“Did I wake you up?” I asked him as he started moving things I couldn’t see around on the tray.
Aaron peeked over at me with a small smile that could have been a reserved one or a tired one, and shook his head a second before picking up something off the tray and holding out a plate in my direction. On it were two slices of toast, each topped with a perfect little square of butter.
I snorted and glanced at him, catching his smile cracking into a wider one.
“It’s all we have until we go to the store, swear,” he claimed, his expression telling me that might be the truth, but he was still enjoying messing with me.
Taking the plate from his hands, I tried pinching my lips together to keep from telling him he was the first person who had ever brought me breakfast unless I was sick, but I kept the words in my mouth. I locked them up and threw away the key. Settling the plate on my lap, I held back a gulp and smiled, feeling a little shy. “Thank you.”
He winked as he leaned forward and angled the chair he was in to face mine more, before pulling another plate off the tray to his left and settling it on his bare knee. “Somebody needs to make sure you’re eating.”
I picked up a slice and held it an inch away from the plate, watching him out of the corner of my eye. “Remind me to buy some cream cheese or jelly when we go to the store.”
He grinned this sleepy, tired grin.
“Really, thank you though,” I repeated myself, just in case he couldn’t tell I was just messing with him.
“You’re welcome,” he replied easily, almost lazily, his eyes flicking to mine quickly before lowering back to the plate. “I told you that I’d make sure you were good. We’ll get something better later.”
“It’s perfect. This was really nice of you.”
Aaron shrugged off my gratitude and leaned back as he took a bite out of one of the three pieces of toast on his plate. I did the same, taking turns between looking at him and glancing at the sliver of beach visible behind the house we were facing.
I zeroed in on the coloring under his eyes. “Did you sleep okay?” I asked him after I finished off the first piece of toast.
He lifted a shoulder a little more casually than I was comfortable with, but I was on to him and his vagueness already. “You?”
“Yeah.” Act normal, Ruby. “This is really pretty,” I said to him, gesturing forward with my chin. “This house is amazing.”
Half of Aaron’s mouth tipped its way up, but he changed the subject. “Do you want to go to the store with us to buy groceries? We’re going to take turns cooking most nights.”
Cook? “Sure. Tell me how I can pitch in.”
He waved me off.
“I’m being serious. Make it easy on yourself and tell me how I can help. Otherwise I’ll just do it anyway.”
The other side of his mouth tipped upward too, and those brown eyes flicked my way. “I thought you weren’t bossy?”
I could play the side-eye game if he wanted to. “Only when you’re being stubborn.”
That had him laughing as he plucked at another piece of toast and brought it up to his mouth, taking a big bite out of it. “I have this to look forward to every day while we’re here then?”
My heart beat a little faster, but I ignored it. “I guess you do.”
Aaron smirked as he wolfed down the rest of his bread, and I didn’t take too long with what I had left. The moment I finished swallowing the last piece, he stood up and took the plate from me. “Want to watch the sunrise on the beach?” he asked. “If we go now, we’ll probably make it.”
I nodded.
I followed him back into the house, watching as he dropped our plates off in the sink, before turning to me with that easygoing expression that somehow looked like he knew something I didn’t. He looked really tired. We headed down the stairs, skipping the second landing and continued on down. If he wasn’t going to stop for shoes, neither was I.
When we made it to the bottom floor, Aaron stepped forward first, unlocking the door and swinging it open with a, “Rubies first” that had me holding back a smile that would for sure tell him how much I liked him.
I hadn’t noticed the day before, but the driveway outside of the door was graveled, not paved, and the small rocks nipped at my bare feet. Aaron didn’t comment as he closed the door behind us, slipping his long fingers through mine, and casually said, “Let’s run for it.”
