Axis of Aaron (52 page)

“I’m definitely looking forward to the quiet.” Ebon wondered if the words were true as they left his mouth. The city was loud and full of distractions. On Aaron, he’d be able to hear himself think. Whether that was a good thing or not was yet to be decided.

The boat turned sidelong to the island, now in the bay, far enough out to obey the wake restrictions but close enough to see details. Ebon was shocked by how much was coming back to him. He’d thought about Aaron often, but usually those thoughts centered on Aimee. He didn’t realize he’d remember the A-frame beside the still-empty and tree-overrun lot. He hadn’t realized how familiar the sight of the cottages atop the docks would still feel. He didn’t know he’d recall the hammocks still hanging outside three cottages in a row, their colors coincidentally red, white, and blue.
 

“Is that Fortford Circle right there?”
 

“Ayuh, I think so.”
 

“And that’s Dick’s Marina.”
 

“Used to be,” the captain said. “I guess you
do
go back.”
 

“‘Go back?’”

“Dick’s hasn’t been open since maybe ’98 or ’99.”
 

Right. Ebon remembered Grams and Pappy mentioning that. It had been only one of three places on the island where you could fuel a boat. Aaron wasn’t huge, but it was large enough. If boaters didn’t plan right, they could easily find themselves stranded halfway down the west shore, low on gas with nowhere to refuel.
 

It was all so familiar. Except …
 

“Shouldn’t Aaron’s Party be around here?”
 

Jack looked around, then took a sip of his beer as if it were a prop used to make a point. “The Party? Fella, they tore that place apart
years
ago. Guess it really has been a while for you.” He pointed north, toward the bow.
 

“Can we see it?”

“I
can’t,” said Jack. He took another sip.
 

“I meant,
could
we? Can you take us up north a bit?”

Jack looked at Ebon. He didn’t seem exactly annoyed or put out, but it was clear the idea didn’t thrill him. Jack lived on the mainland and had said several times that he wanted to get back by dinnertime. He’d also made a point, before leaving the dock, of saying how expensive gas was out here.
 

“I’ll pay you another twenty bucks,” said Ebon. “For your time and fuel.”
 

Jack nodded amiably. “All righty. What the client wants, the client gets.” He turned the wheel to swing the bow seaward, then arced out of the bay and toward the saddle-horn point beyond it. Five minutes later, Ebon saw the end of the pier peeking around the trees. Something unexpected stirred in his chest and there was a strange moment of panic. He both desperately wanted to see Aaron’s Party and didn’t want to see it at all, and here they were hurtling toward it. He should have waited. Met Aimee first, then come up here once he was adjusted and emotionally ready for the wallop that the nostalgic pier was sure to give him. But it was too late now.
 

“There she is.” Jack slowed the boat, nosing closer to give Ebon a good look. When he glanced over and saw Ebon’s jaw hanging open, he chuckled.
 

“Right. You’d’ve been here when last she was open, wouldn’t you?”
 

The place was dead and deserted. The Danger Wheel’s red paint, always vibrant in the canvas of Ebon’s mind, had faded and chipped to rust. The pier’s wood looked old and weathered, green with algae and age. He could see the carousel, its decaying face pocked with small forms that must have been the once-brilliant horses, now broken and askew on their poles. He could see abandoned vendors’ stalls and games, a barely visible gap where the caricaturists used to set up shop. Seeing one of his most precious memories in shambles like this — especially now, when he felt most vulnerable — felt like torture. He wished he hadn’t asked Jack to swing around and see it. If Aaron’s Party couldn’t remain as unchanged in his absence as the rest of the island had, he’d rather have arrived to find the old carnival gone entirely.

“When did they take it apart?” he asked, gutted but unable to turn away.

“Not sure on exactly when, but as to why? Wasn’t no percentage in it, I imagine. Summer people mostly went, and it took a beating in winter. Same for those dock cottages, I guess, but the government helps keep those ship-shape with tax money.”
 

