Dear Aaron

by Mariana Zapata

  AHall80: Your argument right now is that you might get on my nerves?

  RubyMars: We’ve never met!

  AHall80: So

  AHall80: You said you love Florida.

  AHall80: And you know I’d like to meet you. I’d thought next time I came down to Louisiana, we could meet up… all it is is sooner. We’ve known each other for almost a year.

  AHall80: I don’t see a point in waiting

  RubyMars: Yeah, but…

  RubyMars: This isn’t us meeting up at a coffee shop or something.

  AHall80: We wouldn’t have met at a coffee shop

  RubyMars: Why not? We could before you went back to base.

  AHall80: No.

  RubyMars: ….

  AHall80: We could’ve met at a comic con if there was one going on

  RubyMars: You’re killing me.

  AHall80: Why?

  RubyMars: Because you know me too well.

  AHall80: That’s a problem?

  RubyMars: ….no

  RubyMars: I want to meet you. I really do, but going to a beach house with you is a big step.

  AHall80: Why?

  RubyMars: I already told you. We’ve never met.

  AHall80: In person

  AHall80: I don’t think we’re strangers. You know more about me than just about anyone I spent a year with in Iraq. More than most people I know in general, Rubes.

  AHall80: I like you. You like me. What’s the problem?

  RubyMars: I didn’t even know for sure you’d been in Iraq, Aaron.

  RubyMars: I hadn’t even known until right before you flew back that you were even based in Kentucky.

  RubyMars: I get why you didn’t tell me until now. I would’ve done the same, but….

  AHall80: You know now.

  RubyMars: This is crazy.

  AHall80: Do you think it is?

  AHall80: Maybe a little.

  AHall80: It’s fine

  RubyMars: Maybe a little?

  RubyMars: The sad part is that I don’t think it’s as crazy as I should. My mom would kill me for not immediately telling you no.

  RubyMars: This giant part of me wants to tell you yeah, I’ll go. But… we barely know each other.

  RubyMars: You know what I mean.

  AHall80: We know each other.

  RubyMars: You know we know each other. I know we know each other, but nobody else knows or gets that.

  RubyMars: We’ve never met.

  RubyMars: It would be like… an arranged marriage where we meet on the day of the wedding.

  RubyMars: I thought…

  AHall80: So?

  AHall80: I’m asking you, not anybody else. I wouldn’t ask anybody else. Only you.

  AHall80: Who says we don’t know each other?

  RubyMars: I don’t know… society?

  RubyMars: But what if I get on your nerves?

  RubyMars: We’ve never even talked on the phone.

  RubyMars: I don’t even know what you look like.

  RubyMars: I think I’m freaking out.

  AHall80: I doubt you’ll get on my nerves more than anybody else I’ve ever known.

  AHall80: ….I can send you a picture. You never asked for one.

  AHall80: Stop freaking out. You know me.

  RubyMars: !!!!!!

  RubyMars: I know I know you.

  AHall80: Call me

  RubyMars: Wut

  AHall80: Call me. I’ll know the instant I talk to you if I can put up with you for a week.

  RubyMars: Put up with me…

  AHall80: You know what I mean

  RubyMars: ….

  RubyMars: I think you should think about this more.

  AHall80: I have thought about it.

  AHall80: The entire flight back from Scotland

  AHall80: Most of the time I was in the bus

  AHall80: I’ve thought about it, Ruby.

  RubyMars: Maybe you should sleep on it.

  RubyMars: This is crazy. This is really crazy.

  AHall80: I already did.

  AHall80: You keep saying that.

  AHall80: You want to come to Florida.

  RubyMars: You’re stealing my words.

  RubyMars: You’re a pain.

  RubyMars: Why am I not telling you no?

  AHall80: Because you want to meet me too

  AHall80: Because we’re friends and we were going to meet one day.

  RubyMars: !!!!!

  RubyMars: Sleep on it tonight, and if tomorrow you wake up and you still want to talk on the phone and see if we’d get along, I’ll call you.

