Where Sea Meets Sky(78)

“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.

“Smile, weirdo,” Josh says.

My frown deepens and that’s when he takes the picture. He glances at the screen and shrugs. “Well, at least it’s accurate,” he says before shoving it back into his pocket. “Shall we see a man about a tractor and a boat?”

I make a humorous grunting sound and follow him to the water’s edge where Hamish is backing up the tractor.

“Need help?” I yell at him.

He shakes his head and keeps backing up until he slams on the tractor brakes and the whole boat goes sliding backward off the trailer and into the water where it lands with a splashy thud.

Hamish hops off the tractor and gestures to the boat with one arm. “All right, everyone in!”

Though I’ve known not to expect a dock in places like this, I also wasn’t thinking about having to wade through water. I take off my jandals and hold them in one hand, glad I’m wearing shorts as usual.

Josh, on the other hand, is wearing jeans and his skater shoes. He takes the shoes off and rolls up his jeans to the knees.

“You look like Tom Sawyer,” I tell him.

“I love Rush,” Hamish says, hopping on the boat and flipping through the radio channels, as if he expects to find the band and song playing right this minute. “Canadian band, aye?”

Josh and I walk up to the boat, the water reaching to mid-calf on me, before it starts to float away. Josh gets in first and I’m quickly hauled up by him until I’m sitting down on the cold metal seat that stretches across the boat’s middle.

Hamish lowers the propeller into the water. He gives us some quick info on the bay and the surrounding environment, though I’ve heard of most of the birds and sea creatures before. Then he slams on the thrust and we propel forward over ice blue waves that mimic the color of Josh’s eyes.

For the most part, the boat ride is a bumpy trip. The Southern Pacific Ocean rushes into the bay and we bounce around, the cold spray coating my bare limbs. At one point the boat really slams down after a sharp swell, as if we’re landing on a turtle’s back, and Josh’s arm goes around my waist, holding me tight and close.

I don’t protest. He can hold me all he wants here because I have this feeling that if I even move, I’ll be swept overboard. Partly because it’s wet and windy and wild out, and partly because it would be ironic. The girl who’s trying so hard not to drown would literally drown in the end.