by Viva Fox
And perhaps it could've gone on that way forever. At least another week or two. But Castor's impatience, his desire to be nearer to her all the time, came with consequences.
******
The ocean was a haunt. Waves whispering over the pebbled shore and roaring back out. Years passed, and that remained. The lazy, static metronome of waves ghosted into her life endlessly, no matter how she tried to escape them. She had become the still point, the center of a clock, as life moved long and short around her. Sitting on the rocks beneath the overhang of her small acre lot, she watched the water edge closer to her bare feet, salt spray dampening her jeans, stealing herself to finally enter the house she'd spent the better part of her early adulthood avoiding.
Ana had come home with two bags and a cardboard box of books, and that was it that was her entire life, packed squarely away in three containers. Opening the door to the cottage was like prying back the lid from a coffin, dust glowing thick under the pale stream of daylight that etched its way through the stale air. She hadn't stepped foot on the pearled mosaic tiles of her family home in ten years, and yet somehow she couldn't seem to feel it mattered.
It was as if no time had been lost to her, but rather preserved here in this space, undisturbed in her absence. The same simple wooden chairs and table remained in the kitchen, the same worn leather couch hugged the left wall of the open space, and the same white lace curtains her mother had made hung still and untouched across the large, back bay windows.
She walked down the narrow hallway, pausing outside the paint-chipped door of what was once her parents' room. Hand on the doorknob, Ana turned it softly to the left but found herself incapable of pushing it open. She clicked the lock back, the sound sharp and loud in the stillness of her surroundings.
Moving a bit further down the hall and to the right, she shoved open the door to her childhood room and dumped her bags inside. The walls were still the same soft yellow of youth and innocence, the bed and desk smaller, more quaint than she remembered. Opening the window took some effort, but once it unstuck the rush and damp of the ocean filled the space with an almost crippling nostalgia.
"Hello...Ana? Is that you?"
Ana jumped back at the sound, a small jolt of fear—overwhelmingly familiar to her recently—had her clutching her hand to her chest. She spun around to find Laura standing just outside the bedroom door.
"Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you..." Laura's eyes were wide, assessing Ana with an unfamiliarity that bordered on surreal.
Ana waved her apology away, swallowing back the rush of adrenaline. "No, no it's ok. I'm just...just a little jumpy lately is all."
Laura seemed to nod in understanding, though Ana knew she could have no real knowledge why.
Laura looked at her sympathetically, head slightly bowed as though talking to a small child. "It must be strange for you, being back here."
It was true enough. Ana nodded, made a sound of agreement. "It is a bit. Yeah."
"Jesus, look at you," Laura said with an insincere edge to her voice. "You look great."
Laura and Ana had been neighbors as children, best friends by junior high, and something in between by their teens. They had largely ignored one another's existence until the death of Ana's father and, soon after, her mother. Ana had left their hometown straight out of high school, traveling and writing and photographing the world over to make a buck here and there.
Laura had never left, and it fell on she and her mother to check in on the house from time to time, though Ana had never asked them to. Two months prior, just after her mother's funeral, Ana had fled again, intending to stay gone for good. She didn't have the presence of mind—the emotional energy—to deal with the house and the money just then.
But here she was again, life having that strange and circular way of pulling her back into the things she most feared. Only this time, the reasons had been far beyond the scope of reality. She shivered at the thought—traumatic flashes of the jet black of his hair, the intense pallor of his bare feet, the sickening thud as he hit the ground below.
"How long are you staying this time?" Ana stifled the urge to jump again at the interruption.
She swallowed and smiled in a tired way. "Not sure. Awhile, I think."
Laura's somber expression didn't escape her notice.
******
At one time in her life, if Ana could have scorched a single person's presence from her memory, it would have been Vincent's. He was broad and handsome, and just a little rough around the edges, and the always slight glint of bat shit crazy in his eye had ruled and ruined her heart for more years than it should have. He was the reason Laura and she had an unspoken yet understood fallout during their teens, and he was definitely the reason Laura still felt bitter toward her now.
She had orbited around the great big shining sun that was his grin, and swallowed up his every careless compliment and lazy gesture of affection. Then one day, for no clear reason she could have surmised at the time, Vincent became impatient and bored with their interactions. While he had always been close enough to intoxicate and just distant enough to confuse and entice her further, Ana had been rooted in a firm position of inaction, afraid to be too much or not enough. In her mind, stillness was the safest option for the both of them. And it had cost her his attention. The day he strolled into their favorite diner with Laura on his arm, Ana began to die by inches until she had been shriveled to nothing.
If Ana had known then what she knew now, age and experience having gifted her an unfortunate wealth of wisdom, she would've seen through the bullshit. But she'd always been slow to the punch.
