Dear Aaron

by Mariana Zapata

  I didn’t want to believe him. I really didn’t. But…

  “You think I’d do for anybody else what I do for you?” he asked, reminding me that he’d always been able to read my mind.

  I was no match. Maybe it made me naïve that I wanted to believe he cared about me so much, but I didn’t care. I didn’t. I didn’t need to think about the way he was with me to know it was real.

  Because I knew what it was like when it wasn’t real, and this wasn’t it. Not even close. It was as far from being fake as you could get.

  Because this was Aaron.

  “You’re sure?” I whispered.

  His “hmm” was rumbled into my hair.

  “For sure-for sure?”

  He chuckled into my hair, roughly. “For sure.”

  “I need to make sure I’m not misunderstanding this, okay?” I asked, almost croaking, and he laughed again, all low and sexy and almost confident, nodding. “Don’t laugh. I’m being serious.”

  “Okay.” He still chuckled, his hands flexing at my waist. “I’m sorry for not telling you things, RC. I really am. You’re the only person I’ve ever wanted to tell things to.” Aaron pulled away from me just enough so he could look down and I could look up at him. “I know I told you I don’t know about marriage and all that, but…” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “The idea of you being with somebody else… even just texting them… him… even before I saw your face or heard your voice, Rube… I don’t want you with anybody else. You’re my Ruby, and you have been for a long time.”

  There was no doubt in my mind I swooned. Hard. My sister Tali would have smacked me in the face, and Jasmine would have told me to grow up. Maybe I should have questioned this more. Maybe I should have thought about this more, but I wasn’t going to. I knew what I felt. I could sense what Aaron felt. What more did I need?

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  “Does that mean you want to kiss me?” I just went and blurted out.

  He didn’t vocally laugh, but I could sense the vibrations coming from his chest before he said, grinning down at me, “Uh-huh.”

  He wanted to kiss me. Aaron wanted to kiss me.

  “Not as a friend?” I clarified.

  “Not as a friend,” he confirmed, amusement tingeing his words.

  “Are you telling me this because you know I’m not a virgin now?”

  There was a pause. He froze again. And then the next thing I knew, Aaron had dipped his face into my neck, over my hair. And he was laughing, laughing, as he kissed where my throat would be, and everything in me just went nuts. “No,” I thought he said. “I was going to tell you at some point. Tomorrow I think. You’re just always rushing me.”

  I snorted even as I felt like I was falling into quicksand, into this place I didn’t know what to do in.

  Aaron liked me? Aaron. Liked. Me?

  I guess the signs had been there.

  And still… “What are we supposed to do now?”

  His chuckle was soothing, his palm going to the small of my back as those brown eyes stared into mine with more love and affection than I knew what to do with. “Whatever you want, RC. Keep doing what we’ve been doing. We’ll figure it out.”

  Chapter 22

  Aaron liked me was the first thought I woke up to.

  The possibility that Aaron might love me was the very second one.

  I’d stayed up for over an hour after I’d made it to my room the night before, going over everything that had gone down on the restaurant dance floor, and it still hadn’t been enough time. But I understood what my heart thought, what it sensed. And that was that Aaron Tanner Hall loved me. Maybe he hadn’t used the words, but he hadn’t needed to. All I needed to do was think about what he thought about me, how he treated me, and compared it to how every guy my friends had dated had treated them, and I felt pretty confident about it.

  After all, hadn’t I kind of sneaked in me loving him in there and he hadn’t commented?

  Maybe someone would tell me I was jumping the gun and coming to a conclusion that wasn’t at all reality, but my gut thought differently. I didn’t think I was imagining anything. Then again, if he was this wonderful and he didn’t love me, I could live with it forever. What was love if it wasn’t just a single word people used to try and describe something that wasn’t easily explained or grown in one action or declaration?

