Chapter 18 Driftwood
driftwood
Something once grounded, now carried by the tide. Lost, but still moving.
Ten minutes later, we’re in his truck, driving through McDonald’s. I don’t want to go home yet, so we drive on. Out of Welly, and up the coast.
The fries are gone by the time we park, overlooking some shoreline between somewhere and somewhere else. We unwrap the food. I stare at mine, muttering to it like it owes me studio rent, and rip out a bite.
“What did that burger ever do to you?”
Around a mouthful: “Thinking of our pesky chicken.” Another smirking bite. “Call this . . . revenge.”
“Don’t like her much?”
“She pooped on my favourite pants. That’s why I had to jimmy into jeans.”
He glances at my jeans—too quick, too guilty—and takes a bigger bite. A string of lettuce slips down his chin. I point. He swipes too late. It falls to his lap. Another flick towards my legs as he cleans his own. “Mm, I like her.”
“She also pecked a hole in your starfish shirt. You left muesli-bar crumbs in the pocket.”
His eyes narrow on the ocean, appropriately blood-red from a setting sun. “Proceed with the McChicken murder.”
I snicker. “McChicken Murders. Streaming weekly on a screen near you.”
A bird screeches above the truck, perfectly on cue.
“Starring New Zealand’s least-known actor,” Trent says with mocking dryness.
I whack his arm, smirking. “Maybe not for long.”
A gentle eyebrow raise.
“I might’ve landed a role as an extra in a movie.”
He finishes his burger and crumples the wrapper. The sound is sharp in the still air.
“I thought you were a theatre actor? Aren’t there two camps?”
“Heart’s in theatre, but I’ll do anything that pays. Extras, one-liners. Full-year live-in acting with board and food. Whoever will hire me.”
He slants me a sideways look and we exchange a silly laugh.
I point north, further up the coast. Salt wind keeps slipping in through the half-cracked window, lifting the scent of fries from the wrappers.
He turns away from Wellington and keeps going.
We don’t ask where. Just drive. Someplace with distance.
Enough of it it’ll pull taut all the tension from earlier.
Snap it. Make it non-existent again. Even if he’s another that leaves .
. . This is about enjoying moments. Making memories.
Grandpa. Trent. The oldies. A me that feels vibrant. Part of laughter, embrace.
Colour.
Life.
The stench of farm dung comes through the vents and we squish our noses driving through it.
I laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Trent asks.
What’s funny is how safe I feel with Trent at the wheel.
Maybe it started with that perfect parallel park—the one that irritated me so much. That confidence, that ease. That careful calculation. Or maybe it was all his protection since then.
Whatever did it, I’m not worried. Not tense.
I close my eyes. Don’t even watch the road.
My mind wanders, the pull of the car lulling.
And then, I’m in a boat. It rises on a giant wave and drops suddenly, a zip through my middle.
Exhilarating, at first. Then another comes.
And another. Finally, a wave tips the boat, smashing it to pieces, and I’m in a cold, cold ocean.
The waves settle, but it’s unsettling. Too dark to see land.
I struggle in the water, slipping under a few times, gurgling for help.
But who, in the middle of all this, could possibly help?
I stop fighting. Let the water take me.
Then . . . a length of driftwood, floating close. I seize it, nails digging deep.
Thank you, thank you, I whisper, for carrying me. For being strong when I can’t.
The wood hums against my palms. You’re okay.
A horn blasts, and—
The car. A line of traffic. A green light but no movement. Another impatient beep from some van ahead.
I shift, sitting up, my hand slipping from the centre console. From Trent’s arm.
He quickly tugs his sleeve down, but not before I glimpse bloody crescents pocketing his forearm.
“I should’ve turned back towards Welly,” he says. An apology, I think. But his humming feels a little too upbeat.
“No, I wanted to get away.”
“Should we stay somewhere for the night?” Trent says, flashing me a what-do-you-think?
I keep looking at his arm.
Then jerk my gaze out the window. A tight swallow. “Yeah. Good idea.”
But it isn’t.
A line has been drawn in the sand; I should be backing away from it, not tiptoeing its length, not hoping a wind picks up and blows it away. An act: brothers, friends even—not more than that. Stop thinking of hotels with one room left, one bed.
Let alone one bed, there are no vacancies at all at the places we pass.
Trent calls around a few more while I take a loo stop at the petrol station.
I come back to him in the middle of a call with Sara, asking if she’ll stay with Grandpa for the night.
I hear her voice muted down the line, “You love-penguins need some alone time, eh?”
“That’s right,” Trent says, continuing the boyfriend lie with a guilty look my way.
She promises Grandpa will be just fine, she’s got this, and Trent ends the call.
“Find anywhere?” I ask, jumping back into the passenger seat.
