Where Sea Meets Sky by Karina Halle
I nod and bring them outside. I lead them down a path lined with cabbage trees as it winds over to the vines. I can see Jez, his blue ball cap poking up way in the distance.
There isn’t much for me to point out. We’re a boutique winery and we’re not open for tastings or anything touristy yet, so it’s just the vines for acres and acres. We grow three types of grapes and would like to do more than pinot noir in the red department but the land doesn’t quite get hot enough, except on the south end of the small rise near the edge of the property. But my parents started it back when my father was a struggling artist and, throughout the years, either the winery kept the art afloat or the art kept the winery afloat.
The money that my father left behind, thanks to what my mother calls carefully selected stocks, has kept this place going, and the winery even flourishes, depending on the year. It’s a good life. There was a moment there after his death when I thought my mom was going to pack it up, but with Auntie Jolinda’s help and Jez staying on as winemaker, it’s still going strong.
I only wish I liked winemaking—or, really, wine in general—enough to want to be a part of it. Give me a brewery any day.
When we get to the crest of the low hill and can see over the vines to Hawkes Bay, Port of Napier, and the rolling hills on the other side of Highway 2, Amber decides she’s had enough.
“Want us to come with you?” I ask and she shakes her head and says she wants to use the washroom. We watch her blond head pass along the vines as she goes back to the house. I have a sneaking suspicion that she’s leaving on purpose. Seeing as we don’t have a lot of privacy here, I could kiss her for it. Sometimes she really is the best cousin ever.
I start wondering what I should buy her for Christmas—hell, what I should buy Josh—when I feel his arms slip around my stomach, embracing me from behind. In the distance I can see plumes of dust rising from the long driveway, meaning Uncle Jeremy and his eight- and eleven-year-old kids will be here any moment. But out on this hill, surrounded by undulating green, it feels like we have eternity.
Josh kisses the rim of my earlobe, his lips pausing by my ear. “Can you remember the last time we were alone like this?”
I can’t quell the excitement growing inside me. My hormones start to alight, starting off as flames and growing into Roman candles.
“I think the last time we were alone, you were fucking me against a tree,” I say, almost whispering, as if my voice could scare him off.
“No trees here,” he murmurs and presses his erection into my ass. “Only wood.”
I grin at that but it melts away into hazy lust. I can’t stand it. I turn around to face him and he grabs me, kissing me hard. I match his intensity, hot, hot, hot to the touch. His tongue, his lips, his mouth, they’re all sparks to fuel the fire. He kisses me like he’s addicted, needing his fix, and I can only respond in kind. The more he fucks my tongue with his, licks my neck, bites at my collarbone, the more I think I might spontaneously combust.
His fingers deftly undo my shorts and slide down into my underwear. He inhales sharply when he feels how wet I already am, but he must know by now what affect he has on me. He pushes a finger in deep, then two, then three.
I groan and my neck falls back, like my head is too heavy to hold up. I just want to submit and have him do terrible, dirty things to me here among the grapevines. I want him inside me, hard and fast or slow and deliberate—I don’t care.
But then I find myself pulling away from his hand just when his other is slipping under my T-shirt. I drop to my knees, feeling the soft, cool earth beneath me, and reach up for his zipper. I glance up at him with mischievous eyes and he bites his lip before grabbing the hair at the back of my head in a tight fist.
It hurts but it’s a good hurt. He’s the master of hair-pulling. I slowly, teasingly unzip his fly, then pull his jeans down bit by bit. Once they drop to his ankles, I do the same to his boxer briefs, until his cock is free and jutting out in front of me. It really is a beautiful sight and I find myself marveling at it for a few moments. In the pool room at the house party, in his room, by the road in Le Bons Bay, I never really had the best look. His cock is as flawless as it feels between my hands, hot, silky steel.
I take a firm hold around his shaft, holding him taut as I lick a path up and down him, from base to shiny, swollen tip. His fist in my hair tightens and he moans. “Oh fuck.”
I smile and continue. The sound of his pleasure only adds to mine. I go from slow to fast and back again, and before long he has both of his hands at the back of my head and he’s fucking my mouth, his hips slamming into my lips in controlled movements. I try and let my lips and tongue be all he feels, but occasionally my tooth razes him; it only seems to turn him on more. Just when I think he’s about to shoot his load down my throat, he pulls my head back and his wet cock bobs out of my mouth.
Somewhere in the distance I can hear voices, my family, but they’re of no consequence. Josh tears his eyes away from mine and glances lazily at the horizon. When he looks back to me, a languid smile stretches across his face.
“They might start looking for us,” he says, “if we give them something to look for.”
Suddenly he crouches down behind me so that we’re both hidden and pushes his hand between my shoulder blades so I’m on my hands as well as knees. He pulls me by the hips so my back arches and slides my shorts down over my ass and thighs.
“Jesus,” he swears, and I can feel his eyes burning through me, as molten as his fingers. “I won’t forget this.”
He shuffles forward so his cock slides up between the crack of my ass. I’m about to move out of the way, thinking we have a lot more to do before we jump to backdoor action, when he pulls back slightly and begins to tease my ass with his cock before priming it at my wetness. One hand pushes my thighs further apart while the other grabs my waist, his fingers digging into me.
