47. Aaron
47
AARON
“ T here’s my favorite boy in the whole world!” My mother wrapped me in a big hug when she saw me, like I was a little kid again.
“I love you so much, Aaron. You’re the best son a mother could ask for.” She kissed the side of my head tenderly.
I basked in it, gorged myself on it. It wasn’t often my mother was affectionate. I’d remember this forever.
Bill beamed at me.
Michelle had her hands clasped, her eyes teary.
“Oh, she’s so happy.”
I’d made the right choice. It was worth breaking Daisy’s heart to make my mother this happy.
Interior design books lay scattered on the table. Emily pushed them aside and set down a scrapbook.
“Becca and I worked on this together,” she explained happily, “when we were little girls.”
I nodded along, making interested noises as she explained in detail how the once-in-a-lifetime event, a showstopper of a nineties-style wedding, would go.
“Looks wonderful, Mom.”
She squeezed my arm affectionately, gazing at me like I was her favorite person in the world.
Yeah, sacrificing Daisy was worth it.
“Just one more thing,” Bill said happily, taking a small black box out of his pocket. “The ring. Family heirloom.” He showed me the sparking diamond inside then patted my shoulders.
“You made everyone so happy, Aaron. This is happier than I’ve been in a long time. Thank you.”
I couldn’t believe it had been that easy to finally get the Ragnors to like me. Maybe one day they’d even love me.
Emily has done this before, the traitorous part of me remembered. It’s not going to last.
But Bill and Michelle had never been this pleased with me.
Once Aurora had children, my mom would be at peace. She’d have a baby that was a mix of her and her best friend in the whole world. I could give her that.
I figured I should make sure to do IVF. The baby had to be a girl. Emily would respond better to that, I decided as I headed across town to Aurora’s office.
I’d need to think about names. The little girl’s name needed to be something Emily would like. I hoped Aurora wouldn’t put up too much of a fight.
I had looked up her family’s business dealings, just to have a potential pain point in my back pocket in case Aurora balked at the naming issue.
The children’s legal activist nonprofit where she worked was in a converted old brick warehouse building near the water.
Dressed in a cream blouse and wide-legged pants, Aurora walked back and forth, dictating notes to herself, case file in her hand.
Yes, she would make a good wife. The nonprofit angle made a person draw comparisons to Amal Clooney. Aurora was pretty and fit. I’d buy us a generic penthouse. Without a dungeon.
Or a garden.
Who needed a garden in Manhattan anyway?
Becca’s daughter smiled at me when I knocked on the door.
“Good afternoon, Aurora.”
“Aaron! I hope you’re here to make a donation,” she teased, “since you never come to the charity fundraisers.”
“Sometimes I send a check,” I reminded her. “But when we get married, I can, of course, make more regular contributions.”
She set down the paperwork. “Excuse me?”
“Married,” I repeated. “We’re destined to be together. Remember?”
“Mmm…”
“Our moms always said their kids were going to get together. It’s fate. Kismet. Inevitable,” I added, unsure why she was playing hard to get. Did she want to be romanced? Probably.
“Let me take you out,” I crooned. “We could do a weekend away. Paris? Venice?”
“Aaron, what the hell? Aren’t you married?”
“Divorced. Daisy signed the paperwork yesterday.”
“Oh, fuck.” Aurora sat down heavily at her desk. “So it’s too much to hope that you’re not just having a mental breakdown from overwork?”
I took her hands. They felt clammy.
“I’m here for you, Aurora. We make a good team. We’ve known each other forever. Most importantly, it will make our moms happy.”
“Aaron...” She pulled away from me. “How are you the CFO of a huge international company? This is so fucked up.” She rubbed her hands over her face. “Fuck, I am so fucked.”
“No. I promise, I can take care of you.”
“Dude.” Aurora pressed the tips of her fingers together and looked up at the ceiling then back to me, searching for the words. “Aaron. I don’t know how to say this in a nice way, so I’m just gonna say it. No woman in her right mind would want to marry you.”
“I’m not like my father,” I snarled, leaning over the desk. “I’m nothing like him.”
“Honestly, he’s the least of my concerns,” Aurora said, using her courtroom voice on me. This was not how today was supposed to go.
“But you love me.” I couldn’t process what she was saying. “We dated. You were my girlfriend.”
“For like three weeks. Back in tenth grade. I thought you understood…”
I shook my head.
“We were just keeping the peace.” Sighing, she motioned for me to sit.
“Here’s the deal,” she continued. “That night, when your mom was kidnapped, my mom ditched her at the last minute. Becca had told her she didn’t want to go hang out at the beach. There was a nice boy she liked, and she wanted to go see his tennis match early the next morning. Then poof! Emily vanished into thin air, and twelve years later, poof! She reappeared. With a son.”
I crossed my arms.
“My mom felt so heartbroken and guilty. Like if she’d just been there, Emily would have been safe. The first time Emily came over to our house after she was rescued,” Aurora recounted, “she was, like, vibrating with anxious energy. She talked rapid-fire, reminiscing about old times, wanting to hear everything about my mom’s life.” Aurora gave me a pitying look.
“Emily broke down and sobbed when my mom introduced me to her, threw her arms around me, said she loved me, said she always wanted a daughter, that she was so happy Becca had a daughter. But she unfortunately had a son. At least that meant you and I could get married, she told me, and it would be like she had a daughter.”
I swallowed what felt like glass in my throat.
“I told my mom I didn’t want to get married, especially not to some freak.” Aurora shrugged helplessly. “My mom begged me to not rock the boat, to be nice. Maybe give you a chance. She’d tell Daddy to buy me another horse if I played along, just for a little while. We all thought Emily would get over it, let it go.”
“Emily doesn’t let anything go,” I said to the floor.
“Your mom is fucking toxic, Aaron. She’s controlling. When I dated other guys, she would find out about it and call Becca in a rage. My mom would listen for hours sympathetically then beg me to please not post anything online. I had to watch what I said, who I was around. It even affected where I went to college. I wanted to go to Berkeley in California, mainly to get away from it all. But I went to Harvard instead, with you, because my mom said she wouldn’t be able to survive the nuclear fallout if I didn’t. Becca didn’t want to hurt Emily and ruin their friendship. She was consumed by guilt, and her guilt inevitably became mine.”
“I had no idea,” I choked out. “I’m sorry. I would have—”
“What? Done something?” Aurora gestured grandly. “ Really? ”
No, of course not. Because I was incapable of saving anyone.
“Then Daisy came along, and you looked so happy. I thought… well, I thought you and Daisy would just stay married, and I didn’t to be the bad guy.”
“Then I divorced her,” I whispered. It was like I was watching this conversation from the ceiling, like I was going to float away and burn up in outer space.
“I can’t believe you fucked it up with Daisy.” Aurora crossed her arms.
“I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“Seriously, Aaron? Daisy’s like the only person who thinks you’re worth having to deal with your shitty family. It’s not just your father. It’s your crazy mother. You are way too enmeshed with her.”
“I just feel so guilty,” I tried to explain.
Aurora gave me another pitying look, the kind I got from everyone the year after the rescue. Poor bastard , they’d all thought.
“Unfortunately,” Aurora said, standing up, “it looks like someone has to have the balls here. I’m going to tell Emily and my mom that I’m not marrying you.”
“You’re really not?”
“I’ve known you for a while, Aaron,” she said as I stood up, feeling dazed and nauseated. “And as your friend, you might want to try and win Daisy back. I saw the way she looks at you. She is as good as you’re ever going to get.”