18. Aaron
EIGHTEEN
AARON
Sitting on the hood of my matte, tan G-Wagen is starting to garner too much attention after a couple of hours.
I’ll admit it’s not the most subtle of vehicles, and if you twist my arm, I’ll even admit it’s a little douchey of a choice, but can you blame me? I don’t make many luxury purchases. My house, a house for my parents, and this ride—my baby, Gertrude—are all I’ve got. Okay, and my Xbox, Playstation, Switch, and some really impressive collections of video games. But that’s it, I swear. Anything else nice that I own came from PR campaigns, gift bags, and the like.
To be honest, Gertrude and I haven’t really spent much time in this neighborhood, and considering she cost more than most of these homes probably did, she’s kinda sticking out like a narc at a rave. Which means people are looking. Then they’re seeing my ugly mug, and not to sound conceited, but I think quite a few of ’em are recognizing me.
For a stealth mission, this is a total fail.
I look down at my Patek Philippe (it was a gift my PR agent snagged for me, I swear it!), and sigh when I realize it’s past seven PM.
Close to three hours I’ve been sitting here, staring at an empty driveway outside an even emptier home. I didn’t need to knock to know that. The lack of her presence is palpable, even from here.
I’m close to having to admit that she won’t be coming home tonight—if she still considers this place home, and she’s not just shacking up with him full-time.
Despite the salty vein running through my thoughts, something tells me she does still come here regularly. It might be the plants on her front stoop that weren’t there last time I was here. Her recent presence is almost tangible—like some trace of her essence has been left behind. When I try to visualize it, I imagine a trail of golden sparkles in the wake of where she’s been, infusing life everywhere she goes. Or, I’m going fucking nuts. It’s a toss-up, really.
I could have just used my key. Or at least checked the Find My app, assuming she hasn’t thought to ax me off there yet. But those both felt like an invasion of her privacy, and I’m here to show some humility, ffs.
The shoot kicked the living shit out of me, mentally, physically, and definitely emotionally. It’s one thing to plummet to new emotional lows for the camera, but it was a bit too real for me with the turmoil I’ve been living in all summer long. I was counting down the seconds to coming back home and getting some actual rest. That’s not an exaggeration. I actually installed a countdown widget to my flight on my phone’s home screen.
The fact that I landed nearly four hours ago and haven’t been home yet, well, that just tells you how much I needed to see the owner of this townhouse.
I told Kayla last night I was gonna need a full day or two of rest before I came out of my coma and could be a real boyfriend again, and lucky for me, she was understanding enough about that.
But when I landed, I couldn’t just go home. Being on the same continent, in the same city as Gem again…it set something inside me itching . This restless energy deep within me that won’t be calmed, won’t be sated until I know I haven’t been eliminated from her life.
That last tête-à-tête I had with Alex before Midnight Empire wrapped for the season sparked a new fear in me. I know I made some progress with the IG stories, and thank God she stopped shutting me out on texts, but I need to know we’re okay for real. Plus, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past few weeks, and I have some ideas about how we might need to grow and evolve.
I don’t think I’ll physically be able to rest until I see her again, talk this out with her, but I might be SOL here.
It’s as I’m close to giving up, my head bowed in exhaustion, and my mind racing with alternate paths to repairing this hole in my gut that just won’t relent when I hear a car turn into the driveway I’ve been guarding.
My eyes eagerly seek out the source of that sound, and some tiny part of me rests easier when I see that it’s her car, not his, that pulls in. I was worried for a while there that if someone did show up, it would be him, or at least the two of them together. But it’s just her, in her trusty Toyota Corolla that’s easily half as old as we are, maybe older. Somehow the sight of my own specced out G-Wagen between my legs and her… modest ride in front of me paints a contrast between our lives that I haven’t really been forced to acknowledge before.
She was with me through my rise, my windfalls, living the life with me. It’s weird to think of her life as lacking in that same glitz and glam that mine has taken on the sheen of in recent years, but it’s staring me in the face. Her tiny townhouse, her aged, sensible vehicle, even her clothes scream practical, low maintenance. Far from my designer jeans and two-hundred-dollar tees. (Again, gifts! I swear, by the time you can afford this shit, they just send it to you for free, hoping you’ll be spotted in it. What am I going to do? Turn it away?)
