27. Aaron
TWENTY-SEVEN
AARON
What does a day in the life of a normal person look like?
I don’t ask that to be a dick. I ask because I genuinely had no clue what time Gemma would be heading off to the library today, so I got to her place at five-eighteen on the dot, to be safe.
It’s almost eight-thirty now, and I’ve yet to lay eyes on her, so I’m starting to think “Nine to Five” isn’t just the name of the best song Dolly Parton ever did. Maybe that’s, like, a normal person’s schedule?
Most days I don’t have to be on set until eight for Midnight Empire , but on movies, it’s not uncommon for the call time to be pre-dawn. My earliest was three-thirty, but those are kinda rare. I wanted to be safe, so I went with earlier rather than later for her, but I think I was wrong.
Still, I haven’t minded waiting out here. Since seeing her yesterday—her hearing me out—those words she threw at me on my way out (not only that she broke up with him, but that she wanted me to know she did), nothing can kill this buoyancy inside me. It’s deep within my soul, no getting rid of that hope that sprouted, settled in and took root. It’s done nothing but grow overnight.
My hand cramps, tired of holding the same pose for half of the last three hours. I ignore its complaining, just transfer its contents to my other hand (also sore, mind you), and tell it to fuck off and not fuck this up.
I’d rather not be able to use my hand for the next week than ruin her first glimpse of me today. The first day of the rest of our lives, if I’m luckier than I deserve.
From my vantage point in front of the walkway to her front door, I can’t even see her bedroom to know if a light was turned on yet, so I keep waiting. I’ve stood around sets for days. This is nothing. (The numbness in my feet disagrees, but who’s listening to those fuckers anyway?)
At last, the sound of a lock clicking, a knob turning noisily, and her door swings open.
My breath lurches in my chest. This is the first time I’ve been able to take her in since I’ve realized the things I’ve realized. Since I started apologizing and made my intentions clear. Since we’re both, finally, single. I’m not wasting this opportunity to absorb as much of her as I can.
My eyes soak in her appearance, admiring the simplicity of my same old Gem with this newfound elegance that looks so good on her. She’s wearing these kinda tight, not-quite-dark blue jeans, with this tan sweater that looks huge on her, but in a good way. It swallows her frame, highlights how delicate her features are, how tiny her body is, makes her look so feminine I have a hard time standing here and keeping my hands to myself. Not sure how I missed her beauty all these years, if I’m being honest with myself, and with you. Starting to think I must’ve been actively denying it to not have had it slap me upside the head sooner. She’s got these knee-high, brown leather boots on that I’d do a lot of awful things for the chance to take off of her. Her keys jangle in hand as she backs out of the house, locking the door behind her, and when she turns around to start heading to her car (more on that monstrosity later), she finally notices me.
I lean forward, off of my G-Wagen, and walk up the sidewalk, stopping at the bottom of the three little stairs that lead up to her entrance.
She shoves her dark sunglasses up on top of her head, giving me full viewing rights to that gorgeous face, and I can’t help the smile that breaks out on my own in response. Even though she looks like she might slash my face with those keys she’s clutching tightly. A small burst of satisfaction hits me when I spy the key to my house, my life, on her ring there, peeking out of the side of her fist.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t come back until I asked you to.”
Oh yeah, she’s definitely still pissed at me.
“Breaking promises already?” The smile she gives me is zero sweet and all sour. If there were teeth involved, it might actually give me nightmares.
“I don’t plan on breaking another promise to you, Gem. Ever.” I flash her a smile of my own, and she rolls her eyes. “If you recall, I promised not to come inside your house until you invited me in again.” I wave my free hand at the sidewalk still separating us. “As you can see, I am outside your house. Ergo, promise kept.”
The smirk might have been a tad too much for her, but being on speaking terms with her is making me a little high on life right now, can you blame me?
“Did you really think you wouldn’t see me so soon, Gem? You’re not getting rid of me that easily, baby.” My confidence surges when her cheeks pinken at the endearment. “I’ll be here for whatever you need. Like coffee.” I gesture toward her with the paper cup in my hand, which she takes reluctantly and brings to her lips. “Vanilla latte, half sweet, just how you li—” but my description is cut short by the cartoon-like sight and sounds of her gagging when the coffee hits her tongue. Her slight frame twists to the side rapidly and she spits the coffee out into the grass, holding the cup as far away from her person as possible, making noises that would be comical if they weren’t coming from the woman I love nearly puking her guts out (again) at something I gave her.
