Where Sea Meets Sky(58)

I’ve wanted and yearned my whole life, but I don’t think I’ve ever wanted quite like this. It pulls from my gut and mingles with those feelings I’ve ignored, the ones that tell me I’m looking for something and haven’t found it yet.

Is it Josh? Would he fill that void?

Or is he just the sleight-of-hand in a card trick?

He’s sitting across from me on a mossy rock and his eyes keep catching mine through the flames. If I were to lean over and kiss him, I would catch fire.

But I think I’d enjoy it.

“I think I’m going to turn in,” he says, his voice careful, and I look down to hide the disappointment I know is etched on my face.

“Yeah. Me too,” I reply, hoping I sound free.

But I’m not free. My stupid fucking heart is nothing more than a cage. I have to learn better. I have to watch myself.

I tip another shot of whiskey into my mouth and feel it burn as it goes down. I wish there were no tomorrow.

Josh seems hesitant to leave me so I get up and go to the washroom instead with the one dying flashlight that we have. I relieve myself and then spend a few moments milling around the campsites, staring at the glow from the tents against the glow of the stars above.

I wish I could paint this. I wish I could capture it as it is, all the details. I wouldn’t need to embellish or elaborate. The reality is as beautiful as art.

With that thought in my head, I crawl into bed beside Nick and go to sleep.



The next morning I wake up with a fuzzy head and a frozen nose. It’s the only thing poking out of the sleeping bags, and when I open my eyes I see frost on the top of the tent. Lord, it’s cold.

I turn against Nick and try and snuggle, try to get warm. But he cries out and pushes me away.

“Fuck, babe, you’re pure ice,” he says in annoyance and he keeps me at arm’s length so I don’t bring the chill to him. Now I kind of want to freeze him out in a different way.

“Cuddle me,” I demand, half joking, half serious.

But he only covers himself with the rest of his sleeping bag and rolls away, facing the side of the tent. “Fuck no, cuddle yourself, ice queen,” he grumbles.

Maybe he doesn’t mean for it to sting, but it does. It shouldn’t. He meant it as just a joke, a jab at my frozen limbs, not anything more than that. The truth is I don’t really need to snuggle up to Nick; he’s just a warm body and I’d probably snuggle up to a fat, bearded trucker named Earl if I had a choice, but I don’t.

I sigh, my breath catching in a cloud above my head, then decide to get on with the day. I get dressed as fast as I can, my teeth chattering as I go, pulling on singlets and T-shirts and flannel shirts and sweaters.

I noisily zip out of the tent and emerge into the mist. I can barely see Josh and Amber’s tent across the fire pit. Everything is hidden by cold, heavy fog.

My teeth are still chattering as I quickly get the fire going for warmth and then the stove going for our breakfast. It’s not long before everyone else is emerging, hugging themselves and spewing obscenities over the weather. But that’s the thing about the South Island and especially the mountains. You can have four seasons in one day and the weather can change drastically in a short amount of time. The number one killer for tourists is hypothermia.

Thankfully we’ve all planned ahead, and though it takes a while and we have to wear all the clothes we’ve packed and wait for the fire to get hot, we eventually warm up and get ready to continue on with the hike.

The track from the campsite is a lot of up and down, and though I know that the cliffs don’t suddenly drop off from the path, it’s still scary making our way through with limited visibility.

I guess I’m going too slow for Nick because he takes the lead in front of me.

“We’re not going to fall off the mountain,” he tosses over his shoulder at me. “Pick up the pace.”

I exhale noisily but keep one foot going in front of the other. Compared to yesterday, I’m in a bad mood. The low cloud makes me feel boxed in and claustrophobic, plus the slight whiskey hangover and Nick’s rejection this morning doesn’t help.

We pass through an area known as “The Orchard” where the path turns into a grassy plain dotted with ferns and ribbonwood trees. Josh says they remind him of arbutus trees back in British Columbia, the way their thin trunks bend and reach. In the fog they just look like ghostly, frail hands trying to hold the mist, but they can’t hold on any better than I can.

Today’s hike feels longer than yesterday’s, and though we pass by waterfalls and lush beechwood forest, I feel like that moment I wanted to hang on to has passed forever. I didn’t want a tomorrow and yet here it is. Cold and gray and trapped.