He groaned and it made me think of all the times he’d typed out something that conveyed the same emotion, making this all seem so much more real by the second. More safe. “She was pissed?” he asked.
I wouldn’t say she was pissed, but…. “You can call it that.”
The corners of his eyes wrinkled, and I wondered if the lines were from all the time he spent outside or if it was from him smiling. “She doesn’t know me. I’d be surprised if she wasn’t worried I’d kidnap you and sell you on the black market.” Those irises raked over me for what seemed like the hundredth time since he picked me up, making me feel just a hair self-conscious and grateful I’d hit the airport bathroom before I’d gone outside to wait for him. “She loves you. You’re lucky.”
How the hell he managed to say the same exact thing I thought was beyond me, but I let it go.
“Did you tell them you made it?”
I reached for my phone inside of my front pocket as I told him the truth. “Not yet. I forgot until now. Hold on.” It took two swipes, but I unlocked the screen once I had my cell out. The icon that said I had nineteen unread messages now, instantly made me cringe. They were thousands of miles away. It wasn’t like they were going to pop out of the display and holler at me when I read their messages. They were just being loving and worried, like a good family would. Like I would have done if it were any of them in my position, more than likely. This was what I got for never going through the rebel, hormonal teenager, jerk stage. I’d been the quiet one. The one who didn’t like getting into trouble, never got home late, never talked back, and spent most weekends LARPing or sneaking into the movie theater my friends had jobs at, when I wasn’t doing work for my aunt.
I’d always been the one who listened and tried to make everyone happy.
Until now.
I opened the first message and groaned.
“What does it say?” Aaron asked.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I told him. “These are all from my mom right now.”
I went on to the next one.
“If you get kidnapped, I’m not paying your ransom.”
That one had Aaron snickering. I snuck a glance at him with a smile, before picking back up on the rest of the messages on my phone.
The next one had me snorting. “They’re going to harvest your organs and throw you in the ocean. Tell Shamu I said hi. We’ll remember you.”
He snickered even louder than I did before taking a sip of his beer. “That’s pretty messed up.”
“I told you she’s crazy. Okay. Wait, listen to this one. I’ll name our next goldfish after you.” I had to lower my face to my hand to laugh, and heard Aaron doing the same thing. My mom. My freaking mom.
“What do the rest of them say?”
I was still cracking up as I read the remaining texts to him. “You’re going to give me a heart attack. Why are you trying to kill me? You were supposed to be my good girl, not like these other dipshits. Do you not care about my health? I’m too young to die from a heart attack. Do you even love me?” It was one thing to know I was related to drama queens, but it was another thing to be faced with it via text messaging. “These are from my sister. You’re a dumbass. I should’ve gone with you. I’m not joining any search parties going to look for you. I’m never going to wear the dress you made me if you don’t come back. There’s a few repeats… Squirt, you shit, tell me you made it.”
That last one had my heart hurting, and there was no hesitation in me as I typed out a reply to my mom and another to my sister.
I love you too. Made it to Panama City safe. Aaron already picked me up. Everything’s good. Text you soon.
You can borrow my clothes but touch the ones I have folded on the floor and I’ll put Nair in your shampoo. P.S. I love you too.
“Did you tell them you made it?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah, and that I’d message them soon. My sister threatened to borrow my clothes, and I told her if she took the ones I set aside to take with me to visit our dad, I’d put hair removal cream in her shampoo.”
He raised one of those blond eyebrows of his, a slight smile playing at his pink mouth. “Is she skating again?”
“She’s going early in the morning just by herself still, but she hasn’t worked out with her coach since her last competition. She’s been skating longer each day from what I overheard her coach tell my mom on speakerphone the other day. They’ve been watching her on security footage, but no one has the guts to confront her about it.”
“She’s still mad at you?”
“She was.”
He nodded, his hand still propping up his chin, his other one still resting loosely around his bottle. Those brown irises continued lingering on me. What in the world was he thinking?
I fought the urge to fidget and cleared my throat, trying to be a lot more casual and easygoing than I really felt. “So, you left your friends at the beach house?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Aaron caress the beer bottle with the tips of his fingers. “Yeah, but knowing them, they’re probably sleeping, even though I’m the one who drove all night.”
“You didn’t trust them driving your truck?”
The blond man smirked. “No.” He paused and took another sip of his beer before setting it down on the wood surface of the table, loudly, peering up at me in this way that made me even more self-conscious. “I didn’t want to overwhelm you bringing a bunch of people you don’t know to the airport,” he explained at the same time the pads of his fingers made a trail up the neck of the bottle. His gaze was on me as he said, “And I wanted to hang out with you first. Just us two.”
Of all the responses I could have come up with after that, I said “Oh.”
Oh.
When in reality it was more like, are you trying to kill me? That he knew me well enough to understand I’d feel overwhelmed… I wasn’t going to overthink it. I couldn’t. I wasn’t about to stew on him wanting to hang out with me first either.
