
And now she has me.
I grin to myself and spin her around so I’m staring down at her beautiful face, those deep dark eyes that look up at me with a need I’ve never seen before.
“Welcome home,” I tell her before I grab her and kiss her. She tastes as sweet and spicy as I remembered and melts into my arms, into my touch. We kiss with deep heat and fired intensity, which only makes me hungrier for her, for everything about her.
I can’t believe she’s here.
Gemma is here.
She pulls away, breathing hard, her hands gripping me tight.
“Josh,” she nearly whimpers in my ear, her voice soft and on the edge of breaking, “I love you.”
My heart does a warm somersault in my chest—the best kind of ache.
“I love you,” she says again, placing her hands on either side of my face and staring at me with those deep eyes of hers, now wet with waiting tears. “I couldn’t stop loving you. You’re so easy to love.” She kisses me again, soft and slow, and murmurs against my lips, “I’m so sorry I didn’t realize it before, that it took me so long. I never meant to break your heart.”
“Gemma,” I say through a groan, my body and heart igniting. “Don’t be sorry. I couldn’t want for more. You’re here. And I love you.” I place her hand on top of my chest. “See, it’s not broken at all.”
“You still love me?” She sounds so shocked, so vulnerable. I can’t help but smile.
“Always,” I tell her and pull her tank top over her head, unable to keep my hands off of her, my skin from her skin. I need to be closer than this, I need to feel her in every way that I can. I need her to be real, to stay real in this room full of art.
She shoots a nervous look to the door, and as she swiftly removes her bra I head over and lock it, ensuring us privacy. When I’m back at her side, my lips graze her nipples before sucking them, and she moans in response. Such a gorgeous sound, one I never thought I’d hear again.
She’s here
.
She loves me
.
I pick her up in my arms and stride across to the counter in the corner of the room, placing her ass up on the edge beside the sink before pulling down her jeans and underwear.
“I’m having déjà vu,” she says, her smile wanton, her voice throaty. “Though I think the pool table was more comfortable.”
“You won’t be complaining in a moment, sweetheart,” I tell her with a grin as I pull her legs to the edge of the counter and unzip my jeans.
“I like when you call me that,” she says as she wraps her strong legs around my waist.
With one hand I position myself against her and brush a strand of paint-coated hair behind her ears with the other. “Good. Because you’re going to be hearing it for a long time.”
I want nothing more than to take this reunion slowly but I’m fueled by the almost delirious desire to be inside of her again. She holds me close as I push myself in, my eyes squeezing shut as she envelops me, tight and warm, the most decadent feeling.
She gasps then moans, and I do the same.
She’s here. She’s home.
“Please tell me you’re here to stay,” I say to her, my lips finding hers again as I slowly thrust in and out.
“I’m here to learn,” she says softly, her hands gripping my shoulders, my hair. “Not just at school . . .” she breaks off and gasps as my fingers slide around āer. “I’m here to learn from you. About art, about love, about everything. I’m not going anywhere.” She looks me in the eye. “You’ve got me.”
She then punctuates those beautiful words by moaning softly, her head thrown back as we sink into the feel of our love for each other. It is so, so impossibly good.
As we move as one, slow then fast and frantic, she gets paint on me, staining my skin, my clothes. We make love in the art room like lovers reunited after war. It gets messy.
But life is messy.
And life is good.
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