Ebon, still unsure how to respond to this new Holly, kept his face neutral.
“My parents mentioned her a time or two after they found out — from the newspaper, I imagine — but by then I didn’t want to hear her name. They didn’t force it either. My folks aren’t very touchy-feely, and when I got all elusive and distant, nobody tried to make me face what had happened. They didn’t ask how I felt about Ginny’s death, and memories of her just sort of vanished from our house too. After that, I guess I made myself forget about her. But only years later did I realize that Ginny was still there, under my skin like a splinter. Because you can’t really forget that kind of thing. I thought I could push it down, but it only festered. And now … ”
Holly sniffed. Ebon wondered if he was supposed to ask her to continue. But before he could decide, she did.
“Now I worry whenever someone gets close. I guess I’m always afraid they’ll become my responsibility. And then if anything happens … ”
Again, she sniffed. Holly seemed to be waiting for his volley, but Ebon couldn’t make himself say what he supposed had to be said. More than anything, he wanted to steer the conversation back to sunnier seas. Their relationship, so far, had been spent either laughing or making love. Right now, either would be more acceptable than this. Or both at once.
“I’m just saying,” Holly said, again putting a hand on his arm, her own limb shaking as it came, “that I think … I could … I’m ready to be there for you. If you want.”
Ebon looked into Holly’s eyes. Be there for him? He was fine. It was Holly who, right now, needed someone to be there for her. Someone to hold her hand.
“I’m fine,” Ebon said.
He felt her hand on his arm and intuited that he should at least put his own hand over it, but he couldn’t make his other arm move. It felt too heavy. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Holly’s body language was vulnerable, maybe even needy. But wasn’t love supposed to feel comfortable? He already had references for love, and nothing here was syncing. He felt blindsided. Something was in the wrong box, and Ebon couldn’t collect his bearings. His stomach was threatening to roll, his nerves urging him to flee. If he could just get through this moment, they could start over tomorrow. They’d go see a funny movie, then get ice cream. He’d make Holly laugh so hard she’d almost pee herself. Right now, Ebon just wanted to see that look on her face — that out-of-control, swept-away expression she had when lost in laughter. When they were lost in laughter. When things were rolling well neither had a care in the world. And when things moved on from there and Holly (it was always Holly who did it) dragged them into the bedroom, those same cares didn’t stand a chance.
“I want to be the rock for you that Julia wasn’t.”
Ebon gave a dismissive little wave. Why was Holly talking about Julia? Julia and Leonard and those tumultuous years were in the past and had no place in the happy present. He’d told her the story as an amusing anecdote, not as some deep, soul-crushing wound in need of stitching. It was over. Gone. Julia had shaped Ebon in the same — and perhaps opposite — way as Aimee had shaped him. But he was with neither woman now, and Julia’s name on Holly’s lips was offensive, as if one had no place in the presence of the other. He didn’t want to delve. He wanted to be in the now, beyond it all.
“I can be that, Ebon. I’m ready.”
“Is it wrong that this is making me horny?” he said, burying his discomfort.
The laugh that came to Ebon’s lips didn’t transfer to Holly’s face. Usually, she laughed when he laughed. Laughter was what they shared. Ebon wasn’t hot, wasn’t sexy, wasn’t dashing or particularly interesting. His sense of humor was, supposedly, what had attracted her to him. If he couldn’t make her laugh, what good was he?
She moved her hand to his and squeezed.
“I’m trying to be serious,” she said.
Ebon looked into her eyes. They were shimmering, glazed with a skim of water and dead earnest. He couldn’t meet those emerald eyes for long. He looked away. At their intertwined hands. At her bare shoulder. At the peek of a breast above the covers, and the nude, unseen body below.
“Just say you’ll let me be your anchor,” she said.
He didn’t like it. Didn’t like it. Didn’t like it. This wasn’t what he and Holly were about. This wasn’t what Ebon did well, or even competently. He had to steer it away. Give Holly what she wanted, then (ahem) give her what she always wanted. She’d take the lead. She always did. He just needed to nudge the moment, and it would roll to equilibrium on its own.
“Okay, I’ll make you a deal,” he said, the grin returning. “I’ll let you be whatever you want if I can do you up the butt.”
Holly blinked. It was the sort of immature barb she often found charming. Hilarious. Disrupting, so that they could both move on.
“Ebon … ”
“I’m just saying.”
Holly shook her head. “Jesus, Ebon.”
Something was wrong. He had to do better.
“We’ll need to change the sheets, of course.”
She rolled onto her back, blinking at the ceiling, her breasts now fully exposed. With the sense that he was rolling downhill but unable to stop, Ebon reached out and cupped one of them. She didn’t laugh or look over. This wasn’t going as it was supposed to. He was doing it wrong, but felt powerless to hold his tongue, his hands, his erection. Everything was on auto-pilot. He nuzzled beside her, but she only kept shaking her head.
“Come on,” he said. “I’m behind in this game. Teach me some stuff. I’m your willing student.”
“I really should get cleaned up for class.”
“No!” He groped her, feigning mock terror. “How will I ever catch up if I can’t learn from the master?”
