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“Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No, thank you,” I whisper and hang up the phone.
Now he’s really gone.
“He left?” Nyla asks.
“Yes,” I manage to say. I can hear the emptiness in my voice, like an echo in a dark room.
She reaches across the table and puts her hand on mine. “I’m sorry. Really, Gemma. That sucks.”
It does suck. I literally feel like my heart has been sucked from my body and there’s nothing but a gaping hole in my chest.
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.