Run for where, I had no clue, but when his hand tugged, I took off running beside him, dashing into the street between the houses and going slightly to the right where there was a path of wooden planks between an aqua blue home and a cream-colored monstrosity. I didn’t notice what temperature the wood was, or worry about splinters, all I felt was the sand that had been spread over the path over time and the feel of Aaron’s warm fingers.
It wasn’t the Caribbean, but the water was beautiful, especially in the oncoming sunrise. White sand snuck up between my toes and over the tops of my feet as Aaron led us to the right. There were probably twenty umbrellas anchored into the sand within a fifty-foot stretch of beach, all of them spaced apart with beach chairs settled beneath them.
We didn’t go to any of those. Instead, Aaron led us almost to the edge of the water, just before the sand became thick, damp and cool. Almost gracefully, he lowered himself until his butt hit the ground, his hand letting go of mine as he did it. He raised those brown eyes to me and made them wide as he propped his hands behind him. “You want to sit down, or are you going to keep panting standing up?”
I scoffed and fought the urge to kick sand at him before I flopped down just like he had. “We don’t all run ten miles a day.”
“Or one mile,” he muttered, angling his hips just enough so that he was facing me and the water at the same time, the side of his foot moving just enough so that it brushed my own.
“Ha, ha.”
He grinned. “I thought it’s good for people with heart problems to do cardio?”
“I don’t have a heart problem anymore,” I reminded him. “And I like to go for walks—”
He coughed.
“—long walks, thank you very much.”
“Long walks,” he repeated. “And kickboxing.”
I nodded at him. “I took a Zumba class three times a week for three months once.”
He blinked. “What’s Zumba?”
It was my turn to blink at him. “You dance to exercise.”
The way he stared at me blankly made me snort.
“It was harder than you think,” I said, earning a smirk from that mouth that I purposely hadn’t thought about.
“I’ll take your word for it.”
I snickered, and before I knew what I was doing, I moved my foot to the side until it bumped with the side of his. “Are you still going to run now that you’re back?” I asked.
He shrugged as his eyes swung toward the water. “Not as much. It relaxes me, but I don’t love it.”
What he meant too was that he had better things to occupy his time with than running just to make the day go by faster. That was one of the things I tried not to worry about with our friendship once his life got back to normal. About how he’d forget about me. Make less time to sit on his computer and chat… and then, eventually, he’d be gone, living his life. And if I was lucky, he might think of me once a month or once every other month and shoot me an e-mail. As time went on—
I was being a selfish jerk, wasn’t I? Worrying about things I couldn’t control? Expecting everyone to be like everyone else that had used me for something and then forgotten I existed?
“I like going for bike rides more,” he admitted, breaking my thoughts when he nudged my toes with his sand-covered ones.
That had me perking up. “Mountain biking?”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “You mountain bike?”
I shook my head. “No, but it’s always sounded like fun. There aren’t any mountains or hills in Houston. There are two trails that I know of, but they’re usually pack
ed with people because there’s nowhere else for them to go. I’d be too scared to start there.”
“There are lots of trails in Kentucky,” he told me, giving me a little smile that sent my heart doing pit-pats it had no business doing.
“What kind of bike do you have?”
“A Yeti.”
“Never heard of it. I still have my Huffy from when I was a kid.”
I could tell by the creases at the corners of his eyes that Aaron was biting back a smile. “I bet you’d still fit on your kid-sized Huffy.”
That got me side-eyeing him. “I know a lot of people shorter than me, thank you.”
“Oh yeah?” He raised an eyebrow like he didn’t believe me, which chances were, he didn’t.
I nodded sarcastically. “Yeah.”
“Where do you know them from?” he asked, those eyebrows still up. “From the Shire?”
The laugh that busted out of me had me tipping my head back and literally setting my foot totally on top of his as I reached over to poke him hard in the side. Aaron captured my hand as he laughed too. “I’m going back to the house,” I whined when I could finally catch my breath.
“No you’re not,” he quipped, squeezing my fingers before slowly letting them go.