  RubyMars: I can’t believe I just typed that.

  RubyMars: My hands are shaking.

  RubyMars: I should feel like the stupid girl in a horror movie who goes on a date with a serial killer right now because I’m not telling you no.

  AHall80: It’s just me, Rubes.

  AHall80: But fine. I’ll sleep on it

  AHall80: I gotta know ASAP. We start driving there the day after tomorrow.

  AHall80: You could just fly and I could get you from the airport.

  RubyMars: You’re already making plans….

  RubyMars: No hard feelings at all if you change your mind.

  AHall80: All right. Deal.

  RubyMars: Deal.

  11:58 a.m.

  AHall80: Hey

  RubyMars: Hey

  AHall80: 270-555-5025

  RubyMars: ….

  AHall80: That’s my number. Call me.

  RubyMars: Did you even think about it??

  AHall80: That’s why I’m giving you my number.

  AHall80: You said sometimes you know immediately if you hit it off with somebody. We get along already on messenger. I’m not worried.

  RubyMars: …..

  RubyMars: Are you serious?

  AHall80: Yeah. Call me right now.

  RubyMars: Do you know what you’re asking of me?

  RubyMars: I’m still asleep, aren’t I?

  AHall80: For sure.

  AHall80: You’re awake. Call me.

  RubyMars: You’re sure?

  AHall80: Yes. Call.

  RubyMars: Fine, but if there’s awkward silence and we never recover from this, I’ll never forgive you. We had a good thing, you and me.

  AHall80: It’s too early for the sass to be out.

  RubyMars: ……

  RubyMars: I barely slept thanks to you.

  RubyMars: You better answer the phone and that better not be one of those numbers you give strangers when you don’t want them to know your real number. I’ll never get over it.

  AHall80: Just call, Rubes.

  Chapter 14

  Aaron wanted me to call him.

  Aaron wanted me to call him.

  Aaron wanted me to freaking call him.

  Because he was inviting me to go to Florida.

  Because all of a sudden, he’d decided he wanted to meet me. Spend time with me. And he didn’t want to wait until the next time he had leave.

  No pressure.

  I gulped as I sat there at the kitchen counter, picking at a bowl of Fruity Pebbles with my heart in my throat and my stomach attempting to do somersaults. I should have been freaking out at the idea of traveling with someone who, in a tiny way, was a stranger, but I wasn’t. Not really.

  It would be the first time I met someone in a different place for a purpose that didn’t revolve around fittings for dresses or costumes. I wouldn’t be Ruby in work mode. It would just be… me.

  That was the terrifying part. Just me and my poor heart that seemed to pick the worst people to have feelings for. People who didn’t see me as anything other than someone’s little sister and a friend.

  Then there was the whole “we had never met in person” aspect of it.

  Not like that had stopped me from pretty much falling in love with him or anything, so there was that. At some point, after a few months, I’d started going on dates with other guys to get my mind off him because I u
nderstood my feelings were pointless. He didn’t feel the same way. Plus, he’d told me to date. How much more obvious did I need our situation to be?

  And if none of that was reason enough to convince myself that going was a stupid idea, I knew what I would tell anyone who was going to meet a stranger they’d met online.

  I’d tell them they were out of their minds. And if I told any of my family members what I was thinking about doing, they would think the same thing.

  The thing was, for once in my life, my gut wasn’t telling me not to go do this crazy thing. It was telling me the exact opposite. Go, go, go. Despite being scared and worried about my safety. Hadn’t I just told him a couple of days ago that women traveled by themselves all the time?

  Then again, I couldn’t afford to buy a plane ticket. It would also be really irresponsible of me to charge something that expensive on my credit card when I didn’t exactly have a steady income coming in. I hadn’t been rich when I had two steady jobs; now, I was even further away from that point.

  Yet, even knowing all of this, I flexed my tingling fingers and typed in the phone number Aaron had given me.

