by Ava Walsh
“I didn’t think I could be this silly. Like all those women I keep reading about in the papers. All the girls you date.” Chelsey couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. She didn’t want to think about how ridiculous she sounded, by mentioning those women to him for the third time.
She turned on her heels and walked over to the table, under which her clutch lay on the floor.
“What I can’t believe is that you fell for all those gossip columns,” she heard him say. She turned to him again, with rage in her eyes.
“So you’re saying that all these years you’ve been a saint?” She threw the words at him, and Aaron shook his head and looked away.
“No. Of course I haven’t, but the newspapers exaggerate and I thought you would know that. Besides, it’s not like you’ve been a saint either,” he said with a smirk. This was all still a casual joke to him, Chelsey thought. She needed to get out of there.
She didn’t respond to his statement. How could she even begin to explain to him how and why he was the first and last guy she slept with? She drew in a deep breath and then walked towards the door.
“Where are you going? I thought we were having a conversation.” Aaron stood up. Chelsey paused at the door with her hand on the doorknob.
“No more conversations, Aaron. I don’t want this to happen again. I’m going home.” She turned the knob and swung the door open.
“Wait!” Aaron yelled. “You’re going home? Hannah is going to be so upset. You haven’t even seen my parents,” he said, as she walked out of the room.
“Chelsey!” She heard him yell her name as she ran down the stairs. His voice was muffled by the music and all the noise around her. More than anything, she was thankful that nobody noticed her slip out of the house. She ran to her car and drove off faster than she ever normally dared to drive. The tires skid on the gravel and her heart raced faster than the engine.
By the time the Keels’ house was out of view, tears were streaming down her cheeks. She knew she still loved him. Her feelings had never changed, but her daughter was more important now. She had to act responsibly for the sake of her child.
She wiped her tears with one hand and drove silently until she reached her apartment. She had managed to bring her nerves under control, sort of. She parked her car, climbed the stairs and jiggled her keys in the lock to throw the front door open.
Ruby was on the couch watching a music reality show with the sitter, Janice. They both turned to look at her in unison.
“Mommy!” Ruby screamed, and Chelsey couldn’t help but smile. That was the reaction her daughter always had on her. She walked over to the couch to pick her daughter up as Janice turned the TV off.
“You’re home early. Like, too early!” Janice said, standing up from the couch.
“Yeah, I wasn’t feeling very well. Thanks for your time, Janice. Can I pay you tomorrow altogether? I have an eight-hour shift as usual,” Chelsey said, and Janice shrugged.
“Sure. Whatever. I’ll be here at the same time as yesterday, then?” Janice asked, picking up her purse from the coffee table. Chelsey nodded and tried to smile.
“Thanks, Janice. Ruby, say bye to Janice,” she cooed to her daughter, and held her tightly to her chest. Her heart was still beating fast. She felt as if she had committed a sin and she needed her daughter’s blessing to cleanse her. She stroked her daughter’s hair gently and kissed the top of her head. She could hear Janice open the front door.
“Bye, Ruby!” Janice said.
Finally, she could be alone with Ruby again. Just like they were meant to be. If there was anything or anyone who could help her forget about what had happened with Aaron, it was going to be his daughter.
Chapter Fifteen - Aaron
Aaron was too much in shock to move. He remained perched, completely naked, with his heart in his hands as he watched the door of his room shut. Chelsey was gone.
He had called out to her, but she hadn’t made a single reply, she hadn’t even turned to look at him.
He couldn’t believe that all this had happened, in a matter of a few minutes. He had been in total bliss before that, he had hoped that they could eventually lie in bed together, and talk. Talk about everything that had happened and everything that had gone wrong between them. But moments after she had orgasmed, Chelsey had got dressed and left.
Aaron sat there, like that, for a few minutes longer till the sounds of the party downstairs interrupted his thoughts. He stretched out his arms, reaching for his pants that lay on the floor. In silence, he began to get dressed.
He was just tucking his shirt into his pants, when the door of his room flew open. He hadn’t heard footsteps approaching, the sound must have been muffled by the loud music playing downstairs.
“Aaron?” he heard Hannah’s voice and jerked his head up to find his sister at the door, with her hands on her hips.
“Hannah. Get out of my room!” he snapped, surprising himself with his tone.
“What the hell is going on?” Hannah took a few steps in, as Aaron hurriedly tried to dress himself.
“I’m just fixing my clothes. There was a tear in my shirt,” he managed to say, hoping that his sister wouldn’t see right through his barefaced lie.
“You’re still wearing the same shirt, big brother.” Hannah said the words quietly, and Aaron didn’t dare to look at her. They were silent for a while, as he put on his jacket, and smoothened the front of his shirt.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” she asked him, when she realized that he wasn’t going to volunteer any words.
“Nothing is going on,” he snapped at her again, peering his eyes to catch a glimpse of his crystal cufflinks. He was convinced they had popped out when Chelsey took his shirt off his shoulders.
