“I don’t think so.” Aimee’s smile was becoming a grin, her hair a rat’s nest of I-don’t-give-a-shit disorder. “If you ask me, it’s just begun.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Choices in Time
“THIS IS STUPID,” AIMEE SAID.
EBON looked over. She was bundled into an enormous pink coat with white fur at the hood and cuffs. Ebon had never seen Aimee in the winter, but he felt sure that she’d had the coat as a teenager, purchased large and built to last. She looked ridiculous, but Ebon had already sufficiently mocked her about it. He’d get more digs in later, but right now the impression he was trying to project was different: rebuke, not mockery. He met her eyes, waiting.
“Sorry,” she finally said.
“You asked what I wanted to do on my birthday. This was what I wanted to do.”
“Sorry,” she repeated. “This is brilliant. Best idea ever. Why doesn’t everyone do this?”
Ebon looked over at Aimee with a warning glance. She returned his smile, still making fun of him, still shitting on his idea but willing to play along. She’d swapped her giant mittens for smaller gloves that allowed for greater dexterity, but they were filthy with sand and soaked with melted snow. Her hands had to be equally frozen, but this had become a battle of wills: Ebon versus Aimee, a war for all the marbles.
“Hand me that turret mold,” said Ebon. His knees were numb as he knelt in the cleared patch of snow, but the sand was moist and the cold was like current through a wire. The sand had to be wet, or else you couldn’t shape it.
“If you put a turret on top of that pile of crap, it’ll fall right off,” said Aimee.
“Are you literally unable to refrain from giving orders, or are you just an asshole?” Ebon replied.
Aimee rolled her eyes and passed Ebon the mold. He packed sand into it, pushing to firm the brick, then slapped it atop his half-assed castle wall. The wall was little more than a long mound (owing in part to his own chilled hands and wet gloves), so the heavy turret crippled the fortification and made it crack along the bottom. Ebon raised the mold, and the turret stayed inside it, refusing to dislodge.
“Slap the sides,” Aimee said.
“I know how to get sand out of a mold.”
“I keep telling you, it’s freezing as fast as we’re building it.”
“Then it’ll last a long time,” Ebon retorted.
“If you can build it in the first place,” she said. “Maybe I should go get some hot water.”
“Because that’s the way to build a sandcastle. Pour hot water on it.”
“Did I say I wanted to pour it anywhere? I meant that we could dip the molds into it between scoops. Then you, you know, work fast.” Aimee made a complex set of gestures with her hands that were apparently supposed to explain the choreography of using hot-dipped sandcastle molds.
“That’s stupid,” said Ebon.
“You’re stupid.”
“What was our agreement?”
Aimee rolled her eyes again.
“How old are you?” he said.
“I feel seventeen. Does that count?”
“I want to hear you say it. Tell me what we agreed on.”
“You’re going to make me dinner.”
“That’s not what we agreed on.”
“You’re going to finish taping the hallway.”
“Definitely not what we agreed on.”
Ebon looked at Aimee in her huge, furry pink hood, suddenly finding her desperately adorable. An odd emotion tugged at him, feeling like it was trying to break his heart. Here he was, with her at last, while also managing to miss her at the same time — to pine for her, like a lovelorn sailor at sea.
Aimee was caught between ages, and Ebon found himself caught alongside her. They’d missed all those years, and he supposed those lost annums were the absence he felt even as she sat mere feet away, their future indefinite, his plans in the city on hold. He could lean forward and kiss her right now, or he could lead her inside and make love to her on the big master bed. But still Ebon felt that sense of broken nostalgia, of years gone and never able to return. The feeling mingled with a subtle churning of thoughts about Holly, deepening the cut. For a while, she’d be like a third person in their bed. And for a while, his renewed affection for Aimee would be tinged with guilt. There was little to do but to feel it all and move on. Holding faith that dissonant feelings would fade in time, like a torch slowly burning out in the middle of a dark passage between then and now.