He guides himself inside, slowly, hissing sharply as he goes. He feels impossibly fat and thick from this angle and I inhale as he pushes in. My fingernails dig into the dirt.
He pulls back slowly and then thrusts in sharp with a low groan. Both hands grip my hips hard as his pace quickens. He pounds me so fast and hard I can feel my knees slipping in the earth and my breasts coming free of my bra. I reach below to help myself out and it doesn’t take long before I’m coming. I try to keep my cries subdued in case the sound carries, and I can only eke out breathless little whimpers of his name over and over again as the world around me swirls in a beautiful dance.
He isn’t done yet. He slams into me, his balls slapping against my ass, skin on skin, until finally he’s moaning loudly and pushing in with three final thrusts, burying himself deep inside of me. He slowly wraps his arms around me from behind, then slips his cock out.
I hear rustling in the distance, so I straighten up and get to my shaky feet, pulling up my shorts. In my daze I can see people heading toward us along the rows. Uncle Jeremy’s kids, Keri and Kam.
“Shit,” I say, dropping back down before they see me. Josh stays low, pulling up his jeans, and I take his hand. We walk crouched down along the vines until we’re heading down the rise on the side not facing the house. There, with the hill blocking us, we stand up, bathed in shadow.
I lean over and kiss him quickly on the lips, unable to keep myself from smiling or touching him.
He grins lazily at me. “Told you.”
“What?”
“That I was going to explode inside of you.”
“Well, you did just that.” And once again I disappear behind a row of grapes to pee so I don’t have the same problem as before. Either I have to stop wearing shorts or we have to stop having sex outside.
When I come back around the corner, I see Keri and Kam at the top of the rise, thankfully not where we had sex, and waving at us to follow them. I grab Josh’s hand and we go.
No one seems very suspi
Ah, poor mum. If and when she finds out about me and Josh, she’s going to have a conniption. I’m not sure if the fact that he’s not staying in the country for long will be a good thing or a bad thing for her, in this case.
Keri and Kam are nice kids, and they seem to get significantly older each time I see them. I’m always surprised to see them taller and dressing differently, but they’re easygoing and lighthearted. A bit like Amber in that respect, though they’re from different sides of the family. Keri and Kam are also more closely connected to their Maori heritage than I am. It’s nice to have those little reminders of where I came from.
My uncle Jeremy is a riot, though. He and my uncle Robbie, whom I borrowed Mr. Orange from—and now think a lot differently of, thanks to his porn collection—are brothers, born ten years apart. That said, they’re pretty much the same, right down to their laugh. Robbie is more subdued because he’s the older sibling and smokes more grass, while Jeremy is the loud one, but they’re both nutters. We’ll see my uncle Robbie when we go up to the Northland to spend New Year with my grandfather—he takes care of him, even though my grandfather is strong as an ox.
“Ever been to a hāngi, bro?” Uncle Jeremy asks Josh as we sit down to the wide kauri wood table my father made.
Josh shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
Uncle Jeremy laughs and has a swig of his beer. “Then you haven’t. When you go up north, you’ll have one, aye? Robbie will make sure of that. So will Pops. How about the hongi?” Josh only stares so my uncle winks at me. “We’ll let Pops deal with that one.”
Josh looks utterly bewildered by all these Maori terms but he’s taking it in stride. He starts talking about funny Canadian stuff, to which Jeremy cracks up. I look at Amber, who’s drinking our own pinot noir and flushing at the cheeks, clearly enjoying herself. It’s weird to think that in a few days she’ll be flying to Australia on her own. I wonder if she can hunt down Nick and kick him in the nuts for me.
Though it’s not quite the roast my mother has planned for Christmas Day, it’s still a feast of roasted vegetables and homemade steak and onion pies. She’s always been very good at stuffing us silly, which is probably why it’s a blessing that my aspirations turned from art to physical fitness. I was already starting to go a bit doughy in the stomach, hips, and thighs when I was a teenager.
The thought that my physical fitness might no longer be as crucial to my daily life begins to eat away at me. I try to focus on whatever my family is talking about, especially what Josh is saying, but my thoughts keep going to the fact that when I eventually emerge from this vacation haze, I’m going to have to face cold, hard reality, and Josh’s cock won’t be there to distract me from it.
My mother loves to ask questions at the worst possible time, so it shouldn’t surprise me when she says loudly and primly at the table, “Gemma, how is it going with you and Nick?”
“Is this the Aussie rugby player?” Uncle Jeremy asks, and I raise my brows, startled that even he knows about Nick.
I give my mother a steady look while the internal debate rages on. To tell the truth or not tell the truth, that is the question. I glance at Josh, and though his face is impassive, I know what he wants to hear.
I sigh and say, “Well if you must know, Nick and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.”
“Good,” Uncle Jeremy says as he shoves pie into his face. “Aussies are no bloody good.”
The Aussie and Kiwi rivalry is about as heated and constant as the Canadian and American one, but this has nothing to do with it. I eye my uncle. “It didn’t end because he’s Australian.”
