Deeper into Darkness

by Maria Ann Green

  He did eventually put a little clothing on, but he agreed to skip the pants, so now he lounges on the patio chair in only a shirt. A shirt that leaves nothing to the imagination.

  I keep cracking up when I look over at him.

  “Stop,” he says when I do it again.

  “I can’t. You’re adorable. Ridiculous, but adorable.”

  I’m not sure I’ve ever been this satiated, this delighted, in my entire life. I’ve been close a few times, and only since meeting Aidan, but this moment, this night, has been the epitome of contentment, the culmination of all we’ve been working for.

  A sound comes from deep in my belly, quieting as it travels to and out my throat. It’s almost a sigh, almost a question. It’s happy, I’m happy, and I tip my glass to my lips until the sweet liquid warms my mouth, my chest, my stomach.

  Aidan scratches his chin, the sound reaching my ears from across the table. “Have I told you I love the beard?” I ask.

  “You have, several times.” He smiles, and it reaches all the way to his eyes, before he tips his bottle back to take a long sip from his beer.

  I really do, too. He’d always been so clean-shaven, so crisp, before we moved, which was nice too. But this new look, his Ethan aesthetic, is so rugged I keep swooning every time he comes around a corner and I get to see his scruff again. I also can’t keep my hands off his face, and to be honest I think that’s why he’s kept it. I keep running my fingers over his cheeks and chin, and he moans as I do it, a little face massage a couple times a day.

  Forcing myself to look away to sip my own drink, I don’t think I’m up for another round yet and need the quick distraction.

  Downing the last dregs in my glass, I stand. “Want another?” I ask as I raise the tumbler above my head and walk toward the patio door. He grunts and nods in acquiescence, resigning himself to a night in.

  “We could play a drinking game,” he suggests.

  “Or, like, a board game with drinking rules,” I counter.

  He laughs, and I know he’s not really into either idea. So I just refill our orders from the fridge, then go back outside—still naked except for the necklace I’m wearing, still wearing. It’s long, but the length travels down my back, hitting my spine, instead of down my cleavage. The gems are real, and in several shades, a compliment to the gold chain. It’s gorgeous, a gift from Aidan, who got it as a gift himself, or rather a donation. I relish the feel of the air on my skin, and the feel of Aidan’s eyes on me, heating me enough not to need the extra layer of clothing.

  “Here ya go,” I say, as I hand him two beers before sitting next to him this time instead of across. Slipping as I sit, I throw my free hand out to the side to steady myself and almost catch Aidan in the chin in the process. He ducks just in time, spilling a little of his beer in his lap.

  “Clean me up?” he asks with a wicked look on his face and in his eyes.

  “Eat me,” I counter, meaning it.

  He widens his eyes, not expecting the retort, but he makes no move—still spent, apparently. When I blink my eyes, they don’t spring back as quickly as they normally do, and I can feel the movement more too.

  “Are you drunk?”

  There’s mostly surprise in his voice, which then makes its way to my brain, traveling through his words and into my thoughts.

  “Oops.” I think maybe I am. “A little,” I add.

  “How?”

  At first I don’t understand the question, so I just blink at him. And then I think he doesn’t understand my reaction, so he just blinks back. It’s a standoff, the opposite of a staring contest, that goes on too long. I start laughing, leaning forward and slapping the table, and by the time I calm down…I can’t remember the question anymore.

  “So you swear you like it?” I ask, running my fingers through my chin-length, dark chocolate, angled hair, completely distracted.

  “Of course. I’ve told you ten times already.” He sighs, and I narrow my eyes at his feigned irritation. Or maybe it’s real, I don’t know. I don’t really care.

  “But really, really?”

  “How many times do I have to say it?”

  “Until I believe it. Besides,” I pause to take another sip, then continue babbling, “you should not be complaining about complimenting your wife. You should be happy to do it. You should be begging me to let you compliment me.”

  There’s an air of confidence, even superiority, to my voice. It’s the booze, I know it is, but that knowledge and acceptance don’t dampen the liquid encouragement.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  I finish my second drink, then wobble in my seat, despite remaining sitting.

