I don’t tell them that, of course.
The next morning there’s dew covering the tarp above my head and everything feels slightly damp, but it’s warm compared to the last few nights out in the bush. I wake up before the girls and try to land in the bus below without waking them. I make good long use of the showers at the campsite. It’s the first shower for days—and it’s a hot one—and I stay in it as long as possible, even though it means pumping more twenty-cent coins into the machine.
By the time I emerge, my skin is pink and red like a newborn but I don’t care. I feel like I’ve washed all the grime and controversy of the last few days off of me.
Thankfully, all the beauty stays with me. The sunset and sunrise over Key Summit. Gemma’s honest words. The look on her face while she took in the world, so new to her. The feel of her between my arms.
I want her so badly and it’s more than I can bear. Her sudden frost keeps me back and I’m constantly misreading her looks and her words, wanting to believe that she feels something for me but so afraid that it’s all in my imagination. It was almost like she flirted more with me when she was with Nick, and now that she’s not, I’m nothing more than some guy paying for petrol.
After a quick breakfast, we work our way out of tiny, quaint Arrowtown and onto a narrow winding road that’s supposed to lead us from here to Christchurch. Before the Routeburn Track, I’d contacted Tibald to see where he was and it seemed like Christchurch was the only place where our paths would intersect.
In our original plans, we were supposed to stop overnight at a bed-and-breakfast in a town called Twizel and go on a Lord of the Rings Tour, which my inner geek was flipping out over, but now with Nick gone, Gemma seems hellbent on getting us to decent civilization.
She drives Mr. Orange as if her life depends on it, and even when we stop at Lindis Pass to take pictures of the yellow flowers dotted on rolling suede brown hills, she seems like a woman on a mission. None of what we’re witnessing seems to be sinking into her brain, and her face remains impassive and dull, as if she’s not really here.
The ache she was talking about, well, I’m starting to feel it now. I look at Amber and she doesn’t seem to notice that Gemma has gone into autopilot, her own attention focused out the window at the rolling hills of tussock under a saturated blue sky, not on our driver. But mine is, and I just want to beg her to stop driving, to just take a moment and breathe.
Luckily—or unluckily—Mr. Orange decides to do that for us, and it’s all thanks to me.
Outside of Twizel there’s a turnoff for Mount Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand. I get Gemma to turn onto what looks to be a private drive. From where the main road is, it looks like it climbs and snakes its way up a hill, providing spectacular views of the brilliantly blue Lake Pukaki and Mount Cook. I want a view that will knock Gemma’s socks off. I want her to feel.
Mr. Orange has gone through a lot and I assume the Shaggin’ Wagon can take some more. We’re about three minutes up this rough, steep, drive when the bus starts to cough and shake and then comes to a stop.
Then it starts rolling backward.
“Put on the hand brake!” I manage to yell before the back wheels go over the side of the hill and the bus slumps to a stop amid a cloud of dust. Wind whistles in through the open back window.
Gemma slowly turns around and eyes me, her face pinched and panicked. I hate being the voice of reason. I want to flap my arms and panic, too.
“We’re good,” I manage to say. “Let’s take a look at her.”
I get out of the bus and come over to Gemma, opening her door. Once again she’s clad in shorts and I have a hard time concentrating on the bus instead of her smooth, fine legs, but I manage. Either Mr. Orange has run out of gas way before his time or he’s overheating.
One look at the engine tells me that it’s not the problem.
We’ve run out of gas and in the worst place possible.
Gemma looks absolutely embarrassed, and though she should be, I also can’t blame her. Considering everything that’s been going on with her, I should have been the one driving, not her. She needed to sit back and pull herself together. Or let herself unravel. I would be fine with either one.
“I’m such an idiot,” she moans, her head pressed against the steering wheel.
I place my hand on her back and rub. She flinches at first but I try not to take offense. I keep doing it, persistently, and eventually she relaxes into me. She’s saying more than she realizes; I just wish she’d let her body call all the shots.
“It’s just petrol,” I tell her, remembering to use the proper term. “I’m sure there’s someone just up the road who will give us some. People tend to understand this shit out in the country. I bet whoever lives here gets people like us once a week, dumbasses like me who think it’s a great idea to come up here and take pictures.”