Where Sea Meets Sky (21 page)

My nerves change, too, slipping into something more comfortable. He’s just holding me, providing comfort, giving warmth, support. He’s a friend and he’s here for me. He can feel the ache in my heart.

But I also know he’s more than a friend. He’s on the brink of becoming something else, if only I have the courage to try.

We stand like that for a long time. Too long. It’s getting cold and dark but now the moon is out and the stars are like the glowworms we saw in the cave. I don’t want to turn around. I don’t want to go back to the hut or to my life as it was. I want to keep standing here with his strong, hard arms around me, staring up into infinite space.

“We should go back,” Josh eventually says, and I hear a bit of trepidation in his low voice.

I turn around and face him, my chest pressed against his. I rub my lips together, wishing I could ask for what I want, even though I don’t know what it is. I want him to help me.

“Okay,” I say quietly. So we’re not going to talk about it. So it was just a friendly embrace. So that was it.

He sucks in his breath, hesitating for a moment, then he steps back and away from me, removing his backpack. He digs the flashlight out of the front pocket and flicks it on. The light is weak but it works.

But by the time we get to the end of the boardwalk, it doesn’t. Clouds roll in from the sea, hitting the mountains and covering the moon.

Our light is gone.

We are alone in the dark.

We are alone on the mountain.

I try not to panic. I take out my Samsung Galaxy and try to use the flashlight feature. It kind of works, painting the route in front of us in a dim gray. But when I hit rocks and nearly stumble over a low ledge into a mess of trees below, and Josh has to yank me back to safety, I realize we can’t use it to navigate.

“Shit,” I swear. “Shit, shit, shit, fuck!”

I can’t keep the panic out of my voice.

Josh grips my arms, and in the dimness I can barely see his face. “Gemma,” he says, calm and steady. “It’s okay. Save the battery on your phone. I know there’s no reception right now, but you never know what tomorrow will bring. If we try and go down that path in the dark or with those phones, we’re asking for trouble. Do you know what they teach you in Boy Scouts?”

I shake my head.

“Neither do I,” he says. “I was kicked out after the second day for lighting shit on fire. But I did take an outward bound class in high school. You stay in place. You don’t move. You wait for people to come to you. Trust me, this happens all the time at home, people going off to hike in the mountains above Vancouver, and if only they didn’t move, they would have been found. They would have survived.”

“It was so cold last night,” I say, the terror rising in my throat, the image of Nick rolling away from me when I was freezing.

“It was cold,” he says. “But that’s why we packed a backpack, to prepare for this. There are two of us for heat, plus I know how to make a good bed and shelter from the elements. We’re going to be fine, and as soon as dawn breaks, we’ll be on our way. We know where we are. They know where we are. We’re not lost. We’re just delayed in getting back, that’s all.”

I stare at his face in the dark as a cold breeze whips up my hair. I’m putting all my trust in him. I don’t know how he knows this stuff but I believe him. He’ll take care of us. He’ll take care of me.

As if hearing what I’m thinking, he places his warm hand on my chilled cheek and says. “Trust me. I’ve got you.”

And he does. With the weak light of the phone we head back a few feet from where we were and stop at a grassy area beside a low shrub. On the opposite side of it, against the direction of the wind, Josh starts ripping up grass from the ground and leaves from the surrounding trees.

I do the same, adding the occasional hunk of moss that feels dry. We spread it out on the ground beside the tree, then on top of all the foliage he lays down a silver emergency blanket that he brings out from the first-aid kit.

Next he brings out an extra pair of socks and a sweater and orders me to put it on. I do so quickly and he does the same. Then he gives me my rain jacket. As I’m slipping it on, he walks a few feet away to relieve himself. I should do the same but my adrenaline is running too high.

“All righty,” he says as he comes back and gestures to the makeshift bed. “Lie down.” He puts on his jacket but he doesn’t zip it up.

I carefully lower myself to the ground. The low bush really does block the wind and I immediately feel a lot warmer.

He gets down on his knees beside me and puts his hands on my waist, lifting me up slightly. “Here, flip over. We’re spooning tonight.”

