Mystic Man

by E. J. Russell

  “Are you hungry? I can fix breakfast. Or we could just laze around for a while longer.”

  “What kind of breakfast does your noncruise run to? Are we talking a full English,” Aaron said, putting on a faux-British accent, “or merely a continental?”

  “Actually, we’re talking coffee, OJ, and toasted bagels with cream cheese.”

  Aaron grinned. “Works for me. I’ll get dressed and go up on deck to stay out of your way. Your noncruise may be rich in certain amenities, but space is not one of them.”

  “It’ll be chilly up there. Take the blanket off the bench in the salon. You’ll enjoy the scenery much more if you’re not shivering. I’ll bring the coffee up as soon as it’s done.”

  Aaron bent down to deliver a toe-curling kiss. “Don’t be long. I’ve discovered I enjoy the scenery much more when you’re part of it.”

  THE RISING sun tinged the quaint cottages of the Seaport orange-pink as Aaron sat in the cockpit, wrapped in a soft fleece blanket that smelled like Cody. The boat bobbed just a little, but he’d gotten used to it overnight. In fact, he hadn’t slept so well in a long time. Since well before Wayne left.

  Like the boat, he was floating, borne up on a sea of contentment that he’d never felt before. Even after his aunt had rescued him from his parents’ substandard childrearing practices, he’d never achieved anything more than a manageable equilibrium. This tranquility, this welling joy, was something new.

  He inhaled deeply, the salt tang of the sea so different from the smog-laden air of home. No, not home. Not anymore.

  But this morning, instead of sending panic racing through his veins, the reminder was actually liberating. Nothing remained to tether him to his old life. He was free to set sail on this new one, in a new place, with a new man who was already firmly anchored in his heart.

  His phone vibrated in the pocket of his jacket. He frowned as he untangled his arms from the blanket. Who in the world would be calling at this time? It was barely six. His heart stuttered when caller ID flashed Hillview.

  He nearly fumbled the phone but managed to swipe the screen to answer the call. “Hello?”

  “Oh, Mr. Templeton.” Dr. Kensington’s tone held surprise and—was that dismay? “I’m sorry. I expected to simply leave you a message to set a time to chat later.”

  “That’s all right. I’m an early riser.”

  “Yes. Well.” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to tell you how much the staff and students enjoyed your presentation. You clearly have a lot to offer any school lucky enough to have you.”

  Butterflies fluttered against Aaron’s ribs. This is it. I’ve got the job. “Thank you.”

  “However, we’ve decided to go with another candidate.”

  Aaron’s heart tumbled to his feet. “I… I understand.” But I don’t. Not really. What did I do wrong? “Do you mind sharing any of your reasons? Anything that might make my next attempt more successful?”

  “It really wasn’t anything to do with you. All three candidates were eminently qualified. However, the committee decided that retaining the instructor who’s been filling the position on an interim basis would be less disruptive for our students.”

  “I… I see. Well.” Aaron’s throat closed up, making the last word come out as a croak. “Thank you for the opportunity in any case.”

  “I meant what I said, Mr. Templeton. You would clearly be an asset to any institution.”

  But not yours. “I appreciate it.”

  “We wish you all the best. Goodbye.”

  Aaron sank down on the bench, staring the phone long after Dr. Kensington ended the call. His fingers had gone numb, and he started to shiver in the crisp morning air.

  I have no job. I have no home. I’m three thousand miles away from everything I know. “What the fuck am I doing? What the fuck was I thinking?” He knew better. He knew what happened when you didn’t have your safety net in place, and yet he’d blithely assumed he was exempt this time.

  His breath came in gasps, uncertainty opening a pit in his middle big enough for him to fall into and disappear.

  “Hey, I was thinking.” Cody’s tone was cheerful as ever as he rose up the companionway steps, carrying a large tray with two mugs and a French press coffee carafe. “Every October, my family sails up the Connecticut River for some leaf-peeping. Do you think you might be boat-desensitized enough by then to go with us?”

  Aaron opened his mouth, trying to focus on Cody’s words, trying to respond when nothing made sense anymore.

