Axis of Aaron

by Johnny B. Truant

  “Why are you here, Ebon?” she said from the other side of all that red hair.

  “You invited me to dinner.” It was a guess, but seemed safe enough.

  “I mean as a whole. You can do better, a strapping young man like you.”

  “‘Strapping’?” He wasn’t exactly young either, but one outrageous adjective at a time. Ebon realized he’d nearly dropped a fragile spinning plate and grasped for it, changing the conversation’s direction — away from himself and toward her, where it belonged. “I can’t do better.” But that wasn’t quite right; it sounded like he’d grasped for the last rung before falling off a slippery ladder. “I like you more than other women, I mean.”

  “Why?”

  Ebon wanted to cringe at Vicky’s change — at her sudden need for validation. Maybe she was on her period. He very seriously hoped not; she had to feel the way he was responding against her leg. And again, he wondered at himself. Her neediness was a turn-on. He was apparently the strapping young man with the power to light her up. Holding that key made him feel powerful. And yet he knew she was giving him that power, and that taking it away would just as surely crush him. Had he really managed to get into a codependent relationship on an island? It almost made sense, given the way his last few months had gone, but it was hardly a good way to get psychologically healthy after his recent trauma.

  “Because you’re — ” He paused. The obvious Because you’re hot was too superficial. “— So smart and mature.”

  “Mature?”

  “Just like ‘worldly.’ You know a lot of stuff because you’ve done a lot of stuff.”

  “Because I’ve been around a long time.”

  “Don’t be like that.”

  “I’m not being like anything.” Ebon still couldn’t see Vicky’s face as they hugged, but again felt more annoyed, and hornier.

  “You’re fully developed as a person. You speak French. You have intelligent opinions on things.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You’re funny. Sexy.”

  “Sexy?”

  “God, yes.” Ebon slid a hand down her side, to her bare leg, skin on skin.

  “Because I have big tits.”

  “Sexy isn’t about tits. Sexy is an attitude. It’s in every little thing you do.”

  “Like what?”

  “The way you walk. The way you talk. Remember that time you ate those strawberries with whipped cream, before we were … like we are now? It drove me nuts.”

  “I’m allergic to strawberries.”

  His hand rubbed her bare thigh. “The way you used to tease me. You’d wear skirts, then uncross and recross your legs.”

  “Where did I do that?”

  “In the living room.”

  “Whose living room?”

  “I thought you were just being casual, like you needed to recross your legs, and weren’t even looking my way because you were in the middle of a conversation. But that didn’t stop me from seeing the flash of your panties every time, and it even got to the point where I’d situate myself across from you, sitting on the floor instead of a chair, so that when you did it, I’d be in place. But you weren’t doing it casually. You were doing it because you’re sexy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Now rubbing her legs with both hands — outer thighs, tops of thighs, sliding toward inner thighs. Ebon kissed her neck. “Sure you don’t.”

  “Seriously, I don’t.”

  “Hey,” he said, chuckling against her shoulder. “Do you want to help me with my homework?”

  “What?”

  Ebon’s hand slid between her legs, just below her hem. Then her hands were on his shoulders, and he found himself staring at Vicky from arm’s length, his roaming hand suddenly homeless and lonely.

  “What did you say?”

  Ebon couldn’t answer, because whatever had seemed different about Vicky before had magnified. She was still the same woman with the same face, but something was off enough for her to have been swapped with a twin. That was the funny thing about twins: people called them identical, but once you got to know a pair, their differences were huge and obvious and insistent.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, blinking as if slapped. “I thought you wanted it.”

  “What’s going on, Ebon?”

  “Nothing’s going on.” He looked where his hand had so recently been, wanting to return. “Well, nothing unusual anyway.”

  “You’ve been strange all night,” said the strange woman who looked exactly like Vicky.

  “Two to tango,” Ebon said.

  “What?”

  “I guess we’re both different. Do you want to … ” His eyes ticked toward the bedroom, lust eclipsing logic and social decorum.

  “Not really,” she said.

  But she was always like this, wasn’t she? All tease. All crossing and uncrossing of legs. All tall heels and long limbs as she sauntered along with the rest of the group, always ahead of Ebon rather than behind, casting seductive glances that should have been obvious to all. But hadn’t she always been an unattainable ideal? There was really no question of his becoming putty in her hands the moment she decided to open up and offer the treasures her body had promised for years. Years.

  “Tease,” he said, turning away, annoyed.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You gave me what I wanted once, right? And now I’m supposed to be your little puppy dog, hoping you’ll deign to toss me another treat?”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Ebon?”

  “Oh, sure, you definitely have no idea,” he said, walking across the room, bare feet dragging in the worn shag carpeting. He glanced back at Vicky, still trying to figure out why she looked so much the same while also seeming completely different. A dog was barking outside. Ebon found himself getting past his arousal. Now he wanted her to leave, to get out and let him be.

  “Maybe you should go,” she said.

