Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I awoke to “The Swan” by Saint-Saens.
Despite the slow-fading haze of sleep, the gentle sweep of cello paired with the steady chords of piano was unmistakable, and for one blissful moment, the world was nothing but the execution of the piece. A lot of people associated this composition with mourning, saying it was bitter but beautiful, but I’d always thought it was what falling in love sounded like. Quiet. Serene. Reaching down deep inside you and plucking a chord only someone with an intimate touch could.
The piece ended with a dreamlike piano progression, followed by one final strum of a cello string. For some reason, a chord of familiarity hummed within me, too, something triggering déjà vu. The world was silent for a beat, and then two, before “The Swan” began again from the top, piano leading it in before the cello came to life.
In those quiet moments, I realized I was clutching something soft to my chest.
And that I felt like hot garbage.
My head throbbed as if someone used it in place of a baseball. I couldn’t hold still, despite the stillness being what I craved; on its own accord, every inch of me trembled, almost as if my body were the cello and someone was dragging their bow across my raw skin.
I furrowed my brow, wincing at the pain and the taste in my mouth. It wasn’t’ as bad as I thought it would’ve after a night of drinking, but the film that coated my dry tongue and teeth definitely wasn’t enjoyable. Water. I needed water. I felt like I’d die without it.
I pried my eyelids apart, finding a ceiling that wasn’t the water-stained one of my apartment. Things came back to me in flashes. The Uber ride with Paige. Me fumbling for the lamp on the nightstand. Paige’s note. I didn’t know where else to leave you.
Sitting up—and nearly falling back down due to the roar in my head—I remembered that I was at Alderton-Du Ponte the exact same moment I noticed the teddy bear in my arms. I peered at it, smoothing my fingers down its matted fur, wondering why it looked familiar.
And then I remembered Aaron Astor the exact second I swung my legs over the side of the bed, feet landing on something solid, eliciting a very human-like yell.
Or, well, a human-like curse . It punctuated “The Swan” like a squawk from the bird itself.
I jerked my legs back, peering over the bed to find Aaron curled up on the floor, gripping his stomach. He had no blanket to cover him, and instead used what looked like one of his jackets. “Good morning to you, too,” he groaned out.
“What—what are you doing on my hotel room floor?” I demanded, wrenching the teddy bear to my chest, as if there was something scandalizing about my oversized sweatshirt.
“You mean what am I doing on my hotel room floor?” He leveraged himself up onto an elbow. “I’m asking myself the same question, Lovisa.”
Oh. Oh . This was his room. I looked down at the teddy bear— his bear. I’d come to his room in the middle of the night— oh my gosh . I clutched my head with a gasp, equally from the pain and from the humiliation.
Aaron pushed up from the floor to his knees, where he turned toward the nightstand, reaching. The music abruptly went silent, right before the swell point of the piece, and I looked over to see that he’d been playing it from his phone. “You play music when you sleep?” I asked him, setting the teddy bear onto my lap.
“No.” He reached for a little plastic carafe sitting on the nightstand, full of water. “I turned it on to drown out your snoring.”
I pressed my lips together as heat crawled up the back of my neck. I did snore. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He poured water from the decanter into the cup. “I found quite the perfect cover, didn’t I? The YouTube channel name was quite adorable—Lovely Little Virtuoso.”
I’d been reaching out for the cup of water when his words registered, and I froze. “That—what was?—”
“You performing,” he finished. “You didn’t realize?”
That was why the performance had been familiar. I couldn’t even remember when I’d filmed playing that piece, accompanied by my instructor on the piano. It felt like a lifetime ago. But that wasn’t the most shocking part. Aaron had looked it up ?
“You told me about your YouTube channel last June, you remember?” A small smile tugged at his mouth. “Told me to look you up if I wanted to hear you play.”
“And you did?” My whispered voice was almost horrified.
“I did.”
My hand shook as I finally took the cup he offered to me, and I held onto my head with the other, feeling that if I took my hand away, it could crack open. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“It never came up.”
