Axis of Aaron (36 page)

“I don’t understand you,” she said.

“Sometimes, I don’t understand me either.” And then it occurred to Ebon that perhaps he didn’t understand
Vicky
as well as his gut had told him he did. It was probably offensive that he’d missed something as obvious in their (apparent) discussions as the existence of her daughter, but what he’d said afterward was — in Ebon’s mind, at least — hardly insulting. He’d been ignorant, maybe adorably disoriented. And yet she seemed to be releasing her angry flare with reluctance.
 

“I just haven’t gotten the chance,” she said. The sentence left her lips with obvious effort.
 

“Sorry?”
 

“I haven’t gotten the chance to take her overseas. We
do
do things together though.”
 

“Of course.”
 

“But with as much as I work … ”
 

“I’m sure.” Ebon felt disoriented. He found himself desperately wanting to please her — to pacify her at the expense of anything and everything else. She was supposed to be the one who made him feel needed. She was the one who was supposed to make the senseless stand still enough to turn into sense. He couldn’t have her angry at him. It was as if she’d stopped being the playful, sexy, smart companion she was supposed to be and had become someone else. Someone flawed, less than ideal.
 

“I’ll take her soon,” she said.
 

Ebon sensed a return to equilibrium, if he could only make sure to keep tipping Vicky in the right direction. Her eyes were returning to their familiar, friendly almond shape, her lips finally beginning to unpurse and widen into their usual bow. Her skin had found an angry blush, but was settling back to its porcelain complexion.
 

“You look really pretty.”

Vicky tried to roll her eyes but chuckled instead. He’d said the most transparent, most predictable thing a man can say to a woman, but that hadn’t stopped him from hitting the bull’s-eye.
 

“Well, thanks.”
 

“Is your hair different?”
 

She touched her up-do. “Not really.”
 

“You tinted it.”
 

“I don’t
need
to tint it.” This came with a small smile, and Ebon felt a weight fall from his shoulders. But at the same time, his compliments and questions about Vicky’s appearance weren’t just peace offerings. He was seeing something different all of a sudden but couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Like recognizing someone in public, then going mad trying to figure out where you had seen them before.
 

“I just mean, like, highlights. The lighter streaks. Those are new, right?”
 

“I don’t have highlights.” She looked around the room briefly, and Ebon guessed she was looking for a mirror to see if her hair had streaks she’d forgotten. “Are you seeing my gray?” This last was less playful, almost concerned. Vicky didn’t strike Ebon as vain, but she staged appearances for a living and likely couldn’t help translating interior design to thoughts of her own composure.
 

“You don’t have gray.”
 

“Well, I don’t have lighter streaks either.” Her fingers went to the natural part in her hair, as if she could feel its color.
 

“I just swear something’s different. Did you — ” he was on dangerous ground but stepped forward anyway, “ — lose weight?”
 

“No.”
 

“Is that a new dress?”
 

“I might have
gained
a few pounds. Maybe that’s what you’re seeing.”
 

“No, I … ”
 

“This dress does kind of bunch.” Vicky plucked at it, trying to clear space between her skin and the flowery fabric. It was in vain; the dress was supposed to be tight and hug her many curves. She could probably gain a few pounds, and the weight would end up solely in her large, powder-white breasts. That would be okay with Ebon. He wanted to say so, but she seemed agitated. Now, she didn’t seem vain so much as insecure. But that didn’t fit his mental compendium about her. Vicky was strong; Vicky was confident; Vicky lived her life alone when away from the daughter she didn’t have until five minutes ago, making her own rules. Vicky didn’t fret over the fit of a dress meant to accentuate what she had, ample and beautiful as Ebon found it.
 

“Maybe it’s the dress.”
 

“It’s not the dress. I’ve worn this dress with you before.”
 

“I don’t think so,” he said. But Ebon wasn’t sure. The dress definitely rang a bell, but it would have rung the bell in the past too, for a different reason. It just wasn’t a
Vicky
dress. It was the dress of someone trying to look younger, to recapture something from a decade past. Vicky’s clothing was (he seemed to recall) always chic and confident and mature because Vicky, more than anyone he might have ever known (and certainly Aimee), had grown up. Proper adulthood looked good on her.
 

“It’s the winter. I get fat in the winter.” The comment was a bomb that Ebon was expected to pick up and diffuse — a feint at insecurity and a dig for reassurance. He didn’t like it, or her change in demeanor, but at the same time he felt an obligation — a
desire
— to make Vicky feel better. It was the oddest mix of emotions. The way she’d taken offense at nothing felt pathetic and sad to Ebon, but she’d been so good to him, and he was still so strongly attracted to her. On his way over, once the worst of his vertigo was behind him, he’d begun to anticipate the warm reassurance of Vicky’s home and ample bosom. His arousal had ticked up like a Pavlovian response. Vicky meant sex. But not just because they’d had it — repeatedly, Ebon felt certain — but because it’s who she was. It’s who she’d always been, even all those years ago when she’d been forbidden fruit, too mature and worldly for the likes of shy little Ebon Shale.
 

“You’re not fat,” he said.
 

“You’re just saying that.”
 

