Axis of Aaron (48 page)

“What if they fixed the lock?” he said.
 

“Then we’ll come back. Big deal. But I doubt they did. Nobody official seems to go there. I went there loads over the winter.”
 

“Why? What’s there to do at a lighthouse?”
 

“Lots of kids just go there to drink,” she said.
 

More evidence of Miss Hyde. Ebon couldn’t imagine Aimee drinking, Aimee drunk, Aimee passed out in a corner with her flat belly exposed for groping hands at the type of teen parties they had in the movies. He didn’t like it. She wasn’t like that. She was this girl, here and now.
 

“Not me though,” she said.
 

“Oh. Good.”
 

“‘Good’?”
 

Ebon shrugged.
 

“It’s kinda gross inside, but, you know … places you’re not supposed to go and all.” She made a you’ll-appreciate-this gesture with her fingers as if recalling familiar ground. “You remember how I told you about that guy I was hanging out with this summer, and I gave him a blow job, and he got cut on a bottle in the middle of it? That was at the lighthouse.”
 

Ebon wasn’t sure what to say.
 

“It’s not a great spot for that. It’s kind of dirty. I thought we might get hep C or something.”

“Sure.”
 

“You ever have a blow job?”

Ebon looked at his Game Boy, blushing furiously.

“Not that I’m going to give you one at the lighthouse. Like I said: hep C.”
 

Now he couldn’t look up. He fiddled with the Game Boy, pretending to be fascinated by the way the game cartridge seated into it.
 

“So do you want to go or not?”
 

“What is hep C anyway?” was all Ebon could say.
 

“I don’t know. Like AIDS or something.” Now she had Ebon by the hand and was attempting to pull him upright. But despite being two years older than him, she was slight and thin, and Ebon had filled out into his bigger bones. “Come on, fat ass,” she grunted.

He looked up. “Aimee?”

Aimee stopped tugging and waited.
 

“You haven’t like … with a
lot
of guys, have you?”

“What?”
 

“You know.”
 

“Oh. That. I don’t know. A few. I told you about all of them.”
 

Ebon knew that much. The first sexual hints had appeared in Aimee’s letters a little over a year ago. After that it was like something had come uncorked. She seemed to have become afflicted with sexual Tourette’s, bleeding every detail into her letters, unable to stop. Ebon almost wished she’d kept it to herself, but every time a new letter arrived he skimmed it for juicy parts first. Aimee’s letters were long, multipaged, and rambling, exactly how she talked. He had to read them flat against a surface or light from the other side would bleed one page’s looping handwriting into its opposite, one page of mania doubling into insanity’s scribbles. Ebon would read them over and over, with a distant and slightly guilty arousal (this was Aimee, after all, and she was something different and sweeter to him), before sending his reply. Ebon’s letters, in contrast to Aimee’s, were short and desert dry. They read like telegrams. But it didn’t matter; as it was in person, Aimee’s correspondence was only seeking permission from Ebon to continue. In a few days after he sent her his own letter, another doorstop of written confessions would always arrive.
 

Ebon often wondered what it meant, that Aimee was so candid with him. Did it mean she thought of him as safe like a big sister? Or (and he’d become increasingly convinced of this) was she teasing him? Was she
trying
to rev him up? And if so, why hadn’t anything happened between them yet? Most of the summer was gone, but they’d spent all their time in Aimee’s usual, summery-sweet time capsule. She could have been fourteen again, building castles with him in the sand — or fifteen, sharing a kiss that was more bossy than romantic.
 

“I lost count,” he said.
 

“It wasn’t
that
many. Are you even counting … ?”
 

“Everything,” he answered, cutting Aimee off.

“Well,” she said, hands on hips as if about to lay some knowledge on Ebon because without her help, he’d never learn anything on his own. “That’s not all sex.”
 

“It’s not?”
 

“Sex is only when the guy … you know.”
 

Ebon shook his head. He didn’t know. He knew the mechanics, of course, but not what Aimee meant. They hadn’t had this discussion in person. He’d felt, for most of the summer, as if he was with someone different from the girl who’d mailed those salacious letters. This Aimee had always been uncensored, but he hadn’t had the guts to bring up her teasing and what he suspected were implied promises. She hadn’t offered. They’d played in the sun, her body newly developed and exciting. They’d tussled indoors, the play tinged with a fresh scent, a new emotion. But they’d never broached anything serious. Aimee lived in a box in both Ebon’s mind and his life, and seemed like she’d never move to the next box, the next bracket, the next kind of person to him.
 

“When he puts his thing in my … ” she continued.
 

“Right, right,” Ebon said. “Whatever.”
 

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” A slow smile creeped across her wide lips. The smile said that Aimee knew full well how uncomfortable she was making him, and that now that she’d seen it she had no intention of backing down. This had become a game, with Aimee in the lead and in charge. The more he squirmed, the better.

“Have you ever done
anything?”
she asked.
 

“Of course.”
 

“Oh yeah? What have you done?”
 

Ebon thought he might be able to get away without answering. Aimee sat beside him on the couch.
 

“Have you ever fingered a girl?”
 

Ebon mumbled something incoherent.
 

“Have you ever felt a boob?”
 

He couldn’t answer that one. The way Aimee talked in her letters, boob feeling between guys and girls was about as casual as shaking hands. Sure, he was two years younger, but admitting to so little was fiercely embarrassing.
 

“Hey,” she said.
 

