First Man (21 page)

“I never liked that shirt anyway.”

I left my last few bits of clothing scattered behind me, and then we were in that bed, and I was kissing her
like a man trying to devour his last meal and pulling Ember down to lay flush upon me.

It had been far too long, but we both still fit together perfectly like the broken puzzle pieces we were.

In the year apart, I had dreamed of touching her flesh, so I was in no rush. The kiss began as the barest touch of my lips on hers before deepening into something passionate and even aggressive. Anger and regret, loneliness and love, they all poured into that kiss.

I broke the kiss long enough to breathe the words, “I missed you” into fiery tangle of her hair.

Ember sat up, and I tried to reconcile the girl she had been to this new creature she had become. The red hair suited her far more the blonde ever had, floating like a halo of fire as she moved.

I was not the seducer anymore. I was not the teacher or the old man taking advantage. She rose and fell like the tides, her nails raking their way down my chest, marking my skin with the same depth she had marked my soul.

Words bubbled out of me or her or both of us. “I’ll never leave again. I love you. I’ll never leave.” In that colorful room where we were finally, truly equals, I meant it, and I believed it.

EVER AFTER

Ember

I
had stopped believing in happy endings. The prince didn’t ride up on his white horse and take me away. The prince rode off alone, hating himself for crimes both real and imagined.

And what of the one left behind? How did I fare?

Not well. My teenage vitriol combined with a broken heart didn’t lead to easy forgiveness. My last three weeks in school were a battleground, far worse than anything I’d endured as a naïve sophomore.

With less than three weeks left until I could walk out the doors of that school for the last time, I didn’t bother hiding or trying to ignore the jeers. I walked into English class to see an unknown woman sitting in Adam’s chair. The other students filtered in, and Annie
Sargent made sure to pause by my desk and smile.

I went through that first day in a daze, hearing the insults thrown at me and not even registering them. I numbly sat through lunch with Brian and Angie, until Annie passed our table and mumbled, “whore” under hear breath.

That was all it took. I jumped up from my table and tackled her, sending her tray of under-seasoned spaghetti flying. I punched her, splitting her lip and blackening her eye before Brian pulled me off her. I shrugged off his concern and stormed out.

I didn’t go back to classes after that. I sat, silent and sullen through a conference with my parents and the principal, listening to words like “traumatic episode” and “lawsuit” being bandied about. In the end, I stayed away from the school until finals.

On test days, the other students gave me a wide berth. No part of me cared.

Graduation day rolled around, and I dutifully went, smiling hollowly in the photos my parents snapped. I couldn’t hate my Mom and Dad, and I couldn’t take the chance to see me walk at my own graduation away from them.

I searched the crowd for his face as I walked across the stage, irrationally hoping that he’d be waiting for me at the edge of school grounds.

He wasn’t.

I walked away from BU, and hopped on a plane to Louisiana and my Aunt Kathy’s house. I wallowed there. Writing Adam endless letters that I had nowhere to send, varying from accusatory to tearful to vaguely pornographic.

“I’m not going to make you talk if you don’t want to, but you aren’t going to sit around and cry all summer either.” Aunt Kathy was five years my mother’s junior and the black sheep of the family who had run away from a responsible life to bake pies on the bayou.

I loved her shop with its rows and rows of pies and cakes rested on the gleaming counters. Frosting and meringue, candied fruits and sugared flowers shined through the plate glass window like colored jewels to entice passersby.

I made my first pie in the early days of June, when the loss of Adam was still a raw wound. Two pounds of strawberries, ripe with crimson juices cooked down on the stove along with a dash of lemon juice for brightness and just enough sugar to enhance the berries. An hour later the kitchen smelled like jam and a bright pink confection was sitting on the counter.

What started as an occasional diversion became a constant staple of my life. I’d never cooked or baked beyond the occasional chore of peeling or chopping something for my Mom, but I quickly discovered I had a knack for it. I filled the house with the scents of chocolate, blueberry, mango, coconut and for an hour I could forget.

The rules of baking and the endless recipes comforted me in those early days, and, before I really noticed, I was a regular feature in the bakery, wandering from tending the ovens to ringing up customers and loving every minute.

Dark Horse Bakery and the loud, wild city had become my home right under my nose, and as the months passed in king cakes and cream puffs, I realized that I’d finally found a place where I fit.

The red hair was an impulse. September arrived, and the old Ember would have been in a dorm room. Aunt Kathy helped me dye it the day I would have started classes, soaking my hair with the rusty colored liquid while I leaned over her bathtub in the cramped room.

The burnished copper color made me smile, and the girl looking back in the mirror had finally changed enough to match the way I felt.

Midway through the fall a package arrived from my parents. Mixed in with notes from Angie and Brian and the cards from my parents were a few random pieces of mail. One was a heavy padded envelope. The return address listed “The Speculative Literature Foundation.”

I tore open the envelope to find a copy of the journal. I flipped to the table of contents to see
“The Power of the Story: Heroes, Villains and the Modern World” by Ember Pierson
printed in the middle of the page. I sat on the floor of Aunt Kathy’s living room and read every page, letting the memories pour over me.

The next day I filled out an application Tulane for following fall.

My parents were ecstatic, and they offered to foot the bill for an apartment. Aunt Kathy’s tiny apartment above the shop was perfect for one person, but it was definitely cramped for two, so I readily accepted. I found a place about half a mile from the bakery, close enough to my Aunt to make my parents relax but far enough to let me spread my wings.

I settled into a comfortable life. I worked at the bakery five days a week and explored the city in my free hours. Summer had finally arrived, bringing with it endless humidity and even more crowds of tourists. And one June afternoon it brought Adam back to me.

I forgave him long ago. How could I really hate a man who loved me enough to give up what he deemed his last chance at happiness to protect me? That year of separation turned into a day when I saw him, and there was nothing in this world that was going to take him away from me again.

We didn’t leave my apartment for two days.

We hid in a tangle of bedsheets, telling each other every secret thought that had crossed our minds in the last year and relearning every inch of skin. We rushed headlong back into our relationship with the same abandon that had lead us down this road in the beginning. And just like then, I couldn’t regret the lack of caution.

“I knew I’d you find you again,” I whispered to him, in the small hours of the morning when even New Orleans finally slept.

Adam nuzzled my neck and asked, “What made you so sure?”

I smiled, slipping back to the memory of another night in another tiny apartment.

“Because the alternative is unthinkable.”

A
va Martell was born on Friday the 13
^th
, but she always believed in making her own luck and writing her own story. She is a firm believer that love really does conquer all, but sometimes you have to take the long way around to get there.

Ava loves a good gin and tonic to wind her down or wind her up, depending on the occasion.

If you’d like to get in touch, Ava’s always plugged in!

[email protected]