Afterglow

by Artemis Anders

Just after ten, a car pulled up outside. Patton’s ears perked up and his eyes watched the door. Aaron was home.

  Teagan stood up to unlock the door and Patton jumped up, zig-zagging back and forth as his tail whipped with abandon. Aaron strolled up the walkway in his uniform, his bag slung over his shoulder. Even with a worn-out face and a wrinkle between his brows, he looked so handsome that Teagan’s stomach did a flip-flop. Patton raced out to welcome him and Aaron kneeled down to greet his little buddy. Finally, Aaron stood up and looked at her. She smiled.

  “Go inside,” he said to Patton. He gazed at Teagan again, his blue eyes conveying happiness at the sight of her, but also something else. “Hey.” He leaned over and gave her a hug and a quick kiss before they went inside. Aaron set down his things and sat down.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  “I am tired. And I’m on East Coast time.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “I have. You?”

  She nodded.

  Aaron briefed her on the last part of his training. He’d received high marks and things looked good for his next steps.

  “Congratulations.” Teagan felt chagrined that she’d gotten upset about his missed calls and distant behavior. She’d never been in the military. She couldn’t understand what he dealt with, especially at his level. “Are you glad to be home?”

  He nodded. “But I could really use some sleep.”

  “Go to bed. I already fed Patton…”

  Aaron did so. Teagan read in the living room until late, when she finally got tired and went to bed. It took a while for her to fall asleep. Something still didn’t feel right.

  When she awoke the next morning, Aaron was already up. She went out to check on him, and found him sitting at his kitchen table, head resting in his hands. He still looked exhausted… and like something was wrong.

  “Aaron.” He turned to face her. “What the hell is wrong?”

  After a long silence, he finally spoke. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  Teagan went to sit down at the table with him, bracing herself for bad news. She was relieved to know her instincts had been correct, but dread came over her at the prospect of the “something.”

  Aaron paused for a moment, strain in his face as he gathered his words. “During training, I ran into my ex-wife. She wants to get back together.”

  Teagan said nothing for a moment, Aaron’s words registering. “Your ex-wife wants you back?”

  He nodded, his expression grave.

  “And?” she demanded. When Aaron’s frown deepened, a chill ran through Teagan. “Wait… are you actually considering going back to her?”

  Aaron looked away.

  Teagan just sat there, feeling like someone had punched her. Whatever she’d feared, whatever crazy ideas had run through her mind the last several days, this was far worse. “You are, aren’t you? You’re going back.”

  “I have to,” he said gravely.

  “Are you kidding me?” she cried. “I mean… who does that? Who goes through the divorce process, all that pain and dividing of assets and finalizing everything, just to get back together?”

  “It isn’t finalized. Not yet—”

  Teagan’s jaw dropped. “You said it was as good as done! Months ago!”

  “It was—”

  “Obviously not! You lied to me!”

  Aaron’s faced flushed with emotion. “Teagan—”

  She stood up. “You can’t be fucking serious! So what now? You had me watch your house and your dog for a month… and miss Christmas and my friends… so you could go reconnect with the ex-wife you should’ve divorced by now? And let me guess: you want your mistress to leave so you can bring your wife back home? The woman you pretended all these months you didn’t care about?”

  Aaron looked stricken by her words. Suddenly, all of it hit Teagan at once. His weird behavior. His not calling. His lackluster greeting. Her anger turned to rage, so much so that she could no longer see clearly. She stormed out of the room.

  In Aaron’s bedroom, she searched for any clothing she’d left lying around and began stuffing it into her duffle bag. She gathered her toiletries in the bathroom, tossing her shampoo, conditioner, and razor into her kit without care before smashing it all into her duffle. Suddenly, she realized she only wore a t-shirt and underwear. She rifled through her bag for her sweats and hoodie, not worrying about a bra. She paused, looking around, her mind all over the place. What had she forgotten? Her computer!

  “Teagan,” came Aaron’s voice.