“Ebon … ”
He flailed. “Teach me, sexual sensei!”
“You’re being an asshole,” she said.
“Well, sure. But you knew that when you met me.”
Holly rolled her head on the pillow to meet his eyes. Ebon affected his most absurd, most obnoxious innocent smile. She sighed, and Ebon felt something inside relax. The sigh was a crack in her armor. A light at the end of the tunnel.
“Can’t you be serious for two seconds?”
“Honestly,” said Ebon, “no.”
“And now you want to have sex.”
Ebon batted his eyelashes at her.
Holly sighed heavily. Rolled to face him. After a moment, she gave Ebon a slow, tentative smile.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she said. “I’ll ‘catch you up’ all you want … ”
“If … ?”
“If you promise to remember that I actually, truly, deeply love you beyond your cover model body and smooth moves, Ebon Shale.”
“I’ll remember,” he said, again reaching for her bare breasts.
But he didn’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Axis of Aaron
EBON BLINKED HIS EYES OPEN TO see a green-eyed woman above him, her blonde hair hanging down in a bird’s-nest mess. A dust of white powder speckled its waves, twinkling with the light of crystalline refractions before melting into her radiating warmth.
“Hey,” she said.
“Holly.”
The woman smiled. “I’m Aimee.”
“No,” he said. “I was thinking about Holly. Just now.”
“I know you were, sweetheart. You will. Until it’s gone.”
“It’s gone now. She’s gone.”
Aimee adjusted something under Ebon’s head, and he realized, judging by its shape, size, and feel that it must be a winter hat. She’d taken it off of her head to nestle his on the freezing cold sand.
“It’s snowing,” he said.
“Of course. It was snowing when you called.”
Ebon looked around, reality slowly returning. The gray sky above was like a snowy road in a storm, flakes coming at him as if he were racing toward them. His arms were outstretched, his coat was too thin, his hand
was missing something he’d been clinging to like a lifeline. Then he remembered. He had called her. And she’d come running.
“You found me.”
“Of course I found you,” she said. Aimee gave him a small, pinched smile. Her fingertips ran through his hair. It was wet, as if with melted snow. But Ebon was cold, and shouldn’t be. It was summertime on Aaron, as it always was.
Snow stopped falling behind Aimee’s head. The gray sky cleared. The sun came out, making Ebon squint. Still he shivered, even as he watched a child run shirtless behind Aimee, clasping a kite string in his hand.
“How are you feeling?”
“Sick,” he said.
“I have to get you home. Can you walk?”
“I don’t want to walk,” he said. And he didn’t. Ebon felt like he had a thousand-pound weight on his chest. He was freezing. He could hear the chatter of seagulls and smell sunscreen’s coconut echo. Aimee’s clothing changed as he watched, morphing from a thick coat and carelessly threaded scarf to a light pink sundress. It was the sort of thing she used to wear all the time, but never wore anymore. It was too young for her. But now, as the summertime sun shone through her hair, it made her look like an angel.
“We have to go, Ebon. You’ll freeze.”
“Do you remember that first summer? Do you remember the sandcastle?”
“Sit up. Can you sit up?” She put a hand under his neck, trying to shove him upward. But he could only gaze at the cerulean summertime sky as they’d done thousands of times while listening to music on the beach, searching for shapes in the clouds.
“I knew what I was doing,” he said. “But you still butted in, insisting on doing things your way. Just like you always do.” He rolled his head toward her, keeping it back, not flinching toward sitting. “Why do you think I always need to be rescued?”
“Please sit up, Ebon.” Aimee sniffed, and he realized he could see tracks through what must be a light coat of drywall dust on her face. He remembered speaking to her on the phone. He remembered the sounds of crying. But why? There was no need to be sad. He was finally where he needed to be. He finally saw things clearly.
Behind Aimee’s head, the trees’ green leaves turned multicolored and fell to the beach. The branches turned dark and shriveled. Snow came. The sky darkened. A moon came out. Set. Then blossoms lined the trees, the air scented by pollen.
“You ruined me, you know,” he said.
“What?”
“For Holly.” Ebon smiled, because it was all right. Because it was said in jest. It had been her fault in a way, but only in the accidental way that things happened, because Aimee couldn’t help being Aimee. Just as Julia couldn’t help being Julia and Holly couldn’t help being Holly. Just as Ebon, now that he saw, had always been unable to help being Ebon.
“What are you talking about?”
“It was my fault.”
“What was your fault?”
“I pushed her away. I made jokes. Every time she tried to deepen what we had, I refused to allow it. I kept Holly at arm’s length. Because I couldn’t let her in. Not really.”
“Why?”
Ebon smiled. His fingers were going numb. He couldn’t remember what kind of shoes he’d worn. Why hadn’t Aimee put the hat on his head? Maybe because he’d merely needed a pillow to stare up into the summer sky. To feel the warmth on his skin that for some reason wasn’t there.
