by Ani Keating
I take a deep breath and close my eyes. Hydrogen, 1.008. Helium, 4.003… When I open my eyes, he is looking at me.
“Do you really want to part like this?” he asks, his voice very low.
His question douses my rage. Do I? Do I want our last memory to be this? Do I really want a last memory at all? I don’t know. But I do know that I cannot think anymore tonight. I just want to be in bed, with problems that even if I cannot solve, I can at least understand.
He takes a step closer when I don’t respond. “Please let me take you home. Our home. It has started to feel like that with you. You can sleep there tonight, and if you still feel this way in the morning, I will let you go.”
He doesn’t move his eyes from my face, as he waits for my answer. Woodenly, I nod. He shuts my door quietly and without another word, walks around the car and climbs next to me. Benson must notice because he strides back to us and slips into the driver’s seat.
“Home, sir?” he asks.
I don’t look at Aiden but I assume he nods because Benson starts driving at an even speed. Drained—more drained than I remember being in a long time—I stare at the night. Fragments of images start playing in my head. My mum’s dress on fire. Javier’s anguished eyes. Reagan’s shocked whisper. Aiden’s vicious threat. And his wounded face now in the end. Over and over and over. I cannot stand them so I close my eyes and lean my head back.
When we arrive at his house, I get out of the car, sensing Aiden behind me. Close, very close. He slides his palm over the pad and the doors open. I march through them, across the living room, noticing our Powell’s books—from a happy time—still on the dining table. His footsteps echo in my wake. At the bedroom threshold, I pause. His footsteps stop too. His body heat reflects on the back of my neck, and my resolve wavers. So I shut the door behind me. His footsteps do not ring in the hallway. I drape what’s left of Mum’s dress over the chaise and take off Benson’s jacket and my heels. The welts have already started to fade. I put on my periodic table T-shirt and climb into bed.
On his nightstand is the frame I gave him. Was he planning on sleeping here tonight? I fight off every single tear, switch off the side lamp and turn on my side. For the first time since we laid eyes on each other, I’m thankful to be alone.
Chapter Forty
Lifeline
I jolt awake with a sense of unease. Dawn light streams between the strands of my hair, tangled in my lashes. I blink once, twice. I am knotted around Aiden’s pillow, clutching it between my arms and legs. Instantly, I remember last night and my body splits in two. My fingers squeeze the pillow to my chest but my senses try to block Aiden’s words echoing in my ears. Mexican border…let you go… Hydrogen, 1,008. Helium, 4.003. Lithium, 6.94. His words go silent, replaced by the first chirps of the resident bluebirds. Then I see him.
“Oh!” I gasp, the pillow plopping on the bed.
Aiden is sitting on the chair in the corner, ankle over his knee, in the same dark jeans and blue shirt as yesterday. In his right hand, tucked between his thumb and index finger is the quill from our first night. He rolls it gently, the Amherst feather quivering from his touch. A few Powell’s books are at his feet, Byron on top. He is not looking at them. His eyes are on me—vibrant but turbulent, as though images have spun in their depths for hours. I try to speak, even a simple “hi”, but I can’t make a sound with my heart crashing against my ribs.
“I don’t want you to leave.” His voice is soft, quiet.
“Why not?” I whisper.
He sets the quill on Byron’s Poems and stands. A look of purpose flashes in his eyes. He takes the five steps between us, while I try to calm my pulse thudding in my ears. I expect him to sit at the foot of the bed but he kneels on the floor next to me.
“Because you were right yesterday,” he says. “Ever since our first night together, I’ve been so consumed with pushing you away that I didn’t realize how much I don’t want it until you threatened to leave me. I’ve watched you sleep all night, afraid it was my last chance. This little wrinkle between your eyebrows didn’t go away even in your sleep. Thank God you took mercy on me and hugged my pillow or I’d have gone insane. I’ve been dreading this morning even more than on embargo night. Stay with me…please!”