  Cody set his tray down with a clatter. “Aaron? What’s wrong?”

  “The job,” he gasped, trying not to hyperventilate. “I didn’t get it.”

  “Oh man, that’s rough.” Cody sat next to him and slung an arm around his shoulders. “You really liked that place.”

  “I didn’t just like it. I was counting on it, which is so fucking stupid I can’t even believe it.” Heat swirled in his belly. “What idiot sells his house and quits his job before he has someplace else to go?”

  “But you do have someplace else to go. Here.”

  “No, I don’t. You have here. You have family. You have a home. You have a job—or you could have one if you bothered to take it.”

  Cody’s eyes widened and he jerked back as if Aaron had struck him. “That’s a little harsh, don’t you think, Aaron?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like.” Aaron flung the blanket off his shoulders and lurched to his feet. “You wrap the Seaport, you wrap Connecticut around yourself like a freaking impenetrable cocoon. Hell, you live in the house you grew up in. You’re so used to your support system that you don’t even realize it’s there.”

  “I know it’s there. Believe me. I know how lucky I am.”

  “But you take it for granted because you can. You take risks, go on adventures, charge into the unknown, because you know they won’t let you fall. You live life with no regrets.” Aaron hunched his shoulders, bunching his fists. “I’ve got nothing but regrets.”

  “Do you regret what we did last night?” Cody’s eyes were enormous in the early light, his voice soft. “Do you regret me?”

  Aaron carded his hands through his hair, clutching it, the pain grounding him. “No. Of course not. But you’re… you’re….” He flung his arm out, gesturing at the Seaport, sleeping in the dawn light. “You’re the Mystic man, letting song lyrics guide your life. I can’t… I can’t live with that kind of uncertainty.”

  “But, Aaron, nothing is ever certain. Nothing except change. Don’t you think you owe it to yourself, to me, to us, to give this a chance?”

  Aaron glanced around wildly. “It’s too different. Christ, Cody, I can’t even buy potato chips here. If I have to rebuild my life, at the very least I need familiar bricks.”

  “But you hated those bricks.” Cody reached for him, but Aaron dodged, backing away until his hip grazed the starboard wheel. Cody clenched his fists, arms falling to his sides. “There’s a difference between choosing something familiar because you love it and hiding behind it because you’re terrified. That doesn’t make you safe, Aaron. That makes you a prisoner. Don’t you want to be free?”

  “I tried it, all right? I tried to escape. I tried to convince someone that I could meld history and library science and make it meaningful for kids and they turned me down.”

  “That was one time, Aaron. One. Connecticut is lousy with prep schools. Don’t you think your dreams deserve a second chance? Don’t you think we deserve a chance?”

  “But you won’t be here.” Cody flinched at Aaron’s harsh tone. “You’re leaving for a months-long backpacking trip. Alone, for Chrissake. Who knows what will happen? I can’t depend on you to be there for me.”

  “Aaron—”

  “And I shouldn’t, because you shouldn’t have to bear that burden. You’re the most wonderful man I’ve ever met, and I’ll never forget you or the time we spent together. But I can’t… I can’t….” Aaron pressed his lips together, the despair welling in h
is chest threatening to burst out. “I have to get out of here. Pack up. Book a flight home.”

  “You don’t have your car here. At least let me take you back to Clinton.”

  “No. I’ll call an Uber.” Because being in a car, so close to Cody, obviously scrambled Aaron’s logic circuits. How else could Aaron explain last night’s foolish certainty that he’d be able to make this leap—from coast to coast, career to career, man to man?

  But it was a delusion, a fantasy of a perfect world, just like Mystic Seaport Village was the idealized version of something that had originally been far grittier and more dangerous. None of it was real. Reality was never this cheerful, this pleasant, this perfect. Reality was keeping your head down, maintaining a low profile, and dodging the fireballs life catapulted at your head.

  Aaron climbed out of the boat and stood on the wharf, staring at Cody’s beautiful, devastated face. “I’m sorry, Cody. You are amazing and I—” Aaron zipped up his jacket and shoved his hands in his pockets. “The leap was just too big for me.” And he was still falling into the chasm.

