Chapter Twenty-Two #3
Jamie wore his black coat even though the day was fine.
He had promised his father he would disappear and stay in a motel near the airport, but he wanted these few last days, which were mostly spent in bed with Ava.
By now he’d realized that he couldn’t get rid of his magic even if he wanted to.
He’d had it his whole life and had used his skills to cheat at school from the time he was a boy, never studying yet knowing all the answers for his exams just by looking inside his teachers.
As a teen, he’d considered his skills to be nothing more than techniques that allowed him to perform party tricks.
He could read a girl’s mind and likely embarrass her, open liquor cabinets, and start cars even when he didn’t have the keys, all petty parlor tricks.
Perhaps he’d always known there was more to it.
His father always questioned him about his wrongdoings as if there were some evil magic behind the choices he made.
Did you try, or did it just happen? Did you even try to control yourself?
Ava was waiting for him at the café, in a dark corner.
She’d planned to tell him the truth about her condition, but when he leaned over to embrace her, she recalled that Rose Bridewell had let her true love go so that their parting would not be as painful for him.
It would never do any good to force someone to stay.
Jamie’s plane didn’t leave for hours, but already he’d begun to think of himself as Luke Burroughs, and perhaps that was the reason he felt set free from his family history at last. After the incident at the museum, he’d gotten a tattoo, something no one in his family would have approved of.
The studio in Central Square had seemed abandoned when Jamie first arrived, but there was a light on and, luckily for him, the owner, who had recently moved away, had returned to collect some of his belongings.
The tattoo artist recognized Jamie when he opened the door, and before he could stop himself, he punched his unexpected visitor, who stood there stunned, blood pouring out of his nose.
“What did I ever do to you?” Jamie asked the glowering man, who had immediately backed off, shaking his bruised knuckles, muttering to himself.
Jamie hated to think how many people he’d hurt and offended, and he certainly couldn’t account for much of his bad behavior in the past. The truth was, he was angry and he acted like some wretched dog who believed that fighting was his only way out.
The tattoo artist explained that Jamie been the cause of his jail sentence, that he’d been incarcerated for selling Jamie some marijuana. That seemed a lifetime ago to them both, and there in the near-empty apartment, they decided to let bygones be bygones.
A tattoo could be a love letter or an apology, and the one Carrick had inked was both.
When Jamie revealed the black hyacinth on his arm, Ava knew the truth.
He was finally admitting who he was, to her and to himself.
She thought it might be a beginning, and she almost told him the truth about her situation.
Then he showed her his passport with his new name, and she knew it was over.
He was the man in her dreams she could never keep up with, even though she ran so fast her feet were bleeding.
“Mr. Burroughs,” Ava said. “This is not a proper goodbye.”
Jamie took her hand under the table. The café was crowded with customers, and the waitress was hovering, but Ava knew a place where they could be alone.
“Where are we going?” Jamie asked, already willing to follow her anywhere.
“You’ll see. If I turn the lights on.”
Ava led Jamie to a tiny storage room, and he bent to kiss her before the door was closed behind them, his hands already inside her clothes. There were shelves of vegetables and sacks of coffee beans in the storage room. They locked the door and left the light turned off.
“Are you sure?” Jamie said, his voice thick.
Ava was quick to let him know that she was when she kissed him.
He wasn’t Luke Burroughs, he was only himself, the man she’d fallen in love with without even trying.
Ava could have told him the truth, but it would only have broken his heart, and what was the point of that?
There’d been enough damage done already.
His suitcase took up space in the storeroom and there was almost nowhere to move, but they managed.
They were desperate, and there was so little time.
The plane ticket was in the pocket of his coat.
Leave the scene of the crime, that’s the last thing his father had told him. Get as far away from Cambridge as you can. It will do you good.
A prep cook from the kitchen pounded on the door and cried, “Hey, I need the canned tomatoes,” and Ava laughed despite herself but Jamie growled “Go away,” because they weren’t about to stop, and eventually the cook gave up and let them be.
Frankly, they didn’t care who was outside that small room, or how loud the patrons’ calls for espresso were.
They had known what was between them the first night they met, and they knew it now.
“It’s still not enough of a goodbye,” Jamie told her when it came time for him to go.
“You’ll be back, Mr. Burroughs,” Ava said, and he laughed, then leaned in to kiss her one last time, and that was that.
The door opened, let in a flicker of light, and closed.
Once he was gone, Ava remained in the storeroom, but she didn’t cry.
She told herself there was the future to think of, one that had already begun.
I’m just telling you a story, Jamie had said, a story about a woman whose beloved watched over her from the treetops, even when she could no longer see him.
Love has nothing to do with the here and now. That’s what he’d said. It’s what we have no matter what else happens.