by Laila Blake
“I don’t know... lots of possibilities?” she asked, trying to crack a smile, “you could be very religious and I led you into temptation of whatever, or... maybe I did it badly.” She raised her brows, all but begging him to laugh or smile at least.
“I... that’s a lot of assumptions.” His mouth twitched.
“Possibilities,” she corrected with a sheepish, pained smile.
Then she leaned back; she was hurting, everything seemed to hurt. She missed the ease of conversation with Sullivan. She missed his smiles and his voice and his cock, and holding another man's had just multiplied that longing in a way she hadn’t quite expected it to. It had breathed life into her grief, into memories she'd long tried to shove somewhere into a small, safe box at the bottom of her subconscious, so that she had room to stay alive, to keep Song safe. Now, her chest felt heavy with the weight. She sighed, and glanced back at Aaron's stony profile.
“I just, if it made you uncomfortable or anything, I’m sorry. I... I just wanted to, I don’t know. I thought it would be a good thing, that's all.”
He shook his head, automatically.
“I just...” Aaron focused on the road again. “Don’t want you to feel obligated. To anything.”
“You feel obligated,” she whispered, raising her brows. She looked young that way, and sad. “To us. I didn't do it because I felt obligated. I mean...” She shrugged, ears pinking, “I don’t know, we were talking and, and I wanted to. I wanted to make you feel good, that’s all.”
He looked down at his hands on the wheel, the dash, back at the road, her for a beat, and then the road again.
“I don’t feel obligated,” he said, finally, biting at his bottom lip. “I... like you, both of you. And I ain’t gonna leave you somewhere and wish you the best. What kind of person would that make me?”
“I know. I know, Aaron, I didn’t mean it like that.” She sighed, raked her hand through her hair and looked at him, wide-eyed. “I know I’m likely all fucked up and weird, that’s... not even really new. But it felt good, okay? It’s not obligation.”
“You’re not fucked up and weird.” She’d barely had a chance to finish speaking before that was out of his mouth. “Why would you say that?” There was more, but that hit him hard enough that whatever manners he still clung to were forgotten for the moment.
Again she looked at him as though he had to know. Couldn’t he see it wafting out of her like a dark cloud? Couldn't he feel that even now, speaking to him, his face blurred into that of a dead man and she had to blink hard to dispel it?
Her eyes caught Song sleeping on the backseat and her throat closed up more.
“Some other time... okay?” she croaked, taking deep breaths to keep herself from crying.
“Okay.” What else could he do but agree? They couldn’t pull over, and Song was right there, liable to wake up at any moment. What had happened was a fluke, and, ultimately, unimportant. They were safe, the road was clear, and they’d come up on the McKelly farm in the next day. Aaron could, would, focus on that.
Emily sniffed once, and stared out of the window, and Aaron let silence fall over the car again. Finally, he shrugged a shoulder, and lifted it high enough to rub his ear against it, that compulsion to keep his hands on the wheel still strong. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“I just… I miss him, I really miss him, and I am not quite so far gone not to know that this probably isn’t what you're supposed to say to the man you’re just trying to convince that a hand job is just... that, and that he shouldn’t worry and...” The words all tumbled out too quickly, Emily leaping from consonant to consonant, almost tripping over her own accent and then she fell silent, breathing deeply.
Aaron didn’t reply for a minute, two, maybe, a little surprised by the torrent of words, the garbled confession, and also already trying to figure out how to respond.
Finally: “Last woman I slept with was my ex about... three years ago? I don’t know. On my last leave, before my tour was over. Home for five days. That’s when she got pregnant, you know, of course. She lost it when I was back in the desert. When I got home, she broke up with me, and I—I didn’t really care. Not about losing her. I mean—” He huffed out a breath, realizing exactly how bad that all sounded.
“I loved her. But I think I loved the idea of her more than the reality. We were never together long enough for me to know her.”
Emily nodded, accepted his story as a kind of emotional trade.
