by Ace Gray
But the moment we leave the house I remember why I didn’t want to. Besides the whole, putting on clothes thing…
“AJ,” a voice calls, “I heard you responded to that accident last night. I heard you saved that family.”
And the questions are off. From everyone, at the coffee shop, at the restaurant… Each one pulling me from Camilla. And not just from her side. The fire she had this morning, the one that looked distinctly like hope, like a future, is slowly dwindling to ash and smoke.
“You’re the man that saved my grandson.” A fragile elderly woman’s voice shakes beside me and I turn to find big glasses perched on the tip of a withered and spotted nose. Her hand tremors as she grabs my forearm as I’m paying for breakfast at the counter. “You saved that little boy last night.”
“I did,” I say as quietly and simply as I possibly can.
“You’re an angel.” Tears are already pooling in the corners of her eyes. “I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how to thank you.” Her voice begins to shake as badly as she does. But then she smiles a shaking, small smile over my shoulder to Camilla. “You’ve got an angel for a husband.”
“Thank you.” Camilla’s voice is just as mousey as mine.
My heart soars when she doesn’t correct the woman, only to crash all the harder when I catch her eyes. The fire from earlier has dwindled to darkness and the desolation existing behind her eyes speaks volumes. She was going to fight for me, she was going to fight for a future with me—in Seattle. I’ve always been able to read her like a book—a book that now may read The End. Her sweet heart won’t take me away from this life.
Just like my mom wanted. Her words have to be haunting Camilla because they’re suddenly tormenting me. The violent broken thoughts and memories barreling through my mind are going to bring me to my knees. Or maybe that’s just the realization that I might actually have to live without Camilla.
We step outside and I gulp down the fresh air, despite the fact that it stings my lungs. I want to ask her if she’s really going back to the Pacific Northwest. I want to ask her if she really thinks I’ll stay here. I want to scream and rage and hold her and kiss her. But none of those will help ease my pain or change her mind. None of them will smooth the cracks already splintering my heart.
“AJ?” my name is a beautiful question from my Lamb’s lips. She sees my turmoil when I turn toward her and her whole voice changes. “AJ.” This time it’s soft and sorrowful.
“Not today.” My voice is strained as I take her hand, bittersweet becoming a vivid color blanketing us. “I have something else in mind.”
“Angel” The Weeknd
AJ won’t let go of my hand and after this morning, after my world crumbled, I’m grateful. I need him. Desperately. But Sarah’s words, her calling me selfish, is repeating on a loop in my head.
Before coming here, I knew he was cement between the bricks of this town. But being here, particularly being here today, showed me he was this giant retaining wall holding back the flood. I can’t dismantle that wall.
I can’t prove his mother right. I won’t.
The truck silences below me and I snap out of it enough to scan the building in front of us. It’s a clinical looking building with beige aluminum siding and a green aluminum roof, kennels wrap around the side and a few dogs are roughhousing in the yard.
“What are we doing here?” I ask, my voice still not my own.
“There’s someone I want you to meet.” Jealousy flares in my chest even though Jay hasn’t said anything about a woman. Utter defeat runs through a moment later, when I realize that someday there will be another woman. A metaphorical hand comes to my throat and squeezes. “He needs a ride home,” AJ adds and I can’t help but blow out a breath at the mention of a he. It’s not nearly as deep or easy as it should be.
I let AJ slide out of his seat and come around to collect me from mine. When he opens the door, I expect him to reach in for me but instead he turns around and gestures for me to jump on. He used to carry me everywhere claiming Bambi shouldn’t walk on ice. I always thought it was his way to hold on tight. Today, I have my proof.
Thank God.
He nods at the girl sitting at the front desk and she smiles widely. It only falters slightly when she sees me. But AJ doesn’t hesitate, he just rolls us a little so that my backside pushes open the swinging door.
Barks and yips and meows of all types greet us as AJ walks directly to the corner and sets me on my wedges. He bends down beside me and starts fiddling with the lock on the kennel in front of him. Wild yaps and a tail thumping against the metal crescendos as I mimic AJ and bend down.
