Axis of Aaron (26 page)

Before he could finish speaking, Aimee’s lips were back on him. Realizing he was on review, he quickly firmed himself into more of a kissy face. Aimee’s lips were moving, but now it felt like she was trying to paint something immobile, her lips a brush to his hardened canvas. The kiss was definitely something she was doing
to
him, not something they were doing together.
 

She backed away again. The Danger Wheel still showed no sign of lowering. The operator could end this awkwardness, but fate had other plans for Ebon Shale today.
 

“Also terrible,” she said. “And that was your best?”
 

“Well, not my
best
…” Ebon tried to say it like he feared being pinned down on a technicality.
 

She took her hand back, then put it on his mouth. She began squeezing at his lips as if massaging them.

“Loosen this up. Seriously, that was like kissing a statue.”
 

“I can’t exactly … ”
 

“And use your body a little. Not a lot — don’t go trying to feel me up or anything — but at least lean into it a little, you know? In fact … ” Aimee reached down and took his hands as if showing him something he hadn’t known were there. “You want to use your hands. But again, not on my boobs. Not yet.” In the pause, Ebon wondered if “yet” might include next summer. “Put them up here, on my face. Or run your fingers through my hair. Move your lips around a little, but don’t make them too sloppy. Just kind of medium-firm. I move my lips, and you move yours, and we’re doing it right if you hear little wet sounds. Just little ones though. I swear, Ebon, don’t you dare try to stick your tongue in my mouth.”
 

She looked at him very seriously when she said this, but Ebon had no problem nodding his rapid agreement. Not only did they not have a tongue-in-mouth relationship (nor, really, a kissing relationship, but that ship had sailed), but the notion of putting his tongue in someone else’s mouth sounded disgusting. Mashing lips: good. Sampling her breakfast leftovers: kind of gross.

“Okay. Try again.”
 

They tried again. This time it was better. Ebon still wasn’t sure if he was doing it right, but the motions were better and smoother. Her lips felt softer. And the inside of the carriage was filled with tiny wet sounds, just as she’d indicated. When they pulled apart, he looked at her like he’d look at a teacher he hoped would give him a good grade.
 

“There,” she said. “Much better.” Aimee ran a finger along her lips to clear them of what Ebon feared might be a little too much moisture. Then she turned back in her seat, the lesson finished, looking out at the water.
 

“So that was right?”
 

“Pretty good,” she said, not turning.
 

“But not great.”
 

“If that was your first real kiss, then it doesn’t need to be great.”

“I want to do it great.” Ebon realized he was too eager. He also felt lightheaded with a full-body flush of warmth. “You know me. I like to get things right.”
 

There was a jolt, and the horizontal motion became slightly more vertical. In seconds they’d be doing a Ferris wheel motion, mostly up and down. A while after that the wheel would again be flat, allowing riders to disembark. Ebon counted seconds in his mind, somehow knowing that this had been a watershed moment he’d remember forever. Leaving the carriage would pop that moment like a bubble. Summer would end, and the world would wither for long months of absence.
 

“You did it right,” said Aimee.
 

“You seriously have
no notes
for me?” Ebon felt his voice becoming desperate, but he’d just pulled out the best weapon he could wield against Aimee. Maybe the moment of wanting to teach him to kiss had passed, but the moments of wanting to tell him what to do would never end.
 

She turned toward him again, precious seconds escaping with each motion of the ride.
 

“Okay,” she said. “If I have one criticism — and this is an advanced one, but you asked — it was that I didn’t really believe it.”
 

“You didn’t
believe
it?”
 

“I just sensed your mood was a little awkward, like you weren’t committed. If we were boyfriend and girlfriend, I’d be offended because you weren’t really into me.”
 

“Maybe that’s because you sprang it on me and we’ve never come close to kissing even once,” he said. At this moment in particular, it definitely wasn’t because he wasn’t into her. She might be teaching, but he’d become the world’s most willing student over the last thirty seconds.
 

“So just be ‘committed’ when you do it, and you’ll be fine.”
 

The ride was halfway down. He wanted to reach for her and ask for another shot, but he couldn’t. This was one-sided, teacher to student. She was done teaching, and now she’d taught the final lesson — one that didn’t really require a redo … and, if the advice was literal, shouldn’t even improve a redo because they were just two friends. He looked at her, feeling like his chest was swelling, suddenly desperate. But the moment was over.
 

She reached out, again sliding her hand behind his head. Again their lips came together. Ebon breathed through his nose, her lips soft and silky against his. One of his hands slid around her neck and through her hair. The other — awkwardly, in the ride’s restraints — went around her waist. He felt himself pull her closer without meaning to, felt her respond and tug him as well. Their heads moved on swivels. He could feel the small press of her breasts against his chest. He closed his eyes without meaning to.
 

Ebon opened his eyes. They were still facing each other, their hands touching in the space between them, the professorial look gone from Aimee’s face. The carriage shuddered, and Ebon realized the ride was docking.
 

Ebon looked at Aimee.
 

Aimee looked at Ebon.
 

Outside the carriage, the slanting, autumn light of their final day together winked behind a speck of cloud.
 

Then the hatch was sprung from the outside, and a man in his early twenties was standing above them, his face covered in stubble, his shirt dirty.
 

“Exit to your left,” he said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A Boat in December
 

“EBON … ” AIMEE TRAILED OFF. THE SINGLE word was a sentence in itself. Ebon had learned to read Aimee well in the time he’d known her. She was actually saying that although she’d never tell him what to do (even though she always had), she thought he was making a bad choice. But not just a
bad
choice — possibly a
dangerous
one.
 