Rather than ambush her by opening her car door for her and crowding her as she tries to get out—as tempting as that sounds—I hop down off the Mercedes and meander over to the little covered entrance and wait by her door. My travel bag and suitcases wait in the trunk of my car, it’s just me and what I’ve got in my jean pockets. I shove my hands in them to keep from fidgeting while I wait for her to round the corner, and when she does, a wave of that fatigue hits me, hard. My knees nearly give out, and I sway, ripping my hands out of those pockets and steadying myself on the wall behind me before regaining my balance.
She looks… different . Even more different compared to the last time I saw her—that God-awful day I discovered her Tinder profile.
Her hair is down, and short, styled all nice, and kinda blonde? Her sweet little face has more makeup on than I’m used to seeing, but it brings out her features and makes her look even more like a pixie.
The changes don’t stop there. She’s wearing some outfit that makes her look more like a grown ass woman than I’m used to seeing her, but it suits her so well at the same time. That hole in my stomach turns into a knot, tightening my insides at the sight of her after all these weeks apart.
She finally looks up from the ground as she takes the final step onto the stoop with me, and her soft brown eyes meet mine for the first time in more than ninety days. Not that I’ve been counting. If I thought my stomach was in a vice before, it’s just tripled in intensity at the eye contact.
“Hi,” I get out. My throat impedes the sound, making it come out more like a croak or a whisper.
“Hey,” she says with a soft smile.
Something in me snaps, unable to stand the distance between us for another instant. My legs take one large step to eliminate the space separating our bodies, and I can’t keep my hands from reaching out and touching her arms, needing the comfort that she provides.
Her mouth makes this small “o” as she registers our closeness, like we haven’t touched every day of our lives for the last dozen years. In her defense, we’ve never gone this long apart before, so I’ll let it slide. Her nearness is also doing something to my system; calming me, sending a rush of something warm through my veins, a sense of rightness replacing the foreign sensation that’s been plaguing me recently.
There’s still something off between us. I don’t just expect things to be right because we haven’t hung out in so long. But right now, I just need my Gem back.
“I know this is awkward,” I tell her honestly, a self-deprecating smile tugging at the corner of my lips. “And I have so much to say to you. But it’s been, like, three months. Can I just have a hug from my best friend right now?”
The uncertainty on her face flickers for just a second before a huge smile overtakes her features, and she nods her head three times, these huge motions that show how emphatically she means it.
The relief from her permission alone floods me and thankfully she catches me as I lunge in to grab her. Her arms wrap around my back the same instant mine envelop her, absorbing her small frame in my larger one. My head tucks into her neck, buried in her hair, and I suck in my first deep breath I’ve been able to take since she left. My lungs are finally working again, my vital organs complying with basic functions now that I’m whole again.
Her scent floods my nose as I inhale, and she even smells different.
Damn, she smells good. Sweet. Something floral maybe? Did she always smell like this?
I’m embarrassed to say I think a groan leaves my mouth as I soak in the rightness of the moment, and I extend to my full height, lifting her off her feet, holding her close to me, savoring the contact, the proximity.
Her thin arms are still holding onto me for all she’s worth, but I think she might be trembling, and I realize this might be weird, with so much unsaid between us. I lower back down to gently place her feet back on the ground, and pull back from her, clearing my throat.
“Sorry,” I say.
She looks back at the concrete again, shaking her head rapidly, rejecting my apology, her hair covering her face so I can’t see what’s in her eyes.
“You’re gonna have to give me your new assistant’s number.”
That’s about the last thing I expected to be the first thing out of her mouth.
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I really gotta tell her to stop letting you listen to emo while you’re away from home, kid.”
My head falls back, a laugh tumbling out, and my arms wrap around my stomach. Leave it to her to bring me back to earth when I started to stray there.
“I’ll connect you guys,” I say jovially, and I kinda mean it. I bet Gem would have some good input for Shirley.
She looks between me and the door pointedly, kinda awkwardly.
“Uh…can I come in?” I ask. “I didn’t wanna just use my key,” I trail off, realizing that sounded kinda shitty, seeing as to how she was sort of forced to give me hers back.
“Thanks for that.” Her words are clipped and less warm than usual, but I think we can all agree I deserve some aloofness, so no hard feelings from me on that.
I follow her inside, watching her movements as she turns on the lights on the wall inside the entryway. The door closes behind me and we make our way to her…shall we call it quaint kitchen, where she turns around to face me next to the counter where her two barstools are.
Is that her dining room? I thought I remembered this place being bigger?
I twist from side to side, doing a rapid scan of her townhouse, and it’s definitely smaller than I remember.