  He hurried through the deserted grounds of the Seaport as he ordered an Uber back to his Airbnb. He’d email HR. Convince them to give him his job back. He’d come in early. Stay late. Prove to them that he was still the same Aaron.

  Stick with what you know. At least you’ll be safe. “Safe” had always been a fair trade-off for “happy,” and it would be again.

  It had to be.

  THE LEAVES on the trees outside Cody’s living room window were just hitting their peak, and his first thought was Aaron would love this. But Aaron wouldn’t see it because he was back in California, rooting through dusty archives, hiding from his own happiness. Heck, he probably never even saw the light of day.

  Damn it. Three weeks. Aaron had been gone three weeks, and Cody still saw everything through an Aaron-centric lens. Get over it, Cody. He’s not coming back.

  He trudged down the stairs from his apartment as he pulled on his jacket. Since Eliza was still in the throes of morning-noon-and-night sickness, Cody walked Kaya to the bus stop every day, but this morning, Eliza was on the porch, helping Kaya into her backpack.

  “Hey, Lize. Shouldn’t you be resting?”

  “I can’t afford to put off any more projects.” She hugged her sweater around herself, a little green around the gills. “Consequently, ‘maintain’ is my current mantra, which, in conjunction with a little reflexology and mainlining peppermints, is keeping me ambulatory. Barely.”

  Kaya tugged on his sleeve. “Uncle Cody, I’ve got another hey-you story to show my teacher today.”

  He grinned down at her, tweaking her shiny dark braid. “Yeah? Who’s it about this time?”

  “It’s about you and Aaron.”

  He shared a dumbfounded glance with his sister, his stomach doing a barrel roll. She mouthed, Sorry. Cody shifted his gaze to Kaya’s beaming face. “Is that so?”

  “Yes. You and Aaron live upstairs, and we all go to Bishop’s to pick apples and then on the boat to look at leaves, and when it snows we build a snow dragon in the backyard.”

  “That’s….” He swallowed against the lump in his throat. “That’s awesome, munchkin.”

  She glared at him. “Uncle Cody.”

  “Right. No munchkins. Sorry. I forgot.”

  She grabbed his hand. “Come on. I want to show Jamie and Nica my story.”

  He let her drag him down the porch steps, and to his surprise, Eliza came with them. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to venture so far from the porcelain?”

  Eliza glowered at him, swallowing convulsively a couple of times. “Don’t go there, Cody. I mean it. I want to talk to you before you leave for the Seaport.”

  “Okaaay.” They neared the corner and Kaya raced off to join her friends, Cody and Eliza hanging back behind the cluster of other parents. “Why? Is something wrong?”

  “Hiran said you’re about to sign on to a long-term contract with him.”

  Cody sighed. “Yeah. At least three years as scrum master on this project.”

  “Don’t do it.”

  Cody blinked. “Say what?”

  “Don’t. Do. It. Go on that stupid backpacking trip. Sail to Fiji. Go back to Alaska; I don’t care.”

  “Wait a minute.” He grabbed her elbow and pulled her back farther, under a maple with brilliant red leaves. “You hated the idea of the backpacking trip. And you’ve been trying to nail my feet under one of Hiran’s desks for ages. Why the change in tune?”

  She frowned, hugging her sweater tighter around her body, which was only just now showing the swell of the new baby. “Because you’re not happy, Cody. You’re… I don’t know… dimmer than you’ve ever been in your life, and working for Hiran, much as I love the man, isn’t going to fix that. You need one of your adventures to light you up again.”

  Cody plucked one of the leaves, smoothing it over his palm, and tracing its veins as he leaned against the tree trunk. “Thing is, Lize, the whole solo thing doesn’t appeal to me so much anymore.” In fact, it felt more like an obligation, the same old, same old.

  Everyone he met on those trips was just like him—the trip was about the trip. They expected to be wowed because that’s why they’d chosen the destination in the first place—like reading the end of a murder mystery before the beginning.

  In his few days with Aaron, Cody had become addicted to sharing. If Cody had been able to take Aaron with him, his attitude would be completely different because the trip would be about discovery—the surprise and wonder of finding something new and loving it against all expectations.

