Autumn in the City of Lights

by Kirby Howell

  “...You know... what?”

  She stared at me, her brown eyes wide, and I realized suddenly – she was nervous. Or scared.

  “You know... what?” I tried again.

  She clutched her hands and stared at the floor, reminding me more of the scared little girl who used to talk about “the bad people.”

  “Rissi, what’s wrong?”

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out at first. She glanced out the window, and I followed her gaze. Light glowed behind the closed drapes of Grey’s guesthouse.

  When she finally spoke, everything came out in one long, run-on sentence. “I know about him, about Grey, I know that he can go places quickly, like disappear and go somewhere else that’s miles and miles away and would be impossible for someone else to go to, but he can because he’s different, like a super hero or something.”

  She took a quick breath, her eyes bright.

  “Grey can go anywhere,” she said. “He should go find something to help Ben.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I stared at her. Was Rissi really saying this to me right now? Or was I imagining it?

  “I’ve been going crazy wanting to talk to you about it,” she continued. “But don’t worry, I didn’t tell anyone! I know how to keep a secret. I’ve been keeping this secret for a long, long, long, long time, and I won’t tell anyone, I promise!”

  I didn’t want to lie to her, but this secret, Grey’s secret, was dangerous to keep. I had to convince her she was wrong and hope she didn’t see through it.

  I began rubbing my eyes like I had a headache, then leaned against the counter and stared at her like I was trying to get my vision in focus.

  “Say again?” I let my voice sound mildly confused and even a touch disinterested.

  She stepped toward me and placed her hand on top of mine. When she spoke, her voice was low and serious. “I know that Grey has special powers. And I can prove it!”

  After everything that had happened in the past two days, I hadn’t expected this. It was too much. The stress of worrying over Ben and everything else... It all made my head spin.

  She whirled around and ran from the room. I waited for a moment, wondering if following her to find out what her proof was would only confirm her suspicions. On the other hand, I needed to know what she knew, how long she’d known, how she found out, and what threat this might pose to Grey. So I stood and followed her upstairs to her room.

  She was waiting for me, an expectant look on her face. I put up my hands to stop her before she could say anything. “I’m really worn out. I still have a mild concussion, I didn’t sleep last night, and all I want to do is go to bed.”

  Rissi put up her hands beckoning me to hold on, then opened her closet doors and began digging behind a pile of boxes. I recognized something in her closet and stepped forward.

  “Hey! Are those my riding boots?”

  She hurriedly tossed a coat over the boots, and her answer was muffled. I sat down on her bed, slightly miffed that she was turning into a little sister with sticky fingers.

  Rissi unearthed what she was looking for and turned around, a shoebox held reverently in her hands. She placed it on the bed beside me and lifted the lid, hiding the contents as she did so. She removed something and closed the lid again, sliding the box away from me.

  I pressed my lips together and tried not to be annoyed, then suddenly wondered if she might have found the vial of E-Vitamin we lost on the mountain back in Hoover. It wasn’t impossible.

  “Hold out your hand,” she said.

  I did.

  “Close your eyes.”

  “Riss,” I warned.

  “Okay, here’s my proof,” she said, then laid a red lollipop in my outstretched hand. It was circular and flat with a raised, white heart in the center. The candy part was sheathed in clear, crumpled cellophane. Disappointed, I let my shoulders droop and looked up at her.

  She was staring at me like I should have understood. But I honestly didn’t. I had no clue how this connected her to knowing Grey’s secret.

  “When I ran away to come with you and Daniel and Grey when we were in Vegas, I hid on the plane, remember? You had to fly to that secret place to get guns and bombs and stuff.”

  I sighed. “We talked about this already. You dreamed that you came with us. You didn’t actually come. That would have been too dangerous.”

  Rissi charged on. “You almost left me there! You were driving away, and I had to run after you! I met that weird guy, Robert. Daniel was hurt so he couldn’t fly, and I took care of him, and we went back to Hoover together!”

