by Alice Ayden
I waited. “You want to grab their numbers? Maybe get a quickie in the alley?”
Byron rolled his eyes. “Don’t be jealous. I can’t help it.”
“Right. You were born a narcissistic bastard.” I regretted saying it before it left my lips. I tried to reel it in, but bastard slipped out too fast.
Byron looked down at the ground. He put up walls for everyone else, but I knew him. I knew how to hurt him. Sometimes, when necessary, I unleashed the arsenal before restraint pulled me back from the ledge.
I’d known Byron since he returned from his twelfth boarding school. I was four. He was seven, and we became inseparable playmates. I couldn’t remember a time I hadn’t been in love with him. Always willing to play prince or pirate, Byron’s friendship comforted like a hazelnut chocolate malt. But, lately, things had changed, and I didn’t know why.
“I see Ausmor’s getting ready for the Christmas party,” Byron said trying to lighten the mood.
“It is?” I hadn’t noticed. “Is it bad if I hadn’t noticed?”
Byron shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
A group of teenage girls rounded the corner with giggles but soon descended to silence as they stared at Byron. His midnight under a fool moon hair glistened, and his blue eyes transformed to a violet hue when he intensified his focus. He flashed them his dangerously sly smile people waited their whole lives to see from someone so beautiful. They craned their necks as they continued walking, and one of the girls smacked her spiky haired head into a brick wall.
I studied Byron for a minute. “Do you really think I took a knife to myself? Do you think I threw myself down the stairs? Broke my own leg? Locked myself in that room?” I needed to know the truth. His truth. I needed his support.
Byron couldn’t look at me, and I had my answer. My heart crushed just a bit. I knew I was difficult and bitchy most of the time, but I needed him. Why couldn’t he see that? Why couldn’t he give me that after everything?
For years, I’d put up with the whispers and stares. The insinuating rumors hinted I was unstable, or maybe like my mother who died when I was six. Politeness dictated the suicidal opinions weren’t uttered aloud, but eye rolls, whispers and glares hinted of the toxic appetizers many had digested and taken as fact.
I started walking. I didn’t know where I was going, but I had to get away from him. Mrs. Kiness believed me. I think. And Lillia. Not quite an endorsement from a twirlaholic. Fanny Dingo believed me. Although, as long as I left her collections alone and put out her favorite food, she wouldn’t care if I kept babies in my freezer.
I walked until I stood in front of a café. I didn’t know how long I’d walked or when I’d stopped. I turned to look back, but Byron wasn’t there.
“What happened? What did he say to you?” Alexander asked.
I jumped. “Didn’t know you were here.”
He took off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders. “You’re shaking.”
“He thinks I did it.” I lifted up my sleeve to show him the scars. “He thinks I did this to myself.”
“But you didn’t. I believe you. I know you.” Alexander gingerly took my arm and studied the scars. His eyes narrowed and his forehead creased as he studied my wounds. His rough fingers caressed the entire length of each scar and back again. I felt his touch through to my spine. In that moment, I wished we weren’t in public. I wished we were somewhere much more private. I wanted him to make me forget about Byron. I wanted him to make me forget about everything. He could make me forget and remember. No rules. No society.
Then he bent his head and kissed the wounds. From that moment, my world shifted.
6 Alexander
When I kissed her skin, something coursed through me. Not yet. Not so soon. This time, I needed it to be real. I wouldn’t be her escape. To her, I’m just the childhood friend. She doesn’t remember everything. She doesn’t know we were together a year ago. She couldn’t remember. Eva was different. Special. Fragile. She’d been that way since we were kids.
Any bit of trauma. No matter how small, and Eva went away. She’d come to after a few minutes and not know what happened. Some thought it was a trick. A way to get out of things she didn’t want to deal with. I knew it was real. Something happened to her. Something in that room on the third floor. I had my suspicions, but no one talked about it. The Austens and Morgans wouldn’t dare bring it up, and the staff only hinted.