  She ignored him, picking up her bags and dropping them near the door, avoiding Aaron’s stare. She gathered her computer and notes and added them to the pile.

  “Teagan.” He used the Major’s voice this time. “Look at me.”

  “Don’t talk to me,” she said, putting up her hand. She scanned the living room area again. She was forgetting something. Then she remembered. Her telescope. She muttered a curse, suddenly wishing she’d never brought so much stuff. Couldn’t she just leave it and get another one?

  No. It was hers, and she couldn’t stand the idea of leaving any trace of herself there, where his wife would soon come and she and Aaron could mock her together.

  His wife. He was getting back together with his wife.

  She picked up her bags and opened the door. Patton scurried over and Aaron ordered him to stay. She hauled her bags and computer to her truck in one heavy, awkward trip, her computer sliding off her duffle and almost tumbling to the concrete. After stowing it all away, she returned for her telescope.

  Aaron stood waiting for her. “Don’t leave like this—”

  Teagan stopped and looked at him. “Are you getting back together with your wife?”

  He sighed. “Look—”

  Teagan shook her head and resumed heading toward her telescope.

  Aaron followed her. “Let me help you with the telescope—”

  “I don’t need your help!” she snarled. She picked up the awkward assembly and carried it outside, the focus lens pinching her arm as the tripod legs banged her shins. She lay it down in its foam bedding, covering it with a blanket.

  Her purse. Damn it!

  She walked in one last time, ignoring Aaron and zeroing in on her purse near the door. She grabbed it and left.

  In her truck, she started her engine. And for reasons she couldn’t explain, she let herself look. Aaron stood on his sidewalk, pain in his eyes. But her attention was pulled to something else. Patton. He stood next to Aaron, his big brown eyes filled with fear and sadness. Her throat tightened and she looked away, unable to take it anymore. She backed out of Aaron’s driveway and drove off.

  As fast as she could.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Teagan remembered nothing from the first hours of her long drive home. Her eyes remained on the road, but her mind was flooded with anger and the overwhelming desire to get as far away from Aaron and his horrible confession as possible.

  He was getting back together with his ex.

  He had his own place. His own things. His own life. He rarely mentioned his ex. Teagan didn’t even know her name or where she lived! He’d lived and behaved like a divorced man who’d moved on… apparently, that was all bullshit. Just like her marriage was bullshit. She really was an asshole magnet, a woman who had no idea how to differentiate between the real thing and a cheap knockoff.

  She’d heard about men like Aaron. The divorced guys who couldn’t let go, who secretly hoped to get their wives back no matter how lousy the marriage, and who just used some other woman to fill the empty hole in their soul. She was the rebound, the transitional woman to keep his bed warm until his wife came crawling back.

  And the missed phone calls! The man who always called when he said he would, who never left her hanging—who said a man’s only as good as his word—he promised to call and then failed to, twice! And why? Because his wife had commandeered his attention, had made even a man of his word forget her entirely. And how he
’d behaved, so withdrawn. She’d known something was wrong, just like she’d known with Shawn. Aaron denied it at first, just like Shawn did. But calling when you say you’re going to call is something you do for women who really matter to you. Aaron had that woman who really mattered… and it wasn’t her.

  With that awful realization, Teagan’s anger reached a peak and she began shouting a string of obscenities, spewing every filthy word she could think of until her throat ached. Finally, her anger dissipated like steam venting from a radiator, and she felt calmer.

  But without the rage to energize and distract her, a dark sorrow filled her. Suddenly, images ran through her mind like slides at a presentation. Aaron talking to her at Kartchner Caverns State Park. Getting acquainted at Blake’s coffee in Benson. Chatting over margaritas in Tucson. Stargazing on the road to Mt. Lemmon. Eating ice cream as they walked through the park in Denver. Laughing with Diana and Stovi at their campsite, and Aaron’s tender treatment of her after they left. Each memory offered a fresh stab of pain, and soon she felt like she was riddled with holes and had blood spilling out of her. Finally, unable to withstand the pain any longer, she pulled over on Interstate 10, among the buttes of southern New Mexico. Tears ran down her face until she began to sob, the pain rushing from her one streaming tear at a time.

