How Hard Can Love Be?

by Holly Bourne

  “Uh oh – the tourists are coming. The tripods are the first warning sign,” Kyle said. “We better get there quick.”

  “Get WHERE?”

  Just as I yelled it, we came to a built-up bit. Wooden huts sprung up everywhere. And parking spaces. Lots of parking spaces. Most of them were still empty, but the concrete in amongst all that natural wilderness jarred. Kyle parked effortlessly, with just one hand on the wheel. He turned off the ignition and grinned at me.

  “To the best bit. Now, do you have hiking shoes?”

  SITUATIONS THAT ARE DESTINED TO FAIL:

  Me

  +

  Surprises

  +

  Self-preservation instinct

  Twenty

  Kyle still wouldn’t tell me where we were going as I scrambled into my trainers. Nor would he when we boarded the cute little shuttle bus that drove us around the park. Only when the intercom on the bus said, “Stop sixteen, Happy Isles!” did he say, “We’re here.”

  He took my hand to help me down.

  Two other tourists got off the bus with us, taking photos instantly. It made me sad that their first memory of this would be through the eye of a lens.

  There was a sign – The Mist Trail – trailhead starts here.

  “What’s the Mist Trail then?” I asked.

  “It’s my favourite part of the park,” Kyle said. “But you have to do it before all the tourists arrive. You need to have the trail to yourself to really appreciate it.” He started on the trail. “You’ll soon see why,” he called behind him.

  I sighed and followed him.

  Initially I wasn’t that impressed. There was just a lot of uphill going on. I mean, it was pretty. There was a raging river to the right of us, and lots of big fat rocks to look at.

  But mainly there was a lot of uphill.

  Kyle, thankfully, stopped for a short break. I lay back against a rock and caught my breath as attractively as I could.

  “I love these big boulders,” he said, pointing to a massive rock next to us. “I love thinking that they were just rolling down the cliff one day, rolling rolling, and then, for whatever reason, they lost momentum and stopped right here, and this is where they’ll stay now for hundreds or thousands of years.”

  I liked what he’d said. So much so, that I patted the rock for want of something to do.

  “Don’t people say it’s bad to just be a still rock?” I asked. “Aren’t we all supposed to keep rolling so we don’t gather any moss or whatever?”

  Kyle looked at the boulder. “I like moss,” he said. “I like staying still… I guess that’s why I’m so boring.”

  I let go of the rock. “What the hell do you mean?” I asked. “You’re not boring!” How could someone like him even think he was boring? He was, like, the main character in every teen movie. Which is what I told him. It just made him look sadder.

  “That’s the point,” he said. “Everything I do is just walking a really clichéd set path, doing what everyone expects of me… I can’t see myself doing anything remarkable.”

  I pulled a face. “What does remarkable even mean?”

  “I dunno…” He wouldn’t look at me. “…Like you, I guess.”

  WHAT!?

  I perched on a fence protecting us from the river, resting my legs, staring at him in shock. “I’m the least remarkable person ever,” I said. “If we’re all living in a teen movie, I’m the helpful sidekick friend who never gets their own storyline. I’m the one watching everyone else getting asked to dance at the prom. I’m the one whose sole existence in any story is to help people like you find your way…”

  I shouldn’t have said it, it came out so bitter. I was bitter though, much as I didn’t want to be. I mean, who wants to be bitter?

  Kyle wouldn’t look at me for ages, and I watched the tourists overtake us, lugging their camera gear in backpacks. Eventually he spoke. “I don’t think you see yourself how I do. How anyone sees you. I don’t think you’re capable of being a supporting character in any story. It would be impossible.”

  I felt like crying. Why was he saying this? Why were we even here?

  “… I mean, you’re so strong…”

  “I’m not,” I interrupted. “I’m the least strong person ever. I can’t even row a bloody canoe and I vomited all down myself last night because my mum wouldn’t take me to Hollywood.”

  Kyle didn’t laugh. He just scrunched and unscrunched his fists, and brought the conversation back to him again.