  “You always look beautiful. You could shave all your hair off, tattoo your forehead, and double your weight, and you’d still be gorgeous.” Lies, but nice ones. “And,” he adds, “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  “What question?”

  “How are you already drunk?”

  I shrug, and he waits until I’m looking at him, meeting his eye. His search mine, scanning my face and looking for the answer in my features; maybe the secret is in my skin, since I clearly don’t know it.

  “You’ve only had two drinks.”

  “Just lucky, I guess,” I say, shrugging it off again. “Whatever. I didn’t eat a lot for dinner. I don’t know.”

  Aidan smiles then, choosing to let it go, too, as the guarded and inquisitive look passes and makes way for a more relaxed one. I lift my feet and place them in his lap, sending him my own look that begs for a rubdown.

  “Fine,” he says.

  He moves just one hand over my toes, and my heels, making my entire body melt into my chair and my feet into his hands. Noises come out of my mouth that I don’t focus on, probably sounding salacious, and I tip my head back, looking to the sky.

  It’s so much calmer here.

  And quiet pretty. Wait. I shake my head, clearing some of the cobwebs. Correcting myself—it’s pretty here, and quieter—and I smile at the jumbled wording even inside my own head. Maybe Aidan is right.

  But what does right get you, anyway?

  I look to Aidan, see his mouth moving, but ignore it to look to the sky again.

  His hands feel so good on me.

  The stars are so bright out here, it’s almost as if they are each their own nightlight.

  It’s gorgeous.

  Aidan’s gorgeous too, so I peak at him from under my lashes, as he drinks and rubs and just goes on being handsome and charming, and himself while I drift off further into the fog inside my own head.

  My lips part as my smile widens.

  “Wasn’t it fun?” Aidan asks, and this time I hear it, cutting through.

  I nod.

  He keeps talking, moving from one subject to another, and my head bounces along for the ride, not listing, just following.

  “What should we do tomorrow?” he asks. I don’t answer. I do give a half shrug while he lists off possibilities, but then he digs his thumb into my heel, and my whole body goes limp for him.

  “Do you want another drink?” he tries next.

  “No, I think I’m good.” I could go for a donut, though. Or macaroni pizza. Mashed potatoes with chocolate sauce sounds oddly good, too. “Wait, wasn’t what fun?” I ask, my brain finally catching up to what he’d asked me, what I fear was several subjects ago.

  “Last night.”

  “What part?”

  All of it was fun.

  “With him,” Aidan says.

  Him. Him from the bar. Him from the woods. Him, bloody and screaming. Him cut into pieces.

  “Oh, him.” I smile.

  Aidan’s lips move, his pink, wet lips, and I watch them closely. I watch, but I don’t necessarily see, because I’m seeing different lips. It’s like I’m watching a movie playing back, just snippets flashing in, on mute.

  “Oh my god.”

  “Yeah, him. So?”

  “Please don’t.”


  “It’s been amazing…to be together, right?”

  “Why? Please. Oh my god. No. Please. Stop.”

  The two sets of lips almost line up, Aidan’s actually making sound and the other just mouthing what I remember hearing so distinctly, flashing over one another in and out of focus. It feels like a movie, like an acid trip, but I don’t fight it.

  “It has,” I answer Aidan honestly. It really has. Being together, doing it all together. “I can’t describe how perfect.”

  He reaches for my hand, and not far off from it I can picture bloodied ones reaching too. He touches me, lightly just on the tips of my fingers, and I close my eyes again. His touch is soft, and I revel in the feel, so different than earlier.

  Moments slink by, sneaking past me as I sit in this feeling.

  Wind cools my still-heated skin, and the mood changes. I can feel it before anything even happens to indicate a shift, but inside I can sense the ripples in the air. And I tense, bracing. I was right to.

  Aidan laughs, somehow no longer touching me, though I’m not sure when that happened either. When I open my eyes to look at him, his are hard and focused somewhere out into the layers of trees. The sound he’s making, it’s laced with acid, a little bitter.

