by Noelle Adams
So many years ago now.
Aaron wasn’t that same boy anymore. He was a man now. A man who’d made her feel more pleasure than she’d ever experienced before.
Not the boy—her best friend—anymore.
A slice of panic ripped through her chest at the recognition, and she inhaled harshly in response.
Aaron hadn’t said a word since he’d come, but now he raised himself up on straightened arms to look down on her. His eyes were steel grey again in the dim light of his living room. They were strangely urgent. Intense in a way that didn’t match the sated languor of his body.
“Are you all right?” he asked quietly.
She wasn’t all right. Since she’d been fifteen years old, her world had been neatly arranged with everything clearly and safely in its place, the only way to prevent the chaos and instability of her early years. Aaron had always been part of that life—the good life she and her mother had built away from her father.
If you had something good, you didn’t risk it. Not in thoughtless surrender to a momentary impulse.
In a momentary impulse twelve years ago, her mother had accepted her father back into their lives, and they’d almost lost their good, secure world as a result.
In a momentary impulse an hour ago, Kate might have destroyed everything good and secure she’d had with Aaron.
She wanted to push him away and run, but she couldn’t bear to hurt his feelings that way.
She still loved him more than anyone else.
“Yeah.” Her voice cracked, despite her attempts to hide her panic. “I just need to go to the bathroom.”
He heaved himself up to let her out from under his weight, and she stumbled as she scrambled off the couch.
She could still feel him inside her. The length and breadth of him. The gush of his release.
She grabbed her dress from the couch. She’d somehow ended up lying on top of it, and the dress had suffered the consequences. She pulled it on over her head as she walked to the bathroom so she wouldn’t be naked.
She tried to move normally but utterly failed.
She could feel Aaron’s eyes on her as she turned the corner to the hallway.
Then she ran the last few steps to the bathroom, locking the door behind her.
She started to clean herself up, but it wasn’t enough, so she turned the shower on hot, peeled her dress back off, and step beneath the spray.
The sight of his soap and shampoo—the kind he’d used for the last fourteen years—tightened a sob in her throat.
Things could never go back to the way they had been. Aaron could never again be who he’d been to her all these years. Her life might never fall back into place.
And it was her fault. For being weak. For being stupid. For turning to him selfishly because she’d been needy and insecure. For turning their friendship into something it wasn’t.
She started to sob for real, her body shaking so violently she had to bend at the waist, the hot water pounding down on her back.
She stifled the sounds as much as she could, although the effort seemed to crack her chest. She didn’t want Aaron to hear.
It took her a while until she pulled herself together, and she didn’t turn the shower off until she had.
She dried herself off with a clean towel, which had been haphazardly folded with several others on a shelf. The clothes Aaron had worn to work were strewn on the bathroom floor. She was always picking up after him. Sometimes, when he got too busy or distracted, she’d do his laundry for him.
Instinctively, she picked up a slate blue dress shirt so it wouldn’t get any more wrinkled than it already was. She lifted it to her face. It didn’t smell bad. In fact, it smelled warm and pleasant—like Aaron.
“Kate?”
Her throat tightened dangerously at the sound of his familiar, worried tone. “Just a second.”
She thought she’d sounded natural, but evidently he wasn’t fooled.
“Please don’t be upset all by yourself in there. We can talk about it.”
“I know.” Her voice cracked in a way she hated. Why the hell did he always have to be so thoughtful? Why was he always able to read her so well? “I just need to get dressed.”
“Okay.”
She had to fight off the impulse to cry again as she pulled her dress over her head. It smelled like sex and made her stomach ache, but she didn’t have anything else to wear.
She wasn’t the kind of person to fall apart like this. She could always make a plan and fix things.
Maybe there was some way to get their lives back into order without losing what they’d always had.
She towel-dried and finger-combed her hair as best she could. Her bra and panties were still in the living room somewhere. The memory of Aaron’s taking them off made her face flush hot.
When she came out, she found him sitting on the sofa, staring down at the floor.
He’d pulled on his t-shirt and pants but still looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. His hair stuck out in all directions, and he desperately needed to shave.
And she wanted him. Viscerally. She wanted him. Not just in her life but in her bed. In her body. Again.
She couldn’t look at him like a friend anymore.
Her face crumpled at the realization.
Aaron had looked up as she entered so he saw her reaction. “It’s not that bad,” he murmured.
“Yes, it is.” Her knees were suddenly weak, so she hurried over to sit on the hard chair in the seating group. She couldn’t sit beside him on the couch—not after what they’d just done there.
“No, it’s not.” Aaron’s voice was calm, controlled, utterly natural. His eyes met hers evenly. “It was sex. Just sex. It doesn’t have to change things. It doesn’t have to matter.”
She gaped at him, bewildered and now irrationally hurt that what meant so much to her apparently didn’t mean anything to him.
Evidently he could fuck her and just forget it—like she was any other woman.
She couldn’t let him see her reaction, though. Not if they were ever going to get through this. “Okay. It was just sex. It didn’t mean anything. That’s fine then.”