“Nothing is going on? I just saw Chelsey storm down the stairs and run out of the house. And now I find you putting on your clothes.” Hannah’s voice was clipped. She was angry with him, or rather she didn’t trust anything he was saying.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. She might have gone to the bathroom, I don’t know.” Aaron shrugged, still avoiding his sister’s eyes.
“She came out of your room. I saw her from downstairs. I was carrying a glass of champagne for her, waiting for her, she completely ignored me and ran past me to the front door.” Hanna’s hands were still on her hips.
“Why don’t you ask her?” Aaron said, when he finally found his cufflinks under the bed. He bent down to pick them up, so that now Hannah was standing over him, looking down.
“I can’t, because she isn’t here. Is there something I should know about?”
Aaron looked up at his sister, and his face softened. He had always kept their one-night stand a secret, even from Hannah. Had he ruined Hannah’s and Chelsey’s friendship?
“Aaron?” Hannah’s voice broke. She was afraid of what he was going to tell her, she could see it in his eyes. “You fucked her, didn’t you? You fucked my best friend!” Hannah screamed the words out, and he could see the rage in her eyes.
“Hannah…” Aaron stood up and took a few steps towards his sister, but she moved away from him.
“How?! I mean, how could this have happened? This isn’t the first time this happened, was it?” She threw the words at him again, and all he could do was remain silent, his face turned down towards the floor.
“Tell me the truth, Aaron. You’ve slept with her before. You’ve slept with Chelsey! My best friend.” She was screaming still, and her shoulders shook.
“Hannah…it wasn’t like you think. It happened by accident, once, before I left town,” he began to say but Hannah interrupted him again.
“Before you left town? You fucked her and then you left? Like she was one of your cheerleader girls? One of those girls you could just use and throw away?” Hannah took more steps back and Aaron closed his eyes. Finally, he could see it from a different perspective. The perspective that Chelsey would have been viewing him from as well. That he had
used her for a one-night fantasy and then gone away. That was the reason she hated him now.
“It wasn’t like that Hannah. It wasn’t just a one-night thing for me,” he said quietly, while she glared at him.
“So what was it?”
“It was more than that.”
“What are you saying? That you had feelings for Chelsey?” Hannah asked. Her voice had quietened a bit but her body was still shaking. Aaron nodded silently.
“Did she have feelings for you too?” she asked him and Aaron shrugged.
“I don’t know. We never got the chance to talk about it. I left the next day,” he said.
“This is why she doesn’t talk to me anymore. Because she hates you. She hates how you treated her. My own brother!” Hannah’s face was in her hands, she was upset with him, upset with Chelsey, upset that she had never detected this side to their relationship.
“Hannah, look at me. Please, look at me. Tell me where she lives,” Aaron said, trying to keep his voice steady.
Chapter Sixteen - Chelsey
Chelsey remained seated on her couch, cradling Ruby in her arms. The TV was still on, and Ruby’s attention was drawn to it.
She was finally alone, which meant that she could finally think. How had she allowed this to happen? Again!
She thought back to the letter. It wasn’t that she had forgotten about writing it, she had chosen to forget about it.
She knew Aaron had left before he had seen it, and that had made her feel relieved. She had assumed that the letter got lost and he would never find out that she had ever left it for him. She cursed Mr. and Mrs. Keels for keeping his room as it was.
How could she have been so stupid!
She held Ruby more tightly. Their daughter. The child Aaron knew nothing about. He didn’t have a clue that he had been a father for the past three years. That he had a child with a girl he used to know. His sister’s best friend who he happened to fuck one drunken night three years ago.
But that night had meant more to Chelsey than it could ever mean to him. She was convinced of it. He found the letter funny, a silly memory from the past. But to her, those words were the truth.
She had grown up idolizing him. He was the boy of her dreams. She knew him intimately, knew his family intimately, and she had witnessed the number of girls who were crazy about him steadily increasing through the years. If there was one thing Chelsey knew, it was that she could never have him.
Aaron Keels was the golden boy of the town. He was charming, good looking, polite and also happened to be the best hockey player anybody in their small town had ever seen. This meant that even as a kid, Aaron held a celebrity status. Everybody had big dreams for him, and he had managed to achieve them.
In high school, he was the guy everyone wanted to be friends with and he was the boy every girl wanted to marry when they grew up. So where was Chelsey going to fit into the picture?
The only thing she had going for herself was that she was Hannah’s best friend. Which meant that she had close access to him, but it also meant that Aaron always regarded her as a younger sister.
Chelsey never wanted herself to be regarded as his younger sister. She wanted him to notice her in a different way. Notice the way her body was developing. She wanted to be cool for him, to be attractive, to show him that she was as good as any of the cheerleaders he regularly dated. But he never saw her that way, at least not until that night, the night before he was going to leave the town forever.
That one night had changed everything. It had given her everything that she wanted, which was Aaron Keels.
But it had also changed everything else. After he left, a few months before she herself was supposed to leave for New York for her internship, Chelsey realized that she was pregnant.
