January Embers

by Hildred Billings

  Brendon let out a low whistle. “She wasn’t held up somewhere or had an accident?”

  “Nope. After I stayed up all night panicking, I found out that she left without me.”

  “To Vegas?”

  “No idea. She skipped out on town, and we never saw each other until this past week.”

  Brendon sat back in the couch, half-drunk can of beer resting atop his knee and face completely blown off his head in shock. “Whoa.”

  “Yup. She stood me up. Didn’t have the balls to tell me why, or that she didn’t really want to go through with it. Simply didn’t show up, while I sat there feeling like the biggest jackass in the world.”

  “That’s rough, Ari.” Brendon tapped his chin. “Was this before or after your great transformation I’ve heard about?”

  How much could one woman roll her eyes without damaging her brain? Because Ari was on the verge of pushing her eyeballs out of their sockets. “Before.”

  “Uh huh…”

  “Why people insist on talking about that, I have no idea.”

  “I’ve seen the pics, Ari. You were like some scrawny little sunflower child who couldn’t lift her own pup over her head, let alone me.”

  “First of all, that only happened once and probably won’t happen again without me seriously hurting myself.” It had been pure boneheadedness that made her prove her womanly strength to the recent EMT recruit. Yet the sheer amount of pride Ari experienced when she heaved this guy over her head could be felt across the county. “Second, it’s not that weird. People completely change when they grow up all the time.”

  “Sure, but it explains a lot about why you underwent such a drastic transformation.” Brendon shrugged. “Girl breaks your heart, makes you feel vulnerable, you bulk up so nobody hurts you again.”

  A thousand words echoed across Ari’s mind, but the ones that came out of her mouth were nothing better than, “Shut up!” She chucked her empty beer can at his head.

  What she hated the most was how right he was. That fact continued to linger in her head as they finished watching a lackluster game and hit the showers before bed. Ari convinced herself that she wasn’t bothered by her roommate’s words or the truth behind them. Even as she stared at the back of her shampoo bottle for fifteen minutes, forgetting that she was supposed to put some of that on her head. She also forgot to close the blinds on the bathroom window. She should be so lucky that her neighbors weren’t taking the trash out when she hopped from the shower in all her naked glory.

  I really did this to protect myself, didn’t I? She thought that while brushing her teeth and rubbing moisturizer into her body. The woman staring back at her hardly looked like the girl who went to Clark High School and dated a heartbreaker named Mikaiya Marcott. It was more than hitting the gym and cutting off her hair. It was the way she carried herself, as if she were the most powerful woman on the block, and anyone who crossed her would get a giant boot up their ass. Her clothes were either gender neutral or coded masculine to the point so many people outside of Paradise Valley mistook her for a man. Her voice was deeper and her outlook far more cynical than teenaged Ariana. I refused to let myself be pushed around like that again. While it was true that most kids grew up into totally different adults, the reason everyone commented on Ariana’s transformation was because the people who watched her grow up hardly recognized her as the same girl.

  No wonder Mikaiya hadn’t known Ari on that dark, rainy night a week ago.

  “No fuckhead is gonna break your heart again, huh, kid?” Ari said that to her naked reflection in the fogged-up mirror. A streak of her hand allowed her to see the square face and serious eyebrows that now made women swoon like girls used to swoon over Mik. Back in high school, her soft butch approach to jeans, boots, and plaid had been the ticket to getting girls like Ariana, who appreciated the feminine touches to a traditionally butch look. Now it was old hat. Half the women in Paradise Valley were some flavor of butch. Hell, Deputy Greenhill gave Ari a run for her money. There was a reason that little town attracted so many likeminded women. It wasn’t merely a chance to have a dating life with a taste of country living. It was the assurance that nobody would fuck you up because you really had tits beneath that vest.

  Yet Ari had grown up in the area and still got fucked up.