Ebon felt hollow. Scooped out. Almost wishing he’d never come, because this felt like a betrayal. While his attention had been distracted by life and jobs and marriage, someone had come along and smashed his childhood to bits. He could almost smell the cotton candy on the air, now crystallized into dust. He could smell the grease for funnel cakes and elephant ears, now gone rancid. Those carousel horses had been maintained like treasures throughout Ebon’s time on Aaron, but once he’d gone, they’d been abandoned as if they meant nothing.
 

He could almost see the great Danger Wheel turning in his mind, his lips remembering his first real kiss. He could see the pier’s junk-strewn undercarriage as they drifted — a place where he and Aimee had shared many follow-ups. He’d walked this beach hundreds of times with money in his pocket, the sun high in the sky, nothing but summer and carefree afternoons on his mind. Now life was deadlines, pressure, and the fathomless ache of loss. Looking at the dead carnival, he felt like he’d propped himself up with a cane
 
— but someone had come along and kicked it away, laughing as he fell.
 

“Couldn’t tax money have been used to save the carnival?”
 

Jack shrugged.
 

“It’s an attraction! It’s an institution! I remember when those carousel horses … ”
 

Jack cut him off. “I guess it carried a lot of insurance, ran half speed or less once the summer folks left … ” He made a vague gesture, seemingly uncomfortable in the face of Ebon’s disbelieving, pained expression.
 

“Well,” Jack concluded. “Anyway.”
 

Unable to turn away, Ebon watched the carnival disappear as Jack steered the boat back around the horn and into the bay. But as they approached Pinky Slip from the north, Ebon thought to spin around again in a second flash of panic, realizing something else that might have gone missing. But he was just in time to see that it was still there before the shore obscured it, still as it had always been: Redding Dock’s long red length, beyond the pier, intact and waiting for Ebon’s return.
 

So there was still a Redding Dock. And there was still Aimee.
 

I’m so sorry, Ebon. I’m so, so sorry.
 

Their second phone conversation in sixteen long years, both calls occasioned by an untimely death. Only this time, it was Ebon who’d tried to hold in his tears. This time, it was Ebon who failed.
 

I miss her. I miss her so much.
 

I know you do.
 

This was all my fault. I could have stopped it. I could have told her I knew. She’d have ended it; I know she would’ve. Because …

She loved you, Ebon. Of course she did. But she had her own baggage, and her decisions were her own. It’s not your fault.
 

But it was. Aimee didn’t know it all,
couldn’t
know it all. Things with Holly had never been simple, though they’d always seemed simple from the outside. Holly was always a good time, a fun girl to laugh and play with. But there had been more. Or at least, there could have been.
 

He’d cried. And cried. And cried. Enough, as he’d sagged on his living room floor with Holly’s clean laundry in a basket at his feet, that he’d wondered if he’d regret all this sobbing later. His eyes bled saltwater. His nose was a faucet. He could only keep talking, only keep feeling, only keep spilling what he had inside like leeching poison from a snakebite. Part of him imagined the next day, trying to face Aimee online or on the phone, knowing she’d seen him at his most pathetic and weak. But it wouldn’t matter with Aimee. Because he’d seen her, all those years ago, in all the same vulnerable places. And worse.

I don’t want to think about her, but I can’t stop.
 

Shh. It’s okay. You’ll be okay.
 

I didn’t want her to be with anyone else. She was always loyal in the ways that mattered.
 

Aimee hadn’t responded to that, probably not trusting herself to say what Ebon suspected she felt:
If she was loyal, then why did she cheat? And why are you so eager to forgive her?
But Aimee had said nothing because loving a betrayer was another thing she knew all about, and uniquely understood.
 

Come to visit,
she’d told him.
Get away for a while.
 

