Where Sea Meets Sky: A Novel Read online

  And despite just coming, the lust is pouring back into me again, like a dam unleashed.

  The side of his mouth quirks up into that crooked smile. “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but I’m dying to be inside you.”

  I have a feeling that “presumptuous” is his middle name.

  He puts his hands around my waist and pulls me to him. My legs wrap around him while he starts to guide himself inside. It’s intimate, perhaps more so than I’d like. The lights are on and he stares right into my eyes, and for a moment I want to look away, to break the tension, the intrusion. I’m already exposed and he peers into me like he’s uncovering every last rock. The things I keep hidden deep down. It’s mildly terrifying.

  But I don’t look away. Instead, I tighten my hold around him, my calves flexing.

  He grips the small of my back while he thrusts in, finding purchase. I haven’t had sex for months, and despite how turned on I am, it hurts for that first moment. I close my eyes and he slows.

  “Are you all right?” he asks breathlessly. He reaches up and pushes a strand of hair off my face. His tenderness is jarring.

  I quickly nod and smile. I am all right. I’m more than that; I’m flying. He kisses me and I relax into him, allowing him in further until I’m so beautifully full. The pain is gone and the pleasure builds with each controlled movement he makes. There is symmetry in our actions, as if we move as one, as if I’m not precariously perched on the edge of a pool table at some party. We don’t move like strangers.

  I hold him tight, he holds me tighter, I pull him in deeper, he pushes in further. He thrusts, I rush to meet him. We give and take until I should be close to coming. I move my hand between us, running my finger over the tip of his shaft before helping myself out.

  He grins down at my hand and slowly raises his hooded eyes to meet mine. “I’m not sure if I want to watch or if I want to help.” But after a few sweaty moments of near bliss, he moves my hand out of the way and places his thumb on my clit. His lips go to my neck where he bites and sucks his way to the smooth spot behind my ears. He picks up the pace, thrusting harder, faster, and I can barely hang on.

  He whispers, grunts, moans things in my ear. He tells me how good I feel, how bad he wants to come inside me, how much he wants me. He wants more. I want more.

  Just when I feel like he’s about to come, his breath hitches, he frowns in deep concentration and control, and I let go. His thumb is magic and we come at the same time. His nails dig into my back, the heels of my feet dig into his. My body rides the wave again, rides him over and over until I’m drowning. I’m sweaty and sated and he steals my breath for a few moments before I come back down.

  When I do, I realize we’re embracing each other, our foreheads pressed together as we breathe in unison. A drop of sweat rolls off his face and onto mine and he opens his eyes to look at me. They look soft. Delicate. There’s a wound there, something deep and dark and lost inside of him.

  Does he even know it’s there?

  Then he wipes at his face and laughs. He’s a mess of running eyeliner and smudged bronzer. Somehow it makes him look even more handsome. It makes me forget that I ever saw him vulnerable.

  I wish I had more time with him. I wish I could get to know the real Josh.

  But New Zealand is waiting for me. Home.

  Eventually we pull apart—hot and sticky. I am absolutely covered in his bronzer, and my hair and makeup are a mess. Halloween is officially over now.

  “Where are you staying?” he asks me as he carefully pulls the condom off.

  “The Hostelling International on Thurlow,” I say as I jump off the pool table. I quickly get dressed, turning my back to him. Now that the haze of sex has worn off, I’m feeling like a wild animal without cover. Exposed.

  When I turn around, he’s watching me, smiling. His pants are on and his wig is crooked, and with half his body bronzer wiped off he looks like a tawny zebra.

  “What?” I ask, trying not to feel self-conscious.

  “I don’t think we’re done with each other.”

  I raise my brow. “Okay . . .”

  “What time is your flight?”

  “Three in the afternoon.”

  “How about I get you a cab home?”

  I frown. “I can get my own cab.”

  He rubs at the braided goatee on his chin. “How about I take you home. I shave this thing off. We do that,” he gestures to the pool table, “again, in a bed. You stay the night. In the morning, we’ll take it from there.”

