Where Sea Meets Sky (42 page)

I nod, swallowing hard. “Thanks.” I exhale loudly, like I’ve been holding in air all day. “I think I’m going to go to bed.”

“Why don’t you and I go out for lunch tomorrow?” she asks, something else we’ve never really done together. I’m starting to realize we were living together without knowing each other. But how could she know me when I didn’t even know myself?

It’s not too late to change both of those things.

“I’d like that,” I say gratefully and manage to give her a small smile before I shuffle away to my room.

I walk over to my bed and collapse on it. Chairman Meow, as if knowing I need quiet comfort, lies by my head, curled up. I tell myself it’s okay to cry, it’s okay to break down, that I can rebuild. Maybe not a wall, but a window.

The tears don’t come, though. I’m all cried out.

The ache returns, and for days it stays. Empty, throbbing cold. Nyla and I start hanging out together more, which helps soothe the pain, and soon I start driving out to Piha Beach in the late afternoons. It’s the only thing I want to do, the only thing I think will help me. I sit at sunset and paint the horizon, where sea meets sky. I paint the infinity, the melding of the two elements. I paint the messy beauty that changes from day to day, from dark and dramatic to bright and colorful.

It’s beautiful.

Chapter Twenty-Four

VANCOUVER, CANADA

JOSH

“Tell me more about New Zealand,” Katy says from across the table. She’s staring at me with those big blue eyes of hers, twirling her dark blond hair around her finger.

“I’ve told you everything there is to tell,” I tell her, leaning back in my chair and sipping a beer. “Nice people, beautiful scenery.”

“But there’s more to it, isn’t there?”

I shake my head and pick up the dessert menu. “Nope.”

We’re at a Cactus Club restaurant in downtown Vancouver. It’s our third date. I’m putting on the charm but it’s halfhearted. She slept with me on the first date already. It was the first time I’d had sex since New Zealand. It wasn’t bad. Good enough to warrant another date. And a third.

But I’m not sure about a fourth. Katy is pretty and funny and she makes me laugh. But she bores me to tears. There’s no depth to her, no substance. She is who she says she is. And I guess that’s refreshing, the lack of mystery, but I just don’t find myself intrigued by the real her.

I want more. I always want more.

I had a lot more at one point. But that’s neither here nor there.

It’s been three months since I left. They’ve been the hardest three months of my life. After Gemma told me to leave, I went straight back to Auckland and switched my plane to the next flight out. I couldn’t stand being in that city anymore, knowing she was out there. I couldn’t stand being in the country.

Thankfully, Air New Zealand was able to find me a flight two days early, but of course there was a hefty fee for the switch. It was worth all my money. It was worth having to work at the hostel to pay for my stay.

When I got home, I was more angry than hurt. The weather here was dark and gray and inhospitable. It rained every day. It made me a miserable person to be around, even though I was just starting school. I had to throw myself into my studies to try and bring myself out of it.

Gemma tried to contact me once, on Facebook, not long after I left. I never read the message; I just saw it there. I blocked her account. I didn’t need any reminders of her. If I heard Pink Floyd playing anywhere,
anywhere
, I had to get up and leave. Once I left a Foo Fighters concert because the band started covering “Have a Cigar.”

After some time, though, the anger started to fade. Sadness filled in those cracks. I’d never been in love and never had my heart broken. Now I’d experienced both in a very short amount of time. And when I let myself breathe a bit, I realized just how badly Gemma had affected me.

Vera had said I went after Gemma because she reminded me of my mother. It was a disturbing thought, that’s for sure. But maybe Gemma was more of a challenge to me because of that, a lock that needed a key.

I thought I’d found the key. I thought if I kept pushing at Gemma, again and again, she would let me in. But maybe she needed the time to do that on her own, without me breathing down her neck, needing her to love me. Or maybe she was welded shut, and no matter what I did, no matter what happened to her, she would never change.

I wish things ended differently. I wish I hadn’t called her names. I wish I hadn’t run off. I could have stayed and talked to her and tried to make the best of those last days. I wish I hadn’t pushed and pushed, put that pressure on us, and especially, her.

But I can’t do anything about it. It happened. It’s over. And three months later, it still hurts. It’s not so bad—the comic book I’m illustrating is helping me funnel those feelings and fears into something worthwhile. I’m trying to date. I’m at least trying to get laid.

I’ve moved out, too. In February, Toby, the guy who threw the Halloween party where I met Gemma, needed a new roommate. Though my new job at the art supply store on Granville Island is only part-time in order to fit with my school schedule, I jumped at the chance. I’m barely scraping by but the rent is cheap and it’s a share house. I figured why not dive into the cliché and become a starving artist?

At that thought, I close the dessert menu. I’m only buying lemon meringue pie for someone special.

When dinner is over, I drop Katy off at her apartment in North Vancouver. She asks me in. I let her down gently.

“Who is she?” she asks. Her features sharpen. She can tell.

Still, I play dumb. “Huh?”

She sighs. “The girl you’re hung up on. Gemma, is it?”

I frown, bewildered. How could she know her name?

Katy smiles stiffly. “You called me her name the other night. In bed.”

Oh shit. I had no idea. I give her a pleading look. “I did? I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. God knows I’ve been there. Take care, Josh. It was fun.” She gets out of the car and gives me a little wave. No hard feelings, thank god.

I watch her walk inside and then lay my head against the steering wheel. Jesus. Now I can’t even date without having Gemma invade me somehow. What did Amber call love when we were talking on the shores of Lake Wanaka? A fungus?

It was fitting. Love is a fungus. It’s hard to kill. Apparently this strain is lingering on, living in my pores and cracks and crevices.

I can’t tell if I’m grossing myself out or making myself sad.