“Gretzky,” I gasp.
“Crosby,” he gently corrects me as he pulls the terrier from the kennel only to be showered in puppy kisses. “Mom found him the other day. I wasn’t going to keep him but…” His voice trails off but I can finish the sentence easily enough.
Last night when I opened AJ’s never-locked front door and tiptoed through his bachelor pad, I’d done it just to be near him, his smell, his furniture, wrap myself in our blanket, but when I slid between his sheets, sheets that should be ours, a fierce determination started building in my stomach. I was going to keep the man I loved this time. I was going to pull him away from that empty house and back into my very full heart.
This morning had changed everything. The love that burned brightly for AJ was a small candle compared to the town that lit a bonfire for him. In a weird way, I loved him all the more for what he did for Willow Creek. When that grandmother looked at me with love, sincerity and gratitude beaming from her very pores, I crumbled. The resolve I’d found last night was laying in rubble around my feet. My want of him was replaced by a very real and very deep love for him.
I couldn’t take him away, and he knew it. He’d seen it written on my face.
“What else do we need for him?” I say softly, trying to find the warmth from this morning and shove it back into my voice.
AJ turns and looks me straight in the eye before letting out a heavy sigh and leaning in to kiss my temple. His lips won’t leave my skin even as the little puppy barrels into us, his tiny, warm tongue roughly lapping at every inch.
The puppy fills the void between us for a while, unaware of the heaviness existing in the cab of the truck, swirling around us like storm clouds. Crosby is the only thing that doesn’t make our trip to the store, across town, or to the liquor store awkward. He even gets excited as we drive toward AJ’s shop.
As soon as we park, Crosby bounds through the snow in darts and zigzags, barely able to plow through the light, fluffy power that’s up to my shins. I wobble when he darts in front of me and seamlessly AJ catches me.
“Whoa, easy there.” His laugh is warm and rich. Finally something has broken the mood.
Well, not broken it so much as suspended it the smallest bit out of reach. We can both breathe again, even if they are just shallow small breaths. I smile at him and there is a beautiful warmth on his face, finally thawing the bitter cold in my veins. His hand squeezes a little too hard on mine and pulls.
Watching AJ roll back the door of his workshop gives me a small thrill despite it all. The anticipation of seeing him in his space, doing what he loves, and bending the planks beneath those rough hands that bend me gently, sends something crackling beneath my skin. The way his muscles ripple against the flannel fabric of his shirt isn’t a bad sight either.
“Crosby,” he calls, his eyes never leaving mine. “Come on boy.” He whistles too as he pulls me fully into the warm space I’d only been in as an intruder before.
When the terrier launches into the shed, AJ finally drops my hand to shut the door behind us. He flips on a few caged bulbs where they hang from different stands here and there but the space is mostly lit by soft white snow reflecting sunlight onto warm wood.
It’s even more beautiful with AJ inside it.
“I snuck in here the other day.” Just like then I let my fingertips brush acro
ss the wood. “Well, I didn’t mean to sneak… I came over with Trigg and curiosity got the better of me.” I can’t help but blush.
“It’s okay, Camilla.” He gently clasps my fingers in his to keep me from running them along the grain of the wood. “As long as you stop touching my sanded beams.”
I smile and nod. This time I think it reaches my eyes.
“Tell me about it. All of it.” I use my other hand to gesture around the rest of the room.
And AJ does. His words are as beautiful as the plump lips telling me about the types of woods, the grains, the way he works the knots and the natural oils. He builds furniture of all shapes and sizes, and when I thumb through his portfolio, I can see the beautiful, sad heart that he’s been carrying around the past thirteen years.
“AJ—” I breathe in him, in the fresh and treated words and the myriad of emotions before I continue.
His lips against mine cut me off.
