Where Sea Meets Sky(76)

I want to reach out to Josh so badly. I want to lean into him, feel his arms around me, hear those words he once whispered, that he understands, that he gets me. But I’m too much in my head, too far down the spiral, and I know that when our time is up together, he will be gone and I’ll still be trying to deal.

Time is flying, swooping past me, and I have no idea where I’m going to end up in the end.

Amber turns over under the covers, her butt bumping into my hip. I sigh and stare up at the ceiling, at where Josh should be sleeping on the loft above my head. I think about getting out of bed, quietly, and climbing the ladder to him.

What would he say? Would he kick me out of his bed or welcome me with open arms? Would he be wishing I was Amber, or someone else, someone who smiled more than smirked, who took in the world eagerly, like he did?

Would he take away the pain, the dull ache in my chest? For that night on Key Summit, he at least took the emptiness in his hands and held it. He shouldered it. Sometimes I think he keeps wanting to shoulder it.

But my thoughts can’t be trusted. My mind keeps thinking about him and Amber and how he could so easily put her aside. I know that Amber was really starting to like him. However he might’ve felt about her then, Josh is indifferent now.

How do I know that he won’t be that way with me? When I get back to Auckland, I have to find a job and I have no idea where I’m going to start, considering the one steady job I had for the few years is gone and my best reference is gone with it. Josh won’t be there to shoulder anything for me—why should I ask him to start now?

I sigh more loudly than I meant to, and I hear the wooden boards of the loft creak. Josh stirs and I see his long, lean legs coming down the ladder. I watch—unwatched myself—as his boxer briefs come into view, a hint of morning wood snug inside. Then his washboard abs and his tattoos. I want to ask him about them and wonder if we’ll ever have the time. Next is his firm chest, the black ink snaking over him. Then his arms, wide shoulders, kissable neck.

Then it’s his face, and I mean to look away before I see it, but I’m too slow, caught up in morning haze, and I’m staring into his eyes. He smiles with them, cocky but warm. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him look at me so fondly.

It unnerves me. A ghost of a smile traces my lips and I look away.

“Good morning,” I say softly, not wanting to wake Amber. Josh and I are the only ones going somewhere today; she deserves to sleep in.

“Morning,” he says. “Want to take a shower with me?”

I raise my brows to the heavens.

He grins. “I mean, come with me to the showers. We don’t have to shower together. Unless you’d like to.”

I give him the look, the one that says I’m so not impressed, even though I secretly am.

“Suit yourself,” he says and grabs a towel and clothes out of his backpack. It reminds me that I should do laundry tonight.

Then he’s gone and I realize that I’ve turned into a mute statue around him. No wonder he’s often approaching me like I’m a wild animal about to flee.

It’s a gorgeous, sunny morning with the valley lightening from dark green to light green, bit by bit by bit. I stand on the porch, watching it all unfold, and once again I feel that strange pinch of envy about being unable to re-create this in the way I want to, and the fact that Josh can.

I close my eyes to it and wait a few minutes, then head out on the path after the showers. There are two in a little building between the cottages and the main house, and he’s waiting outside of them, talking to some girl with long willowy legs and no hips. She’s got flawless white skin—no cellulite on this chick—and blond hair braided down her back. She’s making him laugh and I’m struck, like a slap in the face, by how ridiculously handsome he is.

That envy strikes again. Not that I can’t make him laugh, because I can and I have and nothing sounded better to my ears than hearing his rich laughter and seeing that smart-ass twinkle in his eyes, but that this girl could probably sleep with him and not understand how fucking lucky she is, while I’m too fucked up to even let it happen again.

He doesn’t even notice as I walk past him, and I’m hoping there’s a shower free inside the farmhouse. There isn’t so I turn around, ready to go back. I wait though, paused in the doorway of the house, watching the showers on the ridge. One opens up and it’s the one that the blond chick is waiting at.

To my horror and surprise, she gestures to it and to Josh. And not in the, Hey you take it instead of me, but in the, Let’s shower together and “conserve water” kind of way. I hold my breath, watching what he’s going to do. She’s fucking hot, way hotter than me, and thin in that celebrity kind of way that I could never be. I’m either curvy with muscles or I’m a blimp.