“How about I stay for a while,” I tell him, “then cab home before the sun rises. I’ll feel better. I have a knack for missing planes, trains, and automobiles.”
He bites his lip and nods. “Excellent film, by the way.” He comes over to me and kisses me softly on the lips. “Let’s go.”
We leave the billiards room and step out into the party. There are people milling about in the hallway—a woman dressed as Luigi from Super Mario, a guy dressed as Ferris Bueller—and though we totally look like two people who just shagged themselves silly, everyone’s too drunk to even make a remark about it.
Hand in hand, we weave through the party and into the night.
It takes us a long time to catch a cab—no surprise since they’re in such high demand tonight. It seems that the province has just as strict drunk-driving rules as we do back home.
We walk for blocks through boisterous suburban streets with houses decorated with all things spooky, listening to firecrackers going off and the subdued beat of music pouring from random house parties. In the distance, police sirens wail. In a way, it’s almost romantic. It has to be at least one a.m. and though the world around us swirls with life, it feels like we’re the only two people left alive.
I was smart enough to bring a jacket with me—Halloween in the southern hemisphere happens in the spring, not autumn—but even though the air is damp and chilly, I’m still high from the orgasm and subdued by the beer; it keeps my nerves alive, my blood warm.
Walking beside Josh helps, too. Though he doesn’t have a coat or anything, he still radiates a kind of heat that draws me to him. I want to know more about him, soak him all up. I want to talk to him about his art but I’m afraid doing so will bring me down, and I can’t afford to be that way. Not now. Art used to be everything to me. Now it reminds me of too much loss.
So we talk about travel instead.
“Have you ever wanted to see your sister overseas?” I ask, remembering what he said about her being in Spain.
He nods. “Yeah, for sure.”
“Would you go traveling anywhere else?”
He seems to think about that for a moment. “Probably somewhere else in Europe. It depends what she has in mind.”
“But would you go alone somewhere?” I press. When he doesn’t answer I say, “I think you should. It will open your eyes.”
He looks at me curiously. “Has it opened your eyes?”
The truth is, I’m not sure that it has. Not in the way I wanted it to. So I smile at him and say, “You should come to New Zealand.”
He laughs. He doesn’t realize I’m not saying it to be polite. I’m half-serious. He should go there. Everyone should.
“I’d love to,” he says. “But you know . . .”
I can hear him finishing his sentence in his head. Work, possibly school. Lack of money. Life. There’s always something. There had always been something for me, some excuse not to go, until suddenly it was really my only choice.
“Well, I’d show you a good time.”
He squints at me. “Am I showing you a good time?”
I shrug. “Sure.”
He reads my bluff. He stops in the middle of the sidewalk and puts his hand behind my head, pulling me to him. “Bullshit,” he whispers before kissing me hard. I almost go dizzy, swirled in desire all over again, like melting soft-serve.
We only pull apart when we hear the sound of an approaching car and the air around us dances in the sharp glare of headlights. It’s a cab and he immediately raises his hand to flag it down. He grabs my arm and gives me a look. “I’m showing you a great time.”
Of course, he’s right.
We get in the cab and make out in the back like horny teenagers, all groping and hungry kisses. It’s not long before he tosses money at the annoyed driver and we stumble out of the cab and into the front yard of his house. It’s tall and narrow and even in the dim streetlights I can tell it’s immaculately kept.
“Wow, you live here?”
He looks away and hesitates. “I live with my mom,” he says.
“Are we going to wake her up?” I ask quietly as he ushers me in first through the front gate.
He shakes his head, getting out his keys. “Don’t worry, my room is far away from hers and she sleeps like a rock.”
I can tell he’s embarrassed. I know he probably feels bad that he lives with his mom but if Vancouver is anything like Auckland, the rent prices are hard to afford. I don’t live with my mom, but I do have a flatmate.
As if he hears my thoughts, he turns to look at me just as he sticks his keys in the front door. “It’s an expensive city,” he explains. His face is shadowed and he probably likes it that way. “I pay my mom what I can but if I want a tiny, shitty studio apartment close to work, I have to shell out at least a thousand bucks a month.”
I briefly put my hand on his shoulder. “Hey, I’d do the same.” Little does he know, if it weren’t for my job and the fact that it pays well, and my flatmate, I wouldn’t be able to afford Auckland either. He also doesn’t know that I’m not one hundred percent sure I have a job to return to when I go home.
We go in the house. Josh moves his tall frame through the dark with ease, as if he’s used to coming home in the odd hours. I wonder if he goes out a lot, what places he goes, what girls he sleeps with. The guy has skills and he didn’t get them from practicing on himself.