  I ran up the stairs just as I hit the call icon, which in hindsight, wasn’t exactly the smartest decision I’d ever made because by the time my legs got me to the second floor, I was out of breath and still hadn’t made it to my room. My mom and Ben were at work, so they weren’t going to be looking at me like I was crazy for running up the stairs for the first time in my life.

  The phone kept on ringing as I dashed into my bedroom, and just as I thought a voice mail recording was going to pick up, I closed my door.

  The familiar clicking sound of someone answering the call had me freezing as I turned the lock, and then I heard it. My name. “Ruby?”

  I was panting and trying not to pant at the same time, as the baritone voice on the phone seemed to steamroll my entire soul to the carpet floor. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting from Aaron, but I hadn’t been expecting the not-too-soft but just-deep-enough voice on the other end of the line. It was just in the middle. Friendly. Deep but not too deep. A little raspy. Perfect.

  It was right then that it sank in.

  He’d answered. I’d called Aaron and he’d answered.

  I was on the phone with Aaron.

  “Rubes?” the male voice came over the phone again, still that beautiful pitch, a natural narrator, sounding… amused? What was he amused over? “You there? I hear you breathing.”

  I stopped breathing. Through my mouth at least. And I swallowed even though I was fairly certain it sounded more like a gulp.

  Then the man on the line chuckled, easygoing and almost sweet. “What are you doing?” he asked like he’d asked me the same question a thousand times before. Like we hadn’t been pen pals for almost a year and instead had been friends for the last ten.

  This was Aaron. Aaron. The only person other than my best friend who knew I’d stepped in human crap once. And just like that… “I ran up the stairs and I’m out of breath,” I told him, holding my phone away from my mouth at the end so he couldn’t hear me panting.

  His—Aaron’s— relaxed chuckle lengthened and somehow, someway, relaxed me. It reminded me of our IMs when we were messing with each other. Normal. Playful. Friendly. Like always. Like my friend. “Just from running up the stairs?” he asked, and for some reason I could picture him raising an eyebrow of a color I wasn’t sure of, like he was teasing me. Like normal.

  “It’s a lot of stairs.” I didn’t even realize I’d started smiling into the phone until I laughed. This was Aaron. No big deal. “I’m so out of shape.” And there it was. What in the world was coming out of mouth? “That’s embarrassing, I’m sorry. You can probably run ten miles at a time. The only time I run is… never. I never run. I don’t want to lie to you. I’m rambling, I’m sorry. I get nervous and I ramble.”

  “What are you nervous over? It’s me,” he drawled, steady and consistent, that slight Louisiana accent tinting his words just enough. It’s me, he’d told me a few times before, and each time, just like this one, shot an arrow straight into my heart that seemed to cripple every excuse I gave myself for why being more than a little in love with him was a stupid idea.

  Because it was a stupid idea.

  A really stupid idea.

  And you would figure with my track record of stupid ideas, I would know when to get rid of them.

  But I hadn’t. Knowing me, I wouldn’t because I was an idiot like that. Weak. I was so weak. That term “wearing your heart on your sleeve” had been written with me in mind.

  Oblivious to the fact he’d taken an imaginary baseball bat to my kneecaps with his tone and his words, he kept going in that smooth voice that I would listen to read the dictionary. “You sound…” He made a noise of hesitation.

  “Like an idiot?” came out of my mouth before I could stop it.

  Aaron laughed that time, clear and loud, sweeping my legs out from under me one more time, because it wasn’t like he could be awkward and graceless and unlikeable and laugh like a donkey. That would just be too easy. And fair. This was the guy who’d had two dozen crazy girlfriends for a reason. It all suddenly made sense. “No. Your voice is different than I thought it’d be.”

  Taking another deep breath to try and not sound like I was as out of shape cardio-wise as I was, I finally took a step away from my door, ignoring the clothes hanging off two chairs and the pile of dirty clothes that was way too close to the pile of clean clothes I’d pulled out of the dryer and dumped on the floor three days ago. This is Aaron, I reminded myself. I could do this. “What do you mean?” I asked him, sounding more like myself than I would’ve expected while on the verge of flipping the heck out.