  I’d grown up knowing love was complicated. But I knew what it looked like. What it felt like. And I’d learned the hard way, through my own life and the lives of the people I loved, that there was a really thin line between love and hate. Telling someone you loved them didn’t mean you’d end up together. It was just a freaking word.

  So I wasn’t going to worry about it.

  With a lot more pep in my step than usual, I got off the bed and showered, feeling revived, feeling even stronger and better than I had before because I’d done what I’d never thought I would be capable of. I’d told someone I was crazy about, madly in love with, that I wasn’t sure we could be together because they weren’t holding up to the expectations I had for them.

  Who the heck was I? A badass? Had I reached that level yet?

  I never, ever would have thought I would have been able to do that. Ever. Not even in my wildest dream, but if there was something I’d learned about myself quickly, it was that I deserved better. I needed it. I wasn’t about to settle for less.

  And I’d done it.

  Even Jasmine would have called me a bad bitch.

  With the sun seeming to shine straight out of me, feeling rejuvenated and awesome, I finished showering, got dressed and headed up the stairs feeling like I could take on anything. I really did. After grabbing my bottle of water, I went to the deck and took a big whiff of the salty air, simply thinking to myself this is amazing.

  So, it was the sun and me feeling pretty indestructible in general that I could blame for how the next few minutes went.

  Because it was at that second that the phone inside the house rang.

  And when I turned to look inside, Aaron wasn’t already in the kitchen like he’d been the other two mornings when he’d answered it.

  It was during the second ring, while I’d been too busy focusing on the fact that the phone was actually ringing, that this image of Aaron being angry and upset at these calls he’d been subjecting himself to, filled my brain. Then, it made me mad. That was when I practically stomped into the house, feeling like a different kind of Ruby than I thought I was capable of.

  And I answered the stupid phone sitting in the cupboard beside the fridge with a grumpy “Hello?” that I also didn’t know I had in me.

  There was silence on the other end of the receiver.

  “Hello?” I repeated myself, sounding just as aggressive as I had at first.

  “Hello?” the female voice on the other end responded, sounding hesitant.

  “Can I help you?”

  There was a pause before the woman cleared her throat and said in a very stern, clear voice, “May I speak to Aaron?”

  “Can I ask who’s calling?” I already knew who it was, but I’d seen my family play enough games to know how to play this one.

  “This is his mother,” the woman replied with a certain amount of steel in her voice.

  “I see,” I said to her, thinking about the words he’d used last night. “He’s not available right now.”

  “Can I leave a message?”

  “I would rather you didn’t,” I told her, honestly and evenly.

  She didn’t say anything again for a moment. “Excuse me?”

  “I would rather you didn’t,” I repeated myself.

  “Who am I speaking to?” the woman asked, her voice getting a hint of attitude in it.

  “His girlfriend,” I said before I could stop myself. “And if you’re going to keep calling him and upsetting him, I would rather you didn’t.”

  “Excuse you,” his mom snapped. “Who are you to—”

  “Look, I don’t know what y
our intentions are for calling him, but all I’m going to tell you is that you should really think twice about forcing him to talk to you when all you do is make him mad. If you’re really trying to get back into his life, maybe you should ease up and go about this another way. If you’re not… I don’t know. All I know is that I’m not letting you ruin his morning. Have a nice rest of your day,” I told her. Then I hung up.

  Not even two seconds later, the rush hit me.

  What in the hell had I just done? Had I actually just said that to Aaron’s mom?

  I couldn’t believe it.

  I couldn’t freaking believe it.

  Who was I?

  “Everything okay?” came a voice that had me jumping in place and slamming the cabinet door closed.

  It was Aaron.

  “Oh, yeah,” I stuttered. “Um.” I knew I needed to tell him. I couldn’t not. My face still went red anyway. “Your, ah, mom called.”

  He was halfway to the kitchen when he stalled in motion. Already in his swim trunks and a white T-shirt, he blinked at me sleepily. “Did it go all right?” he asked slowly.