“When we were bored that last summer, when I was fifteen and you were seventeen, you always used to suggest much more interesting options,” Ebon said.
“Like what?”
Like the time you talked so casually about giving blow jobs. Like the letters you used to send, in which you put yourself on such lascivious display.
But that had been a long time ago, and she was now a grown woman. They could have taken those years to grow into what they were finally becoming, but they’d skipped over them like an errant stitch in a fold of fabric. As it was, they had to start over. And while part of Ebon very much wanted to hear her say those scintillating old words, Aimee doing so today would be false. It would be attempting to rewrite the past, to make it something it wasn’t.
“Things other than home renovation.” Ebon gave Aimee a look, conveying just enough of their old lust to broadcast his meaning.
Aimee knelt tall, then rubbed her chest through her coat. In a sly voice, she said, “Well. A girl does have needs.”
“Right.”
“Hang my drywall, baby,” she purred.
Ebon kept working on the castle. “Sure.”
She leaned closer, her voice almost a whisper. “Oh, your taping knife is so big.”
“Nevermind.”
She pushed him, then settled back and looked down. The turret sand had dislodged from the mold, then slid down the “wall” to break in half, spilling lighter sand from the middle like a rotted center in a piece of fruit.
“Did you seriously scoop up dry sand? Haven’t I taught you anything?”
Ebon looked over, but now Aimee’s smile was deliberately mocking. Her resolution to let him have his way for a single day had lasted through breakfast, a few hours of cutting trim molding, a game of two-handed euchre, and lunch. Thinking about it now, Ebon counted himself fortunate to have had that long.
“You suck,” he said. “What kind of a birthday present is this?”
“I came out into the freezing cold with you and tried to make a sandcastle because it’s what you wanted. If that doesn’t prove … something? … then I don’t know what does.”
“‘Something.’”
“Yes, ‘something,’” she repeated.
“Just say it. Say you love me.”
She laughed. “Too early. I barely know you.”
“It’s what I want for my birthday.”
“You wanted to build a sandcastle. You don’t get two things.”
Feeling bold, Ebon crawled toward her, flattening the castle with his plodding knees. It was fine. The thing was pathetic anyway. He’d insisted mostly to prove a point, though he hadn’t even realized it at the time: They’d met over a sandcastle, but trying to return there was folly. Right now they were two grown-ups, not two kids. They had to start where they were, with due consideration of where they’d been.
“Say you love me,” he said.
“No.”
He crawled farther, now over her, almost pushing Aimee onto her back. “Say it.”
She put one of her filthy gloves against his face. He felt the grit of wet sand. “Slowly, Ebon,” she whispered.
“Slowly?”
“You’re just getting past … ”
“I’m past.” He felt a smile crawl onto his face, but the pull of his facial muscles was like a trigger. He sat back on his heels. Then he said, “I guess I’m not past.”
“Me either,” she said, straightening.
“What aren’t you past?”
“I love it when you make flower metaphors.”
She closed the renewed distance and kissed him. “It’d be a mistake to pretend this is how it’s always been.”
Ebon nodded. “As long as it can still ‘be.’”
“I don’t understand that. It’s too complicated for me.”
“That’s because I was always smarter. Quieter, but smarter.”
“Bullshit,” she said softly, putting a hand on his chest.
After a quiet, thoughtful moment, Aimee said, “He almost killed you, Ebon.”
“Who?”
“My dad. That day. He almost killed you, but I never apologized. Even when I got you out of there, the whole thing just became a problem for us to solve.”
“Why should you apologize?” Ebon was merely mouthing the words because it was polite, but in truth he’d thought about it over and over. What Aimee had said was true. They’d addressed the challenge of explaining Ebon’s injuries and had worked together to concoct an elaborate lie involving hoodlums. But their moment of almost-passion had been instantly forgotten, and she’d never expressed remorse — probably because the situation’s other demands had been so pressing. Or possibly because in the moment, admitting remorse would have forced her to see her father as a monster, when at the time she’d been too fragile for him to be anything but her guardian, her protector, the only person truly on her side in a world filled with hurt.