“Aaron! What the fuck! This is cold—it’s disgusting!” Her mouth seems to be rejecting her tongue, which is doing a series of moves last seen by Simone Biles in the summer Olympics in an effort to get the taste off itself.
One of my hands comes up to the back of my neck, scratching my hairline there. “Yeah, well, it’s a few hours old now…” I trail off.
“A few hours? How long have you been here, you psycho stalker?”
Not exactly the response I was expecting at my romantic gesture, if I’m honest, but it can only go up from here, right?
“I didn’t know what time you started work,” I offer in defense, shrugging and lifting my arms up with the motion.
“Nine,” she says coldly, handing me the coffee back and crossing her arms in front of her chest protectively. Like she’s trying to keep me out of her heart or some shit. Tough crowd.
“Roger that,” I reply cheerily. “Not five-thirty then. So eight-thirty tomorrow good?”
She rolls her eyes again, pursing her lips in annoyance. “You’re not going to bring me coffee every morning are you? This isn’t some montage from a rom-com where you bring me coffee for thirty days and suddenly everything is going to be fine between us.”
She starts walking toward her car—that old as fuck, half-decrepit, if well-kept thing—and I keep pace with her easily, our strides in sync like we’ve always been.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Gem. It’s not just coffee. I’m gonna bring you lunch, too.”
She stops dead in her tracks, spinning around on one heel to face me angrily.
“This isn’t a joke, Aaron.”
God, it’s been too long since I’ve heard my name on her lips. I don’t even care that she made it sound like a curse word.
I make a concerted effort to keep my hands to myself, gripping the coffee cup in one hand, putting the other in my pocket so I don’t reach out to touch her, frame her face, hold any part of her she’ll let me. “I’m not joking, Gem. I’m gonna be here for you. Whatever you need. It’s my turn to take care of you. And yes, that includes coffee, lunch…dinners if you’ll let me. For starters.” I look up at her hopefully, my head tilted to one side, and she looks away quickly, her eyes flitting to the road behind me as a car drives by slowly.
This hint of a smile peeks out on one corner of her mouth, and I know she’s fighting letting me see the rest of it. I’ll take it. “As long as you’re not cooking any of those meals, Stone. I don’t need to end up in the hospital. Again.”
I let out an embarrassing chuckle-snort combo, not expecting her to be lighthearted with me yet. “You give someone food poisoning one time , and suddenly it’s a reputation. Sheesh.” I roll my eyes playfully, like I’ve been put upon by the teasing. It’s better than remembering the horror, the fear at how sick my first and only attempt at chicken Alfredo made her a few years back. She hasn’t taken care of all our meals just because she was my assistant. No, that was out of preservation, survival instincts. Anything my chef didn’t prepare for me or us, Gemma did.
“Only you could fuck up a salad to the point you’ve hospitalized someone, Stone.” God what I wouldn’t do to hear more of that humor in her voice.
Believe it or not, we’re pretty sure it was the tomatoes in the salad that did it, in the end. I guess there’s something called cross contamination? And I cut the tomatoes for the salad on the same cutting board as the chicken for the dish and, well, you get the rest. My best friend ended up hospitalized with salmonella. It wasn’t my finest hour, but after that, I was banned from making any of our meals. Some punishment, tbh, but still. She’s got a fair point with that caveat.
I hold up the pinky of my free hand to her face, in offering. It takes her a second, but she offers me hers in return, linking with mine, and we make a solemn pact on it. I’ll bring her food, but I will not be cooking any of it. My stomach jumps at the contact between us, and I ignore it. I can still feel her hair against my lips from the goodbye I stole from her last night, still feel her scent in my nostrils, like vanilla and something flowery. The feel of her finger on mine is making me appreciate those regency films a little more than I did last time my agent got sent a script sent to my attention. Maybe I’ll read the next one that comes my way after all; there’s something to this pinky flirting shit.
I let a wide grin break out on my face, only half-concealed by our joined hands, and she gives in to hers as well (smaller than mine, but a win is a win—you could let the other team score forty-five points against you in the bowl game, but if you get just one more than them, it’s all over) before breaking apart from me and stomping off to her car.
I jog to my G-Wagen and follow her the entire way to the library, not entirely sure she would’ve told me which one it was if I’d asked, so following her is my best bet. Don’t give her an extra chance to turn me down. She might still tell me to get fucked, but we’ll see.
