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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 2 years ago

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North To The Future [Chapter 4: Semi-Charmed Life]

The year is 1999. You are just beginning your veterinary practice in Juneau, Alaska. Aegon is a mysterious, troubled newcomer to town. You kind of hate him. You are also kind of obsessed with him. Falling for him might legitimately ruin your life…but can you help it? Oh, and there’s a serial killer on the loose known only as the Ice Fisher.

Chapter warnings: Language, alcoholism, addiction, murder, veterinary medicine, delicious Thanksgiving nomz, ANGST and let me repeat that last one in case you missed it ANGSTTTTTTTTT!!!

Word count: 5k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

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Here’s the thing about the Ice Fisher: he doesn’t have a type. Ted Bundy liked girls and young women. John Wayne Gacy liked boys and young men. Juan Corona liked farm laborers, Belle Gunness liked suitors who answered the marriage ads she placed in Chicago newspapers, Robert Hansen liked sex workers who he would set loose in the Alaskan wilderness and then hunt down with his Ruger Mini-14. Everyone has their preferences. But not the Ice Fisher.

The first victim was a burly mid-fifties logger and recreational hunter named Josiah Wolfenstein. The second was nineteen-year-old college student Tammy Miller; she was from Sitka and studying psychology, a choice that now strikes you as ironic. The third and most recent victim was Carol Philips: forty-three, Garth Brooks superfan, amateur baker, and beloved soccer mom. They have nothing in common except for their manner of death. They reveal no pattern. They shed no light on who the Ice Fisher is targeting, and conversely who can consider themselves safe. Everyone is a potential victim. And there is no such thing as safe.

In between veterinary appointments, you watch the local news coverage on the grainy tv in the clinic lobby, your arms crossed instinctively over your chest, your face grim.

“You want some bear mace?” Jennifer says, showing you a small black cannister attached to a keychain. “My boyfriend buys a new one for me every time someone gets murdered, so now I have extra.”

You take it tentatively. “Bear mace?”

“Yeah, but it works on people too. It has a 30-foot range. You can spray that Greek guy with it.”

You laugh and clip the bear mace to your purse: a Coach patchwork saddle bag that your parents bought you a few Christmases ago. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Chief of Police Eugene Baker, a high school classmate of your parents, is holding a press conference on the television screen. “We believe this killer to be an adult male with considerable physical strength and knowledge of the outdoors. While the first two victims were found in Dredge Lake, Ms. Philips’ remains were recovered from nearby Crystal Lake, complicating the investigation. Police are patrolling the Tongass National Forest, but we simply do not have the manpower to surveille all Juneau-area lakes at all times. We therefore will continue to ask for the public’s cooperation in submitting tips and identifying possible suspects. To this end, we have set up an anonymous 24/7 hotline staffed by volunteers; the phone number is displayed at the bottom of your screen. We advise all Juneau residents to stay vigilant, particularly around strangers, and avoid leaving their homes alone after dark…”

Outside in the violet-and-amber afternoon light, there is the sound of tires slipping on ice. Aegon’s 1985 Chevy Nova drifts sideways into a parking spot; or, rather, into a position improbably straddling three separate parking spots. He and Sunfyre exit the vehicle.

“Oh, great,” Jen grumbles. She hides behind the reception desk so she won’t have to interact with Aegon. She busies herself with cutting pieces of paper into snowflakes, impaling them with paperclips, and arranging them on the miniature Christmas tree that you obtained for the clinic.

“Hey!” Aegon announces merrily as he breezes inside. He is dressed in his light-wash Levis, black Converses, and an oversized pale green sweater with holes in it; the white of the T-shirt he has on underneath shines through the gaps like stars. Overtop he has thrown the black parka you gave him, unzipped and peppered with melting snowflakes. Half of his hair is pulled back in a messy bun. Sunfyre—still wearing his cone of shame—trots along beside him, unleashed.

“Hey,” you return, smiling. “You’re early.”

“We weren’t catching anything, there was an orca pod in the bay this morning and it scared most of the fish off. So we docked the boat after lunch.” His spots the new addition to your purse. “What’s up with that?”

“It’s bear mace. For bears…or serial killers…or you. I haven’t decided which yet. What’s up with your hair?”

“It’s a man bun,” he says, somewhat defensive. “They’re very popular in Southern California.”

“That sounds fictional.”

“I’ll have you know that in the acclaimed feature film Mulan, love interest and all-around badass General Li Shang had a man bun.”

