Prologue

Jess has been in love with her best friend, Kate, for seven years, but her feelings have never been returned. One night they sleep together, and Jess finds out how much it is possible to be hurt by someone close.

Jess and Kate struggle to redefine their friendship. They spend a week at Jess’s family holiday house in a small seaside town, Awatangi, intending to make the time to talk things through, but the conversations never happen. Kate makes vague promises, but begins to have second thoughts. Jess wants Kate, and nothing else, and is heartbroken that isn’t enough.

Jess decides – while everything is changing in her life – that she doesn’t want to go on living in the city, that she wants to return to Awatangi. Part of her hopes some physical distance between them may help things with Kate, and part of her – frustrated and upset – simply wants to leave Kate behind. In Awatangi, Jess meets Keri, a local lawyer who has also recently returned home. Like Jess, Keri surfs, and like Jess, she seems to feel some attachment to her family roots in Awatangi. Jess is drawn to Keri, but forces herself not to let anything happen. Despite everything, Kate is still Jess’s closest friend, and she has loved Kate all her life. She feels she has to give the situation with Kate as long as she can to work itself out.

Awatangi is about coping with feelings for a close friend that are not returned, set in a small holiday township on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is an exploration of getting what you’ve always wanted and it not being enough, of being in love with one person and wanting another, and of finding out that life doesn’t always turn out as expected.