  But then it stops, as abruptly as it started, and he gives no explanation. Instead Aidan stands, almost knocking his chair backward to the floor with the force, and snatches his empty bottle from the table to take it inside.

  Well.

  I sit. I wait. I try to figure out what happened, and why. But nothing helpful comes.

  “Aidan?” I tip my head to call it over my shoulder, into the house, but before I’m even done with the first syllable I hear him coming back outside. I don’t try again when he drops into the chair. I don’t try as he starts drinking more, still not touching me.

  I don’t try; I wait.

  Then cherry-red annoyance flares inside me. It’s quick, mimicking the sound that started whatever this is. “You know what?” I shoot across the table, sitting up straighter as each word comes out, my eyes narrowing at the same rate.

  “Yeah?” Aidan asks. There’s the same bite in his voice as before, but at least this time he looks over. Though as soon as he does, I wish he hadn’t. His eyes are clear, focused, and I can feel mine drifting. He’s not in his head, or up in the sky, he’s present and at an advantage.

  “Forget it.”

  “No, let’s hear it,” he prods.

  So I let go. The restraint drifts away as a moment of spontaneity takes over. And I don’t think about what I’m going to say, I just let the words come out.

  Only then I wish I didn’t.

  “You know, you think you’re so smart. Did you know I’ve been lying to you?” I pause, biting my lip. And everything in me deflates. This isn’t what I’d meant to say, how I’d wanted to tell him about everything in my past. I can see everything in him flare—his nostrils, his pupils, his jaw, and the rest of his muscles. He’s coiled up, going into himself. Then I look into his eyes and stumble. Under it all there’s a current of hurt, of shock. He tries to hide it with the anger, but I can see both, warring with each other in a fight that won’t win anything for anyone. “Wait,” I try to start again.

  But then he’s standing.

  His face reddens and he blinks, a lot, breathing quickly, heavy.

  He looks like a pressure cooker not set up right, ready to blow the top.

  Aidan takes one slow breath, trying to calm himself, looking anywhere but at me. And when he finally does, when his honeyed eyes meet mine, it’s all undone because I see the fire ignite again.

  “How could you?” he growls. “How dare—”

  “But,” I try.

  Unsuccessfully.

  “No,” he shouts. I shrink back, pulling my arms into my sides for warmth, for protection against the words I can see he’s gathering to throw at me. And suddenly my drinks, they taste really lonely. They taste like mistakes, like regret.

  “You know I’ve killed for you, right?” he spits out, emphasis not on killed, but the why of it. His words are sharp, pushing against my skin as they shoot across the table to me, waiting to cut when enough are gathered together. “I’ve killed with you,” he adds. Then the droplets start to form, springing beneath the k’s and the y’s, digging in. Guilt flows out of me, freely, from every tear into me.

  “I kno—”

  “I trusted you.” He hurls the words at my head, heavy and inky black.

  They explode on impact, shattering all around me, littering my body with the shrapnel and shame inside.

  “Just let me—”

  But I can’t explain. He won’t wait.

  He’s charging forward while standing still, his words no longer having a set of brakes. But his body remains immobile. He’s tense, and leaning back, like he’s scared of what will happen if he moves forward. His feet clamp into the patio, rooted in his anger.

  “I moved for you. I changed my entire life. I’m here. With you.” Then Aidan looks away, breathing out quick and shallow. “How could you?”

  The knife twists, draining me further.

  Aidan moves to me quickly then, his hands on the armrests of my chair, his nose inches from mine. A switch flipped with my careless words, and apparently that dam can’t be closed back up. He won’t let me speak. I open my mouth to respond, but there’s not time before he’s yelling, still too close. “What have you been keeping from me?” he asks. “What are you lying about? What was ever the truth?” he begs. “Who are you?” he demands, desperate. And it all hurts. I try not to flinch, not to show the fear or the agony, or the knowledge of my utter stupidity. Because every word, every accusation, it all digs deeper, bleeding me out more.

  His eyes widen as he backs away, turning from me, no longer willing to look.