  How could this happen? How?

  There was a loud knock on her window. She jumped, scared out of her wits for a moment. A highway patrolman stood outside. Teagan wiped her eyes and rolled down her window.

  “License and registration,” the cop said.

  She scrambled to find her registration and got her license out of her wallet. The highway patrolman eyed them.

  “Why are you pulled over? Do you need assistance?”

  She wanted to make a joke about needing assistance with her destroyed love life. But the patrolman didn’t seem like the type to appreciate such humor. “No. I… I just needed to pull over for a minute. I’m fine.” Teagan figured that would be enough of an explanation, given that the cop could see her swollen eyes and tear-stained face, and would want no part in learning what caused them.

  “Ma’am, do you know how fast you were going before you pulled over?”

  “I don’t,” she admitted, knowing it was probably too fast.

  “I clocked you at ninety-five miles per hour.”

  Shit.

  “Wait here.” The cop left and got back inside his patrol car. Soon, he returned and handed her a citation.

  She stared at the piece of paper, not sure what felt worse: that a highway patrolman would ticket a woman who was obviously very upset, not to mention broke… or that another man in uniform had proven himself utterly heartless. When the patrolman pulled away, Teagan took a closer look at the citation.

  $350.00.

  She closed her eyes for a moment. Then she stuffed the offending ticket away and pulled back onto the highway. When her phone rang, she glanced at it. It was Aaron. He’d called twice just after she left, too. She cursed and turned off her phone.

  Hours later, when she arrived in Albuquerque, she began to feel better. She was halfway to Denver, and the snow-capped mountains and dormant trees gave her a feeling of solace. Soon, she would be back home, curled up on her couch and watching Star Trek.

  As she looked for a gas station, she noticed steam coming out from under her hood. When she checked her dash, the temperature gauge was rapidly approaching the red. She pulled off at the next exit and drove to a gas station, only to find out her radiator needed replacing. They could replace it the next day, as long as she brought it in first thing.

  It would cost her $650.00.

  Teagan spent the night in the gas station parking lot, sleeping in her sweats, hat, and coat to survive the 20-degree night. She was still cold and didn’t sleep well, especially with the highway just yards away.

  In the morning, she gave her car keys to the techs and found a coffee shop to write in. It was a sunny day but a windy one, signaling that a storm was on its way. Sure enough, by the time they finished the repair, it was snowing hard. As much as she wanted to get home, driving through northern New Mexico during a snowstorm at night was a stupid idea. So she begged the guys to let her park there another night, and got on the road the following day. It was New Year’s Eve.

  She wanted to call Diana, whom she’d talked to a couple times earlier in December, but she didn’t. She didn’t have the heart to tell the truth and risk that her psychologist friend would tell her she was stupid to get involved with a man who wasn’t divorced yet. And she’d be right. She thought of calling Hannah, but she couldn’t face her either. She couldn’t face anyone. Being left for another woman once was bad luck, but twice? She already loathed herself; she didn’t need their pity, too.

  It was a long drive home on sketchy roads. Santa Fe. The lonely stretch of road to the Colorado border. Then north through Colorado Springs, where Teagan pushed away thoughts of Stovi, who was stationed nearby. Memories of the four of them camping only brought feelings of disgust and shame now.

  When Teagan arrived at home, it was dark and already she saw people dressed up and heading out for their New Year celebrations. She hauled all her belongings into her chilly house, and turned up the heat. She was relieved to see that Ben’s place was dark and his porch light on, signaling that he was working or out for the evening. She couldn’t face him either. Before she locked up her truck, she spotted short brown hairs strewn about here and there. Patton’s fur from the car trips they’d taken together.