“Literally fictional.”

“Are you going to take the stitches out of my dog’s face or are you just going to mercilessly bully me? I’m very sensitive, you know. As an Aquarius, I hide this beneath a thin veneer of rebellious behavior and inability to commit, but at my heart I am a profoundly fragile man. I’m forever just a few seconds away from disaster. I’m a Christmas ornament in the unsteady hands of a five-year-old high on the jittery, saccharine rush of Kool-Aid.”

“Tropical Punch?”

“Cherry. But knowing you, every cup would have to be a brand new flavor.”

You’re still smiling; you haven’t stopped since he walked in. Aegon smiles back. Jen peeks over the top of the reception desk with wide, curious eyes. Sunfyre whines and scratches at his cone, as if to remind everyone about the true purpose of this visit.

“Bring the beast,” you say, leading Aegon back into the exam room. He scoops up Sunfyre with a grunt and places him on top of the table; the dog’s nails click against the cool, reflective metal surface. You liberate Sunfyre from his cone, then numb his muzzle with lidocaine and remove the stitches one at a time, snipping them with surgical scissors and then pulling them out of the flesh with tweezers. Aegon watches you with his hands in his parka pockets, his expression strangely vacant.

“He’ll have a scar, won’t he?”

“Yes, a small one. But that will just make him more rugged and attractive to all the lady-dogs. Or gentleman-dogs, whatever Sunfyre is into.”

“A scar on his face,” Aegon murmurs, then shakes his pensiveness away. “What should I bring to Thanksgiving?”

“Probably nothing. I think my parents have it covered…the appetizers, the dinner, the desserts…and also, you do not strike me as someone who cooks.”

“Yeah, I eat a lot of Lunchables. But I feel like I should bring something.”

Your eyes flick to his, playful. “Are you worried about making a good first impression?”

Aegon smirks, shrugs, says nothing. Sometimes you make an appearance at Ursa Minor, sometimes you don’t; sometimes you pick up when he calls, sometimes you end up spending hours in his apartment watching the X-Files or Law & Order or 60 Minutes. Other times, you fill your time with work, family, friends, flipping through the tower of travel magazines you have stacked beside your bed. It’s not that you’re ignoring Aegon. It’s that you’re trying to figure out what being with him would be like: what you would gain, what it would cost. He hasn’t tried to touch you since that night under the Northern Lights. You haven’t tried to pry into his many mysteries. But each unanswered question is like a landmine one careless step away from eruption, and they’re filling up that space that stays between you on his threadbare floral couch. At this precise moment, Aegon seems sober, which is highly unusual. There’s something quiet and boyish about him when he’s like this, something almost vulnerable. You can picture him wandering aimlessly through the Foodland, staring at mounds of Idaho potatoes and cans of gooey apple pie filling, having no idea what to do with any of it.

“My mom really likes flowers,” you say. “And obviously she doesn’t get to see them a lot this time of year. So if you want to bring something, bring flowers.”

“Okay. Deal.”

“No rum and Cokes today?” you ask, still removing stitches with sure, deft hands.

“Not yet. But I’m counting the seconds until we’re done here, believe me.”

You recall what he told you as you sat together in Ursa Minor under Christmas lights and strands of shimmering silver tinsel: I don’t do well when I’m sober. You pull out the last stitch and pet Sunfyre’s soft fluffy head. He pants happily, his tail thumping against the table, his trusting dark eyes gazing up at you, tiny starless universes. “Why did you buy the Nova if you’re almost always too drunk to drive it?”

“So I can take Sunfyre up to the woods on nice days. He loves the trails.”

“Um, I don’t think you should be hiking out there alone.”

“Relax. Killers never get the people who deserve it.” Aegon flashes you grin, digs around in his parka pocket, tosses you a gold key that you catch in fumbling, cupped palms. “Here.”

“What is this?”

“It’s a spare. Just in case you ever want to stop by and hang out with my dog. Or, you know. Me.”

You gawk at the key, at Aegon, back to the key. “You’re giving me a…? Why would…? How…?”