Either my tone or blah response must have unsettled him because, for one brief second, a flash of hurt crossed his eyes, but it was gone before the next blink. He smiled at me tightly. “If you’re not comfortable, there’s a couple motels on the way to the house instead—”
He thought….
“No, no,” I stammered. “That’s not it. You’ve done—you’re—” Why couldn’t I get my words straight? “I’m still a little nervous. You’re just—” Too surreal. Too perfect. So much more than I ever could have imagined.
But I said none of that.
“What?” he asked, cautiously, like he didn’t know his billboard-belonging face could reduce anyone with a pulse to a mess of blood and bones.
I mean, I’d grown this giant crush on him just through e-mails. Having him face to face was almost too much to handle when he looked the way he did. But I couldn’t tell him any of that. I knew why I was here. Because he’d connected with me too, because he’d liked me.
As a friend.
Like a little sister, he’d told me that one time recently when he’d been drunk.
That was all…. Even if the T-shirt he had on showed off pecs that demonstrated he’d definitely been hitting the gym regularly while he’d been stationed in the desert and had biceps and forearms that were lined with lean muscles. I could see, but I couldn’t touch as anything more than a friend could or would.
The Friend Zone: The Life of Ruby Santos
I cleared my throat and glanced at his styled hair again, something about it niggling at me. I swallowed and dragged my eyes up to the ceiling for a second before flicking them back down to him, regretting even starting to say something. I blinked at him.
And he blinked right back at me, expectantly.
When I slid my gaze to the side for a moment and then returned it to him, he just sat there, like he was trying his best to look innocent and curious.
“I already told you when we were leaving the airport.”
He blinked innocent
ly one more time but said nothing.
I groaned deep inside of myself. “You’re going to make me say it?”
He nodded, and I thought for sure he knew exactly what I was thinking.
My face flamed up for the hundredth time, and I was tempted to glance at the ceiling so I wouldn’t have to make contact with those eyes of his. I scratched at my neck and peeked at him again, feeling the words scrape against my throat. I needed to quit being a chicken. “I mean this in a totally platonic way, okay?” I warned him.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him dip his chin once more, and I wasn’t going to pay attention to the way his mouth was doing that fluctuating thing again. Amused, happy, mocking, and back all over again. Why? Why couldn’t he just be plain looking or be so good-looking and not be so direct with his stare?
Because that wasn’t my luck, and I knew it. I coughed. Then I did it. “You’re gorgeous,” I said to him almost painfully, prying the words out. “Like… the army should put you on their recruitment ads or put you as the face on their website. I feel like I can’t look you in the eye or I’ll turn into stone, and they’ll need to add my statue to a garden of other women who have made eye contact with you before and lost their lives.”
Aaron just stared at me for a moment, just a moment, and slowly that wavering smile turned into a full-fledged one, one with straight white teeth and warmth to it that couldn’t be faked, that could have had angels singing and playing harps in the background.
“You smile a lot more than I thought you would,” I kept going. “You said you never really smiled while you were over there.”
“I don’t usually smile so much,” was his cryptic answer.
I scratched at my neck again and watched him, nerves making a nest in my belly. Anxiety prickled at the center of my chest, and so, so hesitantly I said, “I was worried you were going to be disappointed meeting me.”
Those brown eyes seemed to twinkle a little, his eyebrows shaping, his mouth doing that turning thing like he was trying to stop smiling.
My hands were starting to get itchy.
But then he said the words that made a dozen more butterflies explode into existence. “I’m really damn happy to see you, Ruby.” His voice was quiet, not hesitant but more cautious. “I look at you and I can’t stop smiling. That’s all. You’re adorable.”
I couldn’t in a million years envision Jasmine or Tali turning red at someone calling them adorable, but I did. Scarlet, red, garnet. I was covered in invisible lava all of a sudden.
And then with my dignity swimming out of my grasp, I hacked out an, “It took me an hour to decide what to wear before I left the house. I almost brought my Ghost Rider costume with me, but I thought I’d be too hot.”
Aaron shook his head again, brown eyes trained on me, hands folded. “I like you just the way you are, stalker.”
Looking back on it, it’s weird thinking about the moments you don’t realize are important. The sentences, the touches, the actions that seem so innocent in that second, you take them for granted. The words that make water into wine in the course of your life. But I would never forget the way his words made me feel. The way he made me feel right then.
I had no idea.
“I’m really happy you came, you know that, right?” he asked.
I nodded again, too quickly, the emotions and words and gestures and Aaron in general too much, stealing the words right out of my mouth until I had to scarf them back down inside me. “I know. I’m happy I’m here too,” I said, pretty much whispering, definitely blushing. “Thank you for inviting me and paying for my ticket and coming to pick me up. As soon as I get steady work again—”
Something nudged at my foot, and I didn’t need to look down to know it was his foot. “I’m not hurting for money, Rubes. You don’t owe me anything. I wanted you to come, remember?” he reminded me in that warm voice of his just as the waitress brought over two plates of food and slid them across the table in front of each of us, only standing there a second longer than she needed to before moving away because she saw it. She saw us staring at each other.
