Authors: Mimsy Hale
The entire day, all of the smiles and the easy laughter, the renewed faith he’d felt blossoming in some deep and forgotten place… now it all feels as if a gargantuan joke has been played on him, and that the person behind it has taken an ice cream scoop to his insides, gouging out every last shred until nothing but a husk is left behind.
Why isn’t this more satisfying?
Aiden thinks.
I’ve been waiting years to say all of this to him. Now what?
He changes into his pajamas and attempts to write an entry in his journal; he tries counting sheep; he even briefly considers jerking off to work out his frustration before thinking better of it—none of it is any use. Time drags on, and Aiden rolls onto his back, pillowing his head on his arms and counting the tiles from the wall to the small chandelier and back again.
The soft cotton of the sheets is too hot against his skin, and they tangle around his legs as he rolls onto his side in search of a cooler and more comfortable position. He isn’t even angry anymore, not really. The anger has been overtaken by a deep, encompassing sadness that reminds Aiden of everything he forgot; it was so easy to hold onto the anger for so long that the good things had slipped his mind—his dad’s pride in the things Aiden accomplished; his ever-present and slightly ridiculous sense of humor; even his deep, abiding love for throwing Monty Python quotes into everyday conversation. It had all fallen by the wayside. Aiden has
missed
his father, and it’s hitting him all at once just how much. He was expecting two days of a bite-swollen tongue and an awkward knot in his throat, and instead, he got his dad back—right before he caused the chasm to widen further. He should have moved on from this long ago—after all, in their own separate ways, both of his parents have—but he has held onto the anger and loss and utter heartbreak for so many years that it’s burned into his skin, now; it has become part of who he is, and he’s scared of finding out who he might be without it.
Tap-tap-tap.
Aiden throws back the covers, trying to decide if he’d rather see Jake or his dad at the door. He straightens his pajamas and crosses the room, opening the door to see Jake standing before him with his arms crossed over his chest. They regard one another for a long moment. Aiden starts to speak, and within a split second Jake steps forward and places his hand over Aiden’s mouth. Their faces are only centimeters apart; Aiden is suspended in the moment, his heart racing in his chest, blood rushing in his ears.
“Aren’t you tired of this yet?” Jake asks, his eyes soft as he draws his hand back and leans against the doorframe.
After a pause, Aiden nods. “Is anyone still awake?”
“Fiona went to bed, but your dad’s still out on the patio. Aiden, as proud as I was of you for using your words earlier, I think—”
“I know. I know I have to fix this.”
Jake nods and steps aside. “I’m going to bed, but I’ll be up for a while. Maybe we could watch our movie? I know that
Hairspray
always makes you feel better.”
Aiden gives him a tight, crooked smile, murmurs a thank you and makes his way downstairs. Just as Jake promised, he finds George sitting in the middle of the curving taupe couch, one socked foot resting on the upholstered top of the coffee table. Aiden stands awkwardly half in and half out of the doorway to the patio and looks at his father,
really
looks at the man before him, with his usually tidy hair slightly mussed, his eyes bloodshot and beset by dark circles and the wrong kind of lines around his mouth. He looks more tired than Aiden feels.
Slowly, Aiden moves toward the end of the couch and perches on the arm. He glances out over the backlit silhouettes of the roses that border the waist-height wall separating the patio from the yard, and searches for the words.
George sits up straight and leans forward, forearms resting along his thighs, fingers splayed. Cautiously, he says, “Son, about what happened downstairs. Everything you said—”
“Dad, wait,” Aiden interrupts, turning to face him but not yet able to meet his eyes. “I’m—really sorry. I completely embarrassed myself, and I was unforgivably rude to you… I usually have better manners than that, I swear.”
“Aiden, the fact is that I let you down in the worst way a father can let his son down. I wasn’t there for you when you needed me most, and I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am.”
“I thought it would feel really great to finally get all of it out, but…” Aiden trails off, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth and scrubbing his hand across the back of his neck. “But things are actually… things are good now, for both of you. Mom has Stephen, you have Fiona, and I feel like I just watched a video of myself as a toddler throwing a tantrum in the middle of a grocery store or something.”