He sat up. He found himself looking down the beach, south, toward Aaron’s Party. The carnival was alive and vibrant, the Danger Wheel spinning, the carousel revolving. He could barely see it through the line of easels set up by boardwalk artists, all madly sketching. The air was thick with the delighted screams of children and the screeching of gulls. Then the carnival wilted like a flower, the Danger Wheel rusting and coming to a squealing rest as the game stalls emptied. Then everything was gone and the pier was empty.
“I can’t focus,” he said. “It’s changing. All of it.”
“What’s changing?”
“Everything.” Ebon pointed toward Aaron’s Party. The festival again blossomed to life in the sun, then wilted. This time, as it decayed into rust and gray, the pier’s end pilings rotted away and the structure began to slough into the still water, members cracking with tremendous noise in the crisp, cool air. “Everything.”
“We have to get you home.”
“Don’t you see it?”
“See what?”
“I’m so tired, Aimee.” The scenery down the shore was shifting like liquid, never pausing. Cottages rose from nothing. Shacks vanished. The pier resurrected; children ran the beaches; the beaches went cold and white and empty. The sky turned the tangerine of a sunset, except that the sun was rising, not setting. Orange blushed into the white snow, turning it a painter’s palette. Then the snow melted and the color was only in Aimee’s hair: yellow to orange to red to crimson to purple to black. The moon rose. The stars shone. For full seconds Ebon was sure there was nothing but Aimee’s breath, the touch of her hands, and the warmth of her body beside his.
“Get up,” she said, pulling.
“We have to get to Redding Dock,” he replied, his earlier urgency returning.
“What we have to do is go home.” She hefted. “Come on. Help me.”
“Redding,” Ebon said, his heart rate increasing. “It’s the only thing that doesn’t change. I have to find the middle. I have to reset.” He clutched his head, pinching his eyes shut. “Don’t you see? How can I know what’s real and what’s not if it never stops changing?”
Aimee blinked, hard. A tear spilled onto her cheek, cutting another line through the dust.
“How long have we been chatting online, Aimee?”
“We … ”
“Who came up with the idea of me coming to Aaron?”
“I proposed the specifics, but it was your … ”
Ebon stood, shambling backward. The ocean swelled. A storm approached, raged around them. Rain drenched them in sheets. Thunder cracked with the sound of a tree snapping over God’s knee; lightning struck something nearby, the static of it prickling Ebon’s skin like warm fuzz.
“When did I find out about Holly and Mark? Were there other men, or just the one? Did she know I knew? Did I ever tell you? Did I look her in the eye? Did I try to stop it?”
“Get up. Just get to your feet.”
“Did I want to stop it? Did I tell you, Aimee? When we chatted, when we texted, when we emailed, when we called, incessantly, endlessly? Did I know what I was doing, or was I blocking it? Was I willfully ignorant, or had I managed to forget even then? Did I ever tell you about Ginny?” He was upright now, the cold numbing his skin, the hot summer sun doing nothing as windsurfers and Jet Skiers sailed by. “Did I ever tell you that? Did I even know it? Or was it gone?”
“I … ”
“What did I tell you about Holly, Aimee?” Ebon’s voice began to hitch, his eyes trying to freeze shut. “When I talked about her, what did I say? Did I tell you the truth? Or did I tell you a lie, like I told her about you?”
It was all starting to crumble. The pier snapped in the middle and spilled into the water, a giant whirlpool at its base swallowing it whole. A rock bluff cleaved off upshore, crumbling into an avalanche. A chasm formed along the shore, and Ebon watched as a massive slab of rock, beach, and water all spilled into it like a widening sinkhole. If they stayed where they were, they’d be sucked down into the chasm’s depths. As it all faded away forever, and for good.
“I can’t hold it together,” he said, now grasping at Aimee’s coat. Beneath his grip, the coat became a shirt, a light fall jacket, the twin straps of a swimsuit. Aimee became tan, white, tan. The sinkhole gave way and the rest of the island, from where the pier used to be and south, vanished. There was no land, no sky. It was just empty, as if the world held nothing. “I could control it earlier, but whatever it is … it’s falling apart.”
“We have to get you back to the cottage,” she said, still dragging him, oblivious.
“The cottage is gone, Aimee! Can’t you see what’s happening around us? We have to get to Redding. To Redding!”
A new crack in the ground formed at Aimee’s heel. Ebon watched the soft beach shatter like hard glass and fall away. Her foot moved forward, now on the cliff’s edge, and yet she still didn’t seem to notice. Snow fell. A storm blew. Lightning struck the void, alighting on nothing. Now there was weather below too, everywhere around them, snow flying up rather than down, wind blustering at the ground and stirring sand, the shore a symphony of decaying and sundering.
Aimee’s face changed, summoning an expression of regret. She took his face between her palms and turned his head slowly so that he was looking north. He found himself facing empty water. Empty water that looked familiar, near a beach entrance that he knew all too well.
“Ebon,” Aimee said, “Redding Dock has been gone for fifteen years.”
Ebon felt the bottom drop from his stomach. There was no center. There was no safe place. Everything changed, and Redding wasn’t an exception after all. Nothing stayed the same. Time was relentless. You couldn’t go home again. You couldn’t change the past. You could only stumble blindly ahead, helpless, as all that once was decayed into emptiness behind you.
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