Getting Aaron out of the house and into the truck was a significantly easier task than getting him up the stairs. Aaron’s body left a long red streak in the snow from the front door to the truck. Had anyone showed up and saw the scene, they would have screamed bloody-murder.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Thankfully, Lily got Aaron to the town’s emergency clinic alive. Doctor Ben and his nurse wife, Elaine, the old, grey-haired couple who lived above and ran the clinic, told Lily to wait in their upstairs living room while they took Aaron into their office. “Is he going to be okay?” Lily asked.
“We’ll let you know once we’ve had a good look at him,” Doctor Ben said.
Lily paced the room anxiously while she awaited the verdict, which came an hour later. “I’m sorry, Lily, but how did you say you were related to the patient?” Elaine, Doctor Ben’s nurse wife asked.
“He’s a friend. He just moved to town a couple of weeks ago.”
“Are you two close? Does he have a wife, or a girlfriend, or a parent in town with him? Any relatives?”
Lily thought. “I think I’m the closest he’s got.”
“He cut his rib pretty badly. Luckily it wasn’t too deep, just long. After we finished picking the wood splinters out of him, he gave him twelve stitches. Ben’s not as worried about the cut as he is about the drinking. He’s very drunk—very badly dehydrated. Had you not taken him in, I don’t know that the boy would have woken up in the morning.”
Lily was silent. She could feel the guilt stirring in her gut, churning, making her lightheaded. She knew it wasn’t her fault, that Aaron was the one to turn her down, and told her to stay away. But still, somehow, she felt as though Aaron’s bender had something to do with her, that it was something she said or did that drove him to act out.
“There was a smaller cut on the back of his head that needed two stitches as well. It looked like he fell and hit it pretty good,” Elaine continued. Lily remembered Aaron falling back in the chair, right before he fell asleep. “Ben thinks he probably has a pretty good concussion, but we won’t know until he’s awake and you can ask him some questions.”
“You want me to ask him some questions?”
Elaine perked up and smiled. “That’s right. You’re actually very lucky you caught us when you did. Ben and I are heading out to catch a redeye to Maui. It’s our first vacation together in twenty-two years, isn’t that something?” Elaine pointed to the packed suitcase that sat in the corner, which Lily hadn’t even noticed until that very moment. “Ben found a spot right on the beach. I wish the computer wasn’t down so I could show you the pictures of the resort. It’s a real beauty.”
“Right…” Lily looked up at the clock. It was almost midnight. She couldn’t stick around to ask Aaron a bunch of question. She had to be on the road in a few hours herself.
“Ben’s just writing down the care instructions for you, and the questions you’ll have to ask to test the severity of the concussion. If it’s bad, you’ll have to take him to the ER in Chicago. You need to make sure he gets plenty of fluids and rest for the next week. Oh, but for the next couple of nights, stay next to him while he sleeps and wake him up every hour or so, to make sure he’s still breathing.”
Lily tried to think of the proper way to tell Elaine she couldn’t do it. But the moment was too overwhelming, and she clammed up.
Doctor Ben emerged from the back room in a colourful Hawaiian t-shirt, with a suitcase in one hand and Aaron’s care instructions in the other. “Aloha!” he said with a smile. “Your friend had quite the accident, Lily. It’s a good thing you caught us when you did. Here are the care instructions,” he handed the handwritten sheet to Lily. He dug another piece of paper out from his pocket. “And here’s the prescription for the antibiotics.”
“I’m sorry,” Lily said. “I can’t look after him for the next week. I’m supposed to leave for LA with my dad in the morning.”
“Well, then just give the instructions and the prescription to whoever he ends up staying with, and tell them to keep a close eye on his drinking. It’s such a shame to see a young man drink his health away like that.” Doctor Ben placed his suitcase down and headed back towards his in-home clinic. “Come with me, Lily. I’ll help you get him into your truck. C’mon, let’s go. Our seats are non-refundable.”