She was carrying Aaron’s baby, and she had nobody she could tell. She didn’t tell Hannah, because she was afraid of how she would react. She was convinced that Hannah would blame her for being slutty. Because Aaron Keels could never do any wrong.
And least of all did she want to tell him. He had been picked up by a national level hockey team. He was on his way to super stardom. What kind of love would it be, if she came in the way of him achieving his dream?
She cancelled the internship, and drove Hannah to the airport to see her off. They promised to call each other everyday but Chelsey slowly stopped keeping in touch. It was too painful to talk to her, because every time she did, all she could think about was Hannah’s brother.
When it got impossible to hide it any more, she had to tell her mother.
It was obvious that her mother would be angry. She had expected, and rightly so, that her mother would throw her out of the house.
Then Chelsey had no other choice but to go back to working in the hair salon she had worked in as a teenager and try and keep her daughter a secret.
She gave birth secretly, brought Ruby home to her cramped rented apartment secretly, and lived at the edge of town, away from all the people she had grown up with.
The few friends, or rather acquaintances that she had, were all new now. She barely ever went out. All she cared about was going to the hair salon and earning enough money to pay the rent and to keep Ruby clothed and fed. She cared very little about her own needs. She was a mother now, and Ruby didn’t have a father that she knew of. This meant that Chelsey was father and mother both. And she was going to make sure that her daughter grew up with nothing to want for in life.
Even though her life was busy, and she didn’t have a moment in the day to breathe, she thought about Aaron often.
She imagined him in his high-rolling life. The money he made, the fame he had gained, how many people looked up to him. Ruby had his genes, she often thought, when she looked at her daughter. And that made her proud. Even though Ruby would never know, she would still always be Aaron Keels’ daughter.
What she tried to never think about was what happened that fateful night. But today, after she had given in to her deepest desire, she couldn’t stop herself from remembering it.
Chapter Seventeen - Aaron
Aaron was driving. He had the address on a small piece of paper, balled up in the pocket of his pants. Hannah had grudgingly given it to him and he had shot out of the house and driven off. He had no idea if he would be welcome at her house. But he was going to find out.
That night, three years ago, he had made the mistake of not talking to her, not asking the right questions and he wasn’t going to make another mistake like that again.
That night, he hadn’t been able to control himself.
She had found him staggering home. Chelsey had spent the evening with Hannah in their house, and was just leaving when Aaron stepped out of his friend Jack’s car.
They had been drinking all night, and he didn’t know what time it was any more. He had spent his last evening in town with the guys. He was going to have a new life starting tomorrow. He had “broken up” with three girls he was casually dating in the past week.
None of them were really relationships. They were girls he slept with on and off, but all of them believed they were in a serious relationship with him. There had been catfights in the cafeteria, brokenhearted love letters and lots of crying over the course of the few months that he was sleeping with them. The whole town knew, and Chelsey definitely knew as well.
When he got the call from the team and he knew he was going to leave, he put his foot down and made it very clear to all three of the girls that he was done with them. Neither of them had meant anything more to him than a casual fuck.
So this night, he had been clean of girls, but he had too much too drink instead.
When he got out of the car, he saw Chelsey standing at the front door. She had just closed it shut.
Her hair was much longer back then, and her face was more innocent, nearly angelic. She was wearing a short denim skirt and a pink blouse. He could still remember it like it was only a few moments ago. She was clutching her magazines to her chest, and looking up a
t him with her wide curious eyes.
Aaron stumbled once on the pavement as he walked up the driveway, his eyes remained fixed on her.
“Are they all sleeping? I don’t want Mom to see me like this,” he had said, with a silly smile on his face.
Chelsey nodded silently. “Hannah has just gone to bed. Your parents went to sleep a few hours ago,” She added as he came closer to her.
He knew she would have smelt the beer on his breath, and he looked like a disaster, but she didn’t seem to be scared of him. Instead, she just stood there, watching him as he made his way towards her.
He stumbled on the steps again, and this time she dropped the magazines from her hands and lunged towards him. She caught him in time so that he was in her arms, stooping, with his head resting on her shoulder.
“Sorry about that,” he said and chuckled. She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t pushing him away either.
“You must think I’m such an idiot,” he mumbled, but she shook her head and her hair swayed from side to side.
“It’s alright. You were celebrating, you deserve it,” she said quietly, and continued holding his big lumbering body in her arms. He still wasn’t sure how she had the strength to keep holding him. She was much smaller than him, much more tender.
“I’ll help you to your room,” she added then and he only nodded.
“Thank you Chelsey,” he mumbled, but now he had started to realize fully what they were doing. He had imagined being in her arms for years. He had controlled himself for so long, but now she was so close, too close. He could smell the sweet cinnamon scent of her body.
She opened the door again with one hand and dragged him in. His head was still swimming, but less with the alcohol now and more with the fact that Chelsey was touching him. He could physically feel himself sobering up.