12. Aaron
CHAPTER TWELVE
AARON
I work around my beard, cleaning it up so that every hair is in place. I shouldn’t be so nervous, at least according to Emma. But meeting her grandmother is a big deal.
I know, because she didn’t introduce us at the wedding a couple of weeks ago, and Emma is taking time out of her ultra-busy schedule, where she’s got ninety-one roses to prune, wrap, and ribbon this week, with Ry and Elliott’s wedding only a few days after that.
They’re getting married on a Tuesday, because apparently, that’s the slowest day at the office supply store they co-manage.
I finish shaving and step over to my new, expanded master closet. I had to steal some square footage from the bathroom and the bedroom to make it, but it’s worth it. I have three walls of shelves and rods, and I flip through my choices for shirts with the speed of a seasoned shopper.
“I’m here,” Emma calls from the front of the house, and I spin around. I’d seen her text when she was leaving the Big House, and that was only ten minutes ago. There’s no way she got here that fast.
“I’m back here,” I call, and then I face my clothes again. “I could use your help.”
Her footsteps come closer, really causing my pulse to ricochet through my body. I mean, I’m standing in my closet, shirtless, and I haven’t kissed the delectable blonde who enters my closet with the tentative words, “My help?”
“With a shirt.” I indicate the row of hanging garments in front of me.
Emma says nothing, and she doesn’t move closer to the rack to sift through the shirts. I look over to her. “What’s?—?”
Her eyes are glued to my chest, and a certain measure of pride flows through me. I work constantly most days, with heavy objects and building materials, unloading and loading trucks, with a little paper pushing in there too.
I know I have muscles—and now Emma does too.
“I wish I had a doorbell camera to yell into,” I say. “To tell you to stop staring and help me find a shirt.”
Emma startles and blinks rapidly. “I—wasn’t expecting this.”
“I’m meeting your grandmother,” I say. “I need something better than a gray polo. Claudia will never let me live it down.”
She and Beckett comment on every shirt I wear now, and I have to say, it doesn’t bother me.
“You look great in gray,” she says.
“Just what every man wants to hear.”
“Oh, come on.” Emma finally starts to leaf through my clothing. “It is a compliment.”
She’s wearing blue, because she knows it’s her heavenly color—a term I learned from her this past week. She claims that everyone has a “heavenly color” that simply brings out their best features, and that she can match any floral arrangement to it.
To my horror, she pulls a gray shirt from the hanger. “This one.”
“That’s gray.” I refuse to take it, and instead, back up a step.
She shakes it toward me. “It has faint yellow stripes, and that’ll bring out the highlights in your hair.”
“I have highlights in my hair?”
“Can you just put this on, so I can stop being so distracted?” She tosses me the shirt, and I flinch like she’s thrown a load of bricks at me. “We’re going to be late, and if there’s one thing Grams can’t abide, it’s tardiness.”
She nods, sweeps her eyes down my torso again, and turns smartly on her heel to leave the closet .
“You didn’t text from the Big House,” I call after her. “There’s no way. You’d still be over by Salty Dog if you had.” I glare at the shirt in my hands, sigh, and pull it over my head. I tuck it in as I leave my bedroom, adjusting my belt as I go down the hall.
Emma paces in front of my fireplace, and I pause to watch her. “I forgot to text,” she says when she sees me. “So yes, I texted from a stoplight a bit away.”
“I thought you said I didn’t need to be nervous.”
“You don’t.” She throws me a look I can’t decipher, turns, and paces toward the front window. Her hair falls in straight layers down her back, and she’s clearly used a flat iron on that. It’s shiny and silky, and I can’t wait to run my fingers through it.
Of course, I’ve never touched her hair, so that would be a major accomplishment in our relationship.
Something is afoot here, and I shelve my hormones as I move over to intercept her at the end of the hearth. “Emma.” I take her shoulders and force her to stop. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Her eyes meet mine, filled with horrible anxiety. I want to take it from her and ease it into oblivion. “I’m close with my grams, right?”
“Yes,” I say slowly.
She swallows. “It’s because she—well—she raised me. I mean, she didn’t. My parents were here until I was fifteen. She—she didn’t abandon me when she was done with me.”