They put Aaron down across the back seat of Lily’s truck. Lily climbed into the front seat and fired up the engine while Ben and Elaine stood and waved outside. “Aloha,” Ben called out. “It means hello and goodbye!”
Lily forced a smile. “Aloha,” she said back, and then pulled away.
On the way back to Aaron’s home, she made a detour and stopped at her own house. The moving truck was packed and locked and the house was dark. A note on the kitchen table, written by Kilgore, read, “Went to bed. Don’t stay up too late. Big day tomorrow!” The note ended with a smiley face.
Who else could she leave Aaron with? She was the only person in the entire town that the rock star knew. And she couldn’t just leave him at home, alone. What if he stopped breathing, like Elaine said? What if he went on another drunken rampage through his house? She could take him to the hospital in Chicago, but she knew Aaron was too stubborn to stay. Lily gently knocked on her father’s door. “Dad?” She let herself in. “Dad, are you awake?” She gave her father a nudge.
“Huh? What is it?” Kilgore said, rolling over to face his daughter, eyes still closed.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t think I’ll be able to go out to LA tomorrow,” she said.
Kilgore was silent for a moment. He opened his eyes and looked up at his daughter. In his eyes was a combination of disappointment and fear. “What? Why?”
Lily told her father about what happened, leaving out the hows and whys, and the part about Aaron being backwards drunk. “Fred doesn’t know anyone in town but me, Dad. Doctor Ben said he could stop breathing if he falls asleep for too long.”
“I was looking forward to the road trip with you,” Kilgore said.
That all-too familiar lump returned in Lily’s throat. “I know, Dad. I was too. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. I understand. Take Mr Stein home, and make sure he’s okay.”
“I’ll fly out in a few days. A week at the most.” Lily kissed her father on the forehead. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Quit apologizing. I’ll see you when I see you.”
“I love you.” She closed the bedroom door and headed back to the truck where Aaron was still passed out. The smell of whiskey was powerful, confined inside of the small truck. “I hope you’re happy, you drunk dummy,” Lily muttered to Aaron’s unconscious body. She threw the transmission into drive and pulled away from the lot.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Aaron woke up in his bed with the worst headache he’d experienced in all of his heavy-drinking life. It was a combination of a hangover headache and a concussion migraine. He wasn’t aware of the concussion, or even the twelve stitches across his ribcage. He wasn’t even aware that he’d trashed his own basement studio, bled all over his house, gone to the doctor, or that he’d been dragged from Lily’s truck to his incredibly comfortable Swedish memory foam mattress bed. So when he noticed Lily sleeping in bed next to him, he was understandably confused.
After a few wasted minutes trying to refresh his memory, he tried to sit up but was overwhelmed by a sharp pain shooting through his torso and another shooting up his spine, which vibrated against the back of his head. His pained groaning was loud enough to wake Lily up—an impressive feat, seeing as she was not only a very heavy sleeper, but she had also been up until the early hours of the morning, scrubbing dried blood off of just about every surface in the large house. When she finally had the chance to get into bed, she was too nervous to fall asleep, worried Aaron would stop breathing and she would have no idea. “Go back to sleep,” Lily managed to say through her state of groggy exhaustion.
“What the hell’s going on here? Why are you in my bed?”
<
br /> Hardly awake herself, Lily had to think. Why was she in Aaron’s bed? It took a moment for the answer to come to her. She explained the reason to Aaron.
He lifted up his shirt and his eyes lit up when he noticed the long row of stitches. “Holy shit,” he said. Lily had already fallen back asleep. Aaron gave her a nudge. “How the hell did I cut myself?”
“I told you, I don’t know. You told me you cut it when your guitar broke, when you were hitting things with it.”
“Which guitar?”
“I don’t know. That’s what you’re worried about? Which guitar? You’re lucky to be alive. Lay back down and get some sleep. The doctor said to get lots of rest.”
“Doctors don’t know anything—bunch of scam artists. Help me up.” Aaron tried to sit his body up, but the pain was paralyzing.