She makes a noise, not quite clearing her throat, but it calls my attention back to her just the same. Not sure where to start, I throw something out there.
“I was worried you, uh, wouldn’t be coming back here tonight. Maybe you’d be going to his house or whatever.” My booted foot kicks at the vinyl flooring, embarrassed at the implicit admission that the thought bothered me.
Her eyes cut right through my bullshit, lasering to the real me before she answers me in a matter-of-fact tone. “He normally stays with me, actually, but he’s having a guys’ night tonight.”
That knot in my stomach? It’s now a stone, dropping all the way down through my intestines. It feels like it might actually come through the other side, and I mentally map a route to her bathroom in case of emergency.
“Oh.”
The silence is too awkward even for me to break, but I’m still not sure how to just launch into an apology. Maybe I shoulda been working that out the three hours I sat my ass outside her door, but you live, you learn, right?
“You out with Alex today?” I try again.
“I was at work, Aaron. Something us plebeians have to do so we can afford to eat and watch Netflix with a roof over our heads and the heat on in the winter.”
I ignore her sarcastic barb, letting her get one in against me, as I continue pushing for some sort of happy place where we can find conversation again. “I didn’t know you got another job!” My cheer sounds a little forced to my own ears, so I work harder at sounding natural. “What are you doing now?”
Those golden brown eyes dart to the corner of the room, where her computer desk is, and she bites on her lower lip for a second, leaving that full upper one on display.
Why am I noticing her fucking lips, you absolute dipshit.
The mental reprimand helps and my eyes focus back on hers again, which finally come back to me.
“I started working at the library last month.” She says it shyly, like it’s not something to be proud of.
“That’s so cool, Gem! So you’re a librarian? That’s the fucking dream for a book nerd, no?”
Her eyes darken, narrowing at me briefly before she sinks back into herself again. “No, I’m not a librarian. That actually takes like degrees, and a shitload of school. Which I don’t have.”
That one cuts deeper, knowing it’s my fault she never graduated. But it’s not like she was studying to become a librarian anyway, she hadn’t even picked out her real major, ffs!
Still. We were in a different place when we decided she should drop out and come work with me. Neither of us could foresee a future for us where our lives weren’t entirely intertwined. But now she’s out there in the world, without me, and her options are limited because of me . The guilt of it stings in a way I’m not used to feeling, and I don’t fucking like it.
“I’m a library technician. A library assistant. You know, the role I’m delegated to in life. The one you said I sucked at.”
There’s an awful lot of venom in her words, and it pierces something in my chest, leaving me feeling like I’m the poison.
“Gem—” I start, but she holds up a hand, looking resigned.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” The way her voice sounds… I hate it.
“No, I shouldn’t have said any of that. Look, I’ve had a lot of realizations since you’ve been gone. Since I’ve been gone. Can we…can we just talk for a second?”
She crosses her arms over her stomach, then holds one hand up to me as if to say what does it look like we’re doing? I can’t help but smirk at her sass, she’s still my Gem despite the shit I pulled, and I love her for it.
“I, uh, I realize that I was a fucking asshole that day.”
“Mmm,” she humors me, and I know I need to get the rest out.
“There’s not much I can say to make that right. I just want you to know how much I appreciate everything you did for me as my assistant. I, uh, I’ve gone through a few of ’em since you left, and no one comes close to you.”
She rolls her eyes at that, and changes her stance, crossing her legs and dropping her arms.
“Anyway, I hope you don’t think being an assistant isn’t something to be proud of. Working in a library sounds like a dream for you, and I’m sure you’re making their lives so much easier. I’m pretty jealous, to be honest.”
Her eyes soften marginally, and I know she’s hearing what I’m saying.
“I’m sorry, Gem.” My hand reaches out to rub her arm, needing that contact between us to solidify my words.
“Thank you.” Her words are soft, and I can tell she means them.
“And happy belated birthday, by the way.”
“Yeah, I got your texts.”
Is it icy in here, or is it just me? I change the subject again, trying for something else.
“Oh my God, I forgot to tell you! Do you know what they call a bookworm in Romania?”
“Why would I know what they call a bookworm in a language I don’t know a single word of, Stone?”
Now it’s my turn to roll my eyes at her sassy ass, and I scoff at her. “It’s a figure of spee—nevermind.” I change course, mid sentence, getting back to my point. “A library mouse!”
Half a giggle erupts from her mouth, and I silently celebrate that I’m getting through to her.
“A library mouse?” She sounds incredulous, amused.
“Isn’t that perfect?”