Every word, every pause, every new, shy inflection in his tone is so close to what I have dreamed that for an instant I wonder whether I’m really awake. But then I see his dimming eyes and the dark circles under them and I know I must be. No matter how much he hurts me, I’ll never want this look of anguish on his face. His rare “please” echoes in the air.
“But all the reasons why you wanted me to leave are still here. What made you change your mind?”
He shakes his head. “I haven’t changed my mind. I capitulated.”
It sounds like a regret.
The tectonic plates start shifting and he pales. “Seeing you last night—white as a ghost, dress in shreds, running in the wind—” He shudders. “I haven’t prayed in twelve years and eighteen days but when I saw you, all I kept thinking was ‘Please, God, please let her be okay!’” He shudders again.
I shudder too, but for another reason. What happened twelve years and eighteen days ago? I want to ask but, instinctively, I know this is something he needs to tell me on his own. Abruptly, he grips my hand in both of his. “I’d rather be deployed again than be unable to protect you. If you hadn’t calmed me yesterday, I have no idea what I would have done…or whom I would have hurt.”
I shiver, replaying the violence emanating from him as he whirled toward Javier.
“Elisa?” His right hand flies to my cheek, then at the hollow of my neck. “I’ve scared you again.”
I nod. “Yes, a little.”
He leans away from me immediately, resting his hand on the bed. “I don’t want to frighten you.”
“I’m more afraid of what you may do to others.” I shiver again.
His jaw flexes. “I’ll destroy anything and anyone that may hurt you, Elisa. Including myself. On that point, I will not negotiate.”
“I understand that better than you think. I’d do the same for you. But it’s how little it takes for you to jump straight to destruction mode that scares me. A broken nail, Aiden? A burned dress? What if I’d fallen and sprained my ankle? Or got hit by a car?”
He says nothing but from his rigid shoulders I know that even these scenarios are triggering his vigilance.
I take his hand again. “Life happens, Aiden. One day, whether naturally or accidentally, something will happen to me. We can’t have you go on a carnage spree just because I got the flu. And what if we’re both very lucky, and one day when I’m ninety, I pass away in my sleep, probably dreaming of you. What will you do then if you’re still alive?”
He blanches. “Don’t talk about that.”
“But it’s a given. It will happen. Are you going to grab your dentures and beat people up with your cane?”
His lips twitch in a repressed smile.
“It’s not funny, Aiden. We need to prepare you for…for losing. For life.”
The semismile disappears. His eyes lose focus, as though this is a frontier beyond which he cannot see. I pull on his hand to lift him off the floor. I can’t watch him on his knees when he looks so vulnerable. I might as well be trying to lift the Coliseum but he understands my intention and sits at the edge of the bed. He grips my hand like a lifeline.
I take a deep breath, choosing my next words carefully. “Aiden, I don’t want to leave. I dread losing you like I dread boarding that plane to London. But it’s one thing for us to do this to each other and it’s quite another for Javier or Reagan or some other poor soul to bear the brunt of it. I think you should see a doctor for your anger…for your PTSD. You’re destroying your own health, your peace—”
“Okay.”
“I mean, the rate of heart attack—wait, what di
d you say?”
“I said okay, I’ll see someone.”
It takes me a while to find coherent words so instead I blink at him until he almost smiles. “Just like that?”
“It may be just like that for you but it has taken over a decade for me to try this again.”
“Try this again? You mean you’ve seen someone for this before?”
The tension returns to his shoulders. He looks away from me, his eyes resting on the frame I gave him on the nightstand. “Briefly—when I first came home.”
“How briefly?”
“Enough to know I didn’t want to do it.” His shoulders are straight, defiant, as though they agree with that decision, with the part of him that rejects any form of help.
“You’re punishing yourself, aren’t you? That’s why you’ve refused treatment.”
He doesn’t say anything, but his grip on my hand tightens. I take that as confirmation.