“Just so you know it’s an option,” Aegon says. He lifts Sunfyre down from the exam table and leaves like the sun at dusk.

~~~~~~~~~~

You love waking up at home on holiday mornings. There is the noise of clanging pots and pans, the scents of bacon and pancakes and rising Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, the sound of one of your dad’s rock albums spinning on the record player in the living room. Today, his Thanksgiving preparation background music is Third Eye Blind; you bound down the stairs as Semi-Charmed Life drifts through the house. After a swift breakfast—your mom has already set out a plate for you, along with a glass of ice-cold orange juice and a Flintstones multivitamin—the real work begins.

The turkey is slathered with butter and herbs and placed in the oven. The neck and giblets are boiled to make stock for gravy, and then you set them aside for Sunfyre. The rolls are baked, the potatoes are mashed, the yams are smothered with brown sugar and marshmallows, the green bean casserole is topped with French’s fried onions, the stuffing is Stove Top out of the box, the cranberry sauce retains the precise shape of the aluminum can it was jiggled out of. Once you and your dad have finished setting the table, you tell him you’re heading out to pick up the mysterious friend who will be joining you for dinner.

“Your friend doesn’t have a car?” your dad asks, not critical or suspicious, merely intrigued. You have been uncharacteristically cagey about this particular friend, and with good reason. You know practically nothing besides what your parents have already surmised: male, probably single, inopportunely sexy.

“No, he does. I just told him that I’d give him a ride.” In case he gets too hammered to drive himself home, which is almost a certainty.

“Okay, ladybug,” your dad says, folding the red cloth napkins into inelegant triangles, his scruffy grey eyebrows knitted together. “Whatever floats your boat.”

When you knock on Aegon’s apartment door, he appears dressed in his most festive attire: a blue Hawaiian shirt, black jeans, combat boots, a gold chain around his neck, his white-blond hair neat and mostly straight. He is holding a bouquet of roses that have been dyed a deep sapphire color, like the ocean, like biting winter cold.

“Wow,” you say. “You look like Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo + Juliet.”

“I hope I get a happier ending.” He calls Sunfyre over. The golden retriever pads into view. He is wearing a meticulously groomed coat of fur and a blue bowtie to match Aegon’s shirt.

“Hey, buddy!” you squeal in delight, squatting down to scratch Sunfyre’s ears and cover his scarred muzzle with quick smacking kisses. “You are going to be so psyched when you see what we have for you. There’s a nice turkey neck…and a heart, and a liver…and a delicious gizzard…and maybe even some nice juicy kidneys…and I’ll slice it up all up for you into easily chewable little bites…”

“Calm down, Appletini,” Aegon says, grabbing his parka. “You wouldn’t want anyone thinking you’re the Ice Fisher.”

Back at your parents’ house, your mom and dad dash to the door to meet your enigmatic friend, clamoring like teenage girls at an Enrique Iglesias concert. Aegon beams and shakes their hands, thanking them graciously for the invitation. Your dad shoots you a furtive grin: This friend IS sexy! Sunfyre presents himself for pats and high-pitched coos of adoration.

“I’m Vince, and this is my wife Debbie,” your dad says. “But you can call us Mom and Dad, that’ll make things less confusing. That’s what most of my daughter’s friends do.”

“That is so totally cool of you. I’m Aegon.”

“Aegon?!” your mom blurts out before she can stop herself.

He sighs. “It’s Greek.”

“Oh, how exotic!” she recovers tactfully, then gasps when he hands her the bouquet. “For me?!”

“It’s the absolute least I could do. I hope you like roses. The options at the Foodland were roses, roses, or…let me think…oh yeah, more roses.”

“They’re lovely,” your mom purrs. “And such a unique color!”

“They reminded me of Alaska, all the ocean, and ice, and big open sky…and also Appletini. Because I always give her the blue mug.”

Your parents blink at him, confounded. “…Appletini?” your dad ventures, smiling.

“It’s a long story,” you say, suddenly shy.

“Well, come on in,” your mom courteously deflects. “There are deviled eggs, salmon dip, Ritz crackers, and pigs in a blanket just waiting to be eaten.”

As your mom and dad bang around the kitchen putting the final touches on dinner, you and Aegon assemble your appetizer plates and loiter in the dining room, nibbling and chatting, bathed in the flickering golden light of the woodstove and humming along to the red Third Eye Blind vinyl that is still rotating on the record player like a bloody planet. There are three unopened bottles of wine on the table. Aegon keeps glancing at them, his eyes gleaming and famished.