  I admit, it’s tempting. But slightly irresponsible. “It sounds a bit too risky when I have a thirteen hour flight tomorrow.” I’m thinking it over though and he’s studying me, waiting for me to say yes.

  And I do, because I want to. It feels right. He’s right. We aren’t done with each other.

  “How about I stay for a while,” I tell him, “then cab home before the sun rises. I’ll feel better. I have a knack for missing planes, trains, and automobiles.”

  He bites his lip and nods. “Excellent film, by the way.” He comes over to me and kisses me softly on the lips. “Let’s go.”

  We leave the billiards room and step out into the party. There are people milling about in the hallway—a woman dressed as Luigi from Super Mario, a guy dressed as Ferris Bueller—and though we totally look like two people who just shagged themselves silly, everyone’s too drunk to even make a remark about it.

  Hand in hand, we weave through the party and into the night.

  It takes us a long time to catch a cab—no surprise since they’re in such high demand tonight. It seems that the province has just as strict drunk-driving rules as we do back home.

  We walk for blocks through boisterous suburban streets with houses decorated with all things spooky, listening to firecrackers going off and the subdued beat of music pouring from random house parties. In the distance, police sirens wail. In a way, it’s almost romantic. It has to be at least one a.m. and though the world around us swirls with life, it feels like we’re the only two people left alive.

  I was smart enough to bring a jacket with me—Halloween in the southern hemisphere happens in the spring, not autumn—but even though the air is damp and chilly, I’m still high from the orgasm and subdued by the beer; it keeps my nerves alive, my blood warm.

  Walking beside Josh helps, too. Though he doesn’t have a coat or anything, he still radiates a kind of heat that draws me to him. I want to know more about him, soak him all up. I want to talk to him about his art but I’m afraid doing so will bring me down, and I can’t afford to be that way. Not now. Art used to be everything to me. Now it reminds me of too much loss.

  So we talk about travel instead.

  “Have you ever wanted to see your sister overseas?” I ask, remembering what he said about her being in Spain.

  He nods. “Yeah, for sure.”

  “Would you go traveling anywhere else?”

  He seems to think about that for a moment. “Probably somewhere else in Europe. It depends what she has in mind.”

  “But would you go alone somewhere?” I press. When he doesn’t answer I say, “I think you should. It will open your eyes.”

  He looks at me curiously. “Has it opened your eyes?”

  The truth is, I’m not sure that it has. Not in the way I wanted it to. So I smile at him and say, “You should come to New Zealand.”

  He laughs. He doesn’t realize I’m not saying it to be polite. I’m half-serious. He should go there. Everyone should.

  “I’d love to,” he says. “But you know . . .”

  I can hear him finishing his sentence in his head. Work, possibly school. Lack of money. Life. There’s always something. There had always been something for me, some excuse not to go, until suddenly it was really my only choice.

  “Well, I’d show you a good time.”


  He squints at me. “Am I showing you a good time?”

  I shrug. “Sure.”

  He reads my bluff. He stops in the middle of the sidewalk and puts his hand behind my head, pulling me to him. “Bullshit,” he whispers before kissing me hard. I almost go dizzy, swirled in desire all over again, like melting soft-serve.

  We only pull apart when we hear the sound of an approaching car and the air around us dances in the sharp glare of headlights. It’s a cab and he immediately raises his hand to flag it down. He grabs my arm and gives me a look. “I’m showing you a great time.”

  Of course, he’s right.

  We get in the cab and make out in the back like horny teenagers, all groping and hungry kisses. It’s not long before he tosses money at the annoyed driver and we stumble out of the cab and into the front yard of his house. It’s tall and narrow and even in the dim streetlights I can tell it’s immaculately kept.

  “Wow, you live here?”

  He looks away and hesitates. “I live with my mom,” he says.

  “Are we going to wake her up?” I ask quietly as he ushers me in first through the front gate.