I don’t know what to say, and I search her face for more of the story. It’s not written there, of course. My heart thumps painfully against my breastbone as I try to figure out what to say.
“I’m sorry,” comes out of my mouth, and I fold her into my arms and hold her against my chest. My cheek meets the silky quality of her hair, and I breathe in all of the floral goodness Emma has to offer. “I don’t know why anyone would…abandon you. You’re fantastic.”
“I’m fifteen years younger than my next oldest brother,” she whispers against my bicep. “My parents weren’t expecting me, and well, Grams said they hung in there as long as they could.”
I stroke one hand down the back of her head and through her hair, sighing internally in a blissful way. “Where are they now?”
Emma exhales heavily and steps out of my arms. She studies her shoes—a pair of wedges I’ve seen her wear before—and says, “They got divorced and left the Charleston area. My dad got remarried and lives in Florida now. My mom is up in Minnesota, of all places.”
“How many brothers?”
“Two,” she says. “One is in Atlanta. He and his wife have three kids. One is in Baltimore. They have two kids.”
I gently guide her chin up, so she’ll look at me. “And you’re here, in the best small town in South Carolina.” I give her a soft smile. “With your grandmother and all your best friends.”
Tears fill her eyes. “Yeah.”
“And you own an amazing florist shop,” I add as her eyelids drift closed. “And you’re beautiful, and kind, and hardworking, and if your parents can’t see that, well, that sounds like a them-problem.”
A soft sob spills from her mouth, and I haul her back into my chest. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to cry.” She sniffles, but I sure like the way she’s holding onto me like she needs me to stand.
“You can cry about this—about anything—any time you want.”
She pulls away and turns her back on me. I stand there helplessly, wishing I knew more what to do or say. She draws in a big breath. “I’m okay. Really. I’ve had a long time to get over this, and I am. I swear.”
“But it’s okay if you’re not.”
“I just hate explaining it to people.” She faces me again, and all evidence of her tears is gone. “Can we go? I really don’t want Grams to passive-aggressively text me that the rolls are getting cold.” She puts a smile on her face, and all I can think about it kissing it off.
I move into her personal space and curl my fingers around the back of her neck. “We can go,” I whisper. “Because you’re amazing, and I want you to be happy, okay?”
She nods, her eyes falling closed again. “Do you have anything hard you don’t like telling your girlfriends?” She opens her eyes and looks at me, almost an edge of hope in her eyes.
My stomach turns hard, and I nod. “Sure, of course.” I take her hand and lead her toward the front door. When I don’t have to look at her, it’s easier to get confessions out. “I, uh, have ADHD. The kind where you hyper-focus on something to the point of not being able to think about anything else.”
We leave the house, the screen door crashing closed behind us. The new front porch is phenomenal, if I do say so myself, and I had to employ my ADHD to get it done as quickly as I did.
“It can come in handy sometimes,” I say. “Like when I need to finish a project or pay attention to fine details.” I glance over to her as we go down my front steps. “Other times, it’s a curse. It makes me miss texts and ignore some projects that don’t interest me as much.”
I go around to the passenger side of my truck and open the door for her. We finally come face-to-face again, and I think of the lack of cameras on my property. Emma came to pick me up for this Sunday dinner date with her grandmother, because she said it didn’t make sense for me to drive twenty minutes to the Big House to get her, then drive twenty-five minutes back to the center of town where her grams lives.
She smiles at me. “So many things are making sense now. ”
“Are they?”
“You fidget when you’re nervous too.”
“I fidget because I exist,” I say. “I have a hard time sitting still. It’s like my body…it doesn’t match my mind, and I feel out of equilibrium.” I shrug one shoulder. “I mean, that’s how one of my doctors described it, and it made sense to me. So.”
Emma puts both hands on my chest and leans into me, her smile curving up those pretty pink lips in such a slow, tantalizing way.
“How long until your grandmother calls?”
“Could be any second.”
“Dare we risk it…for a kiss?”
Everything about Emma softens, and she nods. I don’t need a verbal affirmation, and since I’ve been dying to kiss Emma for real for months, I lower my head and do exactly that.
An explosion fires through my brain, and I probably kiss her a little too roughly for the first few strokes. Then I settle down, get my mind and body in sync, and really enjoy kissing this woman I’ve liked for so, so long.