Neither one of us talked much as we ate; we were both that hungry and tired. It didn’t take long to pretty much inhale everything, to the point where Aaron scraped every crumb off his plate, and the only thing left on mine was a single burned french fry. When the waiter brought the check, we both eyed each other as I pulled some cash out of my pocket and he pulled his wallet out. We silently each put down an appropriate amount of bills to cover our meals.
I kept my mouth shut when he pulled out more cash to leave a tip.
I tried to tell myself to quit being nervous and awkward, but the pep talk did nothing. We made our way back to his white truck and got in, with Aaron shooting me a closed-mouth smiled as he started it up and backed out of the spot.
I was going to talk to him, I told myself as I buckled in the seat belt.
It was going to be just like when we messaged each other, I swore to the universe.
I was fine now. We were going to have a good time, get to know each other even more than we already had, and that was going to start right then… as soon as he was back on the road.
I told myself all of this over and over again as he pulled the truck back onto the highway to drive the rest of the way to the beach house.
I told myself all of this, really believing it, feeling pretty darn determined… and I still passed out almost immediately after he began driving. Because the next thing I was aware of was gasping awake, jolting in my seat, the air getting ripped out of my lungs when I felt my head droop so far forward it scared me badly enough that I jerked backward and hit my head on the rest behind me.
That’s when I heard Aaron choke.
I watched him out of the corner of my eye as I raised the back of my hand to wipe at the area around my mouth in case I’d started drooling, because it wouldn’t be the first time that happened. I fell asleep at my work table every other day, that was my norm. There were more than likely at least fifty pictures of me passed out with drool on my face floating around my family members’ phones. One picture had been Jasmine’s screensaver for six months, until Christmas had come and Tali had drawn that penis on Sebastian’s face.
Aaron did that choke again, his whole face scrunched up, and I watched him press his lips together then tuck them in as his shoulders shook. I was pretty sure those were tears making his eyes glassy and not allergies.
“Laugh all you want,” I mumbled, wiping at my mouth anyway because he’d already caught me. What was I going to do? Pretend it hadn’t happened? But I still said, “I wasn’t joking when I told you I hadn’t slept in a while.”
To give him credit, he kept his lips tightly sealed. What he did do was reach toward his face with his right hand and press the tip of his index finger to those long, curling blond eyelashes of his, swiping upward as he choked back another laugh. And in a quiet voice that said how much control it was taking him to not burst out laughing, he gasped, “Your face was almost on your knees….”
“I thought I saw a stain on my tights…,” I muttered, pinching my own lips together because the urge to laugh at him, with him, was right there as his hands squeezed the steering wheel so tight his knuckles went white and his shoulders shook even more.
He snickered deep in his throat and cocked his face away from mine just as his shoulders trembled even harder. “Is that what happened?”
“Yes. It was.”
Aaron coughed, earning him a side-eye and a frown. “Sure. Whatever you say, Rubes.”
I’d gotten what I wanted, hadn’t I? Us being back to “normal?” “Do you know how much longer we have until we get there?” I asked, trying to change the subject. The scenery had started to change again. Beach houses clustered together on the left side, and even though I couldn’t see it, I knew water had to be close by.
“Five minutes, ten minutes max,” he informed me.
Ten minutes to meet more people. No biggie. I squeezed my le
ft hand into a fist. “Do you mind if I use your mirror?”
He shook his head.
“Thanks,” I told him as I flipped the visor down and then opened the panel for the lit-up mirror. I tried to ignore the nerves in my stomach as I swept my hair into a low ponytail and started wiping below my eyes with the side of my finger.
I could feel him glance at me. “You already look nice.”
I blushed and flipped the visor closed like a little kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “You only get one first impression—”
“What?”
“You only get one first impression,” I repeated myself, pretty sure I was still blushing. “I don’t want them to not like me.”
Aaron’s mouth screwed up and his forehead furrowed as he shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye. “They’re not going to not like you, Ru.” Then he slid me a full look. “You don’t have to be nervous. You meet your friends’ friends all the time, I thought.”
One explanation after another backed up inside my throat, and I couldn’t pick one that made me sound less lame and self-conscious, but I had to. I tried to reason with myself that he already knew nearly all the worst things about me and I was still here. What was a little more embarrassment after I’d already called him gorgeous? “But these are your friends,” I explained, hoping he’d understand what I meant.
Which was that he was special to me. More special than he should have been. But there was my newest truth out in the open.
And Aaron must have known what I was trying to tell him, because he smiled so tenderly, so freaking sweetly, like you’d look at a puppy being cute, that I felt like a nut cracked in half. “You’re my friend. I want you to like them too. I told them not to make a mess before we got back.”
He…
“Don’t worry, all right?” he said in that gentle, calm voice that could have made him a Ruby Whisperer. When I didn’t respond, he reached over and touched the side of my arm with the back of his hand briefly. “All right?”
“All right,” I agreed, even though my stomach was still all knotty and uneasy, and it wasn’t all because of his friends.
Dear Aaron Page 24