First Man (19 page)

I stood frozen in the doorway of my apartment an hour later, a duffle bag stuffed with my essentials slung over my shoulder.

I’d walked away from dozens of apartments like this without a backward glance. I’d even been able to leave Lily with no more than a note. Somehow in the last years these four walls had become home. The shock and numbness that had kept me going through the mechanical process of packing had finally worn off.

I’d spent my entire life moving and avoiding the ties that bound normal people to each other and to places. Somehow that cocky nomad had genuinely changed in the last few years of Northeastern domesticity. Nearly four years in the same spot would have driven the old Adam mad, but, backed into a corner with no other options but to turn tail and run, I was rooted to the spot.

She would hate me for this. Ember despised weakness and hypocrisy in all its forms with the desperate vehemence of youth. If the roles had been reversed, she would have stayed and fought for us until nothing remained of our lives but scorched earth. She probably would have won in the end, but what would the cost have been?

She was leaving for college in August, to spend her days inside the stately brick halls of Boston University. She would finally be someplace where her passion and drive to learn was the norm instead of an anomaly.

Ember would make friends that had more in common than mere proximity and familiarity. She might even find love.

The sharp pain that accompanied that idle thought took my breath away, but that was, after all, what I wanted. Everyone I touched ended up in ruins. I had never truly stopped blaming myself for Lily’s death, and this had become my chance to make it right. Ember was still whole, her young life unbroken.

The life with her that I’d scarcely allowed myself to dream of had already crumbled to dust around me. All I had left to do was let it go.

I walked away.

SCORCHED EARTH

Ember

T
here was nothing different about the moment I pushed open the door to Adam’s apartment that day. No creaking hinges or flickering florescent light bulbs signified his absence, but I felt it anyway.

Finals were starting in a few days, and I was sprawled on my bedroom floor studying my physics notes. A burned copy of one of Adam’s albums was blaring electronica from my stereo. Buried in my backpack, I never heard the buzz of my phone or the saw Adam’s name flashing on my screen. I didn’t notice anything but my notes and the beat of the music until my father pushed open my door and snapped the stereo off.

“Sorry, was it too loud?” my voice trailed off when I saw my parents. My mother’s mascara was streaked under eyes bloodshot from crying. My father’s jaw was clenched so hard I wondered if his teeth would crack.

“Get your things. We’re going to the school,” my father ordered, his voice clipped. My stomach sank.
‘Adam,’
I thought.

“Can one of you please tell me what this is about?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.

My mother spoke up, finally breaking out of the tear-stained daze. “I think you know what it’s about, Ember. That filthy pervert teacher of yours.” She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me, and I breathed in the warm ginger scent of her shampoo, hating that I had to break her heart and shatter her illusion of my innocence in all this.

“Not a pervert, Mom. Not a predator or any other words you’re thinking of.” I glanced at my father out of the corner of my eye and saw him glowering at me. No matter what I said, Adam would still be the creep who violated his baby girl. “Everything that went on between the two of us was consensual, and nothing happened before I turned 18.”

If my dad registered my words, he didn’t show it. “Get your coat. We’re leaving now.”

Obediently I shrugged into my coat, quickly grabbing my phone from my backpack and shoving it in my pocket before they noticed. I sat quietly in the back of my parents’ car as we backed out of the garage. My dad paused at the end of the street and for the first time in my life I was thankful for his overly cautious driving, as I pushed open the door and climbed out.

“Ember! Get your ass back in the car this instant!” My father’s livid voice followed me as I sprinted down the street.

I ran. Lungs burning, legs aching I ran like every fantastical monster I’d spent the last months studying was on my heels. I ducked down a side street, and, once I was satisfied that my parents weren’t following me, I fished my phone out of my pocket.

One missed call.

I held the phone to my ear and listed to Adam’s shaky voice.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for what’s about to happen. I love you, Ember. Don’t doubt that for one moment. Everything between us was real, but I have to leave.”
I fought the urge to throw the phone as I listened to him babbling about how I deserved better.

I punched end and called Adam back. Unsurprisingly, the call went right to voicemail.

“Dammit Adam!” I said, not bothering to try to hide the tears in my voice. “You do not get to make this decision for both of us. My parents, you, apparently the school too – they all think they get to decide what’s best for me, but no one bothered to ask me what I want.” I was almost two miles from Adam’s house with no keys, so I started walking. “I’m graduating in three weeks, Adam! I don’t care what they think of me!”

Three weeks. We’d been so close.

“Please, Adam. Don’t do this.” I didn’t care that I was begging and acting like the silly teenager I’d worked so hard to convince him I wasn’t. “Don’t walk away from us.”

Crying into a phone wouldn’t do either of us any good if he refused to answer it, so I did the only thing I could do at this point.

I hung up the phone.

And I ran.

You always hear stories about the way people can pull incredible feats of strength or daring out of nowhere when someone they love is in jeopardy, like a mom lifting a car off her toddler. I’d always scoffed at them, writing them off as feel-good filler used to pad out a slow news day.

That was before I ran two miles in ballet flats in fifteen minutes.

I arrived at Adam’s door soaked with sweat and dizzy with exertion, and I just knew before I touched the worn brass doorknob that he was gone. I pushed the door open. He hadn’t bothered to lock it.

To anyone else the room would look perfectly normal, but I could see the empty spaces he’d left behind. The blue and gold bird statue was missing from his desk and the perpetual stack of books was noticeably shorter. A haphazard assortment of clothing was missing from his closet, along with a suitcase.

A note rested on the bed, two words scrawled on thick white paper.

‘Forgive me.’

I sank down onto the mattress, the soft surface where we’d shut out the world and lost ourselves in touch and taste. I ran my fingers over those pale blue sheets, wondering how if what we had was real it could have been ripped away so easily.

I’d finally gotten what I’d idolized in books and movies. I hadn’t wanted the safe, easy love of my parents; I’d wanted the wild abandon of the misunderstood and the marginalized. I’d fallen in love with a broken man and we had made each other whole, but we’d both forgotten that those books rarely had happy endings.

Cathy and Heathcliff didn’t ride off across the moors and into the sunset. Guinevere and Lancelot didn’t end up with living together in a lovely cottage in Camelot. Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmsdale never made it to Paris, and we were both left wearing scarlet shame on our chests.

He was gone, and I knew in my heart that he wasn’t coming back.

NEW DAWN

Adam

W
here did I go?

Not back to Greece and Edwin’s picture perfect life. I’d interrupted his world with my bitterness and misery too many times. I knew he’d welcome me back into his home and his family with words of hope and starting over.