She took a shuddering breath as she stood up and then leaned over to pick up her bra and panties. She had to get out of here soon.
“Come on, Kate—I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant—“
She couldn’t let him finish. She walked out of his apartment before he’d finished his sentence.
When she crossed the hall to her apartment, she locked the door behind her. It was a good thing, too, since Aaron started pounding on it a few seconds later.
“Kate, let me in.”
His outraged tone made her want to cry again, but this time she didn’t indulge it. Ruthlessly, she stifled the emotion.
Needing to do something constructive—when there was absolutely nothing constructive to do—she pulled on a pair of clean underwear, an oversized t-shirt, and a pair of yoga pants and then took her wrinkled dress, bra, and panties to the closet with her stackable washer and dryer.
She turned the washer to the delicate cycle and started the water. She checked the tag in the dress to make sure it was washable—although she already knew it was—and then just stared blindly as water filled up the basin.
She wasn’t surprised when she heard a key in her front door. They’d always walked into each other’s apartments without invitation. There was no reason to assume that would change now.
She was adding expensive detergent to the water when Aaron found her, but she didn’t turn to look at him. She just put her clothes into the water, wishing she could wash away the entire night.
She sensed a strange, tense vibe to the way he watched her, but she couldn’t turn to check his expression.
Finally, Aaron said, his tone stiff and unfamiliar, “Washing me off your clothes and your body isn’t going to wash me out of your life.”
She ducked her head briefly as a sob threatened. He didn’t u
nderstand at all.
This was so much worse than breaking up with Hugh—which had wounded her self-esteem but not her heart.
She’d never lived a happy, stable life without Aaron. He’d been part of it from the beginning, just days after she and her mother had moved to town and started building a good world for themselves. In some ways, her friendship with Aaron had been the bedrock of her life. Once it was cracked, everything else might fall apart.
“So now you’re not even going to talk to me?” He sounded tired, almost bitter. She still didn’t dare to look at his face.
“What is there to talk about?” Pleased that her voice hadn’t broken, she stopped staring at the sudsy water in the machine and closed the lid.
“I think there’s a lot to say. Would you please look at me?”
She let out a shaky breath and turned to meet his eyes. He was right. She couldn’t act like a child. She had to face this—no matter how much it threatened to crush her.
“I’m sorry,” she admitted. “I just don’t know how to deal with this. I know it’s not your fault, but we never should have done that.”
“It’s partly my fault.” His eyes were strangely cool. Watchful. “You didn’t just jump me out of the blue. But I didn’t intend for it to happen. I just…wasn’t thinking.”
“I wasn’t either. But it’s changed everything, Aaron. I don’t know how we can be friends like we were.”
Something strange twisted on Aaron’s face. She didn’t understand it at all. “Maybe it’s for the best.”
She actually gasped at the pain of that remark—that he could see something good in the crumbling of their friendship, which she’d always assumed he needed as much as she did. “For the best?”
She turned away so he wouldn’t see her expression.
It was a futile effort. He just put a hand on her shoulder to turn her back around to face him.
“Kate,” he said, his eyes transforming into that intense heat she remembered from their lovemaking earlier. “Kate.”
She stared up at him, mesmerized. Her mind clearly wasn’t working, since she had no idea what to expect. She wasn’t prepared when he took her face in one of his big hands and then leaned down into a kiss.
She responded immediately—that same hunger, pleasure, and excitement swelling up at the touch of his lips. For a moment, she gave into the feelings, letting herself drink in Aaron—Aaron—so familiar and yet absolutely new.
Then she came back to her senses with a hard thud. She broke the kiss abruptly and pushed him away as another wave of panic slammed into her.
She felt vaguely sick, the way she had as a child when she’d had no idea what to expect from day to day, when nothing in her world had remained in its place.
“No,” she gasped, wiping at her mouth with her hand. “I don’t want that. I don’t want that.”
She did want it, but her world wasn’t going to survive it.
Aaron just stared at her, something aching on his face.
It hurt so much she had to harden her voice to keep it from breaking. “I’ve never thought about you that way.”
“I know you haven’t. But—”
“No. There’s no ‘but.’ We can never be that. And now I’m not sure we can ever be anything.”
There was a long silence before Aaron replied. “I see.”
He was stiff, unnatural, entirely un-Aaron-like.
Her adorable, rumpled friend had vanished, and some hard, silent, sexy stranger had taken his place.
She wanted Aaron. Needed him. Missed him already. And he was getting farther and farther away from her.
“If that’s your final word, then I’ll go.”
She’d hurt him—she could hear it in his cold voice—but she had no idea how to fix it. “Okay,” she croaked.
“We can talk later.”
“Okay.”
Then he just walked out the door.
Four
Kate stood staring at the closed door of her apartment for a long time before she could make herself move.
She’d messed up. She’d really messed up.
She never should have gone over to Aaron’s apartment earlier. She never should have given in to the urge to have sex with him.