I sigh and drive back into Vancouver. The city looks cold and lonely in the dark. Spring is on its way but feels so far off that it’s no more real than a ghost ship in the night. I go home and straight up to my room. Someone is in the kitchen, eating late, but I don’t stop to say hi.

It’s weird, ironic maybe, that my room is the very same room where Gemma and I had sat on the couch and watched people play Rock Band. I had wanted so badly to devour her.

She had bewitched me back then, and she still bewitched me now.

Only then, I welcomed it. Now, I wish it away.

But the feeling stays.

It’s April and I’m about to take a giant leap.

I have to call my dad to ask to borrow money. We’re not so close but it’s necessary; there are a few classes I want to take that start outside of the range of my student loan. I’d ask my mom but I always feel like a burden to her, even though she’s been texting me often, inviting me over for dinner. I just can’t. Art has taken over, and I’m glad.

“Dad,” I say when I hear him answer the phone. I’m sitting on the roof deck on the shoddy furniture, watching the city in the background and the budding maple trees that line the streets.

“Hey Josh,” he says, sounding warm and surprised. I hate that I’m not really calling to talk.

“Hi, listen, Dad, I have a big favor to ask you,” I say, just launching into it.

He sighs. “What is it?”

“Well, there are a few extra classes I would like to take at school but my loan doesn’t cover them and I’m just not making enough at the supply store to cover it. I was wondering . . .”

“How much is it?” He also gets straight to the point.

“In totally, six seventy-five.” I tell him, wincing. “That is, six hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

The line goes silent. I can almost hear him thinking, stroking his mustache. Finally he says, “Fine. But if I do this for you, you have to do me a favor.”

I frown. What could he want from me? “Okay.”

“Why not come to Alberta when school is up and stay a week with me and your stepmom? We’d love to have you.”

This is a first for me. “Really?”

“Yeah. We miss you. We’re not getting any younger, and neither are you. I think it would be good for you to get away for a bit, out of the city.”

He’s right about that. I love Vancouver but it’s starting to make me feel both boxed in and lonely. “Okay, sure. That would be great. If I take these courses I won’t be free till the summer but I can come then. Oh, maybe we can go to the Stampede!”

He chuckles. “Anything you like. All right, I’ll get the money into your account. How is your mother?”

He rarely asks about her, and I can tell he doesn’t really want to know. “She’s fine. I don’t talk to her much, though. School keeps me busy.”

He coughs. “Right. Well, she’s still your mother. You should spend some time with her.”

I sigh. “Yes, fine, I will. Hey, thanks, Dad.”

“You’re welcome.”

When we hang up, I look at all the texts my mom has sent to me over the last month. She’s asked me over for dinner. Asked me to pick up my mail. Asked to come to my apartment to say hello. Asked me to come out with her and Mercy. She’s been asking and asking, and I keep answering her with
I’m busy
or
Later
or
Sorry, can’t
. Or I just don’t answer her at all.

I don’t know why I’ve been pushing her away. It’s like I’m punishing her for something she didn’t do. It’s like I’m punishing her for just being my mom.

Feeling guilty, I decide to answer her last text, sent a week ago:
Come stop by and say hi. And pick up your mail.

I text back,
Okay, I’ll stop by today, I don’t have school until the evening
.

I head on over, thinking she won’t be home but at least she’ll know I made somewhat of an effort. When I get there I see she’s home and the door is open. On the kitchen counter is a pile of mail, probably all junk, for me.

The shower is running but I still yell, “I’m here!” so she doesn’t come out and think I’m a robber and attack me with her pointy nails. I know those things hurt.

I grab a can of Diet Coke from the fridge and crack it open as I stare at the mail on the kitchen counter, expecting to see a mound of letters.

It’s not a mound of letters at all. There are two envelopes and a postcard from Amber in Bali, but the rest are packages. Some are a square foot, others half that size, and they’re all wrapped in plain brown paper.

I pick up the one on the top. It has my address but the return address is Henare Wines in Bay View, New Zealand. I feel the blood drain out of me.

My heart is waterlogged.

With shaking hands, I pull back the paper and reveal a pastel-painted canvas. A seascape at sunset. Blues and corals and tangerine. It’s so gorgeous I want to cry. I blink a few times, turning it over. It doesn’t have Gemma’s name on it or a note but it’s from her. It’s her soul.

And she’s showing it to me.

I put it down and open another. And another. There are about fifteen of them, all gorgeous horizon lines, sunsets, sunrises—dark and stormy, happy and light. I’m surrounded by her.

“Josh?” I hear my mother say, and I whirl around to see her tucking her wet hair up into a towel, her face bare, her glasses off.

I point to the paintings. “What the hell is this?”

Her brows furrow as she comes closer. “Oh, they’re paintings. Quite nice. What do they mean?”

I’m incredulous. “I don’t know what they mean,” though I do. “How long have you been getting these?”

She shrugs, picking up one of a red sunset on a black sand beach. “For weeks now. A new one comes almost every day.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?!”

She gives me a sharp look. “I did tell you. I kept telling you to pick up your mail. It’s not my fault you don’t have a second to spare for me.”

Oh, I see. She’s using the mail as leverage.

I sigh, rubbing my hand vigorously across my face, trying to force some sense into my fried brain. “Okay, I’m sorry that I haven’t been around.”

“It hurts, Joshua,” she says. “Everyone is gone. Everyone has someone except for me.”

I wince, my heart sinking even more. It’s hard to hear my mom be vulnerable. I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t know if she’ll just go back to being the cold stone that she usually is.

“I don’t have anyone, Mom,” I tell her, though now, looking at the paintings—Gemma’s soul, her love, her passion spread out on the table—I think she might have me. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around. Things are . . . tough sometimes. You know how it is.”