  I want that. And he couldn’t have it, not unless he found someone else with Aaron’s odd mixture of intelligence and naiveté. But they still wouldn’t be Aaron.

  The school bus rolled up, and the kids arranged themselves in a line like the six-year-old veterans they were, Kaya waving to them as she climbed aboard.

  Eliza plucked the leaf out of Cody’s hand and let it drift to the ground. “At the very least, keep your shifts at the Seaport.”

  “They’re used to me being gone in the winter, and since I told them a month ago that I’d be leaving, I don’t know if they’ve got a spot for me.”

  “You could ask them anyway, but do something, Cody, because seeing you this way is freaking me out.” She put a hand on her belly. “And that can’t be good for the baby.”

  Cody was surprised into a laugh. “Nicely played, Lize. I’ll think about it, but I’ve got to run. There are three third-grade classes arriving at nine, and I’m on deck at the Sailing Center.”

  And the third-graders kept him busy and entertained—as did the fifth graders who showed up after lunch—enough to keep “The Boys of Summer” from constant mental replay anyway.

  By the time the end of his shift rolled around at three, Cody had hit that point of combined exhaustion/euphoria that came from the satisfaction of a job well done. Maybe Eliza had a point—volunteering here fed his soul in a way that he’d miss if he was a full-time code monkey.

  And since he’d promised his sister he’d scope things out, Cody headed over to the administrative offices. When he asked the volunteer services coordinator if they could use him over the winter, she looked at him as if he were mental.

  “We can always use volunteers. Tell me when you’re available, and I’ll put you on the schedule.”

  He chuckled. “You make this too easy.”

  “Seriously, though, Cody, have you ever thought of applying for a regular staff position? You’ve got more seniority in actual hours spent here than half the staff anyway.”

  Cody blinked. “I… never thought of it. I’m a computer science major.”

  “You think we don’t have an IT department? Think about it. In fact, talk to HR and see what they’ve got.” She grimaced. “I’m going to hate myself for that. If you hire on as a regular employee, you’ll leave a big gap in my roster.”

  “Don’t make that leap quite yet. But I’ll think a
bout it.”

  In truth, Cody needed something to break the link between the Seaport and Aaron that still existed in his mind, as if he’d run aground on a mental sandbar, unable to move on. Maybe this was the way to do it—alter his relationship with the Seaport, forget Aaron, and make his sister happy at the same time.

  What the heck. Since he was here, he might as well test the waters. He reversed course, strolling over to Lewis House near the South Gate where HR was located. He held the door open for a couple of women, but when he entered himself, he nearly ran into a guy in a suit on his way out.

  “Oops. Sorry, I—”

  “Cody?”

  The sound of that voice, the one that had haunted his dreams, made Cody stumble and ram his shoulder into the doorframe. “Aaron? What are you doing here?”

  Aaron—and it was him, Cody wasn’t just hallucinating—smoothed the hair at his nape. “Well… I… ah… I’m filling out my new hire paperwork.”

  Cody’s heart beat loud in his ears. “You what?”

  Aaron smiled tentatively. “I’m officially on the staff at Mystic Seaport Museum. Librarian and archivist. So I guess I’m a Mystic man too.”

  “How… how long have you been back in Connecticut?”

  “A couple of weeks.”

  “How can you have been back for a couple of weeks? You’ve only been gone for three.”

  “Well, ten days, but you know.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Rounding.”

  “Aaron.” Cody’s growl must have startled Aaron as much as it did Cody because he tugged at his tie as if it were choking him.

  “I was kind of hoping you’d be glad to see me.”

  “Ten days, Aaron. Ten whole days and you didn’t bother to come see me? Call me? Hell, send a freaking text?”

  “I didn’t want a repeat of what happened last time.”

  Cody stilled, although his breath still came in rapid puffs. What did that mean? Aaron didn’t want to see him? Didn’t want them to be together? “A repeat of what exactly?”

  Aaron paled. “God, Cody, your face.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Let’s go outside, okay? Where we can talk privately?”