He shrugs as if to say it should have.
“What happened, dear?” my mother asks, and I can’t read her tone. It’s flat, like she could go either way. So I tell the truth.
“I’m not really sure what happened. It’s a bit of a long story, but the gist of it is, he was an ass and became more of an ass on the trip. Possessive, paranoid, and just—”
“He was a shithead,” Amber speaks up, her eyes wide and earnest. “Like, totally. Gemma kicked him to the curb.”
That wasn’t exactly true but I’m adding another round of Christmas presents for this girl.
“An ass?” my mom repeats, and there’s a bit of a smile on her face. She smoothes her blond bob back behind her ears and hides her mouth with her hand. She’s smiling.
“What’s so funny?” I ask her.
Her eyes, light and playful, dart over to Auntie Jolinda before coming back to me. She composes herself and folds her hands daintily in front of her. “Oh, Gemma. I can’t say I’m all that surprised. He struck me as an ass when I first met him.”
That was the only time she met him, too. She was in Auckland visiting and came by the gym. Nick was a little brusque with her but he was that way with most people. Most people I brought into his life, anyway. Anyone who benefited him personally was always a different story.
Once again I berate myself for being so hung up on this loser that I had to fly all the way to North America to try to get over him and just ended up back where I started.
“Well,” I say, clearing my throat and diverting my attention to the half-eaten pie. For a moment I want to focus on all the calories I’ve consumed and all the work I’ll have to do to burn them off, but I’m not sure anymore if that’s me talking. “The problem is that he said he’ll trash my name all over town and I’ll never get a job at another gym.”
There’s complete silence at the table. Not even a clattering of silverware. Finally, Keri says, “I don’t think anyone will listen to someone who says that about you.” She says it with such ease that I almost believe her, then I remember she’s young and she doesn’t realize yet how crap people can be.
“Awh, Gem,” Uncle Jeremy says, “you’ll be all right, aye? People will still want you at their gym because you’re you. And if not, you’ll find something else. You’re only twenty-two, right? Plenty of time to figure things out.”
Is that right? Because I’ve always felt that in your twenties you need to have everything figured out. Your job, your career, your body, your love life. Hell, the only thing I seem to have going for me at the moment is Josh, and he’s fleeting.
At that thought, the ache in my chest rears its ugly head. I push it down with a large gulp of wine and finish the rest of my dinner while the conversation turns to other things.
When it’s all over, I volunteer to help my mother and aunt clean up. As usual they wash the pots and pans and I dry so I don’t have to deal with soggy old food stuck to dishes, something that always make me want to chunder.
After my aunt tutters on about this and that, my mother hands me the pie tin but holds on to it for a moment, looking me in the eye. “You’re better off,” she says, and her candor makes me jerk my head back.
“Really?”
She lets go of the pan and goes back to washing. “He didn’t care about you. I could tell.” Her eyes dart over to the living room where Josh is laughing with Uncle Jeremy about something. “But that boy, Josh, he cares.”
I’m not sure how to approach this doozy so I go with the truth. “Josh is just a friend, Mum.”
“Good,” she says briskly, scrubbing the crap out of a pan. “You need friends. Sometimes I worry that . . .” She trails off and Auntie Jolinda leaves the room. My mother eyes me, ever so elegantly. “It’s good to have fun, Gemma.”
I slowly wipe the pan in my hand and then put it down. Somehow I still feel like a kid in this kitchen. “I have fun.”
“I know,” she says. “But I rarely see you smile. I saw you smile a lot tonight. You’re having fun. And whoever that person
My brows raise. Who replaced my robot mother with this woman?
She notices and lets out a little laugh, her delicate earrings swinging back and forth. “I know I don’t tell you this sort of thing often, my dear, but I’ve not seen it for quite a while. I know things have been tough—for the both of us. And I know you’re trying your best to do what you think is right. But, as your mother, if you just do what makes you happy, I’ll be happy.” She gestures to the kitchen. “Cooking makes me happy. Running this place makes me happy. Tasting that perfect glass of wine that we created, that makes me happy. And yes, one day, I think another man may make me happy. There’s a lot of happiness out there if you’re not afraid to reach for it.”
I don’t know why but tears are springing to my eyes. She makes a tsking sound with her teeth and comes over, enveloping me in a hug. It’s still a Justine Henare hug, the light, barely touching kind, but it counts. It’s hers and right now it’s for me.
“Take this opportunity,” she whispers in my ear, “and find what makes you happy. You may never get that chance again. Time waits for no one.”
I don’t know why, but “Time” by Pink Floyd starts playing in my head, its lyrics finally sinking in with its potency.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
But my mother is giving me the cue to run. I pull away and see the strange sincerity in her eyes. I nod and wipe away at the one tear that has dared to fall.
“Your father would want you to be happy, too,” she adds, her smile soft. She nods in the direction of Josh, who at that moment is looking across the kitchen island and catching my eye. “Go. Sit down.”
She hands me a glass of wine and ushers me away. I sit down next to Josh on the love seat and try to say more with my eyes than I can with my mouth.