  “Should I ‘go’ to help you move? ‘Go’ to help you install a ceiling fan?” His departing lust was alchemizing into repressed anger. These were things he should have said weeks ago, but it had been impossible to break her spell. She waved her sex at Ebon like a weapon, and he’d been fool enough to follow like a moth to a flame.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “It’s always on your terms, isn’t it? When you need me, I’m there. There to make you feel young and pretty and sexy, to do the work you need done and be your slave. But what about my needs?”

  “What about your needs?”

  “I have needs! I’m a human being, not a toy!”

  Vicky stepped back, as if driven by the force of an invisible blow. As she struck the bookcase behind her, a small ceramic clown plummeted toward the ground. It struck the carpet and, miraculously, remained whole.

  But the clown figurine wasn’t right.

  The bookcase wasn’t right.

  The shag carpeting wasn’t right.

  And Vicky definitely wasn’t right.

  Slowly, Vicky stepped forward. She extended a hand, the way people offered a hand to a dog that might leap and bite them.

  “Ebon?” she said. “You’re scaring me, Ebon.”

  The room began to revolve, because nothing was right. Not anymore.

  “I don’t need your pity,” he said.

  His world was a fog after that.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Who Am I?

  “CUTE.”

  “NO, REALLY. WHO AM I?”

  Ebon reached past the pillow, aiming to move aside the mop of dark-blonde hair covering Holly’s face. She must have been able to see past it, despite appearances, because she slapped his hand deftly away before he reached the first strand.

  “I don’t know. A very satisfied woman?”

  “Who else?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She whipped her hair back with one hand, revealing piercing green eyes. “I was Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.”
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  “How does putting your hair over your face make you Elvira?”

  “You know. Like I’m all morose and stuff.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. First of all, Elvira had black hair. Second, she had enormous boobs.”

  Holly folded down the sheet, pushing her own bare breasts together to try and manufacture Mistress-of-the-Dark-level cleavage, but lacking the raw material.

  “And third, I can’t for the life of me remember her ever draping hair over her face.”

  “I was being goth,” said Holly. She moved the hair back to demonstrate.

  “Elvira was pre-goth. She was goth before goth existed.”

  “‘I want to suck your blood!’”

  “Elvira never, ever, in the history of existence, indicated a desire to suck anyone’s blood.”

  Holly affected a theatrical spooky laugh from behind her hair curtain.

  “That was Bela Lugosi. Are you confusing Elvira with Bella Lugosi?”

  “No.”

  Ebon watched her for a minute. “You don’t even know who Bella Lugosi is, do you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then who is he?”

  “He?”

  “Yes, Jesus.”

  “I thought you were talking about the girl in Twilight.”

  Ebon rolled onto his back with an exasperated sigh. The ceiling was the whorls and swoops of a ticky tacky plaster job. It wasn’t the best apartment, for sure, but it beat Holly’s place. She still lived with her roommates in the dorm and had no plans to move out. At all. Ebon had asked her about her future plans early in their relationship, and she’d said she planned to strike it rich and go from there. When he’d asked how she planned to strike it rich, she’d told him that something would come to her eventually.

  “Hey,” she said. “You’re lucky I even pretend to care about your interests. You know I’ll stop doing that eventually, right?”

  “The fact that I made you watch one late-night black-and-white horror movie doesn’t mean it qualifies as an ‘interest,’” he said. “I have other things you should feign interest in if we’re going to do this.”

  “Like what?”

  “And you’re not supposed to tell me you plan to stop humoring me either,” Ebon continued, ignoring the aside. “The rules of relationships are such that as we’re together longer, you’ll stop pretending, but it’ll be a slow creep. You can’t announce your intention to stop caring.”

  “Why not?”

  Ebon rolled his head to look at Holly, who was on her side staring right at him, her lips peeled back in a big just-dare-me grin. Ebon threw the spare pillow at Holly’s face. She took the blow, then wedged it under her head and sat up, chest bare, covers pooled at her waist.

  “You sit there like that, and I’m just going to want to have sex with you again.”

  Holly made a playful little eye roll. “That’s something I won’t lose interest in.”

  “Really.”

  “Really. I say what I mean. So here.” Holly turned toward him again, inched closer to his face, and stared Ebon in the eyes directly enough that she might have been looking through the backs of his sockets to the pillow behind him. “I will always be down to fuck you, Ebon Shale.”

  “What if we break up? Will you still be down to do it?”

  “Down to do what?’

  “Have sex.”

  “Say ‘fuck,’” she told him.

  “Fuck.”

  “You say that like a swear. I’m saying it like an act.”

  Ebon laughed. “You’re one of a kind, Holly Moone.”

  “Goddamn right.” She looked around the bedroom. “I wish I smoked. This feels like a cigarette moment.”

  “Mmm.”

  She rolled fully onto her side again, then scooched closer. Again Ebon turned his head. Her eyes were less insistent, now more sincere.

  “What?”

  “I’m serious about it though,” she said. “A lot of guys complain about their girls not wanting sex often enough. Not going to be a problem with this girl. I’d suck you off in a parking lot.”

  Ebon laughed.

  “I’m totally serious.”