And she never should have handled the aftermath so badly.
She was used to being competent and in control.
She wasn’t used to being such a mess.
But there must still be a way to fix it, to put things back together again into the safe, orderly existence she needed. The world where Aaron was her friend.
She grabbed a bottle of water from the door of her refrigerator. Aaron always mocked her because her refrigerator was so neat. Bottles of water—both flat and sparkling—and his favorite beer in tidy rows on one shelf. Produce tucked into drawers. Every surface immaculately clean. A couple of years ago, he’d rearranged everything just to tease her, and she’d pretended not to react, not to care. She hadn’t wanted to give him the satisfaction, but even such a small change had completely unsettled her.
She fought against that memory and instead went to find her notepad and pen and take them to the sofa.
There were only a few pages left of this notepad, but Aaron had already restocked the pads in her drawer. He’d never let her run out.
She stared down at the long piece of paper on her lap—line after line waiting for her to fill up with a list, an organized attack, a way to fix this mess.
She needed a plan.
She was always good at making plans and following through on them.
She looked at the empty page for a really long time.
She couldn’t help but remember Aaron’s words from earlier that evening. He’d said she lived by a pre-planned agenda. He’d said her lists didn’t really keep her world in order, no matter how hard she tried.
He knew her better than anyone. He would know what was wrong with her now.
For a moment, she tried to imagine what could happen now—what life might look like with her secure world and Aaron’s role as her friend shaken out of their normal positions.
All she could think about was the sickening instability of her first fourteen years.
She couldn’t—she just couldn’t—live a future that felt like that.
She was suddenly aware that something was on her coffee table that hadn’t been there before.
The deep red roses she’d toppled earlier were now stuck haphazardly in a vase Aaron must have taken from the top shelf of her kitchen cabinet.
Beside the vase was a folded piece of paper. She picked it up and read the note.
I know—they’re not perfectly arranged anymore, but I like them better this way. You’ll never admit it but, if you give them a chance, I think you might like them too. A.
She stared at the note in momentary incomprehension. Then she stared at the roses for a long time. She didn’t know if Aaron had tried to arrange them or if he’d just stuffed the whole bunch into the wide mouth of the vase, but there was something unexpectedly lush and appealing about the profusion of rich color and the way the petals spilled messily over each other, some of them dropping to the table surface below.
Hugh had given her the roses—an elegant, ridiculously expensive arrangement. Orderly, predictable, and soulless. Her first impulse was to throw them in the trash now, but she stopped herself before she did.
Now the roses looked more like Aaron than Hugh, and she didn’t want to get rid of them.
She wondered what Aaron was doing right now. If he was all right. He might have acted cool as he left, but she was afraid she’d hurt him.
On that thought, she jumped off the sofa and ran across to the hall to his apartment.
She knocked. When he didn’t answer, she knocked again, calling through the door, “Aaron, please. I’m sorry. Can I come in?”
He still didn’t answer. She tried the door, and it was open. “I’m coming in!”
The living room and kitchen were empty. The hallway and bat
hroom were empty. The bedroom was empty.
But she saw the drawer where he kept his gym clothes was hanging open in the dresser, so she guessed where he might be.
She left his apartment and walked down to their floor’s workout room at the end of the hall.
It wasn’t even five in the morning, so the treadmill, stair climber, recumbent bike, and elliptical trainer were empty except for Aaron.
He was running hard on the treadmill.
She stood in the doorway and stared at him.
He was the same Aaron he’d always been—disheveled hair, lean body, clever eyes. But he was something else now. Something more.
He couldn’t have been running for more than twenty minutes, but his shirt and skin were soaked with sweat. The outline of his broad shoulders and the rippling muscles of his arms and abdomen were clearly visible through the damp fabric.
Both her body and her heart responded to the sight.
She had no idea how it had happened. How her Aaron had turned into this.
But she still wanted him in her life. Needed him. That wasn’t going to change.
He broke his run abruptly when he saw her standing in the doorway. He adjusted the controls on the machine and gradually slowed to a walk.
She waited without speaking until he stepped off the treadmill.
As he wiped off his drenched face with a towel, she came closer.
“I’m sorry, Aaron. I’m so sorry.”
He sighed as he lowered the towel. “I know. I’m sorry too.”
She blinked. “I was the one who made a mess of it. You didn’t do anything.”
“Didn’t I?”
“What did you do wrong?” This wasn’t going the way she’d expected. She’d thought she would profusely apologize and he would forgive her and they’d figure out a way to work through this situation.
Aaron’s expression was still strangely distant, though.
He reached over and picked up his bottle of water, taking a swallow before he responded. “I keep having unrealistic hopes for you, even though I should know better. I get disappointed when they’re not realized, and that makes me react badly.”
Kate’s throat ached as she processed his words, but she was going to respond in a mature way this time. “I’m sorry…” Her voice broke so she tried again. “I’m sorry if I’ve been a disappointment to you. I know I’m a mess, but I can do better. Please don’t give up on me.”