Ebon didn’t remember which of them had turned “get away for a while” into “stay,” but that’s how the conversation had ended. Perhaps Aimee had pressed him for reasons of her own. Or maybe Ebon had come up with the idea because he’d actually had it for months, begging Aimee to be with him the way he’d begged God for his Holly back. Even now, watching the Slip approach, he couldn’t be sure which it was. His usually flawless memory had a blank spot there, same as the increasing blank spots that had (let’s be honest) cost him his job. He supposed he could set his career back on track if he wanted. But right now he didn’t want to, just as he no longer wanted to resist the lure of Aaron and Aimee. He’d spent sixteen years thinking about this place and pretending he wasn’t. Sixteen years dreaming about this woman and denying it, even to himself. But now things had changed. Now, for better or worse, he was alone. Available. Suddenly as free as his turned cheek had allowed Holly to be, until she’d died at her lover’s side instead of living at his where she belonged.

Ebon could see Aimee at the dock. From this distance, she looked very young. Seventeen at most, as he’d seen her last. Seventeen years old with a wide, white smile, brown hair, with no filter and piercing emerald eyes.
 

But it was an optical illusion. As the boat neared, Ebon saw that Aimee’s hair was as dark blonde as it had always been, her long legs crossed at the ankles because she was a Pisces and standing like that made her legs look like a tail fin. She’d aged (she’d be thirty-three; he’d sent her a happy birthday message on LiveLyfe back in March), but she seemed to have aged well. Long and lean, as always, her face tan and beautiful, her hair a delightful, don’t-give-a-shit (like honey badger) mess. She was standing still now, but he could see her trademark nervous energy around her. She’d mellowed, but she hadn’t slowed. He felt sure she still interrupted herself when her thoughts derailed. She still pursued a hundred creative projects at once, never fully committing to any. She’d still trip over everything — not because she was clumsy, but because she was always moving slightly too fast. This would be their first time touching hands for the better part of two decades, but they’d never truly strayed far from skin-on-skin.
 

“That your girl?” Jack didn’t say the rest, but Ebon could see the codicil and a modicum of lechery on the man’s features when he looked over:
She’s purrrrty.

“My friend,” Ebon said.
 

“She
gonna
be your girl?”
 

Ebon thought it was a forward thing of a charter captain to ask, but he almost nodded. Yes, she just might. They’d spent an eternity simmering. Aimee pretended Ebon was here for comfort and Ebon pretended that he’d come to the island to use his hands enough to forget, but they both knew the truth of what was happening — what had
been
happening for years now, slowly approaching a boil chat by chat, email by email, text by text. The master bedroom’s mattress was big enough for two. And the cottage’s old owner was no longer around.

“Captain Jack,” Ebon said.
 

Jack looked over.

“Like the Billy Joel song.”
 

Jack chuckled.
 

“Can you get me high tonight?”
 

Jack said nothing, only continued to smile. But this was a new place, a new start, a new adventure, and maybe he was now the kind of guy who smoked out from time to time to lower life’s volume. Why not? He’d brought little with him, and a very large part of himself wanted to leave his past in the city to burn. He didn’t just have stereo equipment, TVs, and Blu-Ray players; he had Bang & Olufsen and an LG 55EA9800. His sheets weren’t just high thread count, they were Frette on a Duxiana bed. But right now, all of those trophies meant nothing. They were just the remainders of a life that no longer fit — a life that actually hurt to wear, like a bespoke suit outgrown at the shoulders.

But Jack only smiled, not taking the question as serious.

Ebon caught Aimee’s eye as the distance between the boat and dock closed. She smiled, warming his heart. He’d seen plenty of her photos on LiveLyfe, but in person it was easy to see that the photos hadn’t done her justice. She really was beautiful. She’d
always
been beautiful. Right now, she was all that mattered. He was Ebon — just plain old Ebon Shale — here to start again. To correct the past’s mistakes. To follow time where it had inexorably taken him, because all things happened for a reason. His life had ripened, and after all these years of waiting, the time was finally right.