Red Sky: Chapter 28
“Just wait, just wait,” she said.
The gold bracelet had fallen to the floor and Aya was trying to pick it up.
“We’re going to be late,” I said.
“You’re going to be late. I’m on time. Just wait a second.”
I stood there impatiently. She saw the look I gave her.
“You’re always rushing me, you’re always rushing everywhere, we have time.”
“No, we don’t.”
“We’ll get there and be back in plenty of time. He’s not going to show up for five hours.”
She was talking about her fiancé.
“We’re going to be late,” I said again, all too aware of the time.
“Damnit!” The bracelet dropped again, now broken on the floor. She looked at me. “He gave this to me. I can’t lose it.”
“Maybe you should lose it,” I said. “You don’t even like it.”
“He’ll expect me to be wearing it.”
She picked up the gold bracelet, trying to fix it, trying to put it on her left wrist. I looked at the gold. It looked dull under the lights in her apartment. She snapped it onto her wrist and looked back to me.
“Now we can go.”
He had been away at training for eight months. We had been together for eight months. Since he had been back it was harder to see each other. We would have furtive meetings timed to the minute. Every time we saw each other the tension would ratchet another notch. It was getting harder to breathe.
Because we left late for our day out, we returned home late. There wasn’t any time to say goodbye. I tried kissing her, she turned away.
“He’s going to be here in ten minutes, you have to go.” She said.
“I don’t want to go.” I stood my ground. Foolishly, stood my ground.
“This is important, you have to leave, if he catches us…” Aya didn’t finish the sentence.
“What, what happens then?”
She didn’t answer. What was he capable of doing? What was a member of the Fleet, someone trained in violence capable of doing to us if we were caught? I wanted to be caught. I wanted to find out.
“You don’t ever think about me,” she said, “what this would do to me.”
“That’s the only thing I think about.”
“I’m just a projection of what you want me to be, of what you want to love. You don’t see the real me.” Aya’s eyes shined like streetlights in the rain.
“I’m the only one who sees you.” I insisted.
“You don’t see me.”
“I’m the only one who sees the real you. He doesn’t. Your family doesn’t. I’m the only one who sees the real you.”
Our eyes met. She unconsciously reached down and felt the gold bracelet on her left wrist.
“You need to go.” She said and turned away. “I’m doing this for you. I’m doing this for both of us. You need to go.”
I didn’t move. Frozen by the force of my conviction. She kept her back to me and looked up. I could see her reflected in a mirror. Her face cut in half. Her right eye staring back at me in the reflection.
“We can discuss this later.”
“No, we can’t.”
How many minutes were left? Was he already at the door? Had we already been found out?
She looked down, I don’t know at what, and said softly, “please, for me. Before he arrives.”
“If I never came back would you come and find me?”
Her eyes stayed down. She didn’t answer.
“I would come for you. If you were in trouble, I would come for you,” I said.
She looked back up. Her full face in the mirror staring back at me. Her reflection was the sun. I closed my eyes from the glare. I opened them again and she was gone. I could see my own reflection. Her face had been replaced by mine. I tilted my head looking into my own eyes. She was standing next to me. I didn’t turn to look at her. We heard footsteps in the hallway. We stayed silent as we listened for a knock on the door.
The footsteps passed by. We still had time. I left without saying goodbye.
I stood down on the street looking up at her window four stories above. The lights were on and I could see animated shadows moving back and forth in and out of frame. I played many different conversations in my head. I watched them for minutes, seemed like hours, trying to see into her soul. But she was too far away. I walked home alone.
*
One month earlier, before he returned, we were lying in bed on a Saturday night. I started thinking of the coming weeks. She would have to make a choice soon. We were at her cabin. I tried not to dwell on such things during our weekend trips. I wanted to live in the present, but eventually the future, as it always is, was unavoidable.
“When we first started seeing each other I used to lie in bed at night my heart pounding so fast in anticipation of seeing you the next day,” I told her. “I would lay awake, eyes open in the darkness with a giant grin on my face wondering how I could be so lucky to have fallen in love with you. How anybody could be so lucky to have you fall in love with them.”
She blushed, although it was hard to tell in the low light.
“But now. Now I stay up at night worrying.”
“The future will work itself out,” she said.
I didn’t like that answer. I asked her again about their relationship, about her feelings for him. She talked without emotion, describing their past, what had been planned for their future.
“It sounds like an obligation,” I said, “not love.”
“Sometimes obligations need to be kept,” she replied without hesitation.
The quickness of her response surprised me. I thought I'd trapped her with her own words. That she had no choice but to choose love over obligation, to choose me over him. I was wrong. Her words stung. I turned away to hide my pain and patted Bandit who was sleeping next to the bed. “You still love me, don’t you Bandit?”
I don’t think Aya realized the importance of what she said at first. It was an automatic response.
After a few minutes, I could feel her wet lips on the back of my neck. “I just, I don’t know,” she said haltingly. “It will all work out in the end. If we stay true to ourselves, it will all work out in the end.”
It doesn’t always work out in the end. I knew this as much as I knew anything. There is no refrain I hate more than the empty platitude that it will all work out in the end.
I turned back to her, not willing to let go, continuing to make my argument. “You don’t have to live the rest of your life here. There’s an entire world out there waiting for you. Waiting for us. What about your dreams of the open road?”
She simply looked at me like I didn’t understand. She was right, I didn’t.
Our trips to the country were different after that night. The future hung over us like a guillotine waiting to drop.
I would like to say I could remember every one of those weekends as clear as the brightest day. I wish I had them memory stamped onto my brain. My most common memory is of lying on the porch swing while watching Bandit play in the field. She smothered that dog with affection. I could see all of her best qualities come out when they were together. She loved that dog more than anything and I loved her even more than that and it was all destined to end with no one happy because it was destined to end.