A faint smile touches my lips. I roll over so my back is to him and he lies down right beside me, his body pressed flush against mine. For once I can luxuriate in the contact and I move my body back against his, craving his heat. He tangles his long legs over mine and wraps the open flap of his rain jacket over me like it’s the end of a blanket. One arm goes up over my head, making sure my jacket hood is covering me, while the other holds me in a tight embrace.

“You okay?” he whispers in my ear. Even through the hood, his breath is hot and sends shivers running down my spine.

I nod. It’s all I can do.

“We’ll be okay tonight,” he assures me. “The bush will block the wind and all the stuff between us and the ground will let us keep each other warm. That’s why most people die in the wilderness. They think it’s more important to have shelter over them, but it’s the ground that kills them. It will steal all your warmth.”

“What if it rains?” I manage to ask. “Or snows?”

“I don’t know if it will snow. But where we were camping last night was at a much higher elevation and it didn’t snow there. If it rains, then we’ll huddle under the rain jackets, but until that happens it’s best if we get some sleep.”

But I can’t sleep and it’s not just that we’re lying in the open in the dark in the middle of the Southern Alps. It’s that Josh is holding me as tight as he can and I’ve never felt so safe because of it.

My chest is begging for release but I don’t know how to start or what to say.

So I find myself saying something I never thought I would.

“Josh?” I ask softly.

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever find yourself wanting something so badly but you don’t know what it is?”

His breath is heavy in my ear for a moment. Finally he says, “Yes. I do.”

I swallow, my throat feeling thick. “I have this . . . I don’t know what it is exactly. But I wake up and it’s there and it’s been there for a long time. It’s just this absence. It tells me that either something was there before and now it’s gone or that something should be there at this point in my life. But I don’t have it. I feel this lack. So much that it hurts. And I don’t know what it is. It just makes me sad. It makes me long and ache and I need something to fill it. It’s a constant pain and I’m so fucking tired of it.”

My voice chokes up a bit at the end and the tears that didn’t come during the sunset are coming now, slowly, cold on my cheeks. “I think I ache for things I may never have. I long for purpose, for life, and yet sometimes I think I’m too afraid to live.” I pause. “Do you ever worry, that there’s something out there that you’re missing?”

“I do,” he answers quietly, pulling back the edge of my hood. His warm lips brush against the rim of my ear and I close my eyes to intensify the feeling. “The feeling that you won’t be happy until you find it.”

“Yes,” I say, relief flooding through me at the realization that he understands. “Do you know what yours is?”

He pauses. “I have an idea. It’s becoming clearer day by day.”

I suck in my breath, waiting, hoping, wishing on what he will say next. If he says it, then I’ll take the plunge.

“What is it?”

“Well, coming here has helped,” he says. “I feel like I’m actually living my life instead of just getting by. I’m doing something, being somebody. Before this . . . I was just going through the motions. Now I am the motion.”

Knowing what happened to me, I ask, “Are you afraid that when you go back home you’ll change back to the way you were?”

I can feel him smile against my neck. “No. I’m not afraid of that. The things that have happened here . . . they’re permanent.”

Permanent. I can only wish he was permanent in my life.

“You’re lucky,” I tell him.

“Why?”

“Because no matter what happens, you’ll go back a better person. I came back a worse person.”

He flinches like he’s been struck. “What?”

“It’s true,” I admit, and even though it’s painful to do, that sense of freedom teases me with each word that comes out of my mouth. “When I was traveling I became whatever I wanted, whoever I wanted. When I came back home, it was almost like it was all for nothing. I regressed—and then some. All those months of finding myself were gone in a matter of weeks. And the hollowness has only gotten worse. Sometimes I think I’m just a shell of who I used to be and I don’t think I’ll ever feel whole.”

I can’t believe I’m admitting this much. It’s not even a life or death situation, at least it doesn’t feel that way in Josh’s capable arms, but I can’t help but open up to him. He wanted to know the real me and now he’s getting every ugly bit of her. But he still has no idea of what I could be like and only a small glimpse of what I could have been.

