The Storm and the Darkness (24 page)

All night, Oz was there. He did not leave her side for more than a minute or two; when he did, always he would reappear, arms around her waist, leading her, guiding her, watching over her. As the night crept into morning he declined drinks on her behalf, and stopped her from taking a pill that she was ready to take without question. As people started to leave, or retire to private rooms, Oz said to her, “Ana, I am going to take you back to your room.”

She stumbled on his arm, too intoxicated to argue or even care. He walked her down the hall and she threw her arms in the air, in submission of inhibitions. In happiness. For the joy of freedom. His arms never left her, even when he put the key in her lock and let her in.

He laid her gently on the bed and as he stood up, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his. The taffeta rustled brusquely as she held onto him. He returned the kiss, but then he pushed her back gently. “Not like this,” he said, and disappeared, returning when he had a nightgown for her.

He helped her change and, that accomplished, she stood up to kiss him again. But then the room began to spin and she could not make it stop. “Ahhh!” she cried, reaching to grip the bed, finding only air instead. Once again, his arms were there to catch her.

“You okay?” He asked and she shook her head no.
 

“I am going to be sick.”

He led her to the bathroom. He held back her hair, and patted her back for several hours as she threw up everything that she regretfully consumed throughout the long evening. She cried, wondering if she was dying, and he comforted her, assuring her she wasn’t. Finally, when she was done, he took her to bed.

Oz laid down next to her on the bed, holding her as she fell asleep. When she woke up several times during the night, he was still there, still cuddling up next to her, still watching over her.

Ana woke before he did the next morning, and her first thought was:
I am a damn fool
. She remembered every last moment of idiocy from the night before, with painful clarity.

Wanting to cry at her complete loss of self-control, she would not allow herself that relief. She would not lose further control with tears. Live a little, Nicolas had said. Ana could not understand how living like this was enjoyable for anyone. She was ashamed of her behavior, and horrified that both Nicolas and Oz had seen her like that.

Oz. Ana had thrown herself at her friend. Of all the behaviors of the night before, this one was the most dismaying to her. Then he had rejected her, and even her bruised ego understood that he had shown restraint for her sake.

Face buried in her hands, Ana sat at the edge of the bed, her mind whirling. She did not hear Oz wake, but felt his strong legs slide on either side of hers and his arms moved around her waist. He kissed the back of her neck and his face rested against her shoulder blades.

Ana put her hands over his, and he squeezed her fingers. Tipping her head back so that he could see her face, he rewarded her bravery by gently kissing her chin, and cheeks and neck. She led his hands over the curves of her hips, her stomach, her chest.
 

Turning fully to face him, they reclined together on the bed. He pushed her back softly, peeling her nightgown up, kissing her stomach, hips, and softly between her legs. She ran her hands through his hair…that soft, raven black hair of his that she had always found lovely and mysterious. His body brushed up against hers, sending chills throughout her; his hardness, his soft skin, and his lips met hers. “Colin,” she said, realizing that the intimacy she had been missing was upon her, it was happening, and it was real. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Woken up next to a stranger in a hotel room?”

She laughed. “You know what I mean.”

“Me either, Ana,” he said, serious now. “But I want to. With you.”

Later experiences for Ana would be more wild, more creative, more carnal, but none would ever be as intense for her as this first time. Ana opened herself up to Oz and laid herself completely bare, without a hint of self-consciousness. She completely surrendered to him, without fear. Understanding then, for the first time, that intimacy could be so much more than a burden or something to fear.

Later, they lay in the bed, talking for hours and hours. He played with her hair; she traced pictures on his belly. Neither of them wanted for it to end.

As the morning passed into day, and day passed into evening, their conversations moved from very superficial things to more important things. Finally, as the evening passed into morning yet again, the eagerness of their conversations turned to silence.

He looked at her thoughtfully. “I can probably guess what you’re thinking.”

“Yes,” she said after a pause and a sigh. “You probably can.”

“Because it is probably what I am thinking too,” he ventured.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Probably so.”