“I should have.” She touched his cheek again. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Aimee watched him for a few quiet seconds, probably trying to see whether he meant it. He did. Ebon hadn’t been carrying resentment for sixteen years … but then, as he sighed into the moment, he realized he kind of had. That moment and the way it had turned was as responsible for their relationship’s interruption as anything else. He’d left that summer never to return — and had done so feeling unwelcome and unasked by the girl who'd been his first almost-love.
She’d rejected him. Soon afterward Julia had come to call. So much of Ebon’s life had spun on that dime. So much of both of their lives.
“I just wanted you to know,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“And now,” Aimee said, standing and brushing her hands against one another, “I’d like to go inside. My nipples could cut glass.”
Ebon stood and trod behind her like a puppy. Feeling immature, he said, “Can I see?”
“I don’t know. Are you growing into our new relationship slowly? Are you blinded by your long-ass infatuation, unable to see my flaws because you’ve set me too high on a pedestal?”
Ebon scoffed. “Look who thinks she’s the queen.”
“Are you Owning Your Shit?”
“With Dr. Sullivan’s help, I’m trying.”
Aimee looked back at Ebon, her eyes domineering and warning, telling him You’d better be. The glance lasted only a second, but in that blink Ebon saw Aaron’s shore tilt sideways. He saw lost paths in a deserted subdivision. He saw a woman with fiery-red hair and porcelain skin become another with only a passing resemblance. He saw an angry sea, a dam of thunderstorms, a loop from which there was no escape.
And as Ebon thought of those disruptive almost-memories, he wondered how the crumbled wall he’d built inside had ever thought it could keep Aimee from the truth.
Inside, Aimee started two cups of milk warming in the microwave and set two packets of instant hot chocolate on the countertop. Ebon laid more logs on the coals, coaxing the fire slowly to life. When the chocolate was ready, Aimee brought it over and set it on the coffee table, dark brown bits of undissolved mix turning lazy circles on the liquid’s surface. Ebon considered his cup, then took a sip. It was mediocre, too sweet, and gritty. But as fire wrapped the dry wood before them, Ebon looked around the room and contemplated the day’s work, feeling strangely at peace with his mug and the liquid inside it. There was no end in sight to Aimee’s quixotic restoration, but that was par for her course. Ebon found he didn’t need to be able to see tomorrow. It was enough to clearly see today.
Aimee extended her hands, flexing her fingers at the fire.
“I was freezing,” she said. “That feels good.”
Ebon looked at Aimee’s profile, finding her beautiful. She’d been beautiful to him all those years ago. When she’d been fourteen. When she’d been fifteen. When she’d been seventeen. But now she was thirty-three, and she’d become a different kind of beautiful. For perhaps the first time, Ebon let himself see all of her as she was now, letting the way she’d once been slough off like dead skin. She was no longer the girl from his past. Now she was the woman in his present.
Ebon stood. She watched him, wondering.
“We need more wood,” Ebon said, then walked away while Aimee, behind him, pointed in protest at the stack of logs already beside the fire in a black iron cage.
When Ebon returned from upstairs, he knelt beside Aimee, looked at her, then tossed a small, hard-bound book onto the fire. It landed back down, pages up, and was immediately licked to its core by a bright yellow flame. Aimee blinked at Ebon, an unasked question in her eyes.
“Holly’s journal,” he explained.
They stared at the fire together, watching pages blacken and turn as if by an unseen hand.
“I suppose this is me turning my back on the truth,” Ebon said. “But someone once told me that I didn’t have to choose between remembering and letting go.”
“Who told you that?”
