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I want to tell her again that I love her. I had no idea that once you realized you were in love, it was nearly fucking impossible to keep it to yourself. I always thought guys were such chumps for putting themselves out there like that, but now I’m doing the exact same thing. It probably makes me a chump, but the funny thing is, I don’t care. Love whittles the world down into caring about just one thing.
It’s not that I need her to say it back, though to be honest it’s killing me that she hasn’t, but I can’t keep it inside. I’m thinking it all the time, over everything she does. I’m thinking it when I’m pissing in the outhouse, I’m thinking it when I’m talking to strangers. It’s invaded me, and the longer I try to contain it the more it wants to escape, like an oil spill.
I try and fuck it into her instead. It always works. In bed she responds to me like she’s an extension of myself, eager for more, eager for me. In bed I can trick myself into thinking she loves me, that she feels the same. It’s so easy to do. So I do it, again and again. It’s the only place that I’ve been able to find my peace.
Love is a fucking head trip. It’s a bad idea. It’s utterly distracting and, ironically, I think love is bad for your heart.
In the end, I think it’s going to break mine.
Two days later we’re doing the drive to Cape Reinga. It’s a desolate, long journey through shack settlements and unchecked bush. There’s a rampant, wild feeling here, a sensation that you’re on the point of no return. We don’t see any beaches, no ocean, just the same untamed forests and unsmiling faces. I think it’s the first place I don’t want to paint, mainly because it feels like I’m capturing something I shouldn’t.
The weather changes. Gray clouds sit on the horizon like massive alien motherships, moving slowly across the wide expanse of blue sky.
“Goodbye, blue sky,” I sing as I stare out the windscreen and the long, empty road.
When we finally reach the cape, there aren’t that many cars in the car park, just a few tour buses. When we step outside, we aren’t surprised why there’s no one here. The wind is vicious, battering into us, turning us around, and rain sporadically whips us in the face.
We slip on light jackets, grateful that at least it’s not too cold. Grabbing each other’s hands, we make our way down a long path toward the famous lighthouse, which is periodically shrouded in passing mist. Unlike the East Cape Lighthouse, there are others here.
I’m immediately hit with the foreboding sense of isolation as the path becomes more narrow, sloping off on both sides to wave-beaten beaches. You can’t even see the horizon.
This is tapu. This is sacred. This is a place where things end.
We reach the lighthouse and look below to where the land continues onward as a few humps of black rock. That’s the point where Pops told us the spirits leave this world. You can barely see it through the cloud cover and the crashing waves. The water here, where one sea meets an ocean, is violent and rough and loud.
It seems like a terrifying bridge for the dead.
I want to leave.
I want to go back to the sunny, happy-as-fuck place we were in before, but then I’m thinking maybe it’s too late now. Maybe there’s no going back. The sand is almost at the bottom of the hourglass.
I’m at the end of the country, the end of my stay.
I have to do something.
I turn around and see the tall signpost in the middle of the bluff. There are signs pointing to Sydney, London, Tokyo, the Tropic of Capricorn, Los Angeles, and Vancouver.
Vancouver.
Eleven thousand two hundred and twenty-two kilometers away.
I can’t do it.
I can’t go back there, not without her.
I face Gemma, who is looking at the sign with apprehension. Her eyes flick to mine, the wind blowing her hair across her face.
She can feel this coming. She looks ready to run.
“I’m not going back,” I say to her, my voice raised over the wind.
She rubs her lips together and shoves her hair behind her ears. “What do you mean?”
But she knows what I mean. Just because I didn’t bring it up again, what I told her on the beach on New Years still stands. I still love her, and I still don’t want to leave.
“I mean, I’m not going back to Vancouver.”
“But you have school. You have to go to school.” She sounds like a broken record.
I smile at her. “No, I don’t. I don’t have to do anything. I can take courses at a later time. Hell, I can go to school here. I know you have an art school in Auckland, I Googled it.”
“Josh.” She looks at me with wild, staring eyes. She looks like an animal caught in a trap, about to gnaw her leg off in order to be free.
I throw up my hands. I don’t understand why this is so hard for her to comprehend. How does this affect her? “What? Why not? If I don’t get in, I can get a working visa and get a job somewhere. I’m twenty-three. This is the time to do this stuff, to try and figure life out, see what works. See what’s worth it.”
She shakes her head and looks away.
My lips are moving, can’t she hear what I’m saying?
“Gemma,” I plead, grabbing her shoulder and making her face me. “What is it?”
“Why are you doing this?”
I frown at her. “Because of you, obviously.”
She smiles but it’s cold. “You can’t do this for me. It has to be for you.”