“Would you like a tour of the house?” you say. “An authentic Alaskan house? Come March you’ll probably never have this opportunity again. You’ll be jet-setting off to some other far-flung destination, probably somewhere warm where they have plentiful Taco Bells and internet.”

“I’m not a fan of the internet,” Aegon replies, piling a Ritz cracker worryingly high with salmon dip. “But Taco Bells are a must. Yes, lead the way, oh wise and prophetic Madame Appletini.”

You show him the kitchen where your parents are laboring (floral wallpaper), the study (more floral wallpaper), the living room (wood paneling), and the backyard (adorned with a salt lick for the friendly neighborhood cow moose). Then you take Aegon upstairs to your bedroom. He ponders the details for a nerve-rackingly long time as he gnaws on slightly-too-crispy pigs in a blanket: your stack of travel magazines, your veterinary books, your dark blue bedding, the photographs taped to your mirror, the plethora of posters tacked to your walls.

Aegon speaks without looking at you, still investigating. “Has Trent ever gotten to enjoy your extensive collection of Ricky Martin posters?”

“Not yet. Preferably not ever.”

Now Aegon turns to you; he is smiling. “I feel so sorry for him.”

“Dinner’s ready, kids!” your dad shouts up the stairs, and you obediently report to the table to eat until you are in agony, which to your understanding is the primary objective of Thanksgiving.

“Drinks?” you mom inquires as she lights the tall red candles. The blue roses are in a vase at the center of the table. “There’s Tang, and Snapple, and water of course, and Pinot Noir. Martha Stewart says that’s the best wine to pair with turkey.”

“Wine, please,” Aegon says. She fills his glass. It vanishes almost immediately.

Aegon is the perfect guest: he samples everything and offers enthusiastic compliments, even when he is clearly horrified (as he is by the green bean casserole): “The turkey is so moist and flavorful!” “The yams are like dessert!” “It’s so fun to poke this cranberry sauce!” “My, what a creative use of cream of mushroom soup!” Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Sunfyre feasts on a plate of turkey organs and a few slices of white meat. You have a glass of wine, and so does your dad; your mom has two; you lose count of Aegon’s glasses after four. He becomes increasingly uncoordinated, giggly, fogged like a window. Your parents do not encourage him to drink, but they don’t try to stop him either; they ignore his drunkenness like a ghost that stands in the corner of the room, silent, waiting, set ablaze by firelight.

“Do I detect a British accent?” your dad asks Aegon pleasantly. “So this must be a new experience for you. Did you grow up abroad?”

“I grew up everywhere.” Aegon smirks evasively, swigging his wine. “And yes, my exposure to Thanksgiving is extremely limited. But I like this. I like this a lot. I’m going to have to do it every year, wherever I am. Sunfyre will rebel if I don’t. He’ll call PETA to file a complaint.”

“You do quite a bit of travelling, I gather,” your mom says. She watches Aegon with an intense, mesmerized sort of interest. It’s almost unnerving. It’s like she is searching for something: fingerprints dusted at a crime scene, gold nuggets sifted from a river.

“All over. All the time.”

“What do you do for work?”

“Everything,” Aegon says. “Here I’m salmon trolling. In San Francisco I was a dockworker, in San Diego I was a lifeguard—you don’t want to know how little training it takes to be a custodian of human lives, it’s absolutely horrifying, they’d let a great white shark be a lifeguard if it looked good in red—in Phoenix I did construction, just outside of Denver I got a job working on a cattle ranch. In Dallas I picked cotton. In Portland, Maine I caught lobsters. I’ll try anything once. I just like to keep moving. As long as I can make enough money to have somewhere for me and Sunfyre to sleep at night, I’m happy.”

“You’re just like Jack Dawson in Titanic,” your mom sighs, smiling in a way that brightens her whole face. “All you need is the air in your lungs.”

“You work on the same boat as Heather’s brother Trent, is that right?” your dad asks.

“Oh, Trent!” your mom says. “He’s a hunk. He looks just like a long-haired Matt Damon.”

You squint at her. “Yeah, if Matt Damon did steroids.”

“He’s a nice boy, that Trent,” your dad says. “I mean, he won’t be winning Who Wants To Be A Millionaire anytime soon, but he’s solid.”

Your mom nods in agreement. “Dumb as a rock.”

“He’s a great guy,” Aegon says diplomatically. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Unless that fly was a salmon.” He laughs overly-loudly, sloshing red wine out of his glass and staining the tablecloth like blood on snow. Your parents pretend not to notice.

After dinner, your mom brings out dessert: one pumpkin pie, one apple pie, one plate full of Tongass Forest Cookies. Aegon samples both pies and gobbles cookies until his Hawaiian shirt is littered with crumbs, washing them down with more wine. Then he gets up to pull on his parka and let Sunfyre outside. Aegon lurches as he moves, clutching walls and counters and the backs of chairs.