“Aiden, why? What do you think you’ve done to deserve this?” My voice rises and cracks.
His eyes start withdrawing slowly, like a prelude to the lock that signals his flashbacks. I don’t want him to drift into any horrors so I keep talking.
“Look, if it’s too hard to tell me, I’ll wait until you’re ready. Or never if that’s what you need. But you can’t just bottle this up. What about talking to the other Marines? To Marshall—”
Abruptly, his index finger flies to my lips. “Elisa, why I think I deserve this is not the point of this discussion.”
“Your health is the point of this discussion.”
“Fine, my health,” he shouts. The bluebirds outside stop chirping. He is breathing hard and pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. When he looks at me again, they’re almost liquid.
“You are my health now,” he whispers. “So for you, I’ll try.”
There is only silence. No chirps. No breathing. Not even my own pulse in my ears.
“I’m your health?” I try to say the words but no voice comes out.
He must read lips because he smiles. A sad, no-dimple smile. “Are you really that surprised? From the moment I laid eyes on you, you’ve calmed me better than any drug. And believe me, there was a time when I tried them all.”
A drug… I close my eyes, breathe in, and try to find my voice. “Aiden, I have to ask you something.”
He stills. “What?”
“Well—you use words like drugs and addiction when you talk about me—” I stop because my throat constricts so tightly that it sends a zing through my jaw.
“And you’re worried that that’s all you are to me.” His voice is very soft.
I nod, twisting the sheet in my hands.
Before I can blink, he rips me from under the sheets and brings me on his lap. “Elisa, baby, no! If all I wanted was your calmness, why wouldn’t I just keep your painting? That alone is enough to do the job. I wouldn’t need you.”
“Well, I thought maybe the live thing works better?”
“It is better, but not because I get a stronger high. It’s because you’re more to me than that. You…you make me want…”
“What do you want?” I whisper, fixing my eyes on his so I miss nothing.
They still—the turquoise more translucent than ever. His lips lift into the first full smile today. “I want to take you out to concerts. Fall asleep with my nose in your hair.” He runs his fingers through my tangles. “Kiss you in broad daylight in the middle of the Rose Garden, not caring who is around us.”
All the things he cannot have.
He tips my face up so I can look at him. “I want to be your new home.”
For a long moment, I can’t speak. And that’s good. Because the only thing I want to say is I love you.
Instead, I kiss him hard. He groans and responds so forcefully that we fall back on the bed, our bodies skating across the sheets to the very edge. His hand clamps around my jaw—like it did on our first night.
“I don’t want the fantasy anymore,” he says. “I want the real girl.”
His mouth locks with mine then, our tongues twining with no more space for other words. Or even air. He grips the collar of my T-shirt and rips it off. Before my gasp leaves my lips, he shreds my knickers. His lips start a scorching path down my throat, along my collarbones, to my shoulder, closing around my left nipple. He breathes on it once and tugs gently. It stands at attention, lifting the rest of my body off the bed.
“Mmm…still perfect,” he moans, his breath making me hiss. He switches between tongue, teeth, and lips in a sucking, nibbling, kissing pattern. As my belly tightens in a familiar, sharp ache, I grasp what he is doing. He is retracing our first time, with perfect, infallible detail.
And like the first time, my body bows to him down to my last cell. But unlike then, now I move with him. In a togetherness we haven’t had before.
I wrap my legs around his waist, soldering him to me. His mouth and tongue travel to my other nipple, then lower—circling my belly button, nipping at my waist, sucking at my hip. With each kiss, his fingers skim along my calf, inside my thigh, around the all-but-gone welts, until they meet his lips on the relentless pulse beating between my legs. His mouth wraps around me in the same move as his fingers slide inside.
I moan a garbled version of Aiden, gripping his hair and pushing myself into his mouth.