“No. You need to stay in bed.”
Unable to sit himself up, he decided to try and roll himself off of the bed, onto his feet. His attempt failed, and his body hit the ground with a dull thud. “Goddamn!” he said.
Lily perked up. “You idiot! If you pop those stitches, there’s no one in town to sew you back up. You know that, right? I’m not driving you all the way to Chicago because you’re too darned stubborn to get any rest!” Lily helped him up to his feet. Thankfully, no stitches had popped. She held onto his arm just in case he tried to do something equally stupid.
“I need to see which guitar I broke,” he said.
“Why does it matter?”
“Because it matters,” he snapped. He pushed away from Lily and started towards his basement studio. Lily followed. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he stopped and looked down at the large mess he’d made the previous night. “Shit,” he said. His shoulders slumped down and he suddenly looked deflated, weak, sad. His eyes moved down to the shattered guitar in the center of the room and that’s where they stayed.
“I cleaned up all of the blood. I wasn’t sure where anything was supposed to go, so I left it.”
Aaron remained silent, staring down at the guitar.
“Was that an expensive one or something?” Lily asked.
Aaron shrugged. “It was my first guitar.” His voice was quiet. “My mom bought it for me for my thirteenth birthday. She saved up for three months to buy it. It’s probably only worth like five hundred bucks, maybe less. But it was my first.”
“I’m sorry,” Lily said.
“She couldn’t afford lessons, so I just learned to play on my own. Every weekend my mom would request one of her favourite songs, and I would spend the week learning it, and then the next weekend I’d play it for her, and she’d smile and request another. That’s how I learned to play—with that guitar. She died when I was fifteen. Heart attack in the middle of the night, the night before my birthday. No one saw it coming.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Aaron shrugged. “It’s fine. I got over it.”
“Can you fix it? Willy might be able to fix it.”
“Look at it. It looks like I ran it through a goddamned wood chipper.” He became silent and continued to stare at the heap of guitar rubble. “It’s garbage,” he said before turning and walking back up the stairs.
Aaron poured himself a cup of day-old, cold coffee, sat by the window, and stared out.
“Are you okay?” Lily asked, smelling the stagnant coffee in the pot and wincing as she noticed the grounds floating in it.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t drink that. Let me make you a fresh pot.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. I like it like this.” The coffee, having steeped overnight in the old grounds, was strong enough to conquer any migraine, be it from a hangover or a concussion, or a combination of both.
As Lily put the pot back in the coffee maker, she remembered Doctor Ben’s concussion test, which was folded up in her pocket. She took a seat next to Aaron and began asking him the questions. “What’s your name?” she said.
Aaron looked down at the test, which was headlined ‘Concussion Test.’ It was the last thing he wanted to do, but he figured he’d been enough of an asshole over the past few days. He looked back out the window. “Aaron Joseph Brown.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“February 16th, 1981.”
Lily nearly asked the next question when she realized Aaron’s response. “That’s today,” she said.
“No, it was thirty-five years ago.” He continued to stare out the window.
Lily nearly shouted ‘Happy birthday!’ before she realized it wasn’t just Aaron’s birthday, it was the anniversary of his mother’s death. Between the grief and the assumed concussion, the last thing Aaron probably wanted was someone erupting into excitement.
“Any other questions?” Aaron asked, eyes still glued to the window.
“Um,” Lily said, looking back down at the list. “The next question was, what day is it today.”
“February sixteenth, two-thousand and…” Aaron became silent and raised his hand to his head. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just… I can’t remember the year.”
Lily looked back down at the list of questions. “What town do you live in?”
He thought. “Holy shit, what the hell is this hick town called?”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, you’re still the same person, but you definitely have a concussion. It says here that you aren’t supposed to sleep alone for the next two to three nights and you’re not supposed to listen to any loud music, watch TV, or do any activity for the next two to three weeks.”
