Dear Aaron

by Mariana Zapata

  And I was still losing it.

  I made a circle over my heart, swallowing, feeling like an idiot but at the same time like not an idiot because this guy who said he was Aaron, and acted like Aaron and sounded like Aaron, was crouching by my knees after making me think I was on my own in a city I’d never been before because he’d changed his mind.

  Hands I hadn’t even realized were cupping my knees, gave them a squeeze. “Hold on, okay? I’ll be right back.” Another squeeze. “Right, right back,” he promised me as I sat there. I blinked and felt a third squeeze, and then he was up on his feet and gone, jogging somewhere I wasn’t sure of because I didn’t keep watching him.

  I rubbed the skin over my heart, my fingers clammy over the exposed skin above my shirt. My hands weren’t shaking, but it sure felt like the rest of me was. A part of me wanted to decide I’d changed my mind, go back inside the terminal, buy another ticket, go home and pretend this hadn’t happened. I could just tell everyone—

  I just barely thought of “everyone” before the word fell like a wet blanket over my entire nervous system.

  I couldn’t go back home. No way. My family would never let me live this trip down. They’d think something bad happened or think that I couldn’t handle going somewhere by myself and that would be it. No one would ever let me forget it. Most importantly, I would never, ever do anything that made me squirm ever again. That was the whole purpose of this trip. I wanted to do this. I’d wanted to come. I wanted to be here, and it had nothing to do with them.

  I didn’t want to go back.

  If I did…

  Everything was fine. It was okay. I hadn’t been left. Maybe I wasn’t what he was hoping for, but he was here. Aaron was here.

  Aaron who was so good-looking my eyeballs could have started hurting in the three minutes we’d been face to face if I hadn’t been flipping out internally. And it wasn’t a big deal that he didn’t look like what I’d pictured. That if I’d known he looked the way he did, maybe I wouldn’t have been making jokes about his butthole.

  And then I wondered why I didn’t have boyfriends. Why I couldn’t get one person to love me like more than a friend. Why I’d given my virginity to some guy I’d thought I would marry one day and all it had done was make him apologize and blush and beg me not to tell my brother because it had been a mistake. I had been a mistake.

  Aaron was my friend. I’d always known this, and I’d liked him before I’d seen him. I’d known nothing more would come of this friendship. Mostly though, I knew that none of this had anything to do with Hunter. Aaron was as different from that idiot as one could get.

  I saw green Nikes and light brown hair on a pair of male legs first. Aaron’s steps were fast as he jogged slowly over to me before dropping back into a crouch. The next thing I knew, he was shoving a bottle of water at me, one hand going to the spot right above my knee where it met my thigh. He cupped it. Me. Squeezing over the tights I’d put on under my brown skirt in case I got cold on the plane.

  “Drink some,” he told me in a low, insistent voice, as he shoved the bottle closer to my chest.

  I raised my eyes to meet his. His face was right by mine, maybe six inches away. I hadn’t noticed that I was leaning forward, that my elbows were on the middle of my thighs even as one hand rested between my boobs. Aaron’s face, this face I’d never seen before five minutes ago, was open and worried. That mouth that was almost too full for a man’s mouth was strained, and he looked like… well, he looked like he didn’t think of me as a stranger he’d felt bad for and invited on this trip. He didn’t look let down. Because you couldn’t look at someone you didn’t care for the way he was watching me, eyebrows knitted together, lines at the corners of eyes, and a pursed mouth.

  Those eyes of his, which were a warm mahogany color, were on me. “Drink some. Take a deep breath,” he repeated, as his palm came off my thigh and he reached forward with two big palms. I didn’t need to look down to know one set of his fingers was on the lid, the other set suddenly covering mine as he turned and twisted the lid off before nudging it at me again.

  All I could do was watch him as I lifted the bottle to my mouth.

