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I hate that I’ve become so afraid.
I hear the door open behind me and see someone emerge from the indoor showers. I quickly snap it up before anyone else can. When I emerge, less than ten minutes later, utterly conscious of other people waiting for it, I feel better.
An hour later Josh and I are gathered in the parking lot of the backpackers and waiting for the owner, Hamish, to show his face, as well as any other people.
But when Hamish appears, it’s apparent that Josh and I are the only ones going. My pulse quickens in my wrist, excited, scared, but also relieved for some reason. There’s really no one I’d want to experience this with more than him. There’s no one I’d want to experience anything with more than him.
“So I’ll meet you at the bottom of the hill,” Hamish says.
“Uh, what?” Josh responds for the both of us.
“I have to get the tractor and then get the boat,” Hamish says as if he has to say this every day, which I’m sure he does. “Unless you want to wait up here.”
I look at Josh. He’s trying to put together the words tractor and boat and they aren’t making much sense.
I put my hand on his shoulder and give him an affectionate squeeze. He stares down at me in shock and then at my hand. I suppose I haven’t been very touchy-feely lately.
“It’s a Kiwi thing,” I say. “There’s no dock.”
He looks like his mind has been blown but he manages to shrug. “All right, so just walk down the hill . . . how far?”
Hamish laughs. “When your feet get wet, you’ve gone too far.”
Josh gives me a look and I can’t help but laugh, too. “Come on, you Canadian,” I tell him, pushing him forward onto the gravel road that winds down the hill.
“You’re awfully violent this morning,” Josh says. “Should I be worried?”
“You should always be worried,” I say, and I try to ignore the pang of guilt that comes right after. Yesterday I ran into Lake Tekapo wanting to feel numb from head to toe, hoping to quell my raging heart. I ended up kissing him again. I can still taste him on my lips.
“Don’t worry about me, Josh,” I had said.
“But I do,” he answered. And the look in his eyes, it was the same as this morning, full of warmth and concern and all the things that might heal me from the inside out.
I turn my attention to the road and start marching down it, my legs pumping briskly. I haven’t done anything physical since the Routeburn Track, and even though that was just a few days ago, I feel like I haven’t been pushing my body. The funny thing now is I’m not even sure that I’ll be continuing my crazy fitness schedule. I’ll never stop being active—I definitely picked up that habit during my physio training after the accident—but I won’t have to beat myself up over missing a workout here and there.
“What are you thinking about?” Josh asks, his long legs easily keeping up my fast pace.
“Why are you asking?”
“You have that look on your face.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “What look?”
“The one that says you’re so far gone inside your head that you can’t even come out to play.”
I stare at him for a few strides and he stares right back. He can see me at times like this and I hate it.
I kick at a stone and watch it go tumbling down the road. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s always nothing and it’s always something,” he murmurs but doesn’t say anything else.
When we turn a corner, the blue bay of Le Bons comes into view and the sight of that endless ocean, the one that makes Josh feel so alone, spurs something in me.
“Fine,” I say carefully. “I was just thinking I haven’t worked out in a while.”
He scoffs incredulously. “We were just hiking for like four days straight. What the hell? That has to count for something.”
“It does,” I admit. “I’m just used to keeping goals and records and trying to keep on top of stuff.”
“But that’s your job talking,” he says.
I give him a pointed look. “Old job,” I remind him.
“Sure. But old or new, it’s a job, right? No way to live your life. Is it your passion? I mean, in the way that painting was?”
My heart sinks for a moment. “No. Not at all. It was just something I enjoyed and was good at.”
“Lots of people think that’s what passion is.”
I rub my lips together. “Most people are wrong.”
He stares at me and I can’t read his face for the life of me. But I also don’t want to spend too much time doing so. Soon we’re walking across a large expanse of hard, wet sand, out toward a tractor hauling a small metal boat.
“Now that,” I say, grabbing Josh’s phone out of his pocket and swiping across the screen in order to take a picture, “is a real Kiwi scene.” I snap the shot and hand it back to him. “You’re welcome.”
He takes the phone. “Hold up,” he says, coming around the front of me. “If you’re going to use my phone to take a picture of a tractor and a boat, I’m going to use it to take a picture of you. You’re a real Kiwi scene.”
I freeze, totally unused to having my picture taken. I know, it’s weird in this day and age of selfies and Facebook and Instagram. But the Instagram pics I take are usually of Auckland scenery or healthy meals I made, not of myself.