  I wonder what she thinks of me now. Mikaiya had a sleeker haircut and shinier boots, but she would never be mistaken for someone other than the star shortstop on the Clark High softball team. There was a difference between aging and what Ariana went through. She sure doesn’t want anything to do with me. Wasn’t that a good thing?

  Why would Ari want Mik bothering her after a decade of deafening silence?

  She tossed on a baggy shirt and headed to her room, where she collapsed into her bed and set her alarm for the next day’s shift. Yet she couldn’t drift off to sleep. She was too busy staring into the darkness, wondering where the hell she was and how quickly she could get away from that tightness in her throat again.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about Mikaiya. What they used to have as kids. How stupid they had been to think about running off to get married. How stupid Ari had been to believe her. Why wouldn’t I have believed her? She never lied to me before. She never treated me with anything but kindness and respect.

  That was the part that always hurt the most. There had been no warning signs. Not even with Ari’s current hindsight could she see any clues leading up to that terrible night. It was as if Mikaiya had been plucked out of the night. If it weren’t for Abby telling a distraught little Ari that Mik had gone to Portland, she would have filed the missing person’s report for herself.

  Instead, she was the one who went missing. For months. For a year. Ari was almost twenty years old when she signed up for a few online courses to start working toward her EMT career. By then, she was already transforming herself into the kind of woman whose heart could not be broken.

  So why was her pillow wet with tears?

  Chapter 5

  MIKAIYA

  “You’re going to get yourself killed,” Abby said, head poking out of her bay window. “And I’m going to laugh.”

  Across from her, Skylar snickered in front of her laptop. The two of them had become best buds since the day Abby was no longer bedridden and could move around her house at will. She often took to sitting at the table in the bay window, knitting needles hard at work while Joni Mitchell played on the stereo and tea brewed on the stove. Skylar started calling her “my adopted grandma,” and relied on Abby’s advice and ability to serve as an excellent reference in the great job hunt. Skylar had a few leads, but nothing had come from them yet. Paradise Valley was worse than the average small town when it came to networking to get the most mundane of jobs. It was really a “who you know” kind of town. Abby was invaluable, but she hadn’t scored Sky a job yet.

  Probably a good thing Mikaiya wasn’t in the business of finding herself a job yet. Instead, she spent her days fixing up the house, including taking a hard look at the gutters the day before. As soon as the most recent rains cleared, she brought a ladder out of the garage and set it up against the front of the house.

  All so her grandmother could laugh at her killing herself.

  “Seriously, Mik, don’t get hurt,” Skylar said. “Ladders freak me out.”

  “Good thing you’re not on the ladder then, huh?” Mikaiya called from the fourth rung. She didn’t need to go up all the way to knock the last of the autumn leaves out of her grandmother’s gutters. Gosh, how long have they been compacting up here? Didn’t one of the neighbors have a big enough heart to rush over and clean out Abby Marcott’s gutters? Nope! It was left up to Mikaiya, who used to impress her Portland neighbors with her handy skills. Apparently, growing up in a small town and spending her summers on a farm gave her skills most city folk never dreamed of acquiring.

  People around here have the audacity to call me a city slicker… That should be reserved for Skylar, who still couldn’t believe the grocer
y store closed at eight in the winters. She’d be shocked to know the summer hours only extended that until nine.

  “On the other hand,” Skylar said with a dreamy sigh, “I’m starting to see the appeal of having a butchy girlfriend. She can, like… do all the handiwork!”

  Abby scoffed. “I thought you were her girlfriend.”

  “No. We’re just friends.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing here?”

  The rest of that weird conversation was drowned out when Mikaiya started knocking dense leaves out of the gutters. The scraping, the banging, and the cold fluttering of leaves to the ground created such a cacophony of sounds that Mik almost lost her hearing. Or maybe that was the crisp January air freezing her uncovered ears. She had remembered gloves, but her hat was still in her room. Who knew it would be colder up by the roof than on the ground? Wasn’t hot air supposed to rise?