“You’re thinking that relationships suck, and maybe this has potential but maybe it doesn’t.”

Ana nodded slowly.

“But you’re thinking that the odds are in our favor, and you just don’t want to be the one to say it.”

She liked him. Maybe more than liked, because for Ana, strong feelings did not come easily but they did come intensely. There was still fear this surrender would leave her exposed and inevitably bruised. It would be safer to go on as before and pretend it had never happened.

Oz leaned over her. “Look at me.” After a moment, she did. “I get it. I do. But since we are both feeling the same way about this, isn’t that a good sign?”

“I want it to be,” she said.

“And I want you,” he concurred. “So it’s settled.”

Ana smiled. “It is.”

Like everything else in her life, Ana ruined that relationship by slowly forgetting the comfort he had given her and building the wall of solitude back up. She had ruined it further by sleeping with him years later, potentially destroying his marriage and family.
 

And now, with Finn, she was repeating the same mistake. She knew she would not be able to forget about what happened with Jon. It had meant something to her in the same way the first time she was with Oz had meant something. That didn’t simply go away.

But I have to try. I don’t want to be a person who can’t connect with anyone; someone who callously uses sex like it doesn’t matter. I can’t do this to myself anymore. I can’t do this to the people I care about anymore. I need to make a choice, live with it, and never look back.
 

And if I’m not capable of choosing? If this is who I am destined to be for all time? Then it really is hopeless...

Finn was still trying to register the situation. In the movies when someone had a gun held to their head, he would think
, well that sucks, but I bet there are 100 ways they can get out of this situation.
In real life, all he could focus on was the feeling of the cold barrel against his skin and how badly Alex’s hand was trembling.

“Alex, come on,” Finn was saying, carefully. He was afraid to even move his head. He knew how a shotgun worked, and he didn’t want one unloaded in his skull. It was alarming how Alex’s hands
would not stop shaking,
and Finn couldn’t see how close his finger was to the trigger.

“Did ya get all the food ya need?” Alex stuttered. He kept shifting from one foot to the other, and Finn felt the cold barrel of the shotgun correspondingly move left and right. His head ached from where Alex had smashed his skull.

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go. I’m going back to yer house with ya.”

Finn started to ask questions but Alex interrupted him with a rough nudge of the gun. Finn imagined the round exploding and decided as little movement as possible would be best. He had yet to actually analyze what the hell was going on. He had known Alex all of his life, and nothing about this situation made any sense. Jon thought Alex was a bit twisted, but Finn knew the man was harmless. He would have thought he was dreaming if not for how real the steel of the old shotgun barrel felt pressed against his bloody, achy skull.
I bet the crazy ass put rock salt in it so he has an excuse to shoot me with it. But that would still hurt like the devil.

Finn was not confident about driving back in the dark. The streetlights on Androscoggin were on, but they lit up very little of the actual road. Compounding the darkness, all the shop lights that would have helped illuminate the dark street were off. He hardly knew how to drive the temperamental beast. And as if that weren’t enough, while he had been making a path to the food storage, the new storm had finally started, and with a vengeance.
 

Once they were settled into the cab, Finn said, without turning his head, “Alex. Can you please take the gun off of me? I’m not going anywhere.”
Where would I go anyway? I couldn’t outrun a shotgun in this snow.

“Nah, I’m sorry, but I can’t trust ya, I can’t.” Alex was stammering again.
What in the hell has happened to him?

“Alex,” he said, using the calm, rational voice of his father. “I could not outrun you in this if I tried. If you don’t take this damn gun from my head, you may as well shoot me, and then yourself, because I am not driving this gigantic goddamn snow beast with a steel bomb about to go off. We can sit here and freeze to death.”

Alex thought about it a moment and then lowered the gun, slowly. He was shivering so badly that the gun barrel was making a clickity-clack noise as it bumped up against the buttons on his coat. “I’ll take it away from yer head, but I ain’t putting it down,” he said, sounding more like a stubborn child than a middle-aged man.