I let go of her arm. I swore I wouldn’t fall so quickly. Not again. I had to be careful. I could ruin everything if I pushed. “I’m sorry.” I made the mistake of looking into her eyes. Our eyes locked, and, I know what it sounds like, but everything else disappeared. Her eyes took me in.
I almost let myself believe she saw me. The real me. That she remembered everything. Her breathing quickened. I knew that look. Longing. I knew what she wanted. I made her forget. I made her remember. I made her feel. I let myself be her anything last time, but I swore I wouldn’t do that again. I forced myself to look away.
“You need a ride back home?” I tried to ask it nonchalantly as if I were asking a random hitchhiker, but I heard the catch in my voice. I told myself to slow down. We had time. I clenched my jaw tight so I wouldn’t smile and waited for her to say something.
7 Jane
I could melt in Alexander’s eyes. I mentally traced his arms and imagined his muscles around me. I wanted to feel him. I wanted to taste his crooked smile, but then it got weird. It’s like he was with me, and then he was somewhere else. Why? He thinks I’m a freak, doesn’t he? He’s heard the rumors about my memories and my unexplained wounds. He knows about my mother. He knows everything. He flipped so easily like he didn’t want to be associated with me.
“Charlotte’s here. I can get a ride from her.”
Alexander shrugged as if I’d asked to projectile vomit down his pants. He busied himself with his bag from the hardware store. So, I’m not as interesting as brackets or bolts or whatever he’s got in there. Good to know where I stand.
“Son of a bitch!” Charlotte screamed as she hurled herself towards us. “God forsaken car won’t turn over. Turds on a Sunday if I ain’t messing with something every five flippin seconds. If it wasn’t the car your grandfather and I made out in, I’d catch it on fire and drown it in the lake.” She continued muttering as she walked past us. Shoppers flung out of her way as she stomped past the cafe and disappeared around the corner.
“Okay.” I studied Alexander for a few seconds, but he wouldn’t look directly at me. I waited. “I guess I could call Mrs. Kiness, and she could send someone.”
Alexander rolled his eyes. “I’ll take you home.”
8 Alexander
I took Eva’s bag and led her to my motorcycle. She stopped suddenly when she saw it.
“This is your car?”
I laughed. She’d always said that. “Yeah.”
She looked around as if someone would stop her from climbing on the back of a deathtrap. “If Mrs. Kiness…”
I jumped on and held out my hand for her. “She won’t. I know the back way. Roads are clear. There won’t be ice till tonight.”
She grabbed my hand, and that surge pulsed through me again. I remembered the times we’d touched before. I remembered the times we did more than touch. My room. Her room. The kitchen pantry. The dining room. Every room. Her skin smelled like cooked strawberries, and her eyes could look black or blue or green depending on the time of day. I was the only one. The most important person - hers. I shook my head. “Can’t do that.”
“What?” She jerked her hand back. “Did I do something wrong?”
I smiled. “No. Hop on, hold onto me. You’ll be fine.”
The entire ride, I focused on the road. I thought of anything but Eva. Lillia twirling and giving me that look. My mother’s glare when I got too chummy with Jane. Mrs. Kiness dusting. Byron naked in a tub. Naked Byron? “What the?”
“Something wrong?”
Her voice scared me. “Why?”
“You tensed up like a sad peach waiting to be sliced for pie.”
“I’m fine. Nervous that’s all. Taking an Austen home.”
She laughed and coiled her arms closer around my chest and waist. I was gone. No way back.
9 Jane
Alexander cut the engine as soon as we passed the outer gates of Ausmor. Various greens whizzed by me and melted into one ginormous abstract expressionist blob of blur. I didn’t want him to slow down. I didn’t want to stop. On the back of his motorcycle, I didn’t have to think. I didn’t hear my sister’s voice and her incessant demands. None of which I’d ever live up to or do right. I didn’t see the worry in Mrs. Kiness’ eyes. I didn’t hear the whispers or feel the ache in my arm or my leg. I was me. Whoever me was. I was alive. Free. Without worry or fear.
I curled tighter around Alexander even though we were only going about seven miles an hour. Safe. I didn’t know why, but he made me safe.