A few seconds roll past and I wondered if I’ve stunned him. Then he shifts against me, closer, warmer.

“Gemma,” he whispers into my hair, kissing the top of my head. “You’re beautiful. And that’s all I can say—you’re beautiful inside and out, and I’m here only because of you. You’ve given me the life that I needed, just being by your side, just being there for a fucking night, let alone all these ones we’ve spent together. If you could only see how amazing you really are, you wouldn’t be so hard on yourself. Maybe you wouldn’t feel that ache.”

Another tear rolls down my cheek and I’m speechless at his words. They’ve built a small, flickering fire inside me and I’m torn between putting it out or adding fuel to the flames.

I don’t speak for a long time. I just let him hold me, his breath steady with the occasional cricket or buzzing insect against the white-starred sky.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “For being so nice.” To lighten the load I add, “And for making sure I don’t die.”

“Anytime,” he says. He presses his face into my neck. “And when we’re both alive at dawn, you can thank me again.”

I fall asleep when the ache subsides. I barely feel the cold.

Chapter Twelve

GEMMA

We survived the night. Even though I could only doze for a few hours here and there, the ground hard and uncomfortable even through all the foliage, we made it.

The sky above us begins to lighten. I want to roll over onto my back to watch the stars disappear one by one but I know I’m only breathing because Josh is holding me and keeping me warm. My face feels frozen. I know that it’s terminally cold out.

“Hey,” he says into my ear, voice groggy. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” I whisper.

“How did you sleep?”

“I slept. That was more than I thought would happen.”

“Same here. It’s going to be freezing the moment we break apart.”

“I know. Let’s just stay like this until the sun rises.”

But we get up before that happens. Even though the cold is bitter and biting, I’m glad that we’re on our feet just as the sun slides up from the Humboldt Mountains to the east. It paints the other peaks, making their fresh snow glow rose gold.

The little lake near us—which, according to Josh is called a
tarn
—is like a mirror, gradually lightening to match the sky, while the valleys on either side of the summit are all covered with a thick layer of mist. Today we’re above the clouds.

We turn to make our way down the hill just in time to see a couple coming up; an older man with his camera out, a woman behind him, and just behind her, coming into sight, is Amber.

“Oh my god!” Amber cries out, running for us. She wraps her arms around me and then Josh, her eyes watering. “You guys, what happened? Oh my god, I thought you were dead, you never came back, I thought you were just going for a bit but then this morning you weren’t back. I was so worried!”

The couple make their way to us. The man smiles, his bushy mustache moving. “Didn’t quite make it last night?” he asks, his accent Swedish or Danish or something.

Josh shakes his head. “No, the flashlight died and it wasn’t safe to make it down without it.”

The man nods and his pale partner, her head half covered by a knit cap, hands us a thermos full of coffee. “For you,” she says. “To wake up, though with this view maybe you don’t need it.”

I thank her profusely, feeling embarrassed, and take a grateful sip. I pass it over to Josh, meeting his eyes briefly.

Amber squeezes my arm. “We were going to get the ranger to come with us just in case but I guess he went to rescue someone else last night.”

“Yah,” the man says, lifting up his camera and peering through the lens. “In the fog I think someone fell down a ravine and broke their leg. Had to be helicoptered out.”

Shit. That could have been us. I’m suddenly even more grateful for Josh and that he kept us alive up here on the mountain.

Josh looks at the man. “Not to seem ungrateful or anything, but how come you only came now and not last night?”

Amber looks chagrined, biting her lip. “We didn’t tell anyone that you didn’t come back.”

“What?” I ask.

Her eyes widen in shame. “But I set my alarm for this morning and when I was getting ready, I ran into Janne and Ana here who were going to see the sunrise and I just tagged along. I even suggested getting the ranger, but with him gone, this was our best bet.”

“Wait,” Josh said slowly. “Why didn’t you tell anyone last night?”

She looks away. “I thought maybe you did this on purpose. That you wanted to be alone. You know, like it was part of a plan.” When she looks back, she’s giving Josh a loaded stare.

He frowns. “I only came because I wasn’t about to let Gemma come here on her own.”