We hit one longer red light on the way, and I use that couple of minutes as a chance to open the Amazon app and order two dozen Stanley travel mugs that are guaranteed to keep her coffee warm for several hours. They’ll be at my house tonight, so this mishap doesn’t happen again tomorrow morning. (Eight-thirty, schmeight-schmirty, I wouldn’t put it past her to leave early to spite me, make sure I don’t get the chance to see her and win her over another iota in the morning. Not taking that chance, thank you very much.)
When she sees me park a few spots down from her in the lot at the library, she shoots me an exasperated look through our respective car windows, and I shoot her a smile that’s landed me the cover of a couple different magazines in the last year.
She makes her way to what I’m assuming is the back door—no way some rando off the street is gonna find a way in through this thing—and doesn’t look back at me as I follow her, but I know she feels me close behind. Her shoulders are extra stiff, her head held higher than usual, and she’s tossed her hair back no less than three times in the fifty-foot walk.
When she’s unlocked the door and propped it open with one of her booted feet, she turns around to face me again. Confront me is probably a more accurate description.
“What are you doing ?” she hiss-whispers at me (not really to me).
“Accompanying you,” I answer sweetly, innocently. Good-naturedly.
“I don’t need accompanying ,” she insists.
I lean in a little closer than I should, keeping her eyes on mine and relishing the signs of the effect my presence is having on her. “What if I need to be close to you?” I ask her in a whisper.
Her gorgeous honey-and-whiskey eyes narrow on me briefly before she retorts, “You’re impossible, Stone.”
But she turns around and walks inside, so I follow. I let out an impressed whistle as I take the place in, Gem walking ahead of me, flipping lights as she goes.
“You run this place?” I ask, my admiration coloring my words.
“I help,” she replies stiffly.
It’s pretty damn big, actually. There’s a large open space in the center, shit tons of shelves, obviously ( stacks she tells me they’re called), with smaller, private rooms (presumably for studying? Seems like a fun place to hook up if I’m being honest) lining one of the walls. The ceiling in the middle of the room is so tall, I have to let my head fall back to take it in. There’s a balcony up there where I can see more shelves— stacks , I correct myself—running around the perimeter. An elevator and a set of stairs are next to each other not far from the front desk, which overlooks the main workspaces, computer area, and glass front doors. It’s large, clean, more modern than I’d expected, and inviting.
I pick out the space I want to be mine for the foreseeable future, and amble over to it, dropping my phone and keys down on the table’s surface and plopping into a chair, legs extended, making myself comfy. Naturally, I picked a spot facing the front desk, facing her, so I have the best view in the house.
She tries not to pay me any attention as she runs around the place, going through what looks to be a pretty well-oiled morning routine for opening up shop, but eventually her curiosity gets the better of her.
“What are you doing?” she asks, a hint of annoyance present. I suspect it’s gonna take me a while to work that out of her, but I know what I’m in for. She’s not scaring me off.
“Getting comfy,” I tell her, smiling over at her.
She gives in, storming over to me and leaning down, placing both hands on the table, arms fully extended, glaring at me. “You think you’re just going to sit here and what? Watch me work all day? Start a teenybopper riot when word gets out that Aaron Stone is here?” She uses air quotes when she says my name, which kinda hurts.
“What do you mean ‘Aaron Stone’?” I mimic them back at her. “Am I not me?”
“To the kids that come here after school? The women that view this as their happy place, the boys that come here as their only safe place before they have to go to a home life that might not be amazing? You’re not a regular person. You’re Aaron Fucking Stone. You know that. This can’t go well.”
Her passion for this place, the people that frequent it, it touches me, takes me aback.
“I won’t let it become a problem, Gem. I promise. I’m not here to cause a distraction. I’m here for you.”
“For me?” she clarifies. She sounds disbelieving, at best.
“Yeah, for you. Anything you need, I’m at your service.”
“I don’t need a lackey, Stone. I just want to do my job. Sort through whatever the fuck,” her hand furiously gestures between us, “is going on here. Process my emotions and shit. And that’s a little hard to do with the cause of said emotions staring me down, waiting for me to give him an order.”
“Don’t mind me!” I reply easily, crossing one leg over the other, resting the foot on top of my knee. “I’m actually just gonna read while I wait, if that’s okay with you.”