“You had every right,” George says gently, but Aiden shakes his head.
“No. No, what I said earlier was right. I’m not a kid anymore, so I should stop acting like one.”
Aiden knows that his father can’t disagree, and he doesn’t; silence falls heavily between them like a curtain, tapestry-thick. But he also knows that his father desperately wants to fix what he rent asunder, and Aiden is finally beginning to admit to himself that this is a desire they share.
“Do you miss being home?” George asks. The question throws Aiden off. He considers it for a long moment.
“No. Brunswick… never really felt like home, not even when—when things were good. Before,” he says. The words sound stilted and awkward and true.
“Where
does
feel like home?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“Well, whether you use it or not, you’ve always got a home here,” George says, and Aiden’s throat closes. “Do you think we could start fresh?”
Aiden shakes his head, glancing down at the front of his threadbare Bowdoin T-shirt and blinking back the prickle. “No, but—” Aiden stops, looks up to meet George’s gaze and says, “I think we can move forward.”
George smiles, and his hand lands heavily on Aiden’s knee. It’s a start.
1,648 miles
Day Twenty-two: Virginia
“Clouds are coming up on us,” Aiden murmurs, eyes trained on his side mirror. “Think we’ll outrun ‘em?”
Jake glances into the mirror on his side at the dark plumes gaining on the azure stretched out above them and shakes his head. “We might’ve if you hadn’t insisted on using a map instead of the GPS.”
“Hey, you were the one who wanted to drive when this was
my
big surprise for
you
,” Aiden counters. “At least we’re nearly there.”
“So what’s in Luray, anyway?” Jake asks, taking in the land surrounding the highway that will soon become winter scrub, and the white siding of the farmhouse-style homes beyond it.
“Just keep following the road. And believe me, you’re going to love it. Matt and I made Mom and Dad take us, like, once a month. We used to run around the place pretending we were Indiana Jones. Well—Matt was Indiana Jones. I was always his sidekick.”
Jake bites the inside of his cheek and controls his expression—Aiden has always been a little touchy about being in his older brother’s shadow. Still, Jake knows that despite Matthew’s level of self-involvement and his tendency to give Aiden unsolicited advice, he generally means well. “So it’s somewhere you can have adventures, then.”
“The
best
adventures.”
“And Indiana Jones usually ran around in jungles and caves…” Jake trails off, a horrible thought forming from the jumbled mess that took up residence in his mind somewhere in Delaware. “Last time I checked, there were no jungles in Virginia.”
“Turn right up here.”
“Where—” Jake abruptly falls silent as he pulls the RV to a stop at the red light before the turn. He leans forward over the steering wheel and looks up at the tall green sign topped with something that resembles a stout, misshapen dog bone. The sign’s white letters proclaim:
Luray Caverns.
“Ade, seriously?”
Aiden doesn’t even seem to be listening; rather, he’s grinning out the window like one possessed, giddy with the joy of being somewhere that, Jake realizes, represents only good and happy things. As the light turns green and Jake slowly swings the RV to the right, Aiden bounces in his seat and shoots Jake a radiant smile.
“Does it really feel
that
good to be back?” Jake asks.
“It really does,” Aiden says, leaning so far forward over the dashboard that his seat belt locks. “You’ll come exploring with me, right?”
“Just so long as I don’t have to wear a fedora,” Jake answers, hoping against hope that whatever tour they’re about to embark upon does not involve episodes of total darkness. “I’m not nearly swarthy enough to rock that look.”
Aiden laughs at that and continues smiling as they park and make their way past the tall walls of the Garden Maze and into the visitor’s center. Once he has handed over their tickets and signed them in with no small measure of glee—all of which Jake observes with a half-amused, half-trepidatious smile—they’re met by a girl who looks no older than a college freshman. She’s tiny, five feet tall at most, with mousy brown hair tied back into a ponytail and ice blue eyes set deep in a face full of freckles. Over a plain white button-down tucked into a pair of skinny khakis, she wears a hunter green blazer, its chest pocket embroidered with the words
Luray Caverns
over the tagline,
What will you discover?
