After Life Lessons (Book One)

by Laila Blake

  Her accent came and went in waves as she spoke, and he was a little hypnotized by her description; Aaron had never really taken art classes, not even in high school, and wasn’t big on museums. He could appreciate a pretty picture, but had never put much thought into the process, or the connection between the artist and the piece. He had to wonder if that was part of the whole, of that strangeness he always felt in his bones, why he never quite fit—anywhere.

  “So, that’s why you left home? So you could do art?”

  “Partly,” she said with a shrug, “more to be... around artists. Just... it felt I couldn’t breathe there. So I left. Kind of lived on a lot of couches for a while, and then came to the States.”

  “It was better here?” He’d been to England, just the airport, really, but he’d been to Europe on leave, was stationed in Germany for a month, knew some soldiers from the country.

  “Kind of, yeah. I loved... loved New York. And then met Sullivan almost straight away. Maybe two months in. He was playing a show in a tiny venue. You know, where the band just comes down after, and they have a beer at the bar.” She bit her lip again and sucked in a deep, wet breath. “We were such a trainwreck at first but… I don’t know, sometimes you don’t choose who you fall in love with. It chooses you, and it takes you a while to understand it was the best thing ever.”

  “What was he like?”

  Emily looked up, surprised; Aaron had asked it quietly as though unsure whether he was allowed to or not. She lifted her hands, still under the blanket, admiring the way they formed hills and valleys when she moved them.

  “Charming,” she said with a wan little smile. “He came up to me, said I owed him a beer. I asked why and he said it was because he’d seen my pretty eyes from across the room in the very beginning of the set, and then played it all for me.”

  She chuckled sadly and shook her head. “It was such a stupid pick-up line, but he had that way about him, you know, some people do—you just look at them and you know they’re special, like they can do anything, say anything.”

  Pausing for a long moment, Emily drew a few sharp breaths, then leaned her cheek against Aaron’s shoulder once more. Her eyes swam with moisture but she didn’t let it take over.

  “We got drunk together, compared tattoos and stories, as you do. I didn’t really have a place back then, I just squatted with some people, moved from place to place. Neither did he—he just toured all the time. It was winter then too, snow falling everywhere, cold and romantic. He took me with him in the bus for a while—it was never supposed to last, but… we needed each other. And time without him was like… being under water without an oxygen tank. I’d never felt that way before, and so we made it work. And then just a few months later, his ex showed up with that beautiful little toddler and we got a proper place and paid taxes and stuff…”

  She shrugged; Aaron nudged his shoulder gently against her cheek.

  “That sounds good.” He did sound as though he believed that, even as his spine curled a little and he sunk even further under the blankets so that their faces were almost level, so he was almost lying on the floor.

  “That you got that,” he added, after a beat. Emily nodded silently. His motion had disturbed the blankets around her shoulder and her hand started to feel awkward on his arm. She smiled a little sheepishly, and reached across him in an effort to pull the covers back up. Grasping the corner, her fingers brushed over his jeans, over a hardness and bulge, warm to the touch.

  Her mouth opened once and then she quickly pulled the blanket back up.

  It was reaction to heat, he’d argue in his head, and Aaron very quickly bit back any response, tipping his head back as though checking to make sure the boxes weren’t about to teeter and fall on top of them. He didn't look at her, the awkwardness of the situation plenty without him acting like an idiot while waiting for his confused body to get its shit back together.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered.

  “Sorry,” he breathed, anyway. He remembered being young, younger than he was now, the old advice to think of baseball scores and math equations, your old aunt in a bathing suit, and maybe that worked when you were trying to stop thinking of someone, of touch, of sex, but it was less about thought and more about proximity, loneliness, and very much fear that brought it on, so even batting averages weren’t working.

  “I told you, you don’t have to apologize.” She shook her head and leaned forward just a little, trying to catch his eye.

  “I could... help you with that.” She did blush and there was an aching quality to her voice, like loneliness or mourning. “I mean, you know, I could.”

  He tucked his chin to look at her again, in the gloom that was only faintly illuminated by the candle they’d dared to light.

  “I—” He had no idea how to respond to that; he blinked with a long stare, and was patently aware his erection was not waning in the least.

  Emily raised her brows, gently, sweetly and her face looked tragically young, caring in a way it hadn’t before—not when she’d looked at him. Her fingers landed on his stomach and carefully, biting down hard on her bottom lip, she moved them lower.

  “It’s—” He swallowed, with a little trouble; again, bodily memory was more acute than that of his brain and, just at her touch, his stomach rounded in. “It’s not... you don’t have to.”

  “I want to,” she whispered. I want to do something for you, echoed in her mind as she unzipped his pants and rubbed the palm of her hand over the hardness under his boxers. She gulped down the thickness in her throat, then unwrapped him blindly, under the covers as though that made it secret, made it hardly reality at all.

  He closed his eyes, swallowing again at any sound that might rise in his throat. There was some immediate shame coupled with the gratification of a touch that wasn’t his own, the first in God knew how long. The situation felt stilted and fucked up and sad, but his body remembered.