  “Skylar’s trying something new for a while,” Mikaiya explained when her feet were on the grass again. A pile of slimy, crushed leaves were amassing beside the ladder, which meant she would be spending most of her afternoon cleaning it up with rakes and garbage bags. Trash collection already happened that day. Abby wouldn’t mind if she had bags full of gross, dead leaves in her garage, right? “She’s staying here until she gets a job and makes enough for her own place. Remember?” They had gone over this before Mik formally invited Skylar to come with her.

  “Guess so,” Abby mumbled.

  “Sorry if I’m breaking your fantasies of having great-grandchildren with Mik,” Skylar said with a giggle. “I’m sure she’s working on that, though. Right, Mik?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Skylar waved her off through the opened window. “You were right when you said small towns are built around mindless gossip. I can’t go to the store without everyone stopping to ask me who I am and where I’m living! As soon as I drop your name, Mik, everyone starts asking me a million questions and telling me stories about you!”

  The blood flowing in Mikaiya’s veins came to a severe halt. “Excuse me?” she squeaked. “What are they saying?”

  “Oh, that you’re a lady killer. Some real heartbreaker.”

  Mikaiya turned away before Skylar could see the red burning in her cheeks. Lady killer. Heartbreaker. They must be talking about Ariana, the one who never left town and had wholly made this place her turf. I’m so sorry, Ari. Words Mik should have said ten years ago, but never had the balls to convey. When she finally had the words to explain herself, so much time had passed that she didn’t see the point of dragging that up again. For all she knew, Ariana was with someone new. She had moved on, like Mik. Their foolish games as a couple of kids were a thing of the past. Now? God. It was happening all over again.

  “You okay, Mik?”

  Abby scoffed. “She’s thinking about her ex.”

  Mikaiya couldn’t swallow. Skylar had to do the talking for her.

  “Oooh, which ex?”

  “She used to date this girl back in high school. Really broke her heart, didn’t you, Mik?”

  Mikaiya finally swallowed that lump threatening to strangle her. “Sure did, Grandma. Suuuuure did.” Ariana was now big enough to pound Mik’s face in. I would deserve it, too. She bent down and gathered up the leaves into a neater pile. After rubbing her gloves against her jeans, she turned back to the ladder, determined to return to work.

  Yet Skylar was so deep down the gossip drain that she wouldn’t let it go. “She had a bit of a reputation back in Portland, too,” she said to Abby, although loud enough for Mik to (unfortunately) hear. “She didn’t date much, but when she did, it always lasted like five minutes, and that was it!”

  “Didn’t realize you were so knowledgeable about my dating life, Sky!” Mik called from the fifth rung.

  “I think she’s got commitment issues,” Skylar said.

  The last thing Mik heard was her grandmother saying, “You could say that!”

  Geez, weren’t they getting cold with that open window? Wasn’t it time to close it and maybe leave poor Mikaiya alone? I know I’m not innocent… She picked debris out of the gutter and flecked it to the ground. That was a long time ago. Not like she killed somebody. She had been young and immature, but this business was between her and Ariana. If everyone could shut up about it for two seconds, that would be great. In a perfect world, nobody would know about what happened. Yet even if Ari hadn’t told a soul, word still would have discovered a way to get out. That’s how it always went. That was a big reason Mikaiya had to get the hell out of Paradise Valley when she had the chance. College had been that chance. So had been the summer job someone offered her the week of graduation.

  She had never told Ari about it. What was the point, when Mik didn’t decide to take her employer up on that offer until the moment she was handed her high school diploma? By then, fate had been spun. She knew what she had to do to protect her ass – and Ariana’s.

  The hardest part? Convincing herself it was the right thing to do. The reason Mikaiya never stayed in relationships for long – besides her busy job demanding more and more time out of her – was because deep down she was afraid of that night happening all over again.

  She continued cleaning the gutters while thinking of Ari. The old her that Mik used to know. The new her that everyone in town was used to now. Mikaiya could never present her ex to Skylar and say, “This is where it all began. Do you get it now?” because the image Skylar would see was so far from what Mik used to see that there was no point. No chance of making Skylar see what it meant to hear the threats coming from another direction.