Hopefully, t
he way out,
Jake thinks,
or failing that, the gift shop. I’ll buy Aiden something tacky and obnoxious to pay him back for dragging me into the middle of all this nature.
“Hi, guys! I’m Jen,” the guide introduces herself, her ponytail swinging from side to side as she looks between them. She balances her clipboard on her hip to shake each of their hands in turn.
“I’m Aiden, and this is Jake,” Aiden says, shooting her a charming smile.
“Happy to have you both,” she says brightly. “Have either of you visited us before?”
“He has,” Jake says.
“He isn’t really much for nature, but I’m hoping to change that,” Aiden chimes in, bumping his hip against Jake’s.
“Honestly,” Jen begins, leaning closer and lowering her voice conspiratorially, “I
hate
nature. But that’s the great thing about this experience, because it’s more about the history and what
you
take away from it.
“Now, we’re pretty quiet around here today, and usually they don’t run the tours without at least eight people,” she continues. Out of the corner of his eye, Jake sees Aiden’s shoulders droop. “But since you guys are the only booking for the next hour or so, I don’t see why we can’t just go do our thing.”
“Great!” Aiden exclaims, and turns a thousand-watt grin on Jake. “What do you think?”
Jake looks at him, taking in the flush of hope in Aiden’s dark eyes and the slight twitch in his fingertips as he brings his hands together and clasps them in front of his chest. Already beginning to feel his resolve crumble, Jake glances around the brightly lit and inviting visitor’s center. The snapshots of the caverns adorning the walls spark a somewhat foreign sense of intrigue in him.
“All right,” he says. “Let’s go.”
The caverns are magnificent
. Jake finds himself unexpectedly enthralled in each and every room; and despite Jen and Aiden’s repeated attempts to draw him into their chatter, he pays almost no attention to their animated discussion of the history of the place. He’s strangely spellbound by its quiet, natural grandeur, and by the time the tour is nearly over, his neck aches from looking up.
“Told you this place was magical,” Aiden says, his voice carrying over the harmonies resonating from the Great Stalacpipe Organ. Jake can feel the lower notes reverberating deep within his chest, and he shoots Aiden a genuine, humbled smile.
“You were right,” he concedes, quickly adding, “but please don’t do the told-you-so dance. We’re still in a cave.”
“I swear, you guys make one of the cutest couples I’ve ever seen,” Jen says, and Jake turns to her in alarm.
“Oh no, we’re not—I mean, we’re…” Aiden trails off.
“Yeah, no, we’re—we’re just friends,” Jake agrees. The words taste stale.
“But… crap. I’m sorry,” Jen says, glancing down at her clipboard and back up again. “It’s just… you guys, with all your sniping at each other, and the—the
looks,
you know, you’re like one of those adorable married couples and… and I’m just going to stop talking now.”
The organ’s music fades for a few moments as the song ends and another begins, and Jake can feel Aiden’s eyes on him during the pregnant silence. He doesn’t dare look back. Since Rehoboth Beach, they’ve each retreated to their separate trenches. Whatever lies between them has become a no-man’s land, to be traversed carefully—if at all—and with no small measure of trepidation. And most definitely not in a damned cave.
“Only as awkward as we let it be,” Jen finally says with a bright smile, and as she inclines her head to lead them on through the next archway, Jake breathes a sigh of relief.
When they’re in the final room of the tour, all lingering traces of awkwardness swept away, Aiden turns to Jen and asks, “Do you guys still do the same thing with the lights in here?”
“
How
do you keep remembering this stuff?” Jen asks incredulously, and Aiden shrugs with a grin.
“What thing with the lights?” Jake asks.
“We usually finish out the tour by turning off all the lights and letting people experience true darkness, and what it would have been like for the first people to discover the caves,” Jen explains. Jake tenses. “Really get a feel for it, you know? I mean, there’s nothing else like it. Usually there are two of us with a group, and one of us will go switch off the lights while the other stays down here, but since there’s only one of me, can I trust you guys not to go insane and start creating havoc?”
“Of course,” Aiden answers, waving her off.
“Alrighty, then. I’ll be back in a couple minutes,” Jen says. She turns on her heel, strides toward the exit and calls over her shoulder, “Stay put, guys!”