  “Yes,” I told him, faking the brightness in my voice and failing miserably. “Don’t say I never did anything for you, okay?”

  He stared at me for so long, I fidgeted, thinking I’d done something wrong.

  “I didn’t want her to make you mad and ruin your day,” I tried to explain.

  Aaron took a step forward and then another and another until he stopped in front of me, and lightning quick, his hands came up to my face, cupping my cheeks in those rough, broad palms. A small smile had started covering his mouth at some point. Right before he kissed each of my cheeks with that perfect mouth, he said, “Have I told you today how happy I am you’re here?”

  “Jasmine, Jasmine, listen to me—”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m not joking. If your thunder thighs”—she didn’t have anything close to huge legs. Jasmine’s were the stuff people’s dreams were made of. Strong, athletic legs that looked great in everything and nothing. But I wasn’t about to compliment her—“rip my tights, I’ll give you bangs like I did when we were kids, remember that?”

  There was a pause, and I’m sure even though she couldn’t genuinely remember asking me to cut her hair when she was five, and the awful haircut that had followed, it had been well-documented by our mom in picture form. She knew it had happened. Then my little sister made her decision. “I’ll risk the bangs. I’m wearing your tights. Bye, Squirt.”

  And then she hung up on me.

  All I could do was basically cough out a laugh in surprise, when I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.

  “What are you cracking up about?”

  I was still smiling as I turned in the seat to find Aaron standing at the doorway with a beer and a bottle of water in each palm. Reaching toward the chair he usually sat in, I patted the armrest as I answered his question. “Jasmine had texted me asking where I had some of my tights, so I called her to ask why she was asking. One thing led to another and I threated to cut her hair if she wore them and ripped them. Then she just said ‘bye, Squirt’ and hung up on me.”

  “Are they special… tights? What are tights again?”

  “Basically pantyhose.” I smiled at him. “The ones she was looking for have cats on them. I think she’s going on a date if she’s asking.”

  Aaron nodded as he sat down, the hand with the water bottle extending in my direction. I took it. “Cat pantyhose, huh?”

  “Cat pantyhose.”

  “That’s cute.”

  What was I supposed to say after that? “I have some with elephants on them too.”

  He raised an eyebrow as he lifted the bottle of his beer to that mouth that had touched various places on my face the night before. “I’d like to see those.”

  It was times like that I wished I actually had some experience flirting, instead of losing my words and not knowing what to say. “Hopefully one day you can,” I said, unsure if that was too presumptuous or not.

  But the smile he gave me said it wasn’t. “One day,” he confirmed.

  I opened my mouth and closed it. Questions had been plaguing me while we’d been out doing a little more scalloping for a couple of hours and then when we’d spent the afternoon cleaning our catch under the carport using tablespoons. I’d even thought about my questions while I’d showered and eaten lunch. And then while helping Aaron make dinner, my head filled to the point where it felt like I’d burst. I knew I wasn’t being very graceful or classy or mysterious. The truth was, I wasn’t any of those things. I liked people being upfront with me with their expectations and thoughts. I wasn’t so good at picking up hints or trying to play games with people. So I just did it. I just asked Aaron. “What exactly does this mean? You and me?”

  His eyebrows went up as his lips left the rim of the bottle and he swallowed thoughtfully, one of his bare feet coming up to rest on the opposite knee. “Whatever you want it to, Ru.”

  That wasn’t helping any. “What does that mean?”

  Aaron smiled.

  “I don’t want to… take things out of proportion. Does that make sense?” I asked him hesitantly, his smile crumbling into a smaller one as his eyes narrowed.

  “How would you take it out of proportion?”

  Why was this conversation making me itchy and restless? “Like maybe we both really like each other, but you still want to be single—”

  “No.”

  I shot him a look and continued with my examples even though I didn’t want to. “Like maybe you like me, but when we’re not together, we go our own ways and date other—”

  “Hell no.”

  I blinked. “No?”