“I’ll go with you,” your mom offers before you can. She helps Aegon down the icy porch steps and then plays with Sunfyre in the backyard: chasing him through the snow, throwing sticks for him to fetch, tossing snowballs for him to snap between his jaws. Aegon, wobbly but in good spirits, participates as much as he can. And the way that your mom looks at him…it’s an expression you can’t recall ever seeing on her face before. It is fascination and fondness and grief all tangled up together. The light in her eyes is beautiful; it is also breathtakingly sad.

Your dad taps one of the empty wine bottles. “He’s got a problem, ladybug.”

“I know.”

“You can’t fix that for him. He has to want to fix himself.”

“I know,” you say again, your voice a brittle whisper.

Your dad sighs deeply and clasps his hands together, stares out the window, contemplates something heavy and unseen. At last, he speaks. “I’ve loved your mother my whole life. And when she and Jesse got together, I thought it was going to kill me. It wasn’t the fact that she was with another man. It was what he put her through. There were fights, there were bruises, and then there were promises and apologies, past-due bills and handmade birthday cakes, locked doors, open doors, kicked down doors. I couldn’t get her to leave him, and I couldn’t watch it keep happening. I tried everything to get away from your mother. I joined the goddamn Marines to get away from her. Four years in Vietnam and I still couldn’t sweat her out. I came back to Juneau and used my G.I. Bill to go to the University of Alaska, and…I would never admit this to anyone except you, but you need to hear it…I waited for that marriage to fall apart. And it did, but it took Jesse drowning in the Gastineau Channel.” He looks at you with miserable, glistening eyes. “Watching the way your mother suffered with a man like that was hell. Watching you go through the same thing would be unbearable.”

There is silence: a silence as thick and perilous as the ocean. Your dad studies you, searching for understanding, for a rational consensus to be reached. You study the lines in your palms. There is nothing rational about what you’re feeling. Alaska is flush with eligible men who are not temporary, not secretive, not unrepentant alcoholics: pilots, truckers, fishermen, loggers, oil riggers, scientific researchers, park rangers. You don’t want any of them. You’ve never wanted anything the way you want Aegon. It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair.

The back door opens, and your mom and Sunfyre—elated and covered in snow—romp into the house. Your mom is giggling as she grabs a dishtowel from the kitchen and begins to clean the snow from Sunfyre’s fur. “You might want to…uh…retrieve Aegon,” she tells you. “It’s pretty cold out there.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Making snow angels.”

“Oh. Great.” You put on your own parka and head out into the afternoon twilight.

“Hey,” Aegon says from where he’s sprawled on the ground. He’s sweeping his arms and legs back and forth as stars rise in the sky.

“Hey. Are you having fun down there?”

“Yes.” His breath is a cloud in the frigid air. His arms and legs go still. “I love feeling small like this. Nothing matters. Not our pasts, not our accomplishments, not our mistakes. We’re all just bones with memories. We’re all just future space dust.”

“You don’t want to be remembered?”

“God no. What would be worth remembering? I want to be a whisper. I want to be the wind that blows over the ocean.” He cranes his neck to look up at you, thoughtful in that glazed, drunken sort of way. “You can remember me, I guess. I’ll allow that. But only you. No one else.”

“Assuming I outlive you.”

“You will obviously outlive me.” He holds his arms up in the air and you pull him to his feet.

“I think it’s time for you and Sunfyre to go home.”

“Oh no.” His face is filled with abrupt realization. “Do your parents hate me?”

“No, they like you. They like you a lot. They’re just worried about you.” And they’d be a lot more worried if they knew about the track marks on your arms or the fact that you can’t stay in one place longer than six months without being descended upon by maybe-metaphorical ghosts.

Aegon laughs wildly, almost hysterically. He reaches for your shoulder to steady himself and then stops short. He sways in the late-November air, his hair dripping from the snow, his hazy blue eyes all over you. You tuck his ever-errant lock of hair behind his ear. I love him, you think helplessly, like when you know you’re dreaming but can’t wake up. “Worried about me,” he muses without elaborating. “Worried about me.”

Your parents send Aegon home with warm hugs and Tupperware containers full of leftovers, including extra turkey meat for Sunfyre and a truly ludicrous helping of cookies. You drive to Aegon’s apartment building slowly so Sunfyre can stick his head out the back window and bark gleefully at every car you pass. It is dark when you get there, the sunset come and gone, the constellations visible in a rare clear sky: Gemini, Orion, Draco, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor. Your Jeep idles under the lusterless beam of a streetlight.