“Sullivan was away a lot, too. He was a touring musician—not the famous kind, although he was getting there, but the kind that just has to work all the time to create some momentum. It wasn’t easy, but at least we could phone and... and he sent me letters.”
“We emailed, talked a couple times a week if the satellite connection was good,” Aaron said, voice steady, though quiet. “I know you lose a lot in distance, and it was something pretty common—there were guys cheating on their wives, even, and I could sort of understand, even if I didn’t like it.”
He glanced at her again, with just a hint of a wounded expression. “You said maybe it’s better to have nothing to lose. I’m not really sure that's true.”
“Neither am I,” she admitted with a hint of contrition. “But it hurts.”
“I know.”
Emily pulled her hands around her body, hugging herself; she looked up at his profile.
“I enjoyed it. It makes me feel guilty but there it is.”
His eyebrows drew together, and he focused on the road once more.
“What did?” He didn’t want to be presumptuous, even if his stomach ached.
Emily looked at him, her brows rose a fraction of an inch as though that would spare her the need to answer. “You know, still… still feels like cheating. Like getting something good out of… I dunno, out of him being away.”
Aaron nodded, swallowing, the tightness in his stomach only doubling, like a knot pulled harder.
“I’m sorry,” he said, after a moment.
This time, she smiled, if only just.
“I can do that, too, you now. Why in the world would you be sorry? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
He shrugged, squinting at the road; his eyes straight up hurt now. “Seems like the time to apologize,” he said, quiet, accent as thick as the snow outside.
“Hey...” she whispered, the hurt on his face tearing through her unexpectedly. She placed her hand on his arm, squeezed it once and moved a little close. “How about… how about maybe we just say, it was something we did, and it wasn’t a bad thing and you didn’t do anything wrong.” She took a deep breath, looking worried and her forehead in knots. “I mean, I did it—I hardly even asked you.”
“I’m capable of saying no, Emily,” he replied, with a weariness that made him want to put his head down, and maybe smack it against something hard for a few minutes. “If we’re gonna start trading faults or whatever, I get half of it.”
He finally did lift his hand from the wheel to rub at his forehead, over his aching, dry eyes, his chin that desperately needed a shave. “I guess that’s what we do,” he agreed, after another moment to think. “Just... pretend it didn’t happen.”
Heaving a sigh like bricks on her chest, she shook her head. “I’m not ashamed of it.”
“I am.”
Emily stared at him and then quickly whipped her head back to the road.
“Just... let it be. Best as one of those things we don’t talk about?” He tried for a smile, almost got there.
She opened her mouth and then closed it again. She could feel something sticky rise in her throat that felt like bile and guilt and humiliation. She nodded, if just because a reply seemed necessary, took her hand off his arm and moved back, closer to the window, looking out at the passing landscape. Her heart ached with every breath.
Chapter Seven
Song plastered his face against the window, eyes rounded like an owl.
“That is a big house,” he announced
.
Indeed, the McKelly farmhouse was large, ramshackle as it was, surrounded by wide, flat swathes of land. Closer to the house was barbed wire, the only thing marring the otherwise postcard picture of the countryside.
Aaron steered the van up the rough dirt driveway with a relieved, if small, smile on his face. The past day and a half had been somewhat excruciating, both he and Emily falling into a tense silence anytime Song drifted off in the backseat. Conversations were stilted without him involved, and Aaron had a host of things he wanted to tell her, and more than a few he wanted to take back, but had no idea where to start. Finally arriving at their first stop was a blessing in many ways.
At the chained gate, he tapped the horn twice.
“Myra will come down to unlock the fence and let us in. They built this thing last year, and it’s pretty sturdy, but a pain in the ah—butt to get open.”
Song snorted. “I know what you were about to say,” he sang.
Emily looked like she was about to laugh, but then stopped herself. “You are just used to bad, bad words,” she told Song with a smile, “speaks badly of your favorite Emmy, you know?”
He twisted his face as he thought about that.
“You have interesting words,” he decided, and it was Aaron's turn to laugh, casting a glance in Emily’s direction.