  His entire expression changed, and Aaron set the beer down on one of the side tables. “I haven’t liked you dating other people in months.” He spat the words out with so much disgust I couldn’t help but fall even more in love. “It’s making me mad right now just thinking about it, Ruby,” he said in that low voice. “I was jealous when I hadn’t seen you, when I didn’t know how much I like having you close by… when I hadn’t heard your voice….” He swallowed. “Even if you didn’t… look the way you do, I would’ve been here, feeling this way about you. Does that help you understand?”

  He was feeling what kind of way?

  My confusion must have still been apparent because those brown eyes bore into mine. “You’re my Ruby girl. And if we would’ve met and hadn’t kept hitting it off, then I’d feel differently, but I don’t. That’s not how it worked out between us.”

  I shook my head slowly, watching his face, lost, still confused and a little overwhelmed.

  “I’m not going anywhere. Today or tomorrow. We can do this at whatever pace you want. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’re going to move forward, but we can do it when you want to,” he explained.

  “Just to make sure I’m not misunderstanding you…”

  He grinned and I smiled.

  “Just to make sure,” I reiterated. “We’re talking about sex?”

  Aaron tipped his head back and laughed before looking at me once more and cocking it to the side, grinning wide. “I was talking about holding hands, kissing you, sex, too, I guess.” He laughed again. “What am I going to do? Tell you no?”

  I snorted. I couldn’t help but watch him, suddenly feeling in control for the first time in forever and not really sure what to do with it. “Do you want to have sex with me though?”

  The tips of his fingers went up to press into the space between his eyebrows as he laughed and peeked at me from the side of his hand as he kept on cracking up.

  “Why are you laughing at me? I want to make sure I understand,” I cried.

  “I know you are, but it’s making me laugh when you call it sex.”

  “Why? That’s what it is.”

  “Damn it, Ruby,” he said, laughing again. “I thought we’d be having this conversation months from now.”

  “Wh
y?”

  “Because!”

  “Because what?” I asked him, too amused to be embarrassed. “Why are you being shy?”

  Aaron blushed even as he grinned and shook his head. “Come here.”

  I felt myself perk up. “Where?”

  With both hands at about chest level, he motioned me toward him. “Here.”

  I eyed him and blinked, and that only made him grin more.

  “Come here and we can talk about sex.”

  My entire body went hot and red. Definitely red. I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if my eyeballs had bulged out of their sockets, and all I could do was laugh. “This sounds like the kind of moments my mom used to warn Jasmine about when she started having boyfriends, and she worried she’d end up pregnant.”

  “She didn’t have those talks with you?”

  I scowled at him and shook my head. “No. Not once. That actually makes me feel kind of crappy now that I think about it. She never had the sex talk with me. I’m twenty-four years old and I’m still waiting.”

  Aaron laughed. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

  I groaned, and that only made him laugh harder. “You’re awful. You’re doing this to me on purpose.”

  He shook his head, grinning so wide that dimple of his could have been a star. “You know I am. I know, Ruby girl. I know you. This is on you, as long as you know I’m not going anywhere. I’m not giving you up. I was ready to go fight those guys you were dating if it would’ve gotten serious.”

  Maybe it was wrong of me to flash him the biggest smile I was capable of, but I didn’t care.

  He tipped his face down, his expression suddenly going serious. “This isn’t for this weekend. This isn’t for the rest of the month.” My expression must have been skeptical because he motioned me toward him again, his face solemn. “You don’t make a dress in a day, right?”

  With a lump in my throat, I nodded. “Usually.”

  “Your best ones take you hundreds of hours to make, don’t they?”

  “Yes.” Where was he going with this?

  “A business isn’t successful overnight. You don’t get promoted in a week. Everything takes time. Everything that is important and good and worthwhile, takes time. I’m not the kind of man who doesn’t know that. Just looking at you makes me happy. Listening to you makes me happy. So come over here if you want, but only if you want.”