Never came up? We’d talked about the cello—about music —plenty of times. He’d had chance after chance to mention that he’d found my old covers. Had he just watched one or two? Had he watched them all? Oh my gosh, he would’ve seen little Lovisa in all her pimple and braces glory.
Had he been impressed by my playing? Disappointed? I clutched the teddy bear tighter, clamping down on those questions, telling myself I shouldn’t be curious. It didn’t matter. Anything related to the cello… didn’t matter. “I’m sorry for sleeping with your teddy bear,” I said instead, stomach aching.
I almost expected him to appear a bit embarrassed about it—a grown man with a stuffed animal—but he didn’t. “My grandmother gave it to me,” Aaron said. “I never slept well as a child. She’d thought it’d help me. Last night, you needed it more than I did.”
I wanted to hide under the covers and just die there. “What happened?”
Aaron sat back on his heels and watched me take a sip. “Before or after you vomited on my feet?”
I choked as the mental image accompanied his words. It was a crystal-clear memory, me throwing my head down as the alcohol burned its way back up my throat. I threw up on his feet… “After.”
“You threw up a few more times in my bathroom. Once in the tub. It was quite eventful.”
I slapped a hand over my mouth in horror.
And Aaron leaned back. “You aren’t going to throw up again, are you?”
I mutely shook my head.
He seemed to relax. “After that, I gave you mouthwash, you scrubbed your teeth—you used your finger, before you go and get horrified at the idea of using my toothbrush—and you fell into my bed. As the gentleman I am, I slept down here. Which I’m regretting.” He winced as he rolled his neck. “You’d think at a hotel like this, they’d have softer floors.”
Aaron’s shirt was rumpled and buttoned up, and I couldn’t decipher if I remembered it being more undone or if it was my imagination. His hair was tousled, rucked up in the back, and his eyes were still puffy from sleep. In fact, his whole face seemed a little puffy from sleep. It made him look so boyish. So… normal .
I was certain I looked like a trainwreck in comparison.
Aaron stood suddenly, my sluggish mind tracking the movement as he crossed the room to his desk. “I do think I’m owed a bit more of an explanation,” he murmured as he sorted through one of his travel bags that sat there. “Because the housekeeping call I placed at one in the morning is absolutely going to be added to my bill when I check out.”
It’d really been one in the morning when I came knocking on Aaron’s door? Paige and I hadn’t been out that late, had we? I was beyond mortified with every single memory that resurfaced. “I’m never drinking again.” My declaration came out as a groan.
“That’s good.” Aaron came over and held out an aspirin bottle. “Because you can’t seem to hold your liquor well.”
I uncapped the pill bottle slowly, feeling guiltier with his simple kindness, especially after everything I’d done yesterday. Not even just throwing up on his feet— ohmygosh I’ll never live this down —but the fact that I’d showed up to his hotel room to insult him. Twice. “Paige wanted to drown her sorrows in alcohol,” I said after I downed the medication, rolling the cup between my fingers. “And I couldn’t let her drink alone.”
“Oh, no, heaven forbid.” Aaron sat down on the edge of the bed, causing it to dip underneath his weight. He studied me. “So you weren’t drinking because you were upset.”
Honestly? “Maybe a little.” I sucked in a little breath, one that hurt my aching ribs, and I stared down into my water cup. “Yesterday… I shouldn’t have snapped at you like I did. In the hallway. The… first time.”
“Ah, yes, because we had two little tiffs in front of my hotel room yesterday.” To his credit, Aaron seemed calm about the whole thing. Understanding. “I get it. You were upset about your friend.”
I forced myself to look up. He deserved eye contact. “But it wasn’t your fault. I… didn’t mean what I said.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You mean you don’t think I’m a chameleon?”
Despite his attempt at a joke, I didn’t smile. “I don’t think you’re a jerk.” I wanted him to see the earnestness in my eyes. I wasn’t teasing or joking or trying to spin it into anything other than it was. I was serious. “The things you