Pathetic. Sad.
Vicky wasn’t a twig but wore all her “fat” where God had meant women to carry it. Ebon couldn’t clearly remember taking a ride on the body across the table and had only vague impressions, but he imagined it being like a roller coaster. The more ups and downs, the better. His robe’s lap began to rise again and he tried to shuffle the fabric to hide it, wondering if, in Vicky’s agitated state, his overt attention would be bothersome more than flattering. But in Ebon’s mind, at least, the worse she fretted, the more he wanted her. Things were becoming urgent, like a 911 call.
 

“I’m not. I actually proposed the idea that you’d
lost
weight.”
 

She stood, now looking down. Ebon stood to meet her, and his terrycloth erection knocked his fork from the table’s edge to the floor.

“And in fact,” he continued, trying to subtly slip his interloper under the robe’s belt to secure it, “I think that whatever has changed, it’s a
good
change.”
 

“I don’t think anything else could have changed.”
 

“Maybe it’s nothing.”
 

It wasn’t nothing.
 

“I’m sorry,” she said.
 

“For what?”
 

“I’m being moody.”
 

“It’s no problem.”
 

“It’s the shorter days. I get that seasonal depression thing.”
 

Ebon wanted to ask if any of it was due to hormones. It was the kind of question that was sure to earn him nothing but trouble, but he suddenly needed very badly to know if she was on her period. Life seemed to depend on her being off-cycle right now. He wondered if it made him a horrible person that the sadder and more vulnerable Vicky became, the more it turned him on.
 

“I get it too.” He didn’t, but it sounded right. Ebon walked forward and, pulling a cue from the room’s mood, wrapped Vicky in a hug, his head on her shoulder, his face against her fragrant red hair. Up this close, he wondered if maybe it was her hair that was different after all. It had looked so carrot orange, but now it seemed almost tinged with crimson, like something done in a salon. Regardless, it smelled like fresh blossoms and vanilla — the opposite of winter.
 

“Why are you here, Ebon?” she said from the other side of all that red hair.

“You invited me to dinner.” It was a guess, but seemed safe enough.
 

“I mean as a whole. You can do better, a strapping young man like you.”
 

“‘Strapping’?” He wasn’t exactly young either, but one outrageous adjective at a time. Ebon realized he’d nearly dropped a fragile spinning plate and grasped for it, changing the conversation’s direction — away from himself and toward her, where it belonged. “I can’t do better.” But that wasn’t quite right; it sounded like he’d grasped for the last rung before falling off a slippery ladder. “I like you more than other women, I mean.”
 

“Why?”
 

Ebon wanted to cringe at Vicky’s change — at her sudden need for validation. Maybe she
was
on her period. He very seriously hoped not; she had to feel the way he was responding against her leg. And again, he wondered at himself. Her neediness was a turn-on. He was apparently the strapping young man with the power to light her up. Holding that key made him feel powerful. And yet he knew she was giving him that power, and that taking it away would just as surely crush him. Had he really managed to get into a codependent relationship on an island? It almost made sense, given the way his last few months had gone, but it was hardly a good way to get psychologically healthy after his recent trauma.
 

“Because you’re — ” He paused. The obvious
Because you’re hot
was too superficial.
 
“— So smart and mature.”
 

“Mature?”

“Just like ‘worldly.’ You know a lot of stuff because you’ve done a lot of stuff.”
 

“Because I’ve been around a long time.”
 

“Don’t be like that.”
 

“I’m not being like anything.” Ebon still couldn’t see Vicky’s face as they hugged, but again felt more annoyed, and hornier.
 

“You’re fully developed as a person. You speak French. You have intelligent opinions on things.”
 

“Hmm.”
 

“You’re funny. Sexy.”

“Sexy?”
 

“God, yes.” Ebon slid a hand down her side, to her bare leg, skin on skin.
 

“Because I have big tits.”
 

“Sexy isn’t about tits. Sexy is an attitude. It’s in every little thing you do.”
 

“Like what?”
 

“The way you walk. The way you talk. Remember that time you ate those strawberries with whipped cream, before we were … like we are now? It drove me nuts.”
 

“I’m allergic to strawberries.”
 

His hand rubbed her bare thigh. “The way you used to tease me. You’d wear skirts, then uncross and recross your legs.”
 

“Where did I do that?”
 

“In the living room.”
 

“Whose living room?”
 

“I thought you were just being casual, like you needed to recross your legs, and weren’t even looking my way because you were in the middle of a conversation. But that didn’t stop me from seeing the flash of your panties every time, and it even got to the point where I’d situate myself across from you, sitting on the floor instead of a chair, so that when you did it, I’d be in place. But you weren’t doing it casually. You were doing it because you’re
sexy
.”
 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
 

Now rubbing her legs with both hands — outer thighs, tops of thighs, sliding toward inner thighs. Ebon kissed her neck. “Sure you don’t.”
 

“Seriously, I don’t.”

“Hey,” he said, chuckling against her shoulder. “Do you want to help me with my homework?”
 

“What?”
 

Ebon’s hand slid between her legs, just below her hem. Then her hands were on his shoulders, and he found himself staring at Vicky from arm’s length, his roaming hand suddenly homeless and lonely.
 

“What did you say?”
 

Ebon couldn’t answer, because whatever had seemed different about Vicky before had magnified. She was still the same woman with the same face, but something was off enough for her to have been swapped with a twin. That was the funny thing about twins: people called them identical, but once you got to know a pair, their differences were huge and obvious and insistent.

“I’m sorry,” he said, blinking as if slapped. “I thought you wanted it.”