  “I don’t do anything. I don’t believe in anything. I just do what everyone expects…”

  I pushed myself up so I was standing again.

  “I didn’t expect you to turn up outside my window at four a.m. this morning and drive me to a national park,” I pointed out. “And I’m really glad you did. Though my aching calves aren’t so pleased.”

  He laughed then, his laughter shooting down the air pockets of awkwardness that had descended around us.

  “Your calves don’t know what’s coming,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m just rambling. I’ll shut up now. Poor Prom King, eh? I told you I was a cliché.”

  “You’re not,” I said… Though maybe he was. Maybe I was lying. He looked and talked like all the Prom Kings I’d ever seen in American movies. And my inkling that he’d got with Melody kind of proved that he acted like one too. Though he was here with me now…and I didn’t know what that meant.

  “Come on,” he said, adjusting his backpack. “Let’s keep going before I start crying about my childhood or something.”

  “Well I’ve already done that on you.”

  We walked through the dappled sunlight between the trees. The sun was rising higher, but it was still chilly, like when you’re waiting for an oven to heat up. Soon I heard the unmistakable roar of a waterfall. We turned a corner and came out on a cute wooden bridge that looked up to the most impressive waterfall I’d ever seen. It was even bigger than the Yosemite Falls we’d passed in Kyle’s car. We almost couldn’t hear ourselves over the noise of the churning water.

  “This is beautiful,” I said, shouting the obvious.

  “Good,” he yelled back. “Because we’re about to climb up it.”

  Kyle pointed to a small pathway with some steps. Not some steps… All the steps in the universe. They wound up and up till they disappeared into mist – like the top of the Magic Faraway Tree.

  “We’re climbing up the waterfall?”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

  A massive huge Homecoming grin.

  “You will love it, I promise.”

  As we began to climb, I quickly discovered why it was called the Mist Trail. The spray from the waterfall covered the path – making the steps slippery, my hair drenched, my T-shirt soaked through. We were, actually, literally climbing up the side of a waterfall and I’d never seen anything so beautiful in my life.

  “This is awesome,” I yelled backwards at Kyle, so he could hear me over the roar of the water.

  “Just wait till we hit the sunlight.” He pointed to an even steeper bit of the trail above us. My calves ached and I could barely talk I was puffing so hard. We climbed in a comfortable silence, stopping occasionally to catch our breath, or just to look down at how far we’d climbed.

  “Almost there,” Kyle called, “only ten more yards.”

  “That’s actually pretty far when you’re going up vertically.”

  “Wait for it.”

  We emerged from a tree-covered part of the trail into the brightest sunlight. There was another stone staircase to climb, carved right out of the rock. It ran up right next to the gushing water.

  I stopped so suddenly Kyle bumped into the back of me in a comedy way.

  “Oh my God, Kyle,” I whispered. “It’s…it’s… Is this heaven?”

  There were rainbows everywhere – dozens of them. As the sunlight hit the mist, it flung them out in every direction. It was like standing in a paintbox.
The steps led right through them, so you climbed through rainbow after rainbow to get to the summit. I’d never seen anything like it. My brain went quiet, like it needed all the mental space necessary to commit something so magical to memory. I wondered if I could paint it. If I’d ever be able to translate this onto paper with my watercolours.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” I heard a click. I turned away from the view, to see Kyle holding up his phone. “Sorry,” he said, “I couldn’t resist taking a photo.”

  Was I in it? Had he taken a photo of me? I really wanted a photo of him. He was three steps lower than me, right where a rainbow ended. There was no pot of gold, just this guy, this really nice guy, who had taken me to a land of rainbows. I wanted to kiss him so much right then that I almost couldn’t stand. I couldn’t stop looking at him. The way his face was lit up by colour, how his toned arms were painted red, orange, yellow. That. Bloody. Smile. Why wasn’t he mine? Why wasn’t I a Melody?

  He stared right back. And I dared myself to hope…to hope he’d take a step up…to make me a main character in a book, rather than a secondary one, the sort who gets kissed in rainbows.