Ebon looked over. Aimee was huddled into her too-large winter coat, her head covered in a wool cap with earflaps. Her lower half was less coordinated, thematically: She was wearing clodhopper shoes meant for mud, but her pants were capris that stopped well above her ankles. He hadn’t given her time to change before making his announcement, and she hadn’t planned to go outside in the middle of painting the built-in bookshelves. She’d had to hurry, inviting herself on an errand he’d merely been informing her about rather than asking for permission or advice.
 

Still, Ebon (more sanguine in a black pea coat and no hat) felt himself wanting to explain as he met Aimee’s eyes. But he couldn’t. The knot was too thick. He had too much to explain, and not a single explanation would help anyone understand — Ebon included.
 

He said, “It’s just something I have to do.”

They were standing at the foot of Pinky Slip, the rickety wooden staircase scaling the rocks behind them. The water was choppy but not overly so, and there was minimal rocking as a woman steered an approaching boat between the breakwaters toward them. It was a small vessel, for sure. But it would do.

“Why now?” Aimee asked. “Who buys a boat in December?”
 

“It’s your early Christmas gift.”
 

Aimee was behind Ebon as he watched the boat near the dock, ready to receive a line when the woman tossed one his way. He turned with a smile, but Aimee didn’t return it. They’d been happy in their renovations as far as his fractured memory seemed to tell him, and he supposed they’d felt like they were settling in for the winter. He’d got a brief mental image of a fire in the cottage, and that seemed to indicate they’d completed the fireplace in the living room. Part of Ebon also recalled another fire in a much more modern-looking fireplace — this one in a bathroom. That must be Vicky’s, where the thing spanned bathroom to bedroom. If that memory was accurate, there was at least one non-platonic fireplace in play right now. Ebon just wished he could remember what had happened where, or which pieces of the shaking puzzle were safe to mention to whom.

“Look,” Ebon added when Aimee failed to respond, “you asked who buys a boat in December? Nobody, that’s who. That’s precisely
why
I’m doing it. Why do you think I’m getting such a great price?”
 

“That doesn’t make sense. If you have enough money to buy a boat — on an island where you could easily rent one — while not even working your regular job, then you have enough money to wait until a sensible season and pay full price. Wait until April or May, at least. She’ll only feel like she can charge more after the summer crowds get here.”

Ebon didn’t want to argue. He needed a boat now, not in April or May, and this was
his
decision. His money was
his
money (not
their
money), and he
had
looked around for rentals. All of the island’s boats had been winterized and stored. The only reason the woman on the deck of the approaching boat had been willing to de-winterize hers and pilot it over from storage was because Ebon had offered to pay cash on the spot, and she’d admitted a divorce had left her light on funds.
 

“I love being here on Aaron, but I just … ” Ebon sighed. “You know how you keep saying I need to take time to vent — to do something on my own so I’ll have space to process what happened with Holly? How I feel about the accident, and how I maybe should have ended things after catching her cheating? Well, maybe it’s this little seaside town that’s infecting me, but I keep feeling like a boat might be the project I need. My dad had one on a lake near our home, and I used to go out on it with him before I started coming here. It was nothing like this one, just a simple pontoon boat for cruising the lake, but he always talked like I’d buy my own one day.”

“Ebon, it’s … it’s
winter
.”
 

“Technically, it’s not winter for another two weeks.”
 

“You can’t keep a boat in the water for much longer, and I can’t imagine why you’d choose December, on Aaron, as the time to take up an outdoor project. Why now? What are you hoping to do with it?”
 

The truth, of course, was that he hoped to pilot his new boat around to the ocean side of the island and drive it out as far as he dared. He didn’t need to keep the boat in the water much longer to do that. He’d even do it this afternoon if he could sneak away while Aimee was on an errand or sleeping.
 

But he had to know.

Ebon’s sense of losing time had begun to feel almost normal (What had he done last week? He wasn’t totally sure), but for some reason the ocean itself had begun to feel like the truer problem. The ocean surrounded his every move, pushing him around and judging him. It was a foe, an adversary, a nemesis against which he needed a weapon to do battle. When he’d got lost pursuing Vicky, the water had pushed him back toward the shore, tilting sideways like a funhouse mirror. Then, when he’d returned one morning from Vicky’s, he’d felt the wind and the ocean as a presence — a hand at his back, shoving him forward and refusing to allow his retreat. And most recently (such that “recent” was, in fact, in the right order?), when he’d been leaving the deserted carnival (Deserted? Or
gone?
He wasn’t sure), Ebon found himself suddenly surrounded by the ocean, somehow ending up all the way down at the lighthouse. He’d nearly drowned that time. He probably would have, in fact, if a kind old couple hadn’t jumped into the surf and dragged him out.
 

Those incidents (the ones involving the ocean’s bullying) were the images that felt most true and real to Ebon now, as he stood on the dock and watched the small craft approach Pinky Slip. They were more colorful and vivid in his mind, more insistent than the things he found himself unable to remember for sure. So much of his time on Aaron was a fog … but the fact that he needed to confront the water?
That
felt sure. Solid. An anchor atop which he’d be able to stand, holding a flag, ready to plant it in the name of victory.
 

But the rest of his time here was all snippets and flashes. He still hadn’t confessed his malady to Aimee. Whatever was happening was a slow creep, and he felt quite sure he could arrest its progress on his own. He didn’t need help. His disorientation would improve if he just confronted his tormentor. And if it didn’t? Well,
then
of course he’d tell Aimee everything.

As he watched the boat approach, his attention wandered through the past three months. He saw scenes like stills, all of them a strange mix of familiar and alien.