CHAPTER 16 - EAMES
The sound, the fury, the rush of the storm.
All of it, all at once.
And then…silence.
No, not quite silence. Something better than that. The sound of all’s well, the sound of peace.
The sound of someone sleeping next to you, of blankets rustling as they found the next most comfortable spot.
The sound of snow at the window, but not in here where it was safe.
And then the light to go with the sound. I opened my eyes and focused on the unfamiliar ceiling. It looked like the ceiling in my room, but there were different edges here, different knots in the wood. Different colors.
Similar, but different.
I breathed in deep and turned my head in one motion toward the center of the bed. All I saw was a mass of blankets heaped in a mound on the other side of the bed.
I couldn’t help but smile at how different we were. Here I slept like a corpse comfortable in a coffin and Avery had built herself a cave out of most of the blankets in the entire state.
I felt myself getting hard at the thought of her next to me, as the memories of what we’d done the night before came flooding back, sending bolts of pleasure all throughout my body. I reached down and stroked myself, getting even harder, and everything else in my mind faded down to a single point as I contemplated the hot morning sex Avery and I could be having right this second.
And then the single point asserted itself, and expanded back into a whole hell of a lot more than that.
I turned back toward the ceiling. I knew I wanted to go again. Feeling my hard cock down there told me that much.
But at the same time…I knew we shouldn’t.
All of this, everything that had happened between us, it was all a dream. It was a nice dream, to be sure, but even it had been real, even if it had really happened, it was better for both of us in the long run if we acted like it was a dream.
If we got up from this bed and walked away from each other when the storm cleared and the path back to the real world was open.
Because the storm would eventually tire itself out and end, and then the real world would come calling for each of us in turn. I’d have to go back to Meridian and hash things out with my father.
Avery would have to go back to her family and figure out how to get them on the same page about what she wanted to do with her life.
I had realized at some point in the last couple days that running away from my problems wasn’t the answer. I couldn’t be the kind of man I wanted to be and shirk my family responsibilities at the same time - I was a Beckett, and the two things went hand in hand together — neither could be pulled apart from the rest.
That’s not how this worked. Not for me.
But then there was the girl lying next to me, sleeping through this blissfully. I turned back to watch her mound, figuring out from its general shape where her head was. I imagined how gorgeous she must look while asleep under all those blankets. Unaware of anything going on around her.
I wished I could have just a small piece of that kind of freedom, that kind of clarity.
I knew, though that that kind of freedom and clarity was somewhere for me. It just wasn’t…here. I knew it was back in Meridian - I couldn’t run away from it any longer.
I needed to figure out how to become a Beckett, how to live with the mantle of my family, before I could figure out what it meant to be Eames Beckett.
And I needed to square that with my need to find out who I was. I’d searched all around the world and hadn’t found the answer to that fundamental question yet. It tore at me, haunted me, but I still didn’t feel much closer to the answer than I had when I’d started this journey.
Maybe…the answer lay back in Meridian? Maybe wandering around the world searching for myself had been just a way to avoid the truth…that maybe I really was my father’s son, and that the family business and family responsibilities were what I needed?
I’d spent years never thinking that could be the case, but what if that was just teenage and 20-something angst and desire for rebellion?
Maybe I’d just been running away from a bigger truth by wandering around the world. I’d helped others thinking it would help myself, but…I knew in my heart that I hadn’t yet found the peace that I’d been looking for this entire time.
Where was it?
Avery stirred and pulled the blankets back, uncovering her head while she dozed, and I marveled at how someone so peaceful could be so strong facing what she had.
I couldn’t imagine going through the passing of a sibling, and not only that, the effects it would have on my family that would never go away. And yet, Avery still fought against them for the right to make her own way in the world - I couldn’t believe her strength.
She pulled the blankets back over her head and I smiled before turning to look back at the window. The snow was still coming down, and for a few minutes it felt like the storm would never end, and Avery and Marty and Clara and I would spend the rest of our lives in this place.
I knew, of course, that that wasn’t true, but it kinda felt like it.
It would be a few more days at most. And then I’d go back to Meridian and hash things out with my father. Maybe I’d join the family business and carry on the name — the idea didn’t seem so foreign to me as it once did.
Or maybe, I had just realized that sometimes the answers to our questions weren’t exactly where we expected them to be.
That left Avery on my mind. She’d pulled me to such high highs and such low lows over the short time I’d known her, and I had opened up to her, in my perhaps limited way, more than I had to anyone before.
It wouldn’t last, of course — we were too different for that to be a practical reality.
But for a few days more, it could. We could keep playing house like we were until the storm went away.
And that would have to be enough for me.
It took a little while, but I managed to fall back asleep.