He smiled at me and I smiled at him, and I felt… I felt something. In my heart. On my skin. On my fingers and toes. Along my spine. It wasn’t a tingling. It wasn’t some earth-shattering sensation. It was something I wasn’t totally sure of, but it was enough for my smile to grow wider.
Then he said, “I’m really glad you came, Ruby,” and I didn’t know my mouth could go so wide.
“I’m glad too.” Sliding my foot off his, I didn’t stop smiling. “I’m sorry for freaking out yesterday and then being so hot and cold.”
“I told you. Don’t apologize. It was fine.”
Clasping my hands on my lap in front of me, I shrugged. “It could’ve been better. I feel bad not talking to your friends more. I don’t want them to think I’m stuck-up or anything.”
It was the tightening at his jaw that told me he didn’t like something about what I’d said. “Somebody thought you were stuck-up before?”
“Once or twice, but I’m just quiet until I feel comfortable around complete strangers, you know? That’s all.”
His eyes bounced from one of mine to the next, his features still taut, and I could tell he was processing my words before he slowly let out a breath. His words were low again, understanding, so freaking Aaron. “I know, Ru. You’re not. They won’t think you’re stuck-up.”
“I hope not.”
His smile was so soft I genuinely felt like it didn’t matter what they thought as long as he liked me. But I couldn’t think like that. “Don’t worry.” He gestured toward the rolling waves lapping close to our feet. “Look, it’s about to come up any second now. Watch.”
We sat there on the edge of the water, with his foot directly beside mine, that long upper body lined with lean muscles within touching distance if I really stretched to the side, and we watched the sun rise directly in front of us. Blue, purple, lavender, orange, red, and so, so yellow in a few places it made my heart hurt. I’d been a lot of places, but watching the sun rise that morning—because I’d never been awake early enough to watch it before—was something I couldn’t forget. It felt like an awakening. Like nothing I had ever seen and everything I had, all rolled into one single, unforgettable event.
And when Aaron asked, “It’s beautiful, huh?” I told him the one and only truth I had.
“It’s really beautiful.” And then I told him the second truth in my long list of things I couldn’t deny. “I’m going to owe you forever for inviting me and showing this to me.”
He didn’t say another word and neither did I as the sun kept creeping upward, unrushed. I know at one point I held my breath at the same time the sound of two new voices from somewhere behind us broke the silence. I didn’t look back, all I did was keep my eyes forward and swallow the rays entirely.
“I think I want to wake up every day and watch this,” I whispered to him, pulling my knees into my chest so I could settle my chin on top of them. “It would be worth waking up early for.”
And all Aaron said, in his low, soft-spoken voice that he’d been using on me since yesterday, with something in the notes I couldn’t classify that sounded almost like hope, if hope had a sound and if a promise could be made without vocalizing it, was, “Any morning you want, Rube. I’ll watch it with you.”
“So, Ruby… I have an important question to ask you.”
Scrunched into the middle in the back of Aaron’s double cab pickup truck, I slipped my hands between my thighs and accepted that I’d gotten off easy on the way to the grocery store. I’d helped Aaron make a list that mainly consisted of salt and vinegar chips, Fritos, macaroni and cheese, and frozen pizzas while we’d waited around in the kitchen for everyone to wake up. Aaron, Des, Max’s sister whose name I learned was Mindy, and Brittany, Des’s girlfriend, and I had all climbed into the truck at exactly 10:05 a.m. Aaron had invited me to take the front seat, but I had waved him off because obviously Des’s legs were longer than mine. Then, noticing that Brittany was five inches taller than me and that Mindy had a broken arm that probably shouldn’t get jostled around, I’d offered to take the seat on the bench in the middle.
Mindy and Brittany had both been busy on their phones before we’d even gotten into the car and had stayed on them the entire trip to the grocery store. I’d only caught bits and pieces of each of their conversations over the music that Des had started playing in the truck, but I knew Brittany was on the phone with someone she worked with and Mindy was arguing with who I’m pretty sure was the other girl who had been in the accident with her because they’d been talking about pain medication and how it was affecting them differently.