“So I can basically do nothing,” Aaron said, looking back out the window.
“It says the more rest you get, the faster you’ll recover."
Just the thought of sitting around for three weeks was torture in itself, but Aaron knew he didn’t have much of a choice. Screwing around with a concussion was bad news. It’s why all of the NFL players he’d ever met only had half a goddamned brain.
After he finished off the last of the sludge he called coffee, Lily put on a proper, fresh pot.
She still had Aaron’s prescription in her pocket, which she knew she had to get filled. But she was worried to leave Aaron alone—not because she thought he would fall asleep and die, but because she thought he would do something stupid, like go out snowshoeing, or play music through one of his giant amplifiers. But Aaron’s body was aching and in desperate need of painkillers, so Lily begged Aaron to stay put while she took off for the town pharmacy.
And Aaron sat there, staring out the window, feeling like an idiot. Because for the first time in over a decade, he was being taken care of. Lily was not only sticking around to make sure he didn’t die, she had also cleaned his house, cooked him breakfast, made him a pot of fresh coffee, and gone to the store to get his prescription. The emptiness that had lingered inside of him for years suddenly felt filled, and it was being filled by someone he’d been a jackass to, someone he’d accused of being a starfucker, a liar.
He placed his coffee down on the table and then noticed the picture of Lily and her mother that Lily had left there a couple of weeks before. Lily was beautiful; her big, silly smile, and her eyes, filled with joy. Aaron was staring at a girl who loved life, not a girl who cared about money or glory or fame. She wasn’t just some wannabe groupie, some glory whore, some club-hopping starfucker.
Staring at that photo, Aaron realized that he liked Lily a lot more than he’d ever liked a girl—or anyone. Hell, maybe he even loved her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Lily returned with Aaron’s prescription and a couple of grocery bags, filled with all the ingredients she needed to make a good soup. She boiled a kettle full of water and poured Aaron a peppermint tea, which she hoped would help with the nausea caused by the handful of pills he had to take. When she brought the tea and the pills over to him, he kissed her gently on the lips.
She froze, her head swirling with questions
that she was too stunned to ask. What was happening? She stood, trying to gather herself, to make sense of the kiss. Was it real? Did he mean it? Was it just some side-effect from the concussion? Had he lost his mind? The questions remained unanswered. She leaned forward and kissed back, letting her body melt into his arms, into his chest.
His fingers nestled into her hair as their noses snuggled together, lips locked. Her heart was racing and she could feel his heart racing, thudding against her chest. Her body became lighter and lighter and the rest of the world began to drift away. Lighter still, if he let go she would drift away too. She grabbed on tight, digging her fingers into his rigid muscles. “Ouch,” he said, pulling his lips away.
“I’m sorry.” She laughed and they looked into each other’s eyes. She wanted to ask why the sudden change of heart. She wanted to know what had changed, or if it was just a pity kiss. That was no pity kiss, she thought.
She was still in an elated daze, feeling his fingers running gently down her side, sending pulses of ecstasy buzzing through her body. She cuddled deeper into his muscular body and he tightened his powerful embrace. They kissed again.
“Don’t let go,” she said, wrapping her arms around him, feeling every movement of every muscle in his body against her skin. He was warm, strong, and safe.
His lips moved down to her neck and his hands began to explore her body. She could hear a soft moan escape her lips but she had no control over it. Quickly, she was losing control of everything, surrendering to him, her sensibilities melting away. His lips moved up to her ear and gently, playfully, he nibbled her earlobe. Another soft moan escaped her lips.
“Let’s go to the bedroom,” he said.
They started towards the bedroom. Then suddenly, Lily stopped. “Wait,” she said. “Your concussion. We can’t.”
“Screw the concussion.”
Lily smiled and took Aaron by the hands. “I don’t want you hurting yourself any more than you already have. Let’s wait until another day. When I’m back from LA.”
Aaron groaned.
LIMELIGHT LOVE: A Small Town Rock Star Romance Page 11