  It was the most self-conscious drink of my life having Aaron balancing on the tips of his toes in front of me almost eye level. He watched me so closely, with all that golden skin and that amazing bone structure I had rarely seen anywhere other than a high fashion magazine, that I expected to choke on the water and spit it all over him or something stupid like that. I watched him, and he watched me. And I wondered what he was thinking.

  Mostly, I thought he’s here.

  I smiled at him, anxious and nervous, as I took him in, and he took me in too. He smiled in return, not at all anxious or awkward, just… worried. I knew that look well enough from my own brothers. I could see it for what it was.

  This was Aaron. My friend. And something told me I had nothing to worry about. I didn’t need to freak out any longer. I’d known what I was getting into coming here, and I couldn’t let that ruin my weekend. I could make the best out of this. I could be the best female friend he’d ever had. I could be the little sister figure he already looked at me as.

  I could, I thought as he put a hand on my shoulder and slid it down the length of my upper arm.

  But it would be unbelievably hard.

  “You all right?” he whispered. He still had that smile on his face that honestly made my heart start beating a little weird again, but in a way that had nothing to do with a panic attack or palpitations.

  I nodded at him, sensing my unease slowly going away as I took him in, this guy who knew more about me than a lot of other people I’d known for years. This guy who brought me water and squeezed my leg when I told him I was on the verge of losing it. This was the man I’d become friends with. The man I’d tried talking myself out of having a crush on and failing, all because of e-mails and messages.

  This was Aaron. My friend. The person who had invited me to Florida because he wanted to meet me, and he was smiling at me, looking more worried than he should have.

  “You sure? Your heart is okay?” he asked so earnestly I had to stop breathing for a second.

  I plucked the bottle cap from his fingers and looked down as I screwed it on. “It’s okay. I was nervous.”

  “You’re not anymore?” he asked, and it took everything in me to not glance up as he spoke.

  I lifted up a shoulder and let out another breath from my mouth to calm down even more. “No.” My mouth twisted, and that time I couldn’t stop myself from glancing up at him. He was still watching me so closely, I had to glance down for a second before looking up again. “I lied. I am. Just a little.”

  That pretty mouth twisted, his eyes going nowhere. “I thought I could watch the doors better if I was on the side of the lot, but this van was blocking right where you were standing,” he explained. His mouth formed a soft smile that my entire body wasn’t sure how to handle. At the same time, he put his hand back on my knee like it had always been there. His voice was slow and still so low only I could hear. “I wasn’t going to leave you.”

  There went my heart once more.

  He blinked, and it was like he could read my mind. “You really thought I wasn’t coming?”

  I shrugged all over again.

  “I—” He shook his head, and I finally noticed his hair wasn’t just neat, he’d combed it a little. There might have even been gel in it. It was short but just long enough to be able to be parted. “I don’t know what to say, Rubes.” It was the reluctant smile that crept over his face that was so unexpected, so much like the sun coming out over a cloudy day, I forgot about his hair. If that smile wasn’t enough, he squeezed my knee one more time. “Maybe we should text for a minute first. Break the ice.”

  It was me who laughed, all awkward and choppy and still sounding like there were tears hanging around the back of my throat. “Maybe.” I laughed again, and that time it was watery and a bit broken, and luckily I hadn’t tried
to act like I was tough because he’d know right then that I’d been on the verge of crying because I thought he wasn’t coming.

  That handsome, model-like, slightly sun-weathered face flashed me a grin before tipping toward the bottle of water I was holding between my hands. “Take another drink.”

  I undid the cap and took another drink. He was still watching me. Why was he watching me so much?

  That pink mouth went tight as his eyes scanned over my face with a slowness that made me want to fidget and ask him to stop. “Why didn’t you saying anything?” he asked, still being so quiet.

  Dragging the rim of the bottle from my mouth down to my chin and leaving it there, suspended in the air, I blinked, taking him in one more time and eating up the lines of his bones and the clear skin of his face and thinking he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Of course he was. “I’ve told you everything.” Did he have a dimple too or was I imagining it? “I promise,” I assured him, trying to think of what I could have deliberately missed.