“Open up,” he orders as he sucks hard. He spreads my legs as far apart as they will go. “I want to taste you…all of you… I wanted to do this since I first tasted your candy… That’s when I knew it was you…” His tongue laps away in circles, jolts, dips and flicks. Exactly as then. Yet new.
Everything burns and shivers at the same time. I hold on to his hair like I might drown if he lets go. He doesn’t. Another suck, another stroke. I’m suspended for a timeless moment—then I soar and vanish. Reincarnated back into that first night of wakefulness.
* * * * *
A faint gust of air wafts over my face, then a distant chuckle, a faraway sigh. I open my eyes and Aiden’s face is here.
“Hey,” he whispers, smiling. He has taken off his clothes, his skin blazing against mine.
“Hey,” I breathe, expecting his kiss and my citrusy residue on his lips. I kiss him until all I can taste is his fiery cinnamon flavor.
“I wish I could explain how this feels for me,” he sighs, raining kisses on my nose, my eyelids, my cheeks. “Always like the first time”—he kisses my jawline—“and always better.”
“It’s like that for me too,” I whisper, wrapping my legs around him.
Eye to eye, he slides inside me. My body knows him now and grips his every inch. Our hips circle and roll together. He lifts my hips up until my toes touch the mattress above my head, and thrusts hard inside me. My cries mingle with his rough breathing. Aiden. Baby. Aiden. Elisa.
His rhythm picks up—hard, fast and blinding. On every thrust, my insides close around him with precision. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
I explode violently, crying out his name. Just like then. Just like always. He follows in seconds with a final word.
“Elisa!”
* * * * *
From somewhere far away, there is a buzz like a mosquito in a summer loll. I bury my nose in Aiden’s chest to ignore it. But it buzzes again. And again.
“Umm, Aiden? Do you need to answer that?”
“No…vacayshon.”
“Vacation?” I squeal, shooting up in bed, instantly alert. He said he never takes vacation!
He opens one eye. “Mmm.”
“Really?”
“Mmm.”
“So what are we doing?”
“Surp—rise,” he mumbles, drifting into a soft snore.
Chapter Forty-One
Truce
I could lie here all day looking at a sleeping Aide
n. His parted lips, the long lashes brushing his cheekbones, the sculpted jaw. But the urge to touch him is so compulsive that I slip out of bed one inch at a time and tiptoe around the bedroom, tidying up. As I gather Powell’s books from the floor—Byron, Neruda, Dickinson, Brontë—I stifle a gasp, realizing what they have in common. Except Byron, they’re the books we never got a chance to sign together on our second night.
I flip through the pages, and there it is: his signature on pages eight, twenty-four and eleven. He signed them all. I caress his autograph, smiling at the difference a night can make. From numbered hours, we went to what? Numbered days?
The books almost cascade from my arms as I sink into his chair. In the rare moments I allow myself these thoughts, my knees inevitably give out and the questions tear through me for five periodic tables.
What if I still have to leave? Or just as awful, what if I can stay but not with him? He said he’ll try but what does that mean for someone like Aiden? How can he overpower his memory? And what happens when the doctor starts delving deep and Aiden has to talk? How long before he shuts down and quits? An image of his flexed jaw forms in my mind, as he mouths, You’re not my health, you’re my pain.
I leap to my feet. No! I must not think this way. He can do this. I know he can.
I set the books on the dresser and scurry into his closet. Against his suits—like every morning—hangs a new Margolis dress. This one is a simple gray sheath with tiny pearl buttons along the back. I search through the soft cotton, knowing that somewhere I’ll find the next lines of “She Walks in Beauty”. They’re inside the hem this time, embroidered in violet silk.
“The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent”
Before I realize what I’m doing, I bring the hem to my lips and kiss it. And because that’s not crazy enough, I photograph it too. Then I skip to the restroom to get ready before the dress kisses me back.
Fifteen minutes later, my fingertips still itching to touch Aiden, I escape out on the patio to check in with Javier and Reagan.
