Axis of Aaron

by Johnny B. Truant

  Ebon could see Aimee at the dock. From this distance, she looked very young. Seventeen at most, as he’d seen her last. Seventeen years old with a wide, white smile, brown hair, with no filter and piercing emerald eyes.

  But it was an optical illusion. As the boat neared, Ebon saw that Aimee’s hair was as dark blonde as it had always been, her long legs crossed at the ankles because she was a Pisces and standing like that made her legs look like a tail fin. She’d aged (she’d be thirty-three; he’d sent her a happy birthday message on LiveLyfe back in March), but she seemed to have aged well. Long and lean, as always, her face tan and beautiful, her hair a delightful, don’t-give-a-shit (like honey badger) mess. She was standing still now, but he could see her trademark nervous energy around her. She’d mellowed, but she hadn’t slowed. He felt sure she still interrupted herself when her thoughts derailed. She still pursued a hundred creative projects at once, never fully committing to any. She’d still trip over everything — not because she was clumsy, but because she was always moving slightly too fast. This would be their first time touching hands for the better part of two decades, but they’d never truly strayed far from skin-on-skin.

  “That your girl?” Jack didn’t say the rest, but Ebon could see the codicil and a modicum of lechery on the man’s features when he looked over: She’s purrrrty.

  “My friend,” Ebon said.

  “She gonna be your girl?”

  Ebon thought it was a forward thing of a charter captain to ask, but he almost nodded. Yes, she just might. They’d spent an eternity simmering. Aimee pretended Ebon was here for comfort and Ebon pretended that he’d come to the island to use his hands enough to forget, but they both knew the truth of what was happening — what had been happening for years now, slowly approaching a boil chat by chat, email by email, text by text. The master bedroom’s mattress was big enough for two. And the cottage’s old owner was no longer around.

  “Captain Jack,” Ebon said.

  Jack looked over.

  “Like the Billy Joel song.”

  Jack chuckled.

  “Can you get me high tonight?”

  Jack said nothing, only continued to smile. But this was a new place, a new start, a new adventure, and maybe he was now the kind of guy who smoked out from time to time to lower life’s volume. Why not? He’d brought little with him, and a very large part of himself wanted to leave his past in the city to burn. He didn’t just have stereo equipment, TVs, and Blu-Ray players; he had Bang & Olufsen and an LG 55EA9800. His sheets weren’t just high thread count, they were Frette on a Duxiana bed. But right now, all of those trophies meant nothing. They were just the remainders of a life that no longer fit — a life that actually hurt to wear, like a bespoke suit outgrown at the shoulders.

  But Jack only smiled, not taking the question as serious.

  Ebon caught Aimee’s eye as the distance between the boat and dock closed. She smiled, warming his heart. He’d seen plenty of her photos on LiveLyfe, but in person it was easy to see that the photos hadn’t done her justice. She really was beautiful. She’d always been beautiful. Right now, she was all that mattered. He was Ebon — just plain old Ebon Shale — here to start again. To correct the past’s mistakes. To follow time where it had inexorably taken him, because all things happened for a reason. His life had ripened, and after all these years of waiting, the time was finally right.

  Working together, Jack and Aimee held the boat long enough for Ebon to step off. Then Ebon waved to Jack, who waved back and motored away, sure to make it home in time for dinner.

  Once they were alone, Aimee looked him over from head to toe.

  “Who would have thought we’d ever have our fourth summer?” she finally asked.

  Ebon looked around at the turning leaves. “I think summer is over.”

  She gave him a small, almost knowing smile. Something was just under the surface, dying for voice. “Maybe” was all she said.

  “It’s good to see you.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, Ebon. I missed you.”

  “I missed you too, Aimee.”

  “And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I promise to do my best to make you feel better,” she said.

  Ebon looked up at the bluff, toward where the cottage would remain invisible until they climbed the steps leading down to the slip.

  “Thanks.”

  They looked at each other for a strange moment, each seeming ready to say words that never came. Ebon’s were too raw, not yet ready to leave. Aimee’s were held in check, trying to find her role. Already they felt like two pieces of a puzzle clicking together after too long out of sync. Already it was as if no time had passed, as if seventeen and fifteen years old were only a day behind.

  Without waiting for his response, Aimee wrapped her long arms around him, the hug sufficient to pin Ebon’s arms to his sides. He shifted and took her arms under his, hugging her back, feeling the squeeze like something long lost, long gone, long forgotten, long needed like oxygen, yet held at a distance. And quite unexpectedly, he felt his eyes start to water, his chest beginning to hitch.

  “Everything will be all right,” she promised.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Emotional Work

  AIMEE POKED HER HEAD INTO THE bedroom to find Ebon sitting on his bunk, leafing through a small book bound in boards like a hardback novel, its pages covered with looping, feminine handwriting.

  “What’s that?”

  “Holly’s diary.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Ebon looked up. “Why would I be kidding?”