  Aaron’s golden eyebrows rose just a little, just a little, that smirk-ish smile still playing at the corners of his mouth. “Almost everything.”

  I lowered the bottle to my lap and frowned. “What do you think I didn’t tell you?”

  Those brown eyes swept over my face, and he squeezed my knees again before planting his feet flat. He started straightening, his face pausing while he was still eye level with me when he said way too evenly, “You could’ve told me your mom and sister are the ugly ones in the family.”

  I didn’t even get a chance to throw my head back before I laughed, laughed like I hadn’t just been on the verge of crying and then on the edge of having a panic attack. I just laughed my butt off. Loud and dorky and big.

  When I managed to open an eye to see what he was doing, and what that was, was him crouched all over again in front of me like he’d been, with his cheeks and neck colored.

  He was blushing.

  And that only made me blush.

  Leaning forward, his words and his pink cheeks and his smile with a dent in it still fresh on my mind, I asked him, still practically whispering, “Are you drunk again?”

  That dimple that was for sure a dimple went even deeper and his smile went full-powered on my heart, almost knocking the wind and every thought out of me when he snickered.

  “Are you going to hug me or are you just going to stand there?” I asked him.

  I had no idea right then that, for as long as my soul resided in my body and I could reminisce on the best parts of my life, I’d remember how Aaron Hall leaned forward and wrapped those long, tan arms around my back and pulled me into his chest. Me who was still on the bench. The way he hugged the hell out of me would be something that sickness and death could never take away. And in the time it took me to suck in a breath, I put my own arms around him. I’d hugged dozens of men before. Dozens and dozens, hundreds of times. And Aaron’s upper body was just as wide and solid in front of mine like the best of them.

  But better. So much better. Because his hug was the greatest. He smelled like a hint of cologne with cedar in it. And I would remember it forever.

  My friend had come. This man whose beauty had nothing to do with what was on the outside. I only tightened my arms around him and felt him do the same thing to me. He hugged me and kept on hugging me, one hand going to the back of my head and sliding its way back down again. Affection. That was exactly what he was giving me, and I drank every sip of it up.

  When he pulled back after a few moments, those tan hands went to my shoulders and stayed there. His face couldn’t have been more than a foot away as he asked one more time with that expression that I couldn’t properly process, “You didn’t say. Are you hungry?”

  I couldn’t help but do anything other than nod, taking in his features and filing them away for later. Who would have known?

  Aaron smiled again as he reached out to take the handle of my suitcase from where it was propped against the wall. Who or when it had been moved, I had no idea, but later on, when I could think about it, I’d be happy no one had stolen it while I’d been having a mini-meltdown. “Let’s go. I was waiting to eat in case you were hungry too.”

  I nodded and watched as he pulled my suitcase to his side, then tipped his head across the street toward the giant parking lot. Without another word, I followed just to the right of him, the suitcase on his left, finally taking him in fully. In a V-neck, olive green T-shirt that fit the width of his shoulders perfectly, brown cargo shorts that showed off tan, muscular calves, and running shoes, he looked so… normal.

  But better.

  Aaron must have sensed being eyeballed because he glanced over his shoulder and raised those sun-lightened eyebrows. “Do I have something on my face?”

  I could feel my cheeks get red; that’s how bad it was getting caught. “No. It’s just… weird to see you in person.” I hesitated for a second and told him the truth, because I’d promised not to lie, and something in my gut said if he’d known when I was full of crap online, he could tell the same thing in person. “You’re just… not as hard on the eyes as I thought you were going to be.”

  His mouth did that hesitating grin again that fluctuated between a grin and a controlled smile before he winked.

  He winked. At me.