“Read?” she stutters back, like an accidental echo.
“Isn’t that what people do here?” I can practically feel the twinkle in my eye. It would definitely get a zoom-in close-up shot of its own if this were a rom-com. Or a Netflix Christmas movie.
She huffs and stands back up again. “Since when do you read, kid?”
“Since I wanted to get to know my best friend better,” I say, a little smoothly, if I do say so myself. “Got any recommendations for me? Maybe you could make me a list of your favorites?”
It takes her an hour or two to make good on that request, but after she unlocks the front doors and opens up, some other staff and volunteers arrive and do God-knows-what for an eternal age, she seems to be out of ways to avoid me. She comes back over, slamming a piece of paper down in front of me, a list of what’s gotta be twenty or thirty books on there in her cute, easy-to-read handwriting.
My eyes widen at the size of the thing, but I shoot her a grateful smile and snap a picture of it on my phone in case I lose the page.
“Thank you, miss librarian,” I tell her, and it sounds a little sexier than I meant it to once it came out, but I’m not taking it back.
“ Assistant to the librarian,” she corrects me.
“Well, you are the best assistant I’ve ever met,” I tell her.
Her eyes narrow on me, but it’s a hollow glare, I can see they’re softening already. She’s really having to work at this facade she’s thrown up. I don’t blame her for it. Just gotta keep showing up, making up for all the ways I fucked her up, fucked her over. Show her I’m here for her for once—for good.
She turns and begins to walk away, but I call out to her quietly before she gets too far. “Ma’am?”
The glare she shoots me at that, whooo , my Gem can be a spicy one.
“Do you mind helping me find one of these to start with? It’s been a while since I’ve used the Dewey Decimal System,” I tell her innocently.
She grabs my arm and yanks me out of my chair, and I follow her more than willingly. After a few seconds, she seems to realize touching me is counterproductive to staying mad at me, and she drops my forearm like it burned her fingers. I watch her flex them absently, like she can get the feel of me out of them if she tries hard enough, as she leads us through the stacks, into what is undoubtedly the romance section, based on some of these covers. Speaking of spicy…
“This is where most of them are going to be,” she tells me. “A few in the fantasy section.” She tilts her head, thoughtful for a second. “Some were erroneously placed in YA before I got here, but I fixed that. Anyway, you can find them by the author’s last name, along this row,” she gestures with her hand, pointing in front of us, and then behind us, “and this one, for the most part.”
I approach the shelf she’s directly in front of, bending my upper body forward like the book right by her head is so fucking interesting, just for an excuse to be closer to her. Her nostrils flare and I can hear her take a deep inhale through her nose. I might do the same, relishing in her nearness, her scent, striving to take her in with as many of my senses as possible in this short moment.
After a second, she sidesteps out of my personal space—or her own, that I overtook, more like it—and grabs a book off of a shelf about eight feet down from where I’m standing.
“Here,” she says, roughly passing it to me. “Start with this one.”
Our fingers brush as I take it from her, and she doesn’t release it instantly. “If you make one single joke about this book, the characters, the plot, the cover, the writing, anything ? You’re out of here.” Sheesh. She’s touchy about her books. My face must tell her I think so, because she leans closer into me and threatens me again. “I mean it. This is my favorite author, one of my all-time favorite books, and I won’t have you desecrate it. Fictional men are the best thing to be found on this God-forsaken planet. I won’t listen to you verbally defile one of my favorite ones. You get one chance with this, kid.”
And with that, she releases the book and heads back to the front desk, her hair swinging in a short, chic ponytail behind her with each step. My eyes follow that ponytail—and that walk beneath it—the entire way, before I head back to my new seat and make myself comfy.
And thus begins the first week of winning back my spot in her life. A comfortable routine of meeting her outside her house early each morning, coffee in hand (in a temperature-controlled tumbler from now on), following her to the library, settling in for a day of reading her favorite books, getting to know more about her likes, her thoughts, her feelings in a different way than I ever have before. I manage to deflect undue attention from the regulars for the most part, and I pause every day about an hour before her lunch break, when I go to get a different takeout order (curbside, so as not to draw more attention to myself than necessary), and I bring it back for her, leaving it at the front desk, never pushing my presence on her, but never far away either. She doesn’t take me up on any of those tasks I offered to do for her yet, but I think she sees that I’m serious about being here for her, and that’s the first step of my master plan.