“Okay, that’s pretty great,” she admits, swinging one leg back and forth, the toe of her little boot scraping over the dark brown flooring with each sweep. “But seriously, you’re an idiot to think I’d know a phrase in a language less than twenty million people on a planet of almost eight billion can understand.”
My jaw drops as I realize what she just admitted. “You researched Romania!”
She pulls back from me and narrows her eyes again. One of my fingers comes up to point at her in triumph. “Hah! You still care, Gemma Carson. I caught you!”
She blows a raspberry at me, and I don’t even complain when a fleck of her spit hits my skin. I’m just pumped to have some semblance of normality back between us. It’ll be no time at all before I’m back to giving her noogies and teasing her about her pastry of choice.
“Do you know what else was cool about Romania?”
She doesn’t offer any guesses, but I didn’t expect her to. I’m just happy to be here. Allowed this chance. “Peonies are, like, a huge deal there. It’s their national flower, and a ton of Romanians have the last name Bujor , or Bujori , which means peony.” Her face softens marginally at the mention of the flower she’s vaguely obsessed with. “They had a peony festival while I was there, can you believe that? I got some pics to show you.”
A non-committal noise, but it doesn’t blow my hopes. I take a step closer to her, closing that space between us again—I’m not ready for it to make another appearance yet—and clasp her left hand in one of mine.
“Listen, Gem. I know I was an asshole.”
“Was?” She questions.
“Fine. I’ve been a real dick. I’m fucking sorry, okay? I don’t know what came over me. I’m working on me, I promise. But I had some ideas I wanted to tell you.”
She raises both of her eyebrows at me, allowing me to continue pitching her. I was kinda hoping we’d, like, sit down and talk, but she’s clearly not that warmed up to me just yet, so I’ll take what I can get and go on.
“It’s always been just us, right?”
She nods, and I can practically hear her sarcastic obviously, Stone with that single, exasperated motion.
“But now it’s not.”
She nods again, understanding dawning on her features.
“So I think maybe our friendship needs to evolve with the rest of our lives. Like, maybe we should start spending some time together with each other’s…” I struggle to find the word, “ people .” Anything else would’ve soured my mouth, and I move on before I think about that another second. “We’re not kids anymore, we’re not even working together anymore, maybe it’s time our friendship matures and grows up, too. We can still do video games sometimes, if you want, but I thought it might be nice to go on a double date. You can spend some more time with Kayla, and I can get to meet Steven.” The smile I fake would pass as genuine on-screen, but I just hope it’s enough to fool her.
“Spencer,” she growls at me.
I withdraw my hands, holding them up defensively in front of me. “Sorry. Spencer. I can finally meet Spencer.”
She recrosses her arms over her stomach, digesting my words. After a few seconds, I can’t take the silence.
“What do you think?”
“You really think that’s a good idea?”
My head nods vigorously before she even finishes the line.
“Is Kayla…okay with me?”
“Gem, she really liked you! The key was a bit much for her.” Gemma gives me a pointed look, but I keep rolling. “But it’s been months. If she and I are going to have a future, if you and he are…you know,” I make some undecipherable hand gesture to signify God-knows-what, “we should all hang.”
Gem uncrosses her legs and takes a wide stance, feet spread apart. I can’t help but notice how great she looks with this new look she’s got going on. This difference in her, it’s not just the clothes, the way she looks. There’s this glow about her. Like a surety, maybe more confidence than before. Once again, Alex’s words pummel me right in the gut, and I wonder if it was me who was holding her back, holding her down.
“Okay,” she says simply.
“Okay,” I confirm.
“Spencer goes back to work next Monday, so Friday or Saturday is probably the best night for us. I work till five Friday and six or sometimes seven on Saturday.” She waves to the front of the house, as if demonstrating her late arrival tonight.
“Cool.”
“You’ll text me?” she asks.
I swallow once, not ready to be out of her presence just yet, but I can tell she’s had enough for tonight. I nod, and make to turn and head back to the front door. Before I make it all the way, I turn suddenly and face her once more. She stops abruptly, almost running into me, and scans my face for the reason why.
I lean back in for another hug, unable to help myself. Her arms are more hesitant this time, but she does bring them up, stiffly holding me, while I squeeze her briefly before releasing her. “Thank you,” I whisper in her ear as I withdraw, turning back around and heading straight for the door.
That exhaustion from before? It’s vanished.
I feel lighter than I have in ages, a bounce to my step that wasn’t there on the way in, and the future finally looks bright once again.