  Then he said the most perfect words that could have come out of his mouth. “If it makes you feel better, we can talk about my….” He waved the hand closest to me behind his butt. A butt I’d have to totally catalogue later when it wasn’t so obvious.

  I pressed my lips together and tried not to smile.

  And I totally failed at it.

  Chapter 16

  Aaron was smiling at me.

  This could-be runway model, with cheekbones that could cut glass if they wanted to, a jaw that was so defined it would give a sculptor a hard-on, and a mouth that must have given hundreds of women over the years countless raunchy dreams, was smiling at me from across the table. Me. And he wasn’t looking anywhere else.

  The most important place this not-looking-anywhere-else part included was the waitress who had been playfully pouting and trying her absolute best to make eye contact with him when she’d come by to take our drink orders a few minutes go. She’d struck out. Then she’d struck out again when she’d brought them over and taken our food order. Her squeezing her boobs together with her upper arms hadn’t been enough to get him to look elsewhere, and she had girls even I had glanced at twice. But Aaron? He’d been constantly sneaking looks and smiles at me while we’d been in the car, and hadn’t stopped doing so since we’d been seated at the café he’d pulled over at.

  I’d be fooling myself if I tried to deny that on the first leg of the drive, I taken some sneaky glances to my left. Neither one of us had said much yet. When I hadn’t been busy looking at Aaron, I’d been focused on the scenery outside the window, eating up the darkening landscape that was so different from what I was used to back in Houston.

  Most importantly, as we sat facing one another, I was smiling at him cautiously and he was giving me that smirking little smile that seemed like it had secrets stitched in some compartment below his practically flawless skin. If he had pores or blemishes, I hadn’t been able to see a single one… and I’d looked.

  Luckily, Aaron wasn’t as quiet as I was, because it was him who finally broke our silence with his elbows on the table we shared. He had his chin on his hand, not looking at all like he’d driven hours on end to get to the beach house and then had to drive to get me.

  “You look really tired,” was what he decided to start off with.

  I blinked and bit down on my bottom lip as I struggled not to take that as an insult. “Do I?”

  The corners of his mouth flexed upward just a bit, a smirk hiding in plain sight. “You know what I mean.”

  Uh.

  His mouth lost the battle when that quiet laugh of his came out. “You know what I mean.”

  Raising an eyebrow, I nodded enthusiasti
cally, trying not to smile and mostly failing at it. “You’re saying I look like hell.”

  One of those hands that had been on my knees less than an hour ago palmed a lean cheek. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  I squinted at him that time and tipped my head to the side. “Pretty sure that’s what it seems like you’re saying.”

  “It’s not,” he argued, his gaze still totally focused on me.

  I wrinkled my nose. “It’s okay. I haven’t slept much the last two nights thanks to someone I know. I’m sure I do look like hell.”

  That had him groaning as he seemed to push his chair closer to the table from the scrape of wood on tile. “I didn’t say you look like hell. You just look tired.”

  I’m not going to smile. I’m not going to smile. “There’s a difference?”

  He cocked his head to the side and made his eyes go wide as he nodded. Apparently it was his turn to bring out the sass. “Yeah.”

  Aaron stared at me and I stared back at him.

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm,” he repeated.

  I smirked and he smirked right back.

  This really was just like our conversations online. It relaxed me. Made me feel better about… everything. “If you say so.” I held back a grin, snickering before letting out a yawn I tried my best to muffle but failed at. Wanting things to be as normal as they could be, I fidgeted with my hands, trying to think of what to ask him. Of all the things I could have brought up, I went with, “How was your drive?”

  Those muscular shoulders I hadn’t gotten to ogle much yet both went up casually. “Fine.” The hand, the one he wasn’t using to cup the side of his face, reached blindly toward his beer. Those brown, brown eyes still hadn’t left my direction. “Your flight was okay?”

  “Besides having an old man use my shoulder as a pillow, and having my mom yell at me before I walked out of the house, everything was good.”