  He shakes his head, getting out his keys. “Don’t worry, my room is far away from hers and she sleeps like a rock.”

  I can tell he’s embarrassed. I know he probably feels bad that he lives with his mom but if Vancouver is anything like Auckland, the rent prices are hard to afford. I don’t live with my mom, but I do have a flatmate.

  As if he hears my thoughts, he turns to look at me just as he sticks his keys in the front door. “It’s an expensive city,” he explains. His face is shadowed and he probably likes it that way. “I pay my mom what I can but if I want a tiny, shitty studio apartment close to work, I have to shell out at least a thousand bucks a month.”

  I briefly put my hand on his shoulder. “Hey, I’d do the same.” Little does he know, if it weren’t for my job and the fact that it pays well, and my flatmate, I wouldn’t be able to afford Auckland either. He also doesn’t know that I’m not one hundred percent sure I have a job to return to when I go home.

  We go in the house. Josh moves his tall frame through the dark with ease, as if he’s used to coming home in the odd hours. I wonder if he goes out a lot, what places he goes, what girls he sleeps with. The guy has skills and he didn’t get them from practicing on himself.

  We go into his bedroom and the door softly clicks shut behind us. He locks it and flicks on a small lamp that barely illuminates the darkness. He’s got a few framed Melvins and Tomahawk posters on the walls, a messy stack of vinyl beside an aging record player. There’s an empty beer and coffee mug on the windowsill and a small bookcase overstuffed with what look like secondhand paperbacks. I see some titles—Asimov, Goodkind, Gaiman, alongside Chandler and Hammett. Sci-fi and detective novels. Interesting.

  In one corner are an empty easel and a paint-splattered toolbox. Against the wall, a tower of graphic novels and comic books flank battered sketchbooks and canvas still in their plastic wrapping. He has a small work desk and a large Mac monitor that looks like it’s about to topple over at any minute. A few photos and magazine tear-outs are pinned to the wall behind it.

  Aside from the fact that his queen-size bed is unmade, it’s not too messy. It’s comfortable and has a bit of controlled chaos going on.

  “It’s not much,” he says in a low voice. “But it’s home.”

  Home. Tomorrow I’ll be heading home. After so long, the concept seems strange. It makes me both wistful and anxious. I want to go but I also want to stay. If only I could be in two places at once. If only I could be two people at once.

  “You okay?” he asks. He takes a step toward me and puts his hand at the back of my neck. It’s a possessive move but his hand only massages me as he stares at me intently. “Sorry it’s such a mess,” he says, misreading me.

  I give him a quick smile. “It’s all good. Sorry. Just . . .” I don’t want to get into it. I’m here to have some more fun with him, to prolong the last night, not to get into the sordid details of my life. “I was just tired for a second. Too much beer, I guess.”

  He looks a bit disappointed but says, “Well, let’s get you to bed then. No harm in sleeping for a few hours. I’ll set an alarm.”

  I grab his arm before he can turn around. “Sleep is for pussies,” I tell him. He’s taken aback but he likes it. Before he can say anything else, I drop to my knees and tell him to take off his pants.

  He wastes no time, and neither do I.

  There is no sleep to be had this night. After a blow job and a couple of sweaty rounds of sex on the bed and off, when we finally crawl under the covers for good, we stay up talking until the sun comes up.

  I tell him about where I work in Auckland, where I live, what my favorite activities are. We have a similar taste in music—nineties grunge, experimental rock—so I tell him about some up-and-coming Kiwi bands. I tell him a bit about my mother and aunt, who run a winery outside of Napier together, and when it comes up that my dad died when I was a teenager, he doesn’t press or ask questions. I’m glad for that. My bad hand starts to tremor at the memory and I have to quell it before he notices.

  Josh doesn’t talk as much, which surprises me at first. He’s so easy-going that I figured he’d be just as open. Instead he listens. I mean, really listens. It’s both good and bad. Sometimes I don’t want people to listen that closely. But when you’ll never see the person again, I suppose it shouldn’t matter.