  But he just coughed and put his phone back in his pocket.

  “Come on, we’ve still got a lot of climbing to go.”

  My heart sank with disappointment – but when you’re me, you get quite used to boys not kissing you when you want them to. The view helped heal the wound. I stepped onto a slippery stone and walked into more rainbows.

  I could see why Kyle had wanted us to come here alone. Every other step provided a different viewpoint, a different explosion of colour. It was lovely to stop and drink it all in, without having to queue in a line of tourists to get your photo taken on the prettiest rock. It felt like ours, like it was created for us.

  I’d even forgotten to be upset that this was obviously a charity trip, rather than a romantic one. I was just filled with gratitude that I was alive, that I could see this, that the world allowed such beautiful things to exist. And I thought, Why would anyone get drunk? Why does anyone need anything like that to escape the world, when the world is its own antidote?

  When my calves and eyeballs couldn’t take much more, the path turned off into a forest, and the rainbows faded into nothing. I sat down on a log to rest my aching legs, and twisted my T-shirt to drain out the water.

  “You like it?” Kyle asked, sitting next to me. His wet arm touched mine; I saw goosebumps erupt instantly, my ginger arm hairs springing to attention.

  “That was incredible.”

  “We’re almost at the top.”

  “Good. I don’t think I can go much further.”

  One last staircase took us to the top of Vernal Falls. I leaned over the guard rail and my stomach flipped on itself as I stared down at the sheer drop and the roaring tirade of water disappearing over it. I handed my phone to Kyle and asked him to take my photo, which he did. Then he pulled out his phone and took another of me, in one of his confusing acts, which I was getting used to. I found it too churny, being at the top, so we walked along to “Emerald Lake” – a gorgeous calm body of water that glowed like a gemstone, and sunned ourselves dry on the warm stones baking in the sun.

  I used my soaking wet hoody as a pillow and leaned back onto it – closing my eyes and enjoying looking at the pink of the inside of my eyelids and how the heat felt on my face.

  It was then that Kyle kissed me.

  He leaned over and gently put his lips on my lips, casting my face into shadow. I kept my eyes closed, hardly moving.

  My first kiss, my first kiss, my first kiss.

  Hang on, what was going on? Why was Kyle kissing me? I opened my eyes, just as he pulled away, staying close enough so our noses were touching. He delicately drew a line from the top of my forehead, down my cheek, and under my chin. My face tingled at his touch. I looked up at him, so confused…

  Do I say something? Does he say something? What happens after you randomly kiss someone? I didn’t know the etiquette. I went to touch my own lips, to check they were real, to check they’d been kissed. As I did, I brushed hands with his…and, oh, the electricity. We were touching hands, and it wasn’t because we were doing some stupid dance at camp, but because he was choosing to touch my hand and I was choosing to touch it back…and…and…

  …we were kissing again.

  Every worry I’d ever had about kissing – Would I be good at it? Would it be awful? – vanished the moment Kyle’s mouth fell on mine. Instinct and just a hunger for him guided me. I found myself wrapping my arms around him, stroking the back of his neck with my fingers just so I could touch as much of him as possible. All I could hear was the distant roar of the waterfall below us, all I could taste was him. The sun warmed the bits of my body which weren’t shadowed by Kyle, creating a prickly heat as it dried. All I could think was how good it felt…

  … Until I thought, Why?

  I clumsily broke off the kiss, turning my head to one side.

  Kyle kept kissing me, showering kisses on my arm, my neck… I closed my eyes, trying to enjoy it but thinking…

  Why why why why why?

  “Kyle?”

  He kissed just under my chin.

  “Yes?” he half-murmured.

  “Why are you kissing me?”

  He stopped, his mouth hovering in mid-air.

  “I…I…”

  He pulled away and sat back, so he was next to me. There was a gap between us, and I suddenly felt really sick. I was ruining it. I shouldn’t have said anything. I just…just… I didn’t understand. “Because I wanted to, I guess,” he said. “Why? Do you not want me to kiss you?”