  “Well … you’re reading her diary. You’re not supposed to read a girl’s diary.”

  “She’s dead, Aimee.” The words left his mouth with a hammer’s blunt force. Ebon had said them over and over — sometimes to himself at night, sometimes to the bathroom mirror, sometimes to the crashing waves when he took walks, and occasionally to Aimee when he felt up to discussing it — with a kind of steeling bravado. She was gone. In a box. Underground. There was no changing any of those facts, and dancing around them wouldn’t do anyone any good. Ebon felt like he was flogging himself with a whip, forcing himself to accept what was done because it couldn’t be changed.

  Aimee sat on the opposite bunk, disarmed by the edge in his trio of words. “Oh.” A pause. “Do you think that’s healthy?”

  “Healthy how?”

  “Like you said, she’s … gone. There may be things in there you don’t want to know. Things that don’t make any difference now anyway, and that you’ll be taking out of context.”

  Ebon flipped to a page he’d marked with a dog-ear bookmark, then read aloud: “‘Last night, Mark made me come so hard I sprained my hip.’” He looked up at Aimee. “You’re right. In a different context, that could mean anything.”

  “It’s not fair, Ebon.”

  “What does it matter if it’s fair? She made her own bed.” He rolled his eyes. “Then she invited a bunch of other guys into it.”

  “I meant, it’s not fair to you.”

  Ebon held up the diary. “I disagree. I think this is the comeuppance I deserve.”

  “Because you were wronged.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So you’ll right it by making yourself feel worse.”

  Ebon set the book down and looked at Aimee. He wasn’t good at putting up a tough act, and already felt it melting away. For their entire lives, Aimee had been the alpha between them. She’d taught him all of his life lessons. She’d even coached him, from a distance, through his years dating Holly. It was only a few months after meeting Holly that he and Aimee had found each other again online, and she’d resumed bossing him around almost immediately.

  “I have to know,” he said.

  “You know already. Does it make things better for you, knowing more?” Aimee picked up the diary and cracked the spine. Ebon reached for it halfheartedly and she slapped his hand. She read for
a few moments, flipping through and skimming pages one after the other, while Ebon made impatient noises. Then she looked up.

  “Have you read the whole thing?”

  Ebon tried to glower. The truth was that like a teenager fast-forwarding to a movie’s nude scenes, he’d obsessively read the juicy parts having to do with Holly’s infidelities and little else. Because of her famous lack of filter, she’d described them in detail. Reading them over now was, for Ebon, the oddest mix of depressing, vindicating, and arousing.

  “Because the first half of this book, based on a quick scan, seems to be almost entirely about you.”

  “‘Ebon was an unsatisfying lay,’” Ebon said in a quoting voice.

  “It goes back to 2005,” she said. “Is that when you met her?”

  Ebon nodded reluctantly.

  Aimee opened the book and read aloud. “‘I just met the sweetest guy. He’s a total dork, but I thought he was super cute. I laughed so hard! I know he knows Jimmy, so hopefully I’ll run into him again.’” She looked up. “That’s from the first entry. It’s like she bought and began this journal when she first met you.”

  “So?”

  “Maybe she thought you were worth commemorating. A lot of this — the first half, at least — seems to be about you.”

  Ebon had ignored the first half. The damning stuff was farther in, and the possibly-kind first pages would only confuse him. “Maybe she just wanted to chronicle her social experiment to fuck around on someone who kept trying to love her.”

  Aimee sighed, then set the journal down.

  “How are you feeling?” she said.

  “Kind of pissed.”

  “I guess that’s a start.”

  “A start to what?”

  “My shrink said it’s okay to get angry first, because then you can kind of get it out and move beyond.”

  “Move beyond to what?”

  “To the hurt that caused it.”

  Ebon vented a mirthless laugh. “I think I’m well aware of the hurt.”

  “And,” she continued, “any role you might have played in causing that hurt.”

  “You’re right. I seem to remember putting condoms on so many dicks that were pointing at my wife.”

  Aimee sighed again. “I keep thinking,” she said. “About our chats.”

  “Well. This one is lovely,” Ebon said, more spitefully than he’d intended.

  “I meant our other chats. Our online chats. And our emails. Our letters, back in the day.”

  “What about them?”

  “How much did Holly know about me?”

  Ebon shuffled on the bed.

  “Did Holly know about me?” she amended, more statement than question.

  “Of course.”

  “What did she know?”

  Ebon rolled his eyes.

  “About those old summers,” she said. “Right?”

  “Right. I told her about the bossy girl I used to hang with. The one who, years later, might coerce me into helping her fix up some old cottage.” He smiled, to make his jest obvious in the jab.

  “If you were Holly, when would you assume that you, Ebon, had last been in touch with me?”

  Ebon looked at his feet.

  “You didn’t tell her. About any of it. The emails, the texts, the chats — none of it.”

  “It didn’t involve her.”

  Aimee nodded slowly. “To tell you the truth, Ebon, I’ve felt guilty about chatting so much with you, from time to time.”