We collide into each other and then into the raw beams propped against the wall behind me. Our bodies entwine while we bounce the slightest bit off the pliant wood. His hands claw at the down of my jacket like his lips ravage at mine. When he can’t get the jacket off, he just shoves it up. I, for my part, can’t stop clinging to his biceps. Each grip and flex and roll of the muscles beneath my desperate hands makes my legs go to Jell-O.
One of his hands finds my breast as his tongue threads between my lips. His other flirts with the waistband of my jeans as Crosby adds himself to the fray, yapping at our calves.
“AJ…” his name is like air; I’m only breathing because of him.
He bends down and tucks beneath the rucked-up fabric of my layers and latches on to my nipple. My hands fall from his body and flatten to the wood behind us and I moan, loud and lustful.
Only to be cut short by the squeak of the door behind us as it rolls on its wheels. AJ lets my breast go and yanks on my shirt, barely covering me before Trigg’s big booming laughter fills the room. He leans against his forehead against my stomach, still holding tight to my hips.
“Twice in one week?” Trigg’s voice is still laced with laughter. “If straight sex were my thing, I’d get rid of my porn subscription.”
Crosby barks at her, running circles around Trigg’s Sorels.
“Gretzky?” Her eyes go wide as she scoops up the puppy.
“Crosby.” AJ turns, still resting against me to watch them. Trigg’s smiling at us even though Crosby’s tongue is assaulting the side of her face.
“It’s starting to feel like home here again,” she says softly. Her smile has nothing to do with the puppy in her arms.
We’re all silent for a few moments. Well, all of us except Crosby. But then Trigg sets him down and he yaps before running directly to AJ and burrowing into his thigh. My heart almost cracks.
“When you’re finished, you guys should come inside. We’re playing beer pong.” She smirks, shoots us some terribly wild eyebrow raises, then goes back into the snowy twilight from which she came.
I wait for AJ to make the next move, to shove my shirt up or tow me after Trigg, but he stays frozen. At least until the frigid night air reaches us and he blows out a deep breath. He stands up and his gorgeous eyes reveal how deeply he’s struggling with this decision. I can see how much he wants it to be a normal Friday night, how he wants to prolong the lust between us and literally ride it out later tonight. But it’s not a normal Friday, we barely have the night.
“We’ve been pretending all day.” I shrug. “Why not go inside?”
He closes his eyes into tight and seemingly painful lines then presses his lips to my forehead.
“We’ve been pretending a lot longer than that.” His words are not at all accusatory, not angry or hurtful, they’re simply, and rather beautifully, broken.
“Like I’m Gonna Lose You” Jasmine Thompson
I will the feeling of holding Camilla’s warm hand as we walk across the snow toward Trigg’s into my brain. I have approximately twelve hours left with her and it feels like each step is dragging me toward death, not just another Saturday. If I can remember the way her skin feels, I’ll make it. If I can remember the simple moments like this, where I glimpsed a life with her by my side, there’s a sliver of hope.
The roar of Trigg, Cass, Mike, Janie, Jimmy, and the rest of the gang when we walk in is almost enough to drown out my thoughts. Almost. There is no way this is their first or even second round.
“This one’s mine,” Mike growls as he grabs Camilla’s arm.
The utter fury that erupts inside me almost pours as smoke out of my ears.
“It’s okay, Jay,” Trigg says quietly as she puts her hand on my arm. “Be on my team. Make eyes at each other over the table.”
“She’s mine,” I don’t mean to growl through gritted teeth but I do.
Trigg shoots me a rather appropriate look considering.
“She’s all of ours. You’re the only one that gets to keep her.” She arches her eyebrow and pulls me toward the end of the table.
“I don’t get to keep her.”
Trigg’s face falls and her eyes dart from me to Camilla and back again. When she stops a second time to study Camilla, she sees what I do, that sullen silence hugging onto every inch of her.
“You’re kidding me?” She can barely get the words out with Mike harassing us to play.
“I can’t ask her to give up her little empire in Seattle and she won’t ask me to come with her,” I say as my heart sinks further.
“So don’t fucking ask.” Trigg’s as serious as I’ve ever seen her.