“Better let you off here.” Alexander stopped the motorcycle at the back of the staff garage. “She’s got eyes everywhere.”
I quickly looked around hoping Mrs. Kiness wouldn’t jump out from underneath a blade of grass and lecture me about organ donations and two wheeled contraptions. I couldn’t force my limbs to move. Not yet. I didn’t want it to end. “Can’t we go back to town? I think I forgot the bag of whatever I was supposed to get.”
Alexander twirled the bag around his fingers and handed it to me.
“Are you hungry? I saw that cafe there.”
He jumped off the bike and held out his hand to me. I took it and saw the concern in his beautiful green eyes. Why did he have to look like that?
“What are you afraid of?”
I stopped. No one ever asked me questions like that. They told me what to feel. They didn’t inquire about specifics. What was I afraid of? Everything. Nothing. Everything. Him.
We heard a noise in the garage, and he lurched me off the bike to the bushes. I giggled like a five year old. I couldn’t help it. “What’s the matter?”
He glanced at me as if I had just taken my eyeball out and complimented a hat. “Gotta go.”
He left me hiding alone in the bushes and rushed off out of sight. “What the hell?” I looked down at my clothes. I wasn’t in my pajamas. Did I forget to wear makeup? I wondered about my breath. I never got how some people were able to cup their hands together, breathe into them and deduce if they needed a breath mint or coroner. But I’d had a few candy bars for breakfast, and chocolate is world renowned for healing properties and inducing perfect hygiene. Couldn’t be that. Then what?
“The hell are you doing hiding out here?”
I closed my eyes. Aunt Bitty. I slowly rose out of the bushes and faced my fate. “Nothing, Bitty. How’s it hanging?”
She glared at me with her blackened, beady eyes - the smallest part of her other than her brain and compassion for any living thing. Elizabeth Austen, my mother’s younger sister, stood with her chicken arms bent in the awkward shape to rest on her hips. Known as The Bitty to her family and ‘The Beast’ to the staff, Bitty wore the dark blue dress, over sized apron and white cap of an 1870 kitchen maid. She let tourists watch her cook in the outdoor kitchen and called herself chef. She made delectable dishes like hangnail pasta and chocolate covered pickles.
“Why are you hiding in the bushes like some friggin rapist ready to slit our throats, bleed us dry and slip on our blood as he makes his getaway.”
I winced. “Be sure to tell me a bedtime story before I go to sleep tonight. I’m not hiding in the bushes. Thought Johnston was stalking me.”
She snorted. “You just think you’re all that, don’t you? Think everyone and his horny brother’s after you.”
I climbed out of the bushes. “That’s me. I’m just all that. Who wouldn’t want to get with this?” I swung my arms out to the sides as if accepting tourists for a ride, but she didn’t catch onto my sarcasm.
She twirled some of her long red hair around her finger and tried to force it back into the lopsided bun she’d worn for the past twenty years. “Stay the hell out of my kitchen.”
I glanced around us. “Not in your kitchen.”
She stomped her foot and screamed as a few dozen blackbirds made their escape from her predatory screech. “I know you were in my kitchen last night. Know it.” She moved closer and pointed a flour encrusted finger at me. “And if I catch you again.”
“Again? You didn’t catch me the first time.” I breathed easier when I saw Evan - Lillia’s older brother, my former tutor and savior from all things sticky.
“Is there a problem?” Tall and thin, Evan, as handsome as Lillia was, well, whatever Lillia was, either didn’t realize how he looked or chose to ignore it. He, outside of Byron, was the most eligible bachelor around. His fan club – the Evanites - gathered every morning to catch him with an armload of books, feeding the birds or doing tai chi or whatever he called his slow yoga moves. They rearranged their schedules to follow his.
Evan clasped his hands behind his back. “Can I help you with something, Elizabeth?”
Bitty glared. “Either this one or your bitch sister, Lillia, was in my kitchen last night.”
Evan waited for more. “And?”
Bitty hated everything from crickets to tourists to family to dirt clods, but no one hated Evan. All respected his knowledge – he’d been named the smartest guy in Virginia – and envied his patience in dealing with family situations that most would have fled or set fire to.