“Some event happening. We’re out of luck. We can drive back to Waikanae, or—”
“Or,” I say quickly.
He glances over. “Or crash in the truck. I’ve got a sleeping bag back there.”
In a truck, together, under the stars.
For fuck’s sake.
Was the love-penguin stuff a lie after all? How can this sound reasonable? I should put a stop to it. “Park by the beach.”
It’ll be cold there. We’ll have to sleep close.
What are you thinking, Dylan?!
We’re the only vehicle parked at this section of the beach.
Light from a silver moon catches the white rush of crashing waves.
The ocean is rhythmic, loud, and above is a rush of stars; so many, it immediately shrinks us, makes us feel as tiny as we are.
A speck, gone in less than a blink, to the universe.
Goosebumps rise along my arms. I want to feel more. I crack the door and climb out into the still air. A salty rush fills my lungs. The cold bonnet seeps through my jeans.
I lean back against the windscreen and tip my head to space.
Trent’s door shuts. Another opens, shuts again.
He swings onto the front of the truck with me, unzips a sleeping bag and throws it around us. We lean again, our top halves cocooned, Trent holding the middle together.
I’m rolling shivers like the sea is waves.
“Go on, tell me about the stars.”
He tips his chin into a misty laugh. “Grandpa knows more.”
“Ah, so I should be sitting here with him.”
A small cluck of his tongue. A cleared throat. “When it’s Matariki. We’ll head up the City to Sea path with torches. Before dawn.”
“Before what ungodly hour?”
He stares up at the stars with a soft smile. “It’ll be nice. The three of us.”
“I’ll eat you alive if you get me up before six.”
“Five.”
“You’re dead meat.”
He tucks the sleeping bag tighter around my shoulders. I let him. “You can wash it down with coffee. I’ll make a flask.”
I turn my head and pretend to bite him, and our fogged laughs mingle.
We sleep in the front seat. The passenger one.
It’s reclined all the way, and we squeeze onto it side by side, facing one another, and huddle under the sleeping bag. It’s cold, but not so cold it’s dangerous. Just enough to be aware how much warmer it is to press in close.
“We’ll wake up rigid tomorrow.”
“That’s nothing new.”
I get bopped on the nose. None of that now.
But he feels warmer suddenly. Like his whole body is flushing. I reach towards his face and his eyes jump, and I pull out a coin from behind his ear.
I whisper, “Penny for them?”
“Fifty cents. Hope you’re not expecting so many.”
“Keep the change.”
Trent’s hand engulfs the silver coin and the tips of my fingers. “I’m thinking about how I stop thinking about you. How I can stop being attracted.”
Goosebumps prickle over my arms, my legs, probably my back and chest too. I grin. “You really are quite candid.”
“Better to be upfront. My body is talking anyway.”
I laugh. “Mine too. It’s just close proximitiness. Nothing more complicated.”
Trent breathes deeply, a tickle that curls down my throat.
My stomach dips and my throat tightens, and I’m nodding hard, desperate to convince myself.
I swallow, and say, “Maybe being explicit about what we like . . . maybe it’ll all sound so ordinary spoken aloud. Maybe we’ll see we could be talking about a tenth of the men out there.”
I expect him to list common traits and behaviours. A sense of humour, kindness, curiosity, maybe say that I’m passionate, or have a nice smile.
He pauses. “I like the way you fold, the way you move your body. There’s something in the way you sit at the family table that pulls at me.
The way you drag your chair out, a little petulant, a little hopeful, a little mystified.
But then you sit, and suddenly shuffle forwards and fold.
Yes, it really is a fold. The way you lean into the conversation, and grab the condiments, and lately, how you reach over without a second thought and cut Grandpa’s meat and potatoes, and grin at him as you slide it back.
And the sneaky glances you give me whenever Grandpa says something outrageous or hilarious, the way you always fold towards me to share the laugh with me.
And the way I always find myself folding to meet you halfway. ”
He laughs lightly. “I’m attracted to this fold, to all your folds.”
My throat aches. I’ve had a few boyfriends before, some semi-serious. Not one of them ever said anything that sounded so much like a confession.
“What attracts you about me?” Trent murmurs.
“Not after that.”
“Why not?”
“The bar just got raised way up there and . . .”
“And?”
I shift. “All I can think about is folding all over you.”
Trent busts into a charmed laugh and then, so do I.
On instinct, I reach out, I touch him. But only to find his arm, and to feel each of the crescent marks in his skin.
This attracts me.
Not the hurt I left behind, but his willingness to bear it. The kindness, to let me hold on so tight.
I want to kiss him so badly I’m trembling. I’m aching, being this close to him and having to resist the urge.
I let him go.
I find the bracelet around my wrist and I pinch each metal fish, round and round.