  He tells me about the art school he wants to get into, hoping that he can get a loan from either the government or his father to pay it off (his parents are divorced). He figures he has to keep working as a line cook but I encourage him to try getting another job, in a field he likes, if he’s going to cut down his hours anyway. It’s easy for me to say—it’s not my rent, not my bills—but he doesn’t discount it either.

  Just before dawn cracks open the sky, he goes into the bathroom. When he emerges, his face is clean-shaven, his makeup thoroughly washed off. In his tight gray T-shirt and loose, black pajama pants, he’s both hot and adorable and extraordinarily pretty. It’s sexy as all out, and I find myself wishing he lived in Auckland. Oh, the fun we could have.

  But it’s time to go.

  “I wish you could stay another day,” he says as I slip on my gross clothes, all smelling like pot and beer. “I’d take you out for dinner tonight.”

  I shoot him a sly smile. “Like, a date?”

  He returns the smile easily. “Definitely a date. Bit of food, bit of sex.”

  “I do like both those things.”

  “At the very least, I could take you out for breakfast,” he suggests and he’s hopeful.

  I want to say yes, I really do. But this is what it is: a one-night stand. We had our fun—it was essentially the best sex of my life, multiple times—and that’s all it was going to be. That’s all it could be.

  “Thanks,” I say, quickly braiding my hair back, “but I’ve got packing to do. I may even have a nap since we didn’t sleep much.”

  “We didn’t sleep at all.”

  “No, we sure didn’t.”

  We stare at each other for a few moments and the space between us seems to fill with the unknown. We’re both waiting to say something but I don’t know what it is.

  “Let me call you a cab,” he says eventually, plucking his cell from the desk. I thank him and in minutes the cab calls back to tell us it’s on its way.

  He walks me out of his room and down the hall. I can hear someone in the house stirring but he doesn’t try and hurry me out or hide me.

  Outside, the air is sharp, bitingly cold, and a layer of mist hangs over the half-bare trees, their branches dark from the damp and reaching into the gray like skeleton hands.

  I’m shivering and Josh has his arms around me to keep me warm. I lean back into his chest and close my eyes fo
r a moment, just enjoying his embrace, the feel of his hard body behind me. It makes me feel safe and protected. I could stay like this forever.

  But the cab crawls down the road and stops beside us, and Josh is letting go. I shove my hands in my jacket pockets as he leans down and kisses me, soft and sweet.

  “Thank you for the best Halloween ever,” he says.

  “Thank you for the sex,” I tell him and he laughs.

  “You’re welcome. Anytime.”

  I reluctantly walk to the cab but he’s suddenly ahead of me and opening the door. He’s got good manners, too.

  I slide on in and he hesitates at the door. “Have a safe flight.”

  I nearly laugh. Why do people always say that? It’s not like I have any control over the plane. “I will try my best.”

  He grins and nods then shuts the door. I wave my fingers at him and he lifts his hand in goodbye. I try and commit his beautiful face to memory but I know I won’t forget him anyway.

  I tell the driver where I’m going. To the hostel.

  Then I’m going home.

  Home.

  Home.

  Home comes faster than I think. I go through the rest of the day in a daze, too afraid to nap in case I miss my flight, which turns out to be uneventful. I even manage to doze off for a few hours despite being cramped between the window and a fidgeting child. The copious glasses of cab sauv that Air New Zealand serves like candy certainly helped.

  When I arrive in Auckland, it’s like I’ve gone back in time instead of going forward. I can’t explain it except that everything feels old. I feel like I don’t belong here in my own country.

  But the feeling doesn’t last long. After I get my ratty backpack and duffel bag and go through customs, my old life comes crashing toward me. In the arrivals area I see him among a sea of people, the man I had wished I’d shared every sunset with. He’s holding a single red rose, his dark blond hair even shorter than before, his skin deeper than ever. He’s waiting for me.