  During the two months we’d been in Hoover helping rebuild the town, Rissi had asked me how she’d gotten back to Las Vegas, and I’d told her she never left. She knew all of the details about Area 51 and Daniel getting hurt. So we told her she’d heard us tell the story and then dreamed she’d come with us. In all that time, we’d been very careful to make sure she never ran into Robert, the man we’d met at Area 51. That task had been made easier when he chose to stay in Hoover while we moved to New Burbank.

  “Then we went to the Mayor’s Office, and you talked about all those plans for the battle, and the Mayor gave this to me.” She touched the lollipop.

  Chills broke out over my shoulders. I vaguely remembered Mayor Westland giving Rissi a lollipop the night of the battle. It hadn’t occurred to me to take it away from her while she slept.

  “And I fell asleep, and when I woke up, you were carrying me, and we were walking somewhere by Lake Mead with Grey, but I pretended to be asleep. Then he hugged us, and I got really confused because suddenly Connie was there, and then you were gone, but I had this lollipop in my pocket, so I know I went to Hoover.”

  She took my silence as confirmation and touched my arm. “I promise I won’t tell anyone. But I want to know more. Will you tell me?”

  A part of me did want to tell her everything. To confide in her. But then I looked up at her and came to my senses. She was eight years old. The burden of this huge, sprawling secret wasn’t and shouldn’t be hers to bear.

  I rubbed my eyes again. I really was tired. Rissi shifted, nervous and eager for my response.

  “I don’t know what to say, Rissi,” I said, shrugging. “I have no clue what you’re talking about. Think about it. Grey? Special powers?” I tried my best to sound disinterested, but I’m afraid I sounded more annoyed than anything else. I sighed. “Believe me, I know Grey is...” I searched for the right word. “Different. And he’s important to us, because he’s a leader and a doctor. And he is special... to me.”

  For now, the air seemed to have left the sails of her argument, and she sat in silence, staring at the floor.

  “Hey, it’s pretty late. We should get to bed.” I hugged her and was relieved when her arms wrapped around me, too. I kissed the top of her head, then left, shutting her door behind me.

  I headed toward my own room, feeling my eyelids droop. I was pleased to remember I was already in my pajamas. I opened the door to my room and shut it again behind me, crossed the room without turning on the light and collapsed into bed. Something large moved beside me, and I squealed in surprise and fright, scampering away from whatever was in my bed.

  “Is that how you greet every guy you invite into your room at night?” Grey’s voice came quietly through the darkness, and I breathed deeply to calm myself.

  “I’m sorry – I forgot!” I whispered as I crawled back onto the bed.

  “You forgot about me?” he said mockingly.

  I lay down and settled my head against his shoulder. “You’ll never believe the conversation I just had with Rissi. And once I tell you, you’ll understand how I could forget you’d be here.”

  I quickly told him what happened after dinner. When I finished, he didn’t seem at all concerned.

  “There have been people in the past, friends and strangers, who have suspected something about me. Either they thought they saw something they couldn’t explain, or they were c
urious and just couldn’t put their finger on what it was about me that piqued their interest.”

  “Did anyone ever guess right?”

  “Once or twice, but nothing ever came of it,” he said. “One time someone asked me if I was a vampire.”

  I covered my mouth to keep from laughing too loudly. “What did you say?”

  “I asked if he’d believe me if I said no, but that I was from another planet. He just laughed at himself for asking something so ridiculous.”

  “So you’re not worried that Rissi kind of knows?”

  “Not really. She’s eight. No one would believe her even if she decided to tell someone.” He reached up and began playing with my hair, gently tugging on the strands in my messy ponytail. It felt wonderful, and my eyelids fluttered closed.

  “So why did you ask me to meet you back up here?” Even though he could project from the guesthouse to my room and back easily, he wanted to be respectful to Connie and Daniel and played by their rules while we were sharing a living space, so he’d never spent the night with me.