  I ran my fingers through my damp hair, fluffing it out. Not sure if I could look at him.

  “Yes, I do… But…but…I’m not sure what’s going on?”

  “I really like you, Amber,” he said.

  The words sank in slowly, like sugar dissolving in a mug of hot tea. He really liked me? What? But he was a boy. Boys didn’t like me. They liked my friends, or other girls in my class, or girls who looked like Melody. Never me. It was never me. Especially boys who looked like Kyle.

  I felt like smiling so hard my face would fall apart.

  I also didn’t trust it.

  This was a good thing. Good things didn’t happen. Not to me, never to me.

  “You do?” I asked, not trusting, not believing.

  He picked up my hand so our fingers were entwined.

  “I’ve wanted to kiss you since that first night, when I walked you home.”

  What? When I was drunk? And complaining? And unfriendly?

  “You did?” Not trusting, not believing.

  “I thought I was being really obvious.” He clenched my hand tight. His fingers felt so right in mine, and yet none of it made any sense.

  “But…you…” And it tumbled out. “You got with Melody.”

  He opened his mouth, surprised I’d said it. Surprised I knew maybe. He let go of me and sighed.

  I knew it was true then, my worst suspicions, made true. I felt sick. All the good from the kiss evaporated, like the mist coming off the waterfall.

  “I only kissed Melody because…” He paused. “Because, well, I’m not sure, I just do what I’m expected to do. I told you… It didn’t mean anything.”

  I moved away a little, making the gap between us wider.

  “What do you mean? You’re expected to?”

  He threw his hands up. “I was trying to tell you earlier. I’m boring, I’m obvious. Everyone sees me and expects me to behave a certain way, and I just, I don’t know, go along with it sometimes. Because I’m not sure what else to do.”

  I shook my head.

  “Be yourself, perhaps?”

  “I don’t know who myself is. I’m so dull. I’m just, like, the most obvious person who does the most obvious things.” He picked up a small rock and threw it across the lake. Even in my emotional state, I had to stop and pause a moment and appreciate just how far he’d thrown the rock.


  “You’re not saying anything,” he said.

  I picked at nothing on the rock face below me. “I don’t do talking about emotions very well, remember? British? Repressed?”

  He smiled at that, but it was a small one.

  “You’re so not repressed at all. That’s what I like about you. You’re all fire and passion. You really care about stuff, you really do stuff. Like you came out here for a whole summer, to a new country, and you don’t even know anyone? I’ve never even left America. I don’t even have a passport. And you, you’re always making comments, but in a good way, you don’t just let things pass. You’re just…you… You can’t be anyone other than you. And I really like the you you are, Amber.”

  We were kissing again. Rougher. I couldn’t work out what was happening. It felt so so nice, but he’d kissed Melody… Had he kissed her like this? Why would he kiss someone he didn’t even like that much?

  I remembered Mum’s words: Every girl feels they have a connection with Kyle…

  I broke off again.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m just…confused,” I said. “About the Melody thing.”

  “I told you, I wasn’t thinking. I just did it!”

  “I get that. But I don’t just kiss people. I’ve never just kissed someone. I don’t understand. Plus, won’t Melody be hurt by this?” It’s weird, how I was suddenly on Melody’s side. Maybe that’s what girls need in order to like each other – a guy in common to confuse us and make us turn all solidarity. “I mean, what if you kiss someone else next week?”

  “I won’t, I really won’t.”

  “I don’t even know you,” I said.

  The moment the words came out of my mouth, I knew they were true.

  I didn’t know him, not at all.

  I didn’t know what he liked, what he didn’t. I hardly knew anything about his family. He’d asked me about myself loads, but never really revealed much of him. He was just a great guy, a nice-looking guy, a smart guy. But what else? What did I really like about him? What he stood for? As a Prom King, a basketball player? Was I just into the idea of him? Also, I was only here a few more weeks. Would I ever get to know him? There wasn’t any time to…