“I’ll try to behave better, promise,” he swore, big eyes and all innocence.
“Eh, it’s okay, I kind of like it.” She poked her tongue out at him just long enough to feel silly. Aaron stirred, and caught their attention as he waved towards the house. They saw a figure emerge onto the big wrap-around porch. She was old, at least seventy, and Emily raised her brows at Aaron. He hadn't said much about his mission, the different stops, and now wasn't the time either.
Palming his handgun, he hopped out of the van to cast a quick look over the property before moving up to the fence just as Myra arrived.
“Afternoon, ma’am,” he greeted her, all good Southern boy, removing his baseball cap, his hair a mess from being pressed beneath it for days at a time as he drove.
“Don’t ma’am me,” the woman scolded, sliding the key into the big padlock. “I wish we still had a way of calling, we were starting to worry.”
Emily watched the exchange, then looked back at Song. He was shy and she sometimes wondered if that was her fault: she was the one who felt apprehensive of strangers in a way Sullivan never had. It had gotten worse with the years, once her drifting days were over. But even then, she'd coasted on being small, and different and a girl, rather than an actually gregarious personality. Aaron hadn’t invited her to join him outside the car, and she’d had the distinct impression he was glad to get out and away from her, and so she didn’t follow; she just waved when the woman’s eyes fell on her, smiling a little shyly.
Myra waved back, pushing the gate open. “You’ve got friends,” she remarked to Aaron.
“Guess I do,” he said, shrugging and heading back to the van to climb behind the wheel, shifting it into drive and rolling through the open gate.
“Myra and Bill have been married forever,” he told them, parking the van just inside the gate and reaching for the handle of his door. “It's kinda amazing they kept this place with everything. Come on,” he added, hopping out so he could help Myra push the gate closed again.
Emily nodded and took a deep breath. Then she opened the passenger’s door and carefully climbed out, too, hands pressed to the sides of her jeans as she approached.
“Hi,” she said and awkwardly held out her good hand. “I'm Emily and that’s my son, Song.” She nodded back towards the window where Song had immediately climbed onto the front seat and was watching them intently.
“Nice to meet you.” Myra shook her hand, but her gaze was on the boy in the van. “Why don’t you kids pull the van up to the house and we’ll see if there’s something for your little boy? I’ve got coffee on the stove, and I bet there's cookies somewhere.”
Aaron shook his head, but was smiling.
“I got it. You want a ride back up to the house?” he asked the old woman, but she swung the large key-ring at him.
“I can still walk,” she scolded, starting her way back up the driveway.
Aaron smiled at Emily, forgetting, maybe, for the moment, how tense everything was between them. “They’re nice folks. You’ll like 'em.”
“She likes you very much,” Emily said, quietly. It was the first nice exchange just between the two of them in a long time and she wanted it to stay that way, at least for a while. It was on the small ride over to the house, that she let his words echo in her ears and something cold seemed to trickle down into her stomach. If he was sick of them already, this would be as good a place as any to drop them off and fulfill his promise.
At the house, Myra took them to the kitchen, old-fashioned in nearly every way but for a refrigerator in the corner that looked like it was from the mid-eighties, bright yellow and covered in magnets.
Emily stared at it.
“You... you have electricity?” she asked, unable to hide the hope and desire in her voice.
Myra followed her gaze to the fridge and smiled.
“Went off the grid in what... was it? Some time after 9/11. Solar, mostly. And a heat pump.”
Emily’s heart raced but she looked down, hiding her desire as she pressed Song’s hand and ushered him into the seat Myra had pulled out for him.
“I bet a lot of people wish they’d had that foresight,” she all but whispered, unable to sit anywhere as of yet because Song was holding on to her with all his might.
“Aaron’s back?” It was an older man’s voice, and Song jumped, head swiveling in the direction of a doorway, through which they couldn’t see much, the room darkened.