  “I wasn’t ready to say goodnight,” I mumbled against his shirt.

  He sighed deeply, my head rising with his chest, then said, “Maybe, one day, we can be like Daniel and Connie... and live somewhere together so I don’t have to leave. And I can stay with you all night, every night.”

  That woke me up. I lifted my head and looked up at him. Was he suggesting we get married one day? His blue eyes seemed to glow in the darkness as he gazed down at me. I expected to feel some jolting emotion: excitement, happiness, or even panic. Instead, comforting warmth spread through me.

  “How do you feel about that?” he asked.

  I thought about my parents. How they must have felt about each other to want to spend the rest of their lives together. I realized with a sudden surety that they would both have liked Grey very much.

  “I like that idea,” I said.

  He smiled widely. I laid my head on his shoulder again, and an image of Grey in a light colored suit, standing at the front of a church, waiting for me, filled my mind. Nervous excitement fluttered in my chest. A reception like Connie and Daniel’s would be perfect, though smaller. I didn’t want to invite the entirety of New Burbank. A smaller, more intimate party was what I would want. We’d find a nice, little house to live in. Not too far from Connie and Daniel. Maybe even on this street. We’d fill it with items from The Water Tower. After the wedding, we’d come home together for the first time; he’d carry me across the threshold, just like in the movies.

  My happy thoughts stopped there, and a memory of the four tiny graves in the small park down the street surfaced in my mind. There were seven similar graves in Hoover. And more around the rest of the world, I was sure. Despite the endless hours Grey had spent in the lab at the hospital, he’d made no progress on finding a solution that allowed newborns to live immune from the Crimson Fever, and until then, the baby in the baby carriage would not be a possibility for anyone, not even Grey and me. The thought made me sad.

  The act of love would be as dangerous as running around the Front-controlled Westside at night. Not many would want to chance losing a child. It was just too sad on top of everything else we’d all experienced after surviving what we had. Why do that to ourselves?

  But then, to not have sex? To not be able to express how much we loved each other? I’d never had sex, not even come close to it — or had anyone in my life that I’d even wanted to make love to. Until now. The tension between Grey and me had become almost unbearable. We hadn’t slept together yet, and I didn’t expect we would soon. We’d had all that time apart while in Hoover, and since the Battle for Hoover, we’d managed to have nine drama-free months together. Nine months wasn’t a long time, though it felt like I’d known him, trusted him, depended on him, and been in love with him for my entire life.

  “Grey?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re still working on a cure for the Crimson Fever, right?”

  “Every spare minute I have. I won’t stop until I find it.” He kissed the top of my head and hugged me tight against him. “And you and I don’t need to rush into anything,” he said, understanding what I’d asked but not said. “I’m not going anywhere. We’ll wait until it’s right.”

  “What if something like what happened at the Hillside Bowl happens again? What if something worse than what happened to Ben happens to you?”

  He wrapped his arms around me, and then kissed me again. “Don’t let that make us rush into anything we’re not ready for.”

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he said, smiling. “Remember, this is new territory for me as well.”

  “So does that mean that you’ve never...” I said, trying to hide a smile.

  He laughed. “Of course I haven’t.” He looked at me, his smile melting and his face turning serious. “You were my first crush, my first kiss... you’ll be my first everything.”

  I didn’t know why this was a surprise to me. He’d told me that I’d been the one to make him “crack.” He’d been slipping for a while in repressing his emotions, but when he met me, he said he lost control completely. But to hear him say that I’d be his first everything...

  “Can you stay a little while longer? I don’t want to be alone.”

  He pulled me closer and wrapped an arm around me. “As your physician, it’s my responsibility to keep an eye on you.”

  I laughed and squeezed him tightly, thankful I was in his arms and nowhere else.

  I woke to early morning sunshine filling the room, making everything seem pure and white. Dust softly floated in the beams of light, and everything felt warm and soft and very comfortable. I slowly became more aware of my surroundings and the fact that Grey hadn’t left. We must have fallen asleep and stayed that way all night, otherwise, he would have projected back to the guesthouse.