Not that I was paying that close attention. I’d already texted my mom to let her know I was alive and kicking; there was no one else for me to message.
Half an hour later, with the groceries in the bed of the truck, we’d all climbed back in, no one on their phone. So I wasn’t surprised when Mindy finally spoke up.
“Okay,” I told her, taking in her light brown hair and a face whose youth and angles reminded me of Jasmine… if my little sister didn’t have the crazy person glint in her eye.
The younger, very pretty girl had her broken arm propped against the car door. Her expression was serious. “Where did you get those tights from?”
Tights?
“The ones you had on yesterday with the cats on them. Where’d you get them?” she asked, like she’d read my mind.
I blinked, taking a second to process what she was saying. “Oh. Online. There’s a store that I order things from that’s cheap. I’ll write down the link for you if you want,” I answered her, only sounding a little awkward.
The side of Brittany’s thigh touched mine as she asked, “And the skirt?”
My face definitely turned a little pink at the attention they were both giving me. “I got it from a thrift store and redid a lot of it, I’m sorry.”
She blinked. “You redid it, how?”
“She makes costumes and dresses,” Aaron piped in from the front, his brown eyes visible in the rearview mirror.
Brittany leaned further into me, narrowing her eyes a little in a way that didn’t make me feel like it was judgmental, more just… curious. “Where do you live?”
“In Houston,” I told her, cocking my head to the side just enough to make eye contact with the pretty black-haired woman that had been watching me closely on and off with a friendly expression on her face every time I’d caught her. I could do this. Everyone had been nice so far. “Are you in Shreveport?” I asked her, trying to make conversation.
“I live in Haughton. It’s outside Shreveport,” she explained, giving me an easygoing smile that relaxed me.
I nodded and tried to think of something else to ask her. “Have you been here before?”
“Yeah, we came last spring before Hall shipped out,” she said.
I hadn’t known that. Had I? I couldn’t remember him mentioning if this was his first time in Port Saint Joe, the town closest to the strip of peninsula called Cape San Blas, where we were staying, or not. Either way, it wasn’t like it was any of my business to know where he’d gone before we’d met.
Even though I might have wanted to know everything.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
I froze at the random question that came from my right, from the younger girl whose face was suddenly red like she couldn’t believe she’d asked that. I guess I was too, a little. I’d never heard anyone just… ask that kind of question like that before.
“Ahh…” I trailed off, knowing the answer but….
She must have realized what the heck had come out of her mouth because she started stuttering, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t have a filter—”
“It’s okay—”
Mindy waved me off. “That’s so rude. I’ve just been wondering because Max said that Aaron said you weren’t his girlfriend—”
Why that felt like a sock to my stomach, I had no idea. It wasn’t like I didn’t know that. It wasn’t like he didn’t know I wasn’t his girlfriend either.
“—and my mom always says guys and girls can’t be friends, and I’m just trying to figure out why you would come if you aren’t together, and oh my God, I’m still talking. I’m sorry,” the girl, who couldn’t have been older than eighteen, rambled on in the same breath.
I could only look at her.
“Jesus Christ, Mindy,” that was Aaron from the front seat, glancing over his shoulder with a shake of his head.
“It’s okay,” I tried to butt in, even though I was positive my face was red. “I would probably wonder too.” I just wouldn’t ask outright something like that. It was one thing for everyone I knew and had known for years to know my miss after miss in the relationship business, but for this girl I barely knew to ask, was a little bit depressing. The whole world was aware that there was something strange about Aaron inviting me to come. There was no hiding it. There was no pretending like he saw me as something more than a… than a… relative. Ugh. But I told her the truth. “No” and my face definitely turned red, if it hadn’t already been.
Dear Aaron Page 26