“Screw you,” Bitty said leaving in a huff. “Screw all of you!” Just because Bitty couldn’t hate Evan didn’t mean she liked him.
I made a mental note to check the news later and ask the government not to raise the terror alert level because of The Bitty screech. “Sadistic little thing, isn’t she?”
Evan didn’t answer. He nodded and looked down at the ground. He refused to ever say anything bad about a member of the Austen or Morgan family – even The Bitty. I flashed back to when eighteen year old Evan tried to convince his restless parents not to leave Ausmor. Evan could not imagine a world beyond the plantation. Unconvinced by Evan’s numerous arguments, Joseph relinquished his inheritance to Evan. Promises of ‘we’ll see you soon’ hung ominously in the air as they left Evan guardian to his six year old sister, Lillia. In the eleven years since the supposed year long cruise began, they hadn’t returned. It hurt me that he had to take on everything so young, but he never complained.
“Mrs. Kiness told me you’d like me to teach you all about computers?”
I took a deep breath. I could have been sarcastic or snotty but not with Evan. “Yes.”
Evan laughed. “That was difficult, wasn’t it? You so wanted to say something else.”
“Busted.” He and I walked back to the house, and I was glad he didn’t ask why I hid in the bushes. If Karenda had seen me, she’d have scheduled the lobotomy for sure.
“No, I knew you got a ride from Alexander.”
I stopped. “How?”
Evan smiled at me. “You like him.”
To anyone else, I wouldn’t have known how to respond. “Yes.” I said barely above a whisper.
“I can tell.”
“Wait…” I ran in front of him and blocked his path. “You don’t mind? You don’t think it’s against some weird rule or some such thing?”
He hesitated.
Uh oh.
“I just want you to be happy.”
“And?” I waited for Evan’s full explanation. Evan couldn’t decide he wanted water with dinner without a lengthy diatribe about stomach acids, some kind of dam in China and the politicization of water rights around the world.
“I just want…” Evan shoved his hands in his jean pockets then quickly took them out and hugged his chest so tight I was afraid the Celtic knot design on his sweater would snap at his ribs. “I want you to be…at peace.”
Not so bad. “Thank you?”
“Be careful of Mrs. Kiness. She does
not like a scene, gossip or anything out of place. And what about him?” Evan nodded ahead to Byron walking towards us.
Crap. “Evan, do you think I’m a selfish little asswipe for going by Eva and not doing the whole Jane Austen thing like Karenda wants?”
He shook his head as if trying to remember how to spell Supercalifragilitous. “I’m sorry?”
I tried to splurt everything out before Byron shifted focus. “Do you think I’m damaged beyond repair? Broken? Expired? Like something touched me so deeply I’ll never be the same again? And I should have died because now I’m just existing like a shadow or ghost?”
He felt my forehead. “How much chocolate have you had today?”
I quickly grabbed my throat. Did someone else use my voice? Is this me? Something about being with Alexander brought things up. Were they good things like the smell of lavender fields after a misty rain or bad things like the bile from yesterday’s burnt asparagus?
Byron caught up to us. “Evan.” He glanced at me. “Jane.”
“That’s me. Just Jane.” I curtseyed to get a feel. “Doesn’t matter what I want. What hovers thou? The quiet oceans of blue haired miscreants celebrate the flirty rain.” I squinted as the words crashed out. “I’ll work on the Austen prose.”
“Excellent,” Byron said. “I bought you all new editions of Jane’s works. Both the famous and unfinished. I left them upstairs. Glad you’ve come to your senses and listened to me for once.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I was going to continue being me, but I think Alexander likes me either way.”
Evan smiled as he studied the ground.
Byron’s eyes narrowed. “He’s the son of a maid and gardener. Evan, you can’t allow Jane to embarrass the family—”
Evan bristled. “My cousin can do what she wants.” The last thing Evan wanted was for the family name lecture to be shoved in his face like some pee soaked rag. He’d heard it his entire life. He always did the right thing, gave leeway for others to find their own way and didn’t judge.