  I slowly lifted my head from his chest to look at him. We were in the exact same position we’d been in when we were talking before falling asleep.

  He was still asleep, his eyelids shut, hiding his beautiful, bright eyes. He inhaled so softly I almost couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He was so still. The light coming through the window behind him highlighted his cheekbone, the tip of his nose, and the edges of his lips.

  His light blonde hair was like sun-bleached straw in the morning light. He’d let it grow a bit since we left Hoover, and I ran my fingers through it, exploring the new softness. I closed my eyes and let my head droop back to his chest as I let my fingers wade through his hair.

  I heard a deep sigh, and he mumbled, “I could get used to waking up this way.”

  I smiled and paused my hair stroking. “I’m sorry I woke you up.”

  “Don’t be sorry and don’t stop. That feels amazing.”

  I resumed, my fingers cutting paths through his hair like children running through a wheat field. He let out a long breath, and I felt his warm palm come to rest on my hip. I let my hands blaze new trails down his neck to his shoulders, and he shuddered, and then turned on his side to face me, his hands dragging me closer.

  Grey’s lips found mine. He clutched me to him so that we were chest to chest. My hands slipped under his t-shirt to the warm, bare skin of his back.

  In one motion, he rolled me onto my back, and then he was above me, supporting his weight on his elbows.

  He burrowed his hands under my shoulders and wrapped his fingers around them, holding me to him. The pressure of his weight on me was lovely. I felt safe and tucked away, his to hold, his to hide, his to possess.

  Our hands clutched at each other. His scruff-covered chin rasped against mine, making it burn. A crinkle of pleasure pain creased his forehead. Then a fleeting thought about the tiny graves washed through my mind, reminding me why continuing down this path was so dangerous.

  “We should stop,” I whispered, wishing I didn’t have to restrain us both.

  He touched his forehead to mine, his blue eyes fillin
g my field of vision. “I wish we could just stay here like this, all day, and that all of the troubles of this world could melt away.”

  “That sounds heavenly. Let’s —”

  Footsteps sounded on the other side of my door. There were two sharp knocks, and the door creaked open. “Autumn? You awake yet?”

  Startled, we looked up right as Connie’s head poked through the doorway. Grey leaped off the bed, dragging all of the blankets with him.

  Thankfully, we hadn’t progressed to removing any clothes yet, as I was now lying in my pajamas on the top of the empty bed. It was hard to tell who was more startled in this situation. Me, at Grey’s abrupt departure from the bed; Grey, at Connie’s sudden appearance; or Connie, at Grey’s presence in my room so early in the morning.

  There was no movement for a solid ten seconds, then Connie entered the room and shut the door behind her. She gave both of us the sternest look I’d ever seen her give, and in a tone she usually reserved for Rissi, she began to lecture us.

  “You are eighteen years old, Autumn, and I don’t even know how old you are, Grey, but not only does this set a bad example for Rissi, but it’s dangerous right now. Too dangerous.”

  I peeled my eyes from Connie’s reddening face and glanced at Grey. Her comment on Grey’s age was turning up the corners of my mouth into a smile. But Grey wasn’t smiling.

  “Especially with what’s going on right now with the lack of contraceptives and... and...” Her voice trailed off, and I knew she wanted to mention the problem with newborns not living more than a few days. She turned away toward the window for a moment, a hand covering her mouth, then spun back to face us.

  “I’m especially disappointed in you, Grey. Being a doctor and seeing all of this stuff first hand! You know more than anyone what the risks are.” She paused to give him a pointed look.

  “Connie, you’re right. We’re setting a bad example for Rissi,” Grey said. I noticed he intentionally didn’t apologize for the rest. Yes, he was a doctor, and things were dire for couples right now, but he knew, as well as Connie, that this was our decision.