Ana took a deep breath and swung back the door to the market, the sharp tang of fish and sea stinging her nostrils. There was a young boy, hair like a mop and patchy pink cheeks, standing just behind the counter unsuccessfully flirting with a gangly blonde girl. They were apparently left to run the small and unassuming restaurant while strong-armed men stood several feet away behind a half wall of pine, sorting fish and oysters and things Ana didn't really understand or have the desire to eat for that matter.
She heard him before she saw him. Voice booming and amiable with the slightest affectation she had never been able to identify. He walked swiftly from the market and into the restaurant, hand scruffing the back of his head as the other pointed out something the teenagers were meant to be doing.
He glanced quickly toward the door, still mumbling disapproval when he stopped firmly in his tracks and looked back toward the door. Back at Ana.
She gave a small wave. "Heard I'd find you here."
She wasn't sure what reaction she expected out of him, but the look of devastation, slowly turning into something close to awe as he approached her, certainly hadn't been it.
"Thought I'd just seen a ghost..." Vincent said, barely audible.
This was a terrible idea. "Surprise..."
He shifted uncomfortably. "Indeed it is."
******
He'd just wanted to take in her scent, view the faint lines on her face, study the way she looked out into the bleak and crumbling landscape. He wanted to see what she saw, feel whatever it was she felt. He couldn't much help it, his feet moved of their own volition.
She was crouched a bit, tripod precariously positioned on the edge of what was once the cement landing for the fire escape, transformed some time ago into a gaping hole in the side of the building. She was trying to get a long exposure shot of the city skyline, at least he assumed so, the way she kept adjusting and looking back, camera pointed out into the dark. Castor wondered what might happen if he suddenly spoke up, said, "Don't you think that might be a little cheesy? Boring, even?" He had been doing that a lot—tossing around absurd hypotheticals, even occasionally imagining full and easy conversations with her.
Instead he only stepped closer to her, performing a long and nearly pointless dance in her shadow. Crouch, bend, lean forward, lean back, stand straight. He moved as she moved with almost no thought, her actio
ns anticipated, flowing and smooth for him. Until she dropped the ring. It made a high, thin ting on the cement as it bounced just out of her grasp. She ducked to recover it and it took Castor an impossibly long second to realize his mistake. He'd lunged forward for the ring, but remained standing.
He could almost feel her pulse quicken, a drum beat against him. He hadn't had time to think of the why—all he knew was that he did not move, and Ana had spun toward him, tumbling back in a vacuous silence as she took in his bare feet, two legs that had seemingly appeared from nowhere, standing stock still mere inches from her. She choked on the air, legs and arms shooting out in a desperate and automated response.
He somehow fumbled toward her—to gather the ring, to calm her, or kill her, he didn't have the slightest idea. And then he was pitching forward into the black, the night as noiseless as he could ever remember it, smacking some eighty odd feet into the ground hard enough to knock him momentarily unconscious.
It was funny in a way. Nothing could have made him feel, for those brief and precious moments, more human or fallible again. He would've cried if he could.
It had taken him over a week, but he'd found her. During the few hours between the fall and Ana's mad dash to escape the nightmare she'd inadvertently hurtled into, a nuclear bomb could have charred the earth's surface black, and Castor was sure he'd still have been able to trail her scent to the edge of the world.
He'd found the small studio apartment she'd spent her time in when not pacing his warehouse. That's where he'd learned her name, seen it scrawled on a letter she'd stuck to her fridge with a curious little bull's head magnet. The rest of the apartment had been bombed with clothing, but mostly sparse and empty save for a few plants on the window sill knocked over in her rush.
Then he'd started the journey east by night, spending his days huddled in motel rooms with blackout curtains, avoiding any stray beams of sunlight while watching the news or reading to pass the time until nightfall. He'd read a paperback romance, dog-eared and shoved into the back of the nightstand, about a rogue cowboy saddled with the moral dilemma of either turning in or escaping to Mexico with a genteel but feisty oil heiress who'd had a bounty placed on her head for crimes she may or may not have committed. Castor's frown was severe. He hoped Ana's idea of romance did not resemble any of the breathless and delusional muttering he'd read.
Because he wasn't going to be able to deliver.
******
The first time he appeared, Ana sat dumbfounded on the sidewalk, shin scraped and bleeding. She'd wandered drunk, straight into the opening door of a convenience store on the corner of Antigues and Claremont. A round man in blue coveralls hunched over her, somehow pissed off and concerned in equal measure.
"I'm so sorry! I didn't see you there, came out of nowhere."
After Ana had seen Vincent, she'd needed a drink or two or five. She'd sat like a miserable cliché on a barstool at Charlie's Pub until she'd worked herself into a stupor, stumbling on a poor and fuzzy memory back home.
