Sunday 20th October

“Why does Jess get to invite people to her brother’s twenty-first?” I asked Tessa. We were at the old hall in Karangahake. It was Jess’s brother’s twenty-first, and the hall was filled with people I didn’t know. Some were still wandering in through the double doors, pushed wide open. Others were spilling out into the car park.

“That’s the way her family does things.” Tessa pushed through the sound and the bodies. Luke and I followed. The mass ebbed and flowed like a tide, tossed around by the sea of noise. A DJ stood up front adding to the racket. Plates were being cleared from the trestles, and dishes clashed in the kitchen.

We found Jess standing by some tables. She was wearing this short lace dress, deep orange like the roe of kina, with long sleeves and a short flirty skirt. Her hair flowed down her back, a river of dark honey.

She smiled when she saw us and came over. “Hi, Tessa and Luke,” she said. “Hi, Isaac...” There was this pause. Because it was Tessa who invited me, not Jess. Then Jess solved the pause. She took my hand. “Come and meet my grandma,” she said. “You’re just in time. She’s been waiting for you to get here.”

“Meet your grandma?” Jesus, I wasn’t even sure I was here with Jess. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end. Jess leaned in the grandma direction. My boots stay rooted, and I leaned in the Luke and Tessa direction.

Jess tugged on my hand. “Come on.”

Her grandma was sitting at a table in the noise of the DJ surrounded by a million people about the age of Mum and Dad and all watching me and Jess. Jess’s aunties and uncles, I guessed. Her grandma was a sea of purple flowers, topped by white hair, and she had this crinkly smile.

“Grandma, meet Isaac,” said Jess.

“So, this is the boy all the fuss is about,” said Jess’s grandma. And that was a revelation. I glanced at Jess. She managed to glance back, blush and shrug all at the same time.

Like I said, it was a revelation. Maybe Luke was right. She liked me.

“Come closer so I can see you, Isaac,” said the grandma quietly and looked up at me with eyes like Jess’s, but old.

I looked at Jess and she nodded, so I stepped closer. The grandma lifted her hands real slow, the way Jess moves. I bent down a little, and she cupped my face.

I like Jess a lot, and she seemed to like this grandma. The hands on my cheeks felt like that tissue paper they wrap fine china in. She stared at me a moment, then she turned to Jess.

“You have a fine-looking boy here,” she said. “Lovely eyes.”

“If only we could see them through the hair and makeup,” said a prune- faced woman. Everyone around laughed.

Jess’s grandma let my face go and patted me on the shoulder. “Look after my granddaughter, Isaac.”

It all went from there. I met a cascade of family. No idea who.

Then Jess and I stayed together right through the party. We found Tessa and Luke again and wandered around with them drinking and talking in the crush and the noise. The DJ had cranked up the music. Everyone was shouting over it. Someone had dimmed the lights. Some of the olds had left the table and were trying to dance.

“How big is your family?” I asked Jess.

“Just two brothers and a sister.” She took a sip of lemonade. Her father had poured it for her.

I met him too, and he seemed friendly. I’ve seen him at school anyway. He’s a teacher there. And the mother. She’s another teacher but a different school. Friendly too. And her brothers. I know Denis, we’re in the same year group, but he runs with a different crowd. Then there’s Alan. It was his twenty-first.

Her sister Laura was less friendly. Laura’s in her first year at university and was just home for the weekend. A couple of years ago, she was ‘that girl’ at college. Head prefect, won the speech contest, in the maths team, got most of the prizes at the end of the year, and just got beaten to Dux by some maths whizz.

I waved my bottle at the cluster on the dance floor and at the tables with Jess’s grandma.

“And a billion aunts and uncles.” For me there’s Mum and Dad and a couple of grandparents in Wellington we might see at Christmas.

“Mum and Dad have lots of brothers and sisters,” said Jess.

We leaned against the wall at the end of the hall. Jess beside me with her arm touching mine. I could feel the pattern of the lace on my sleeve and the warmth of her body. Luke and Tessa were on the other side of Jess having their own conversation.

“How many altogether?” I asked Jess.

“I don’t know.” She counted on her fingers for a bit. “Fifty-three?”

“And they’re all here?”

She shook her head. “No. The ones with little kids left after dinner.” She looked up at me, and paused, and for a moment I stopped breathing. I thought I could taste what it would be like to kiss her, lemonade, lipstick, her. It was just a moment. I caught sight of her mother watching us from the kitchen door, the light behind her, a silhouette.

Jess looked at the kitchen door too then away and concentrated for a while on the dancing heads in the half light. Luke and Tessa disappeared as usual.

Jess and I kept talking and wandered a bit more. Eventually we went outside and across the road. We leaned against the stone wall at the start of the walkway.

It was October and cold, but we were away from the hall and it was peaceful, darker and quieter. Music and light still spilled out of the front doors. But not this far, and everyone else was inside.

“Is that your motorbike in the shed where you practice?’ asked Jess like she was searching for something to say as hard as I was.

“Yeah.”

Jess nodded, and I saw her shiver. Maybe we should go back into the hall where it was warm. But instead I moved my arm and put it around her shoulders like I am sure Luke would have done at least an hour before.

“To keep you warm,” I said while I was wondering how to kiss her. Like I’m also sure Luke would have done an hour ago.

She turned and smiled. “Thanks.” The word came out in a puff of fog, her lips a perfect shape and parted and close. The lemonade and lipstick, the breath of her whisper, reached me.

She lifted her hand and traced my cheek. Then raised herself on tiptoes. The lace of her dress brushed my shirt. She touched her lips to mine. I guess she got sick of waiting and had to take matters into her own hands.

The world contracted to just that moment, lips, warmth, touch, skin, taste, shadow. I breathed in the flavour and sound and the softness of her.

It was the best thing I can remember.

She sighed, downward, quietly.

After an eternity I heard a voice calling out from a distance.

“Jess.”

I looked up at the hall. Jess looked over too. Her sister was standing there.

“It’s Laura. Mum will have sent her to find me.”

I could see her sister’s head on a swivel, searching. When she saw us, she started down the steps. The music had stopped. The lights were on full, and the hall was emptying itself out.

Laura stalked across the road towards us.

“Jess, Mum wants you to come and help clean up,” she said. “And time for you to go home,” she said to me.