Ebon slipped his arm under Aimee’s, saying nothing, leaning sideways to rest against her shoulder. He gazed into the fire and watched the past burn as his future’s heart beat against him. A strange sense of melancholy was descending. Something hurt, but it was an ache he was learning to recognize, and make friends with.
“I miss her,” he said, feeling his eyes beginning to mist.
Aimee reached over and held Ebon closer.
“But for all those years, I missed you too.”
She squeezed his hand, then looked down and gave him a small, bittersweet smile.
“Me too,” she said.
They watched the journal’s spine blacken and curl atop the fire’s logs. Ebon felt something sigh inside — something now departed, never to return. It wasn’t just Holly. It was everything. It was those past summers, the second-guessed initials carved at Redding Dock, those days of innocence, that first stolen kiss atop the carnival’s wheel. So much was gone. So much couldn’t be changed. It was what it was, for better or for worse.
Ebon rolled his eyes upward, taking in the patched walls, the incomplete moldings, and Aimee’s every schizophrenic pattern and project. They’d never finish. Eventually they’d have to hire contractors or call it quits. Eventually he’d have to decide whether to stay or go, how to earn a living, and what to do with the life he’d paused in the city and didn’t want to consider again, because that life was too thick with the wrong breed of memory. That was a different kind of renovation — a new undertaking to change something drenched in painful memories and make it fresh. He’d have to face all of those choices in time. But for now it was enough to let it be — a benign splinter that could be abided even while it kept a wound from closing.
“What’s next?” Aimee asked, following Ebon’s eyes to the dozen in-progress projects around the room.
Ebon looked at Aimee. He watched fresh snow settle to the sand beneath the gray sky beyond the window, brushing a bleak world that felt empty of all but the two of them. He watched the fire, where private memories burned, decently buried and finally at rest. And he gave Aimee the only answer he had to give.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
Author’s Note
Not a lot of people know this, but Axis of Aaron was born cover first.
Sean and I like to experiment and do crazy things with our art. If you doubt me, just look at the project we wrote imme
diately before Axis: a young adult steampunk novel called The Dream Engine. We wrote that book in thirty days, in front of a live audience, starting without any ideas whatsoever, as part of a project called Fiction Unboxed. People said we were so crazy, we needed drool cups. Axis, which ends up being plenty crazy, started like this:
Once upon a time, Sean discovered this great cover designer named Jason Gurley and became immediately excited about getting Gurley covers on all of our work. But Jason was already starting his slow retirement from cover work to focus on his writing, and the work he was taking comprised quite a long waiting list. You’d think that would deter a normal person, but it didn’t deter Sean. He just started finding another way.
“Look,” he told me, pointing excitedly at his MacBook’s screen when I came down for a week-long story session in Austin, Texas. “Jason has all these premade covers. We wouldn’t have to talk him into a commission, and we wouldn’t have to wait. We can just grab a cover and start writing right now.”
“But we don’t have a book that needs a cover,” I said.
“Of course not. We get the cover first,” Sean explained. “Then we write the book second.”
If you’ve noticed the oddity in this thinking already, you’re not alone. But I’ve got used to working with Sean, and I also know full well that after writing titles like the Unicorn Western and Fat Vampire series (both of which began as single-line jokes on our podcast, both of which ended at nearly a quarter-million words), I’m convinced that ideas aren’t the rare gems people think they are. We can start from a seed of nothing, then grow it into something. Why would a cover be any different?
So Sean sent me an email and said, “Pick three or four of your favorite covers from Jason’s site, and let me know which they are.” I did. Then, working together, we narrowed those finalists to a cover that showed a quaint town with something amiss: the image was doubled, reflected, and tilted so the beach line was at a vertiginous angle. It was awesome. Now all we needed was a book to go with it.
At the time, when he was doing cover work, Jason put fake titles on his pre-mades so that buyers — sensible buyers who already had a book in need of a cover, in a sane world — could see what the typography would look like and where the words would go. And on our pick, the fictional author was Leonard Ammas. And the title? Axis of the World.
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