“He’s outside, Bill. He brought a girl and her little boy. You should come say hi, at least.” She shook her head before leaning towards the two of them conspiratorially. “Bill’s not doing so hot, but he pretends.”
Song looked up at Emily with wide eyes, squeezing her hand; he was clearly overwhelmed, and would clamber into her arms if given the chance. She knew the look, and leaned over to kiss his hair before she tried to keep drift of the conversation, still somewhat rusty.
“Is that why...” she started but then stopped herself. “I’m sorry to hear that. Can... can Aaron help him?”
“He already does,” Myra said, turning away to the stove as Bill entered; he was a big man, but clearly winnowed down, and walked with a cane. His glasses were thick, and he squinted through them at the newcomers. Song pressed his cheek to Emily's hip.
“Hello there!” His voice was booming that close, and Myra shook her head and swatted at him with a wooden spoon, similar to how she’d scolded Aaron.
“Bill, this is Emily and Song, Aaron’s friends.” She spoke of the soldier like he was her son.
“Hi,” Emily repeated and with Song clinging to her left, she could only offer her injured hand. “It's nice to meet you, um, sir.”
He looked at the bandages and her fingertips, obviously not quite sure what to do with it, and then let her curl them over his index finger, shaking it rather gently for his size.
“Friend of Aaron’s is a friend of ours.” Over his shoulder, Emily could clearly see Myra rolling her eyes.
At that moment, Aaron entered the kitchen with a stack of boxes in his arms and the woman rushed forward to take the one off the top.
“Hello there, sir,” he greeted the big man, smiling widely.
Emily had hoped Aaron’s reappearance would relax Song at least a little but he was still clinging, and she gently brushed her fingers over his hair. They seemed like nice people, fighters to the last, but Emily couldn't help watching Aaron's profile for any sign of his intentions. It was an oddly painful idea, to be left behind here, like one of his boxes.
Myra carried one of them to the refrigerator, and Aaron followed her, unpacking the smaller ones: the labels on the side read insulin. Bill watched the two
of them appraisingly. “How much you find?”
Aaron straightened up, lifting his hat again to brush his fingers over his hair before he stuck the brim in his pocket, hair sticking up over his ears and forehead.
“A few more months?” he said, shrugging apologetically. “Most of them didn’t keep. These were the only ones I could salvage, I’m sorry.”
“Oh hush yourself, we know you did all you could,” Myra chided him gently. Emily thought she could hear the worry, the age, the pain in her voice, somewhere buried deeply under her bracing cheer. She wanted to touch her arm but didn't quite dare. Instead, she tried to make sure she took up as little space as she could in the small, busy kitchen.
Still, Aaron wore an apologetic smile on his face. “If I come across anymore...”
“I know, dear. Sit, coffee’s ready. Song, I do have some oatmeal cookies, would that do?” Myra asked, unstacking little matching cups from a holder on the counter.
Song looked up at Emily; back before, they’d made an attempt to ration his sugar intake, but they’d also not seen a cookie in what felt like years. Their eyes met and just for a moment, she thought her heart would break from the look on his face. She brushed her fingertips over his cheek, tried not to wince from moving her splint, and smiled at Myra.
“That would be wonderful, thank you so much. He loves cookies. Don’t you, Ducky?”
He gave a serious nod, and when Myra produced the cookie, handed it over, he held it in both hands for a long moment before he managed to look up at the woman. “Thank you.”
“Of course, honey.” She shoved at Aaron, who was still standing politely next to the counter. “Didn't I tell you to sit down? All of you. I can take care of this.”
Aaron gestured to Emily, though. “I can help,” he protested, as Bill did sit down.
Emily, too, wanted to offer, but she also didn’t want to abandon Song on his chair. She smiled sheepishly at Myra, then Aaron and finally sat down on the one next to Song’s.
Myra poured the coffee, and pushed cookies on Emily and Aaron, making noises about Aaron’s weight, just like a mother. On the fridge, there were photos of small children, her grandchildren, Emily had to suppose, and she edged closer to Song.