  Emily’s hand was small. It didn’t fit around him completely; she couldn’t make her fingers meet but she started to pump anyway. Not looking at him anymore, her cheek pressed against his shoulder, she stared at the movement under the blankets. Her thumb rubbed a wet drop of precum over his head, massaging and pumping again. There wasn't much she could contribute to their journey, but shelter, transportation and food were not a person's only needs.

  The better part of him wanted to tell her to stop, that she had no obligation to him, but the rest of him felt some stifling sense of need, like he’d not known he had behind all the sorting and packing and assigning. His brain was outvoted, and though his hand drifted in the direction of hers, it didn’t make contact to stop, and he didn’t open his eyes to look at her.

  It also didn’t take long, not with months and maybe years without the touch of another person. He only gave a low, choked groan and came sticky on her hand, the rush of relief followed immediately by a larger one of sheer and complete embarrassment.

  He struggled to catch his breath, grateful his eyes were already closed. Suddenly, batting averages came to mind easily, and he could feel every aching muscle in his body.

  Chapter Six

  Aaron was gone when Emily woke the next morning. Early spring sun was filtering through the cracks in the boarded-up windows, causing a myriad of artificial stars to move in and out of focus as she blinked the sleep out of her eyes. She leaned back against the boxes, closed her eyes, listened to the regular breathing next to her. It was one of her favorite things in the world, Song’s sleepy inhales and exhales.

  In his sleep, all those aching similarities to his father disappeared. Sleeping, he was nothing like Sullivan, who could never truly relax, breathing always irregular, always tense as though he was ready to jump and run. He had never slept much, usually spending his nights writing songs or thinking, smoking outside on the fire escape. In a way, she had never fully accepted that, the knowledge that her sleeping arms around him weren’t enough to soothe whatever kept him awake like that. Once, she’d ment
ioned his erratic sleeping to him—and he had looked at her, so suspicious and hurt, as though watching him sleep had violated some dark, intimate core deep inside of him. The moment had passed, he’d pulled her back into bed and they had fucked, long and hard. And she had never mentioned it again.

  She yawned, stifling the sound and opened her eyes again in the well-rehearsed motion that would dislodge thoughts of Sullivan from the painful forefront of her mind. When she pulled up her hands to swivel out of the blankets, one was coated in something that cracked under pressure. Emily took a deep breath, ignored it and hoisted herself to her feet. Aaron was nowhere to be seen but had left a pot with snow to melt for tea and breakfast.

  It was definitely the wrong place to wash her hand. For a few moments, she stumbled around the small, dark room. For no apparent reason, her clothes felt tighter than the night before. She looked at her feet, then cracked open the door and found a patch of snow close enough to avoid getting her socks wet. Rubbing the snow over her fingers, she cleaned them slowly, awkwardly while cradling her sprain against her stomach; and the evidence, the remaining hardened crust re-liquefied, washed away.

  Aaron approached from the left, and Emily raised her hand. He opened his mouth, then waved back instead. Her small hand was pink from the cold and they didn't quite meet each other's eyes. Finally, she mimed being chilled, shivering and hugging herself, and vanished back in the house. There, she breathed, blushed and found the thermos with yesterday’s tea to wash out her mouth, wishing she'd stayed outside long enough to rub some snow over her sleepy face. But she didn’t go back out.

  Instead, she pilfered through the empty cabinets, the old bathroom. It was a habit, the desire to make sure that no house, be it ever so decrepit, would be left unsearched. It was also distraction; she had long learned that it wasn't a good idea to leave her mind unattended and to wander free anymore. Even before it had become a necessity of survival, Emily had lived this way—scavenging through other people's trash for art supplies and furniture, clothes and food. Finding usable items for free had once filled her with pride, had fueled her convictions of living outside of the consumer society she despised.

  “Mmpf.” Song rolled over in his little cocoon behind her, wiggling in order to bring his hands out to rub his eyes.

  “Breakfast?” he croaked; that was more like Song than he’d been in weeks, months. Emily could remember when he was tiny, before he was even any good at talking, waking up painfully early and whining for juice and cereal.

  “Soon,” she promised and came back to the sofa. She handed him the thermos where she had left enough tea for him to quell that first desire for a taste to wash away the night's phlegm. She kissed his hair and ruffled it a little. “It’s still early.”

  “Mmm... pancakes,” Song sighed, flopping against her once he’d swallowed his tea. He was slow to wake up, but not feverish, not coughing, and that was good.

  The door swung open with a burst of cold, but Aaron shut it as quickly as he could manage. His boots were coated with ice, but the rest of him was dry. The sky outside was clear and sunny.

  He flashed them a smile, and went to the supplies, sorting through them, face weary. There was no hot coffee or tea that morning; they needed to conserve the fuel left for nights. They’d eat something cold and move on their way, and, maybe, that night there would be space for a fire, for beds, or something close to it.