"So did you," she sputtered aloud, though she hadn't meant to.
She put a hand over her mouth, groaned like the idiot she felt she was. "I'm sorry, sorry, my fault."
The man helped her stand, brushing off his hands to signify the end to their interaction. She steadied herself, then leaned back against the brick wall of the storefront. A shock of black hair gleamed under the powdered light of the streetlamp across from where she stood. It took her a few moments to focus, but just as the fog cleared, she realized she was staring at nothing but the lone light shining a puddle on the pavement.
"Get a grip, Ana," she whispered. Her stomach twisted in tight knots, remembering his feet again, his black hair from behind as he went over the edge of the landing. The grotesque thunk of bone and flesh hitting concrete. She couldn't hold the guilt at bay this time. She wretched on the sidewalk in front of her feet.
The next time was bolder, almost confrontational. As she would later learn, Castor had a tendency to go from zero to sixty with no in between. Moderation and rationale would desert them both—abandon them to the fickle governance of fear and wild idealism.
Ana and Vincent had at this time settled into routine meetings at his restaurant. She'd arrive sometime around noon, setting up her temporary work station while Vincent hovered around her in intervals, chatting and giving her the same wicked grin he'd besieged her with in earlier, decidedly better years. They'd close the day together, usually over dinner and increasingly more serious conversations.
Conversations about things like why she'd ever left, how he'd managed it poorly, more poorly than she knew, and how he'd wrecked Laura's heart in the wake of it all. She didn't bring up how five years into a relationship with Laura after the fact couldn't have possibly been considered 'in the wake' of her departure. His motives and carefree way of making serious declarations would always be a mystery and a reminder to exercise caution.
One rainy evening, Ana felt it. A pin prick of fear starting somewhere near the base of her spine that spread like a thin and crawling vine throughout her arms and throat.
Vincent, leaning over her shoulder to view the photos she was retouching, made a low hmm, eyes cutting up sharply to meet the stare of the man sitting opposite them a few tables away. He looked down toward the book he held in his hand, one corner of his mouth curving out slightly.
The tilt of his chin signaled something familiar, but Ana shook it off as though subconsciously willed to file it away for another time. His profile was erudite—the jawline sharp and distinct, the high cut of his cheekbone and soft curve of his aquiline nose gave him a certain air of importance. He was arresting.
"What?" Ana asked, looking up toward Vincent who was now straightening himself out.
He pulled out a seat to Ana's left and sat down, back to the stranger. "He was staring at you."
Ana shrugged in a poor attempt to feign indifference. Every part of her body felt like a tightly wound string being ever so finely but mercilessly plucked. "Who is he?"
"Not sure. Never seen him before."
Ana's expression must have given something away—her curiosity, the indecipherable familiarity she was trying to work out.
"Have you?" Vincent's tone was light but she sensed the uneasy way he forced it.
Just then she swore she saw the man huff a small and silent laugh.
Mistakenly sensing his boss was concerned with the lack of attention shown to a new customer, the mop-headed boy, Will, sprinted like an uncoordinated bird toward the man's table. Vincent didn't have a chance to wave him away before he was standing awkward and nervous in front of him.
"Can I get you anything?" he asked, voice fading into a squeak when the man set his bored gaze on him.
Ana didn't hear the response, but Vincent was already walking behind the counter to both observe their interaction and get back to work. Will left the table stiff-legged, and the beautiful stranger stood from his seat, staring directly at Ana as he crossed the room and took the seat next to her.
For a few seconds that seemed to span into eternity, Ana couldn't breathe. She felt alarmed and intrigued and anxious all at once as he looked at her clearly and without hesitation.
"Do you remember me?"
Ana shook her head, body on autopilot. She heard herself nearly whisper, "No. But maybe..."
Castor tilted his head to the side, owl-like and strange at first. Ana tried not to notice.
"Yeah, funny that. Thought I recognized you, but now I'm not so sure."
Will set a glass of water alongside a plate of fries in front of him. The man didn't acknowledge him or the food in the slightest. Ana's heart was beating out of her chest.
"Someone was sitting there," she blurted out lamely.
He leaned back in his chair, looking out through the front windows of the restaurant. "I know. He still fuming back there?"
She glanced quickly behind the counter to find Vincent not so subtly drilling holes into the back of the man's head. She smir
ked, surprised at how much it amused her. "A little maybe."
"Good. I sense a bizarre imbalance of power."
"What?"
"Between the two of you. Why do you let him have the upper hand?"
She jerked her head back, as though slapped on the nose by an invisible hand. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Maybe not the circumstances. But I can see it all the same." His manner was casual and confident. Ana wasn't sure what in the world was happening right now.