  “Why?”

  She looked at him, her green eyes — so like Holly’s — strangely serious. “I think we both know it was all a step above friendly.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Then why did you hide it?”

  “I didn’t hide it!”

  “You didn’t tell her.”

  “And I didn’t hide it either! I’d have told her, if it had come up. There was nothing to hide. Two old friends, bullshitting to pass the time. You weren’t exactly sending me videos of yourself doing a striptease.” Ebon regretted it the second he said it. Of course they’d kept everything platonic, but even joking about Aimee sending him nude videos now felt like opening a box that ought not be opened. It felt like something held back rather than something that had had no place in their discussions. Because there had been letters, all those years ago, in which Aimee had teased him with something similar. He recalled reading those letters over the years, holding onto them, and falling into fantasy. But that had been a long time ago, and nothing to joke about now that they were two adults who’d clearly moved on.

  Instead of being as embarrassed as Ebon suddenly felt, Aimee laughed. “Thank God we weren’t kids in this day and age. Back then, if I’d had access to email and a webcam … ”

  “What?” said Ebon, too eager.

  “I had that wild phase.”

  “But we never … ”

  “Though we got close. And back then, all I really cared about was acting out. It took me years to settle down. To realize that what I’d found so thrilling about … well, you got my letters. But after I moved out, I guess I stayed crazy for a while, and if we’d still been in touch then, things might have been different. But I started therapy pretty quickly after moving out (Dad thought therapy was stupid, and that anyone who needed it was weak), and when I got my head around what holes I was trying to fill in my life … ”

  Ebon laughed immaturely at Aimee’s mention of “filling holes” and regretted it instantly. It wasn’t the first time he’d ruined a serious moment by deflecting into inappropriate humor.

  She looked at him for a moment, then continued. “I’m just saying that sometimes we don’t know what’s actually bothering us, and what’s driving our actions. I saw this movie once, about people who’d had parasitic worms implanted in them by this guy, and then afterward there was some farmer who could control their emotions by touching pigs.”

  “That’s absurd,” said Ebon.

  “But that’s how I saw myself after a bit of therapy. Like I was being controlled.”

  “By pigs.”

  “By my dad. The point is that for the longest time, I didn’t even see it. I didn’t know he was pulling my strings, let alone how they were being pulled. I thought I was making my own decisions.”

  “Just like when you’re controlled by pigs.”

  Aimee gave him a patient look.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Look,” said Aimee. “It’s really none of my business. I just think that maybe you don’t even know why you’re hurt right now.”

  “My wife fucked around on me. Then she died.”

  “And you don’t know how to feel.”

  “I feel pissed.”

  “And sad.”

  Ebon thought. “More pissed. But also sad, yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  Ebon shook his head back at her, but Aimee said nothing.

  “What? Why don’t you just tell me what I’m missing, Sigmund?” he finally said. “Why don’t you just tell me which mysterious pigs are somehow pulling my strings?”

  “I’m prying. I’m sorry.”

  Aimee looked away, no longer alpha, no longer trying to be the boss. Her default personality was manic, flighty, bossy, and intrusive. It’s how he knew her, how he liked her. But sitting opposite Aimee on the bed, Ebon saw the influence of her years of therapy. She’d matured beyond the knee-jerk emotions instilled by her bully of a father. She’d learned to hate him on one hand while loving him on another rather than mashing the two emotions together into a confusing stew. She’d moved beyond her short promiscuous phase — something that Ebon, over the years, had joked to himself about regretting. And now she was backing away from intruding in his recovery, despite being a therapy veteran and knowing better, just as she’d known better about how to build a sandcastle, how to kiss, and how to make love.

  Ebon took her hand. “Don’t be sorry. It’s okay. I want your help. Or maybe for now, I just want you to be around.�
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  “I’m around,” she said.

  “I didn’t just come here to fix up your house for you.”

  “Good thing I’m not paying you.”

  “Yes. Because in the spring, you’re going to realize how futile this is, and you’re going to hire contractors. Between the two of us, we may successfully spackle a wall. And fix the fireplace, before the snow falls.”

  “Can you stay that long?”

  Ebon sighed. “Maybe. I’m basically fired anyway. I don’t have the strength right now to go back to the city. Tell me: is it bad that I want to walk away from it all — to stay here on Aaron and live … ” He stopped. He was going to add “ … with you,” but suddenly “live with you” seemed as if it meant more than a mutual address.

  Aimee laughed. “I’d say that’s you avoiding.”

  “And avoiding is bad?”

  “Not always. But you do have to deal with this, Ebon. Not to be your mother or anything, but don’t you want to not throw your entire career away?”

  “What does it matter? That career made sense when Holly was around. Now that she’s gone, what’s left for me? Sure, I need a high-paying job to live in the city, but the job’s the only real reason to stay in the city, and the city is the only place that costs enough to require a high-paying job. It’s a closed loop. I’m so much happier here.”