Ebon met Aimee’s eyes. She looked deviously taunting with a crooked and almost cruel smile. A look he knew well: She’d won the exchange, and knew Ebon would do what she said whether he felt it wise or dignified or not. It was embarrassing. It was as if he had no pride. Aimee was always in charge, and that would never change.
 

“I know what we could do instead of going to the lighthouse.” Her smile widened.

“What?”
 

“You wanna do it?”
 

Ebon looked away.
 

“I’ll show you how. I guarantee you’ll like it.”
 

Jesus.
He fumbled with his hands in his lap, the Game Boy now feeling like a lifeline. His head was swimming. The offer was a very, very good one — one that, truth be told, he’d been fantasizing for at least a year — but it was too sudden, too out of the blue. He felt lost.

“It’s cool. Usually for the girl it’s weird the first time — the girl’s first time or so in general, I mean — but I’m past that. For guys it’s always good the first time. And if it’s over too fast, which it could be, then … ”
 

“Let’s go to the lighthouse,” Ebon said, still looking down.
 

“I’d rather do it here.”
 

“Your dad.”
 

“Let’s not involve him.” Aimee giggled.

“I mean … ” Ebon didn’t want to elaborate. Her father wouldn’t be back from the mainland for hours, and they both knew it. The blood flow seemed to have left his head. He changed tacks. “I meant, let’s just
walk
to the lighthouse.”
 

“There’s no need. I’ll totally give you a blow job here.”
 

Ebon wanted to curl into a ball.
 

“But I think we should do more than that. You know, for the memories.” She was snickering. Ebon didn’t want to look up, but he could hear it plain as day. She was messing with him, making him as uncomfortable as possible. This was a game, and he was losing. But then he realized something else: even if he “lost” and Aimee got her way, he was still going to win.
 

“Ebon,” she said.
 

He looked up. Most of the laughter had left her face.
 

“Just start by kissing me.”
 

But he couldn’t move. She reached out and took his hand.
 

“It’s okay.” Aimee guided his hand to her breast. It felt soft through the fabric. “We’ll move slow.”
 

She leaned forward and met his mouth before he could respond. But once her soft lips were on his, Ebon felt something inside himself surrender. He was still nervous, and still unsure that it was right for he and Aimee to cross the line. Ebon didn’t have girlfriends in the way Aimee had boyfriends, but he’d still set Aimee somewhere else in his mind. She was a friend, a confidant, a treasured thing that went back into its cherished box when the leaves turned each year. Maybe they were moving into something wrong, something that would no longer allow the box to properly close. But as his lips and hand moved — clumsily at first, smoother after a moment — he found himself not caring.
 

Aimee pulled away. Her eyes met his, deep and no longer kidding.
 

“Seriously. You haven’t done anything before, have you?”

Ebon shook his head. It was too fast, almost spastic.
 

“It’s okay. I’ll show you.”
 

Ebon swallowed. She lay back on the couch, pushing pillows and afghans to the floor. Her body language became soft and receptive as she nestled on the cushions. Aimee looked somehow fragile with her dark-blonde hair spread around her in a halo — quite the opposite of her usual scattered look. She was normally bulletproof, but in that moment Ebon felt like he could wound her deeply if he had cruel intentions. She was at his mercy. Despite being the teacher, she was in his hands. His inexpert, clumsy hands.
 

“Come down here,” she whispered. “Lie on top of me, and kiss me some more.”
 

Ebon did. Their bodies pressed together from end to end, top to bottom. Below him, Aimee began to writhe slowly, sinuously, as they kissed. His hands moved down of their own accord. After a moment hers did too, palms and fingers under shirts, on bare torsos.
 

“Kiss my neck.” Aimee cocked her head back and exposed her throat as if for a killing strike. Her eyes were closed, her hair bunched in clumps behind her. Her breathing was soft. Ebon moved down to comply, sure he was doing it wrong. But she kept breathing slowly, moving with the rhythm of his breath, of her breath. Their hands continued to explore, finding fresh frontier.
 

Ebon paused with his hand flat on Aimee’s stomach, his fingers pointing down, toward the snap on her jean shorts. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, eyelids fluttering. In the moment, he saw all the brusqueness — the brave, cavalier, I-don’t-care sexuality — from her letters drop away. She wasn’t the jaded dynamo she pretended to be. She was just a girl.
Just a girl.
 

Ebon’s hand moved less than an inch.
 

Aimee met his eyes and nodded. Slowly. Fragile.
 

Across the room, something hit the floor. For some reason, Ebon wanted to leave Aimee’s neck enough to look up. It was a cushion, tipped over by Aimee’s aggressive clearing of the couch. A pillow from the futon, tipped to the floor by the earlier thrown pillow.
 

But it wasn’t a cushion or a pillow. It was a book.
 

A math book, used for teaching university courses.
 

And above the fallen book, the hand that had been holding it wasn’t quite open but
slack
, the musculature gone forgetful. After a slow moment, Aimee’s father, standing in the doorway, seemed to remember the case in his other hand. He set it down slowly, as if trying to stay silent in church.
 

“Get up,” said Richard.
 

Ebon had frozen in place. His mouth was still inches from Aimee’s neck as she craned up at her father, his breath still coming slow and low, one hand on her bare belly with his fingertips below the top edge of her shorts. He felt his eyes grow wide as his heart thumped, but strangely he couldn’t move, his erection not getting the memo or uncaring. As Richard stared, Ebon told himself that he couldn’t get up. If he stood, it would be obvious what they’d been doing. Maybe if he stayed perfectly still Richard wouldn’t see him, or where his hand was about to go, where it desperately wanted to
keep
going, because there might never be another chance.