  “Morning,” Emily said with a bracing smile, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. All morning she'd tried to bury the memory of Sullivan's face, staring at her in her dream, accusation, pain, longing all wrapped up in his dead eyes. She didn't know what to say to Aaron now, looking at his back was like staring at a wall anyway, and she quickly turned her attention back to Song.

  “How about it, Ducky? A quick start this morning? I-Spy in the car?”

  He sighed, but nodded, reaching up to hug her a bit more fully before she helped him stand up. They still didn’t have much in the way of clothes—they’d lost a lot of what she'd gathered for him, and he’d grown, a little, in spite of their lack of food. Still, she helped him put on the grey sweater they hadn't been able to leave behind because it looked exactly like one Sullivan used to wear, and his boots. Aaron brought more applesauce and canned peaches, and that was enough to satisfy Song before Aaron headed back out into the cold to load the van.

  It was up to Emily and Song to pack the rest of their sleeping things and Emily carried them outside, bracing her teeth against the pressure on her sprain. She took a deep breath as she passed Aaron; he didn't look at her and she was glad when Song trotted out behind her, still unsteady on his feet and looking sleepy and sweet with his ruffled hair. Even Aaron smiled at him, then picked him up and carried him over the snow where it was deep enough to reach over the boy's boots. They, at least, had found a way to bridge the distance of strangers the night before, and Emily watched them with a mixture of envy and relief.

  “Everyone ready?” Aaron asked once they were all settled in, but was looking over his shoulder at Song.

  “Ready,” Song said with an almost wearying smile as though he was already tired of traveling, a wise and jaded little boy who made Emily hide a smile.

  They played car games for a while, I-Spy, memory games, making up words and stories. Song was bright and fast, and focusing on him was easy. Emily could also feel she was doing him some kind of schooling service, even, as they worked their way through the alphabet on the Picnic Game, and she only had to encourage him on a couple letters.

  “When are we going to stop?” he asked, hanging over the back of the front seat to peer out the windshield; the ice was melting off the road, and they rolled down the street at a higher speed than the last day had allowed.

  “When do you think?” Aaron had suggested the Question Game, one he remembered from childhood, and, as a constantly probing seven year old, Song had taken to it like a duck to water.

  “Whenever a house shows up?” They’d bent the rules a little—Song could turn anything into a question, even if it wasn't technically one.

  Emily shook her head. “Have you seen any houses?”

  “Did you see a road?” Aaron countered; he’d looked over at Emily, only incidentally, for some time, and it made her feel strangely rebuked, which in turn spiraled her into long silent contemplations of why that would bother her in the first place. Everything he said was directed at Song, through Song, and it made the little boy a bit giddy to be the center of attention now that he'd overcome his initial shyness.

  “Do we even need a road?” Song replied, immediately, and Aaron snorted, and then laughed, and lost the round.

  The morning was uneventful in all the ways the previous day hadn't been. They ate more snacks and refilled their water bottles from the jugs kept at the back. Eventually, Song drifted off again, head pillowed by his mass of blankets.

  They had both hoped Song would make it longer. The kid was going longer stretches between naps, and that was great, showed he was gaining strength again, but, selfishly, Aaron wanted him awake as a distraction. Now he and Emily sat stiffly, staring out the windshield at the warming road, with absolutely nothing to say to one another.

  “Another round?” she asked finally, her tongue sneaking out to moisten her bottom lip. It was a nervous habit she usually regretted when, after particularly nerve-wracking days, they were bright red and inflamed.

  “Throat’s getting a little dry,” he said, after a beat, flexing his fingers against the wheel; he didn't lift them to scratch his chin, one of his own nervous habits, despite a major desire to do so. Without a word, she handed him the bottle with water they had boiled for drinking back at the house the night before. Then she looked out at the road again, and gnawed at her bottom lip.

  “Do you want me to apologize to you?” she asked quietly, gritting her teeth with humiliation.

  “Excuse me?” He finally did look at her, for a second, confusion etched all over his face.

  She raised her brows, uni
mpressed.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong...”

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  She coughed out a breath and shook her head, then looked away from him, out of the far window.

  “Right. Of course.” She swallowed hard, hated how weak her voice sounded when she got emotional.

  He looked out the windshield again, blinking against the sun's bright reflection off the melted snow. The silence in the van almost had a texture to it, enough to make his head hurt and tongue feel swollen.

  “I should apologize.” He spoke to the road in front of him, still not looking at her. “You have nothing to apologize for. Just... Sorry. I didn’t...” He sucked in a breath, let it out. “Sorry.”

  Emily sighed and turned back around. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes glinted, like the snow.

  “It was just a hand job...” she whispered, eying Song in the rearview mirror for a moment. “You don't have to apologize either. It’s... you didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Aaron flexed his fingers against the wheel again.

  “I’d say something’s wrong, now,” he said, after a moment, glancing at her, then away. They’d actually talked the night before, a conversation that wasn’t halting and surface and pointless, spoken into the air just to fill up the time and space, and that, oddly enough, was what had been more gratifying, and maybe enticing, than anything else.

  “I thought you were angry at me,” she admitted, shrugging.

  “Why would I be angry at you?”