  “I know you are. That’s the funny part.”

  “We should do that. I’d like to do that.”

  Again, Ebon laughed. If he weren’t already totally drained, what she’d said would have him winding up to go again. Instead, he watched the ceiling, then the window. It was going to be a nice day. Maybe they should go to the park or wash their cars. The day was theirs.

  “How did we end up together?” Ebon felt safe, in the post-coital moment, to voice a question he often asked himself. Holly was possibly the most attractive, sexiest girl he’d ever met. He was as shy, reserved, and nerdy as he’d always been. He’d phrased the question as something mutual, but in reality Ebon mostly wondered why she was with him.

  “I saw what I wanted and went after it.”

  “Oh. So you get all the credit. I seem to remember manning up and being bold.”

  “When were you bold?”

  “When we met. The second time.”

  “At the union?”

  “Of course.”

  Holly rolled onto her back. “You weren’t bold then.”

  “I asked you out, didn’t I?”

  “Um … ” Holly put a finger to her chin, feigning deep thought, “ … nooo.”

  “Then how did we end up at the Olive Garden the next night?”

  “I’m not taking credit for the Olive Garden. That was all you. But I was the one who said we should continue our discussion somewhere else, later.”

  “Because I’d given you scintillating conversation.”

  This time when Holly rolled over, she did so all the way, wrapping her nude body against Ebon’s side, her long, tan arm draped across his hair-strewn chest. “You did do that.”

  “But really,” he said. “I didn’t exactly see myself with someone like you.”

  “That hurts.”

  “Sorry. I meant, I didn’t see it outside of fantasies wherein I was irresistible.”

  She snuggled closer. “You are irresistible.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re funny.”

  That was true. Time and again over the few weeks they’d been together — inseparable since that second awkward yet oddly perfect meeting in the ticket line — Holly had told Ebon that she’d never met anyone who could make her laugh more than him. She laughed a lot, all the time, and her laugh had the tune of an unforgettable song. Their pairing made for perfect synergy: Holly loved to laugh, and Ebon loved to make her do it. She joked to her friends that he could make her laugh until she came, but Ebon, who wasn’t entirely sure she was kidding, always felt uncomfortable when she said it. But that was Holly through and through: she had no filter, and said what she meant.

  “I am funny,” he said, watching the ceiling.

  “We’re funny together.”

  “Yes. Your Elvira impression is hilarious.”

  “It’s not hilarious at all. It’s terrifying.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Why don’t you fuck the terror right out of my body?”

  Ebon looked over, sensing a sincere request, but was still too spent.

  “I can’t just keep going like that, over and over.”

  Holly sighed, then began playing with his flaccid penis under the covers as if it were a toy and she could stir it to action.

  “Just so you know,” she said, “I masturbate all the time.”

  If Ebon had been drinking something, he’d have spit it out all over the bed.

  “I just think you should know that. You come into the bedroom unexpectedly, you might find me wrinkling fingers. You come in while I’m taking a bath, you might … ”

  “I wouldn’t just pop into the bathroom while you’re in there.”

  “Well, feel free.”

  A moment passed. Holly’s hand surrendered, sensing a lack of reward for the effort.<
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  “Holly.”

  She looked over.

  “That’s a big difference between us, you know.”

  “What?”

  “Sex.”

  “We both like it. Problem solved.”

  “Yes, but your … appetites … are beyond mine.” It felt like a strange thing to say, because most of the time Holly’s incessant sexual energy was a thrill. When his dander was up, the idea of screwing in cars and public bathrooms or getting head while he drove all sounded exciting. But when the pressure was released and Ebon was back to his baseline, sometimes he wondered if he could keep up — and if he couldn’t, he wondered if Holly would be happy enough with what he had to offer.

  “You’re complaining about a horny girlfriend?”

  “Not complaining at all. I just wonder … ” Oh, just say it. “Well, I wonder if I’m enough for you. If it could cause problems.”

  “Problems,” she scoffed.

  “Is it a bad idea to look out for problems?”

  “We’ve only been going out for, like, three weeks.” Holly didn’t need to say the rest, which was that for her, the relationship was still very much an open project. Not so for Ebon. The minute a girl returned his affections, he started thinking of what they’d be like as a couple, if they could ever be married, if they made sense as a long-term family. He knew it was too much pressure for the early days and kept it to himself, but the tendency to think long term from the start was in his DNA. Not so for Holly. If there were problems, she surely assumed they’d just break up and enjoy the ride, carefree, until then. Ebon, though, didn’t want to deepen their connection in the light of an inevitable breakup. In Ebon’s mind, it was better never to have loved than to have loved and lost.

  Ebon shrugged, knowing it would be a bad idea to voice his thoughts. But they’d talked a lifetime in the last three weeks, as inseparable as two people could be without being compulsive or codependent. For Ebon, this wasn’t about a good time, laughs, or sex. He was sure he loved Holly, and had fallen for her entirely too deeply. And Holly, who was as insightful as she was brash, knew it. Her still being with him despite his tendencies had to mean something.