“Fine, just don’t point it at me,” Finn said, starting up the snowcat. Alex jumped next to him as it roared to life. Finn pictured the news after they found the two of them in pieces all over the cab from a rogue shotgun pellet. “Relax, outlaw!”

“There’s only one outlaw in this rig, and it ain’t me.” Alex’s eyes burned holes in him as he maneuvered in reverse and then forward toward home.
 

Finn thought again of Ana.
I’ve kept Jon safe from the world, and I can do the same for her.

He glanced to his right and wondered what he might need to do to keep Ana safe from this trembling madman…

Nicolas never had any doubts that Jennifer would come through, but the longer they waited, the more he worried. The money had already exchanged hands, but he had felt good about trusting her–hoping his sense wasn’t wrong this time–and he had been waiting with Oz on the pier for over an hour, in the pitch black.

At first she told them they would leave at first light in the morning. She called back later and said the fishing boat captain was too nervous about the prospect of being caught and thought night would be better.

“Isn’t that less safe, even, than the already unsafe daytime trip we were planning to make?” Nicolas asked.

She sighed. “These are his terms. I even offered him more of your money, and he wouldn’t budge.”

So be it.
 

Nicolas asked Oz if he was sure he wanted to come.
You can stay here in the hotel Ozzy; I won’t think less of you
, he said, and meant it. If captains who were raised in this weather wouldn’t run, then the risks were real. He felt bad enough dragging Oz to Maine with him, and away from Adrienne and the kids.

Oz just snickered at that. “Our hotel doesn’t even have
cable
.”

Nicolas and Oz exchanged no words standing on the pier, but they both had enough thoughts to keep themselves occupied. Nicolas watched his friend and thought,
well now we really have been through everything
.

On the flight over, a specific memory continued dancing around the tip of his thoughts, until he finally allowed himself to explore it. It was Ana’s senior year of undergraduate studies at Tulane. Nicolas had discovered a letter, peeking out from under her textbooks.
We are pleased to extend an invitation to the English program at Oxford University.
 

“What is this?”
Nicolas had asked. It was the first time she had hidden anything from him.

“It’s nothing.”
Dropped gaze, lowered voice.

“Um, the fuck it’s nothing, Ana! You were accepted to motherfucking
Oxford
, and you say that its
nothing
?”

“It’s nothing because I’m making it nothing
.”
Her eyes were distant; he hardly recognized her in that moment. He detected a sadness. But more so, a resolve.
She’s forced herself to come to this decision. She wants to go, but she’s not going to do it.
“I’ve already declined the offer. I’m staying at Tulane.”

Nicolas stared at her then in frustrated amazement. “But…
why
?!”

Ana sighed. She was still unwilling to meet his eyes, and Nicolas wanted to take her face in both hands and force her to look at him. “I don’t…want to leave you,” is what she said. But what Nicolas heard beneath her words was:
I don’t want to leave you alone.

“That is the most ridiculous fucking thing I’ve ever heard you say, Anasofiya Aleksandrovna. And you’ve said a lot of ridiculous shit.” Perhaps if he belittled her feelings, she would reconsider.
She’s doing this shit for me, and not because she can’t bear to lose me. It’s because she knows
I
can’t bear to lose
her.

“Seriously, Ana. All fuckery aside. You need to do this.”
You need to do this, but a part of me is overflowing with gladness and relief that you aren’t. And I hate myself for it.

But she had simply shrugged. “I’ve made my decision. Can we talk about something else?”

Nicolas had dropped the issue then, and it had never come up again. But that didn’t mean he forgot about it. Nor did he forget
why
she had done it, or the knowledge that his indignant persuasion was weak at best.
I could have made her go. I had the power to make her go, and I chose to pretend she couldn’t be swayed.

He rarely allowed his conclusions to travel down a philosophical path, but part of him wondered now if somehow all of these decisions had brought them to where they were here, and now. How every decision they made affected every subsequent one; how one choice can start a spiral of events that determine the course of your entire life.