  Eventually, it became easier to hop the ladder over bit by bit instead of racing up and down to move it. Like it became easier to think of the moments leading up to Mik’s decision to stand the love of her young life up.

  I wish you could understand, Ari. The ladder wobbled as Mikaiya took those little hops, one hand gripping the side while the other clung to Abby’s sturdy gutters. I didn’t want to hurt you. I loved you! That’s why I had to do it!

  Classic tale of misunderstandings with a violent undertone. Yet this wasn’t the movies. Things wouldn’t be neatly packaged up by the end of the week. Like there were no convenient coincidences to putting Mik on the path to patching things up with Ariana. Something she clearly had to do if she wanted to last five more minutes in her hometown.

  She reached for the next glob of leaves still trapped in her grandmother’s gutter. Two seconds later, the ladder was falling on its side, taking her down with it.

  It was probably what she deserved.

  Chapter 6

  ARIANA

  Brendon shoved his phone in Ariana’s face. “Read this. Tell me I’m not a master wordsmith who is gonna change the world with his essays about…”

  “I ain’t readin’ nothin’.” Ariana shoved her sunglasses up her head, because it was better to tell him off using both of her big blue eyes than pretending she was a huge hotshot behind the glasses. “Don’t you have anything better to do than sit on your ass and play on your phone?”

  He shrugged. “Not really? We haven’t had a call all day.”

  “Yeah, well, we might get one if you keep interrupting me.” Ari turned back to her paperwork, set up in a clipboard that was as old as her. Heaven forbid anyone but her fill out the paperwork. Was Brendon literate? Sure, he wrote those weird essays about French philosophers and read books about renovating old European cathedrals, but that still didn’t convince Ariana that Brendon knew what he was writing or thinking. This guy had too much of a death wish. Next, he would be ripping off his uniform and running down the rainy street wearing nothing but his underwear. He would claim it “revitalized his vitals,” but would it make him late to the next call they inevitably received?

  This was the part most EMTs hated about their shifts. The endless waiting. There was a reason the county only had a handful of full-time EMTs and paramedics, and it had nothing to do with budget. (All right, maybe a bit.) Litt
le action came to towns like Paradise Valley, where Ariana spent most of her days. Sometimes she was back in Roundabout, but they had a smaller population that only saw an uptick of action during fireworks season. Roundabout is where you go if you want to blow your arm off. Ah, yes, hunting season as well. The only time Ari saw her fair share of bullet wounds was in the middle of autumn. And winter. And spring, and summer…

  Basically, whenever the locals were bored enough to go out and shoot their guns.

  The lull that day distressed her as well, but what could she do? While some EMTs approached work as, “I’m paid to respond to calls, not wait for them,” she wasn’t the type to sit around and work on side projects or do homework until the calls came in. She preferred to stay in the moment, either catching up on paperwork or training herself. Ideally, her coworkers would join her in the training so they would all remain sharp and responsive, but it was like herding cats some days. Like when Brendon kept draining his phone battery to read Kant.

  Something isn’t right today. Maybe it was the scent of rain coming in with the air. Or maybe it was that tamale she ate for lunch. It was cooked all the way, right? I’m not getting salmonella from that chicken… I better not be getting salmonella…

  Her pencil was on its third flick against the clipboard when they got their call.

  Ari tossed the paperwork over her shoulder while Brendon scrambled to get his seatbelt. Anything about his essay or what they might want to do for dinner went out the window as soon as the address and code came over the line.

  “Whoo! I thought we were done with people falling down and hitting their heads!” Brendon braced himself against the door as Ariana turned on the siren and stepped on the gas. “You know I love me a good head injury!”

  It wasn’t until Ari turned at the four way stop that she realized where they were heading. “Oh, my God,” she said, weaving between cars attempting to pull over for them. “It’s Abby Marcott’s house.”