Aegon asks, a ghost of a smile on his lips: “You want to come upstairs with me?”

“Yes,” you reply. And if you do, you won’t leave until morning. “But not until I’ve talked to you about something first.”

“It’s important,” Aegon says softly, not a question but an observation, reading your face like a weather forecast: chance of sun, chance of storms.

“Yes, it’s important.”

“Okay. Let me take Sunfyre inside and I’ll be right back.”

“Okay.”

He doesn’t kiss you goodbye, he doesn’t even hug you. He reaches out with one hand and dusts his calloused thumbprint across your cheekbone, marveling at you like you’re a radiant horizon, like you’re ancient ruins: cave paintings older than the pyramids, pillars of stones and secrets. Then he gets out of the Jeep and staggers into the apartment building with Sunfyre scampering along beside him. He reappears moments later, his hands buried in the pockets of his parka. You were too anxious to wait in the Jeep; you pace back and forth beneath the dim ochre streetlight. Aegon watches you from several yards away, waiting for you to begin.

“Look,” you say. “I like you.”

“Cool.”

“No, I mean, I really like you.”

He smiles like the sun, like the Northern Lights. “So you are applying to be my Juneau girl.”

“Yes. But I need something from you first.”

His blue eyes are calm beneath the streetlight, beneath the starlight. “Name it.”

“I need you to get help.”

Aegon shakes his head, not understanding, his smile slowly dying. His lock of bone-white hair cuts his cheek in half like a scar. “What are you talking about?”

“You can go to rehab. I’ll help you find a program, I’ll take care of Sunfyre while you’re away.”

Everything about him changes, like the phases of the moon: his face darkens, his eyes go steely and sharp, everything you love about him is eclipsed. “I don’t need rehab.”

“Aegon, you obviously need rehab.”

He glares at you with savage distrust, with betrayal.

“I need you to get yourself together,” you plead. “I want to be with you, I want to let myself care about you, but I can’t do that when you’re killing yourself right in front of me.”

“I don’t see how it affects you.”

“It does. It will.”

“I’m a lot better now than I was two years ago.”

“It’s not good enough, Aegon.”

He looks down at his combat boots, then back at you. You barely recognize him. “So I’m not good enough.”

“That’s not what I said—”

“It’s what you meant, it’s what this whole fucking conversation is about, right?” he flares. “You not being satisfied with the kind of person I am. You thinking that you get any say at all in who I am. Are you delusional, are you that goddamn narcissistic? Have you staked some claim to me that I’m unaware of? Are you Christopher Columbus here to strip me bare and claim you discovered me?”

“Are you listening to me?! I’m trying to tell you that I l—”

“No, you don’t like me. You like some hypothetical version of me that you’re trying to convince yourself exists.”

You stare at him in heartbroken disbelief. “Why won’t you let me help you?”

“I don’t need your help. I don’t want your help.”

“But I thought…if you would just…we could…”

“When the fuck did I ever promise you a future?” Aegon flings like a blade. “When did I ever promise you anything? You think I showed up here to build you some cabin on the side of a mountain, get a desk job, give you Christmases and kids? That’s not me. That’s never going to be me. I’m not yours to use. I’m not a Ricky Martin poster to keep tacked up on your wall. I’m not the impetus to bail you out of your spineless, unfulfilling life.”

“Please stop.” Your throat is burning; there are hot tears slithering from your eyes. The icy wind stings against your face. “Please just stop.”

“I’m not the one who fucked this up,” Aegon hisses. “It was you, it was you, because I told you the truth but you refused to believe it. I’m not yours and I never was and I’m never going to be, so you better get that through your thick fucking skull. I’m not yours.”

“And why would I want someone like you?!” you scream into the darkness. He flinches away like you’ve hit him. His eyes are huge and glassy. “An alcoholic, an addict, a coward who runs away from anything worth living for? I’d rather die than waste my life on you. Wait, my mistake, waste the next four months on you, because then you’ll be fleeing to go terrorize some other girl in some other city. I don’t want you. I can’t wait to forget you.”

“Then go!” Aegon roars over his shoulder as he turns away. “Just fucking go!” He storms off into his apartment building; he disappears like the end of summer, leaving a jet-black endless void.

You retreat back into your Jeep, slam the door, and sit there under the silver-cold moonlight sobbing into empty, trembling hands.

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