  “I didn’t…I can’t…”

  And that’s all I have. It’s not what he thinks, but I don’t know how to say that.

  I’m empty; I’m frozen; I’m pathetic.

  “Has everything been a lie?” Aidan starts to pace, still half naked, but not caring. And it’s not funny anymore. His hands whip around above his head, wildly. His face gets redder; even in the dark night sky I can see the shade deepening. His words come out on a hiss, followed by acid, and finished with a bitter aftertaste. “Did you trap me? Trick me into being with you, into loving you?”

  I suck in a breath, my hand going to my mouth without my even thinking about it first.

  “What?” I gasp on the word, chocking it out through the shock and the pain. “How could y—you think that?” I stumble over my words, my arms wrapped around me for protection from the accusations he’s hurling at me.

  Aidan doesn’t slow down; he keeps moving around the patio, his feet slapping the stones beneath. I swear, he could wear holes in the ground, or his feet. He doesn’t stop, not to breathe, not to think.

  And then in the next breath he’s onto the next thought, without giving me time to catch up. “Was this all a game to you? Some sort of rouse to manipulate me? What’s the big plan; are you just waiting to kill me too?”

  And then he’s done.

  I can see it in his eyes. He stops moving too, his hands now limp at his sides.

  A sound, an animal probably, comes from the woods, and we both look in the direction, jumping first. It breaks into everything. It lets down the waterfall of everything he’s said, of what I did, of where we are after the last few minutes.

  I’m shocked, breathless. I’m afraid, shaking. And I’m surprised—the quickness of his anger, the intensity, when he barely knows anything, the judgments he jumped to, the gaps he filled with his own ideas. He’s never been like that with me. I thought he’d be more shocked, less angry.

  But I was wrong.

  Wow, was I wrong.

  Another leaf rustles, a twig cracks as more animals skitter in response to the first, and Aidan turns. He walks inside, not giving me any time to speak. Before he crosses into the house, one foot sti
ll outside, the other hovering to take the step onto the tile, he looks at me. His eyes, his face, everything, is suspicious. That’s bad enough; that hurts enough. But I can also see the tension of betrayal. Of damage, of injury, of aching.

  And behind it all are the slow burning embers of anger.

  I only see it all for a moment, because then a wall comes down over everything.

  Then he’s inside, leaving me here, no one to hear the defense I wasn’t able to give.

  While I’m still catching my breath, still reeling from what’s happened—and honestly, it hasn’t been more than ten minutes—I start panicking. I can’t see straight anymore. We were just having sex, less than a half hour ago. And earlier, just last night, we were together in the woods, bonding over spilt blood.

  I still don’t get it, the quick change in everything, the swift shift.

  And now I’m here. Alone. Naked. I’m still in the patio chair, my empty drink on the ground near my feet.

  Aidan doesn’t take long. Before I have time to stand, I hear the bedroom door slam. Before I’m to the patio doors the front door slams as well, even louder. And before I can make it to the glass of our front door, trying to see him, Aidan’s driving away, speeding down the driveway, and then red lights illuminate the road away from me.

  I try not to panic.

  I try to slow my heart rate, try to tell my body what to do. It only sort of works; not well and not quickly.

  Because he stormed out. He left me. Aidan didn’t give me a chance to speak, to explain myself. And now he’s gone, and I couldn’t stop him.

  My feet carry me back to the patio, to look around. I watch the wind rattle the leaves, I listen for sounds—I search for a clue as to what the hell happened. I try to think about what to do now, how to prevent the explosion I’m now standing in the wreckage of.

  Debris from the warfare sticks out of me now, at all angles, and I don’t know how to remove it, how to undo the damage done. It feels like anything I try at the moment will be comparable to duct tape over a bullet hole.

  I stand here naked, cold, and nothing really works. My brain won’t function right. My limbs are clunky and heavy, not moving how I want them to. And my stupid breathing, my idiotic pulse, neither will slow down. The panic creeps up higher, rising from my stomach to my chest, gripping tighter as it goes.