“That’s how I’ll finally lose her. Pushing her. She’d let the guilt of taking me away eat her and her happiness alive.”
Trigg is still facing me, the horror of my truths written plain on her face, when a ping pong ball lands in a red Solo cup with a splash. I don’t break her eye contact as I reach for the glass and chug. She wordlessly turns, grabs Camilla’s bourbon and refills my cup. For that, I manage a small, lifeless smile.
It slides down so easy like my hands or lips across Camilla’s skin. And it tastes like her, filling up my senses not only with wood and smoke and vanilla and cherry but also the bitter burn of loving her. Just like Thirteen, she warms my insides, melts the tension roving through my body, and after too much of Camilla, I actually get dizzy.
She watches me from her spot at Mike’s side. My temper flares a little when I can’t reach out and hold her, but seeing her bend over to toss her ping pong ball toward the cups helps. Her dark, wavy ponytail dipping into the generous swell of her tits peeking out from the V of her shirt does too. Her shy smile tugs on the corner of her lips and it splits wide when she misses, complete with a pouty stomp.
Maybe watching her isn’t so bad.
And when we’re good and sauced from too many rounds of beer pong and shots of Thirteen, watching her becomes a blissful moment of quiet in the roaring crowd of high school friends. Everything fades away beside the way Camilla teeters on her high heels or talks a little too animatedly with her hands or sometimes teeters because she’s making those wild gestures.
When she turns toward me, when she watches me in return, my world blurs. For a minute, it’s just us. It’s going to only ever be us. But then she looks away and reality filters in. I can’t decide if I’m grateful or pained by each small smile she flashes.
“It can’t end this way,” Trigg says a little too roughly as she sidles up to me.
“This isn’t a Hallmark movie, Trigg.” I smile despite the weight pummeling my chest. “So it can. Tomorrow it will.”
I can’t keep talking about it. I can’t keep away from her any longer either. I have enough B reel in my mind to replay during the long winter months in Willow Creek and, inevitably, my life. Her touch will chase that frost away, if only for a few more hours.
“Hi,” I whisper in her ear only for her to wordlessly melt back into my body. “Think it can be my turn? Or maybe I can grab you a drink this time around?” I can f
eel my words skate across the nape of her neck almost as well as her answering purr.
“Bourbon,” she says. “And pool.”
I’m a slave to both of those requests, grabbing a bottle then her waist as I pull her into the other room where Trigg’s pool table sits.
Cam grabs a cue and rolls it on the table to check that it’s straight then bends to collect the colorful balls from their pockets. My hand skates along her spine as she does, my fingers completely enrapt. After she’s set up the table, she brings me a cue, nestling between my knees as she hands it over. I can barely breathe as I trade her for bourbon.
“Can you really play?” I manage.
She bites her plump crimson lip and something both mischievous and shy dances behind her eyes.
“I always could.”
Her cheeks flush as my heart gets obliterated by the answer. I snap my cue up behind her and use it to pull her closer to me, taking her lips as soon as she wobbles into me. A throat clears behind us, someone else whistles and the murmurs break loose but I can’t bring myself to care. They can watch us kiss if for no other reason than later, they’ll know how hard I’ve fallen and maybe they’ll help lift me up. They can watch as I nibble on her lips and trace the seam of her mouth with my tongue. They can watch as she gasps and lets me in, her body giving up the last whisper-thin space between us.
The catcalls finally pull us apart. Well, Camilla shrinking away from the attention and into the crook of my neck does. Her skin’s on fire and I know it’s not just the kiss. It makes the tiny mark left by her lips when she presses them to my throat in front of everyone all the more endearing.
She’s still a dark shade of scarlet as she turns from me and back toward the table. I let my hand roll down her spine, hoping to ease the flame in her cheeks. The splotches on the back of her neck don’t fade but she bends over the table all the same.
Part of me wants to watch her again, see her bent gracefully over the table, running pool balls left and right, but my eyes have feasted tonight. My body’s still starving.