  Teagan headed straight for her shower, lingering under the hot, steamy water for far longer than normal, hoping it would remove the unclean feelings and carry them away down her stainless steel drain. She dried off and donned her sweats, and sat down with a glass of wine to watch Star Trek. She smiled for the first time in days, glad to see Captain Picard and Data and Worf, wishing she could escape her life and go join Starfleet.

  After a couple of episodes, Teagan dug through her bag for her Saturn notebook, ready to jot down a couple of ideas that had come to her. It wasn’t there. She sifted through her duffle bag, finally yanking out everything. No sign of it. She sat there, trying to recall when she’d last used it.

  Then it hit her. She’d written a few notes before Aaron came home, and then left it on his bedside table. In her extreme haste, she’d forgotten to grab it.

  Angry tears filled her eyes. Her personal notebook lay at his home, for him to find… for his wife to find when she came to be with him. That thought haunted her for several minutes, and the desperate desire to get it back clawed at her, to the point where she almost picked up the phone and called Aaron.

  No. She couldn’t talk to him. She couldn’t risk that he’d ignore her call because he was with his wife. Or worse, that his wife would answer instead.

  She was too tired to think about any of it, and she tucked herself into bed at 11 p.m.

  Happy New Year.

  Chapter Twenty

  Teagan woke. She heard a sound. A familiar sound, but one she couldn’t put her finger on.

  It came again. Her phone. When she found it, it showed a picture of a drained battery in bright red. She’d turned it off on the journey home and forgot about it. She plugged it in and turned it on, finding that she had several text messages. All from Aaron.

  Please call me.

  I tried to call again, but it goes straight to VM. Call me when you get home.

  Teagan, please call. I’m worried.

  She shook her head. No. She couldn’t talk to him.

  But curiosity nipped at her, and she felt an irritating rush of pleasure at seeing his texts, like Pavlov’s dog salivating at the bell that he’d learned to associate with food. Even now, after the devastating truth, a text from him still felt good, no matter how worthless that feeling was.

  Suddenly, the phone rang. It was Aaron. And before she could think, she answered it.

  “Hello?”

  “Teagan… it’s me. Aaron.”

 
She said nothing in response. Only tears came to her eyes. She wanted to hang up on him, but she couldn’t.

  “I’ve been trying to call you for days. Did you get home okay?”

  “Yes. I’m home.”

  “Good. I was worried about you.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me. Worry about your marriage.” It just came out, before she could stop herself.

  A sigh. “I’m sorry. I know it’s fucked up, and there’s so much I want to say—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Teagan—”

  “Did I leave my notebook there? My Saturn notebook?”

  “Yeah. It’s here.”

  “Just throw it away—”

  “I’ll send it to you—”

  “No,” she said, louder. “I don’t need it. Throw it out. And please… don’t let anyone read it,” she added, her voice breaking. Don’t let your wife read it and ridicule you about it, about the nerd who writes science fiction. “Are you really going back to your wife?”

  Another sigh. “Look—”

  “Just throw the notebook away, okay?” She hung up the phone.

  Tears blurred her eyes, so much so that she couldn’t see the display on her phone anymore. And no matter how much she tried to stop them, they flowed from her. The images invaded her mind again, the ones of her and Aaron together, but they faded quickly as more disturbing images replaced them. Aaron hugging his wife. Kissing her. Sleeping in the same bed as her. Any guilt he felt would be quickly subsumed by the pleasure of reconnecting with a woman who was so intriguing and special that he would throw away what he and Teagan had.

  Her phone rang again. Anger surged through her, until she saw it was Diana.

  “Hey,” Teagan said.

  “Hey!” came Diana’s happy voice. “Happy New Year!”

  “You too.”

  “How’s Tucson? Is the weather gorgeous?”

  Teagan hesitated. “I’m in Denver.”

  “Oh. I thought you were spending New Year’s with Aaron…”

  “I was. But he’s spending it with his wife instead. They’re getting back together.”