  It wasn’t my imagination he made another hesitating noise.

  I got this sinking feeling…. “What? Did you think I was going to sound like Minnie Mouse?”

  His “Uh” didn’t even take a second. I burst out laughing, forgetting I was out of breath and that I’d been nervous all of ten seconds ago.

  “You did?”

  He started chuckling, like he was trying his best not to and failing. “I don’t know! I thought you were going to sound younger, not—”

  “You’re wounding me, Aaron. You’re wounding my pride here.” I snorted into my cell as I plopped down on the edge of my messy full-sized bed, feeling too at ease.

  It was his turn to laugh again, louder than his chuckle, the sound fuller and from the belly. “You don’t sound like you’re twenty-four,” he tried to argue, his words getting broken up by his steady laugh.

  “That’s not what you mean. You thought I was going to sound like a fifteen-year-old cheerleader from the Valley or something. Didn’t you?” There was no response, just a hint of a sound that was suspiciously distant… like he was laughing with his face away from the receiver… That was it, wasn’t it? “I cannot believe you.”

  “I’m sorry!” he tried to say, but he started laughing harder, that time directly into the phone, the sound making me smile so wide, I was glad no one was around to see it, otherwise they’d ask questions I didn’t want to answer.

  “It’s because I told you about the cosplay, isn’t it?”

  There was a pause by the man I’d been e-mailing for over year. “No—”

  “You’re a liar.”

  Aaron’s laughter suddenly got lower in volume, and I knew he’d pulled the phone away from his face again, for sure. My best friend did the same thing when she was laughing as hard as she could.

  “And the no-boyfriend thing,” I added.

  Even with the phone not being close to his mouth, I could tell he’d started cracking up all over again. I shouldn’t have loved the sound as much as I did, but… guilty.

  “I can’t believe you.”

  “You sound like you work for those phone sex lines,” he finally managed to get out, sometime ten minutes later.

  What? “No I don’t.” Had he not ever listened to his own voic
e before?

  “Have you heard yourself? I was watching TV last night after I messaged you and the commercials for those chat lines came on. You sound just like those girls….” He trailed off for a moment, his voice changing. “Are you sick?”

  I had no right to smile as wide as I was, but I did it anyway. “No, I’m not sick anymore. This is my normal voice, thanks.”

  There was another pause over the line and then, “Are you really Ruby?”

  “What do you think?” I snorted. “Do I need to ask about your butthole for you to believe me?”

  Aaron choked. I didn’t need to see him to know he’d done it. He didn’t try to hide it or pull the phone away from his mouth. “Now I know it’s you for sure.”

  I was a fool, and it didn’t matter. “Are you sure? Because I can,” I offered him before I could shut myself up.

  “I’m sure.”

  “If you change your mind…”

  Aaron shot out another laugh. “No, I know it’s you. We’ve been on the phone… four minutes and you’ve got me laughing more than I have in weeks. It couldn’t be anybody else but you, Ru.”

  I couldn’t count the number of times he’d said something to me like that in written word, but just like every other time he had, I felt like… I felt like I’d done something amazing. And I needed to get it together and control myself. I needed to act normal. Normal, Ruby.

  “You could’ve warned me before I called,” he said quietly before I could get my normal game together, but somehow I could tell he was smiling as he said the sentence.

  Plopping down on the edge of my bed, I pulled my knees up toward my chest, heels on the mattress side by side. I tried not to wonder what he was doing right then, what he looked like, what he was thinking… and I failed. Like usual. “What would you need a warning for?” I asked, almost hesitantly but definitely a little distracted.

  There was another soft chuckle. “For that voice. Jesus, Ru. You told me you were worried I wasn’t going to like you, so I had this plan in my head for how I’d get you to talk to me in case things got awkward. And you start giving me shit thirty seconds in,” he argued. “You threw my game off.”

  Act normal. Act normal. Don’t ask what his plan was. Don’t tell him you love his voice too. “You? I was nervous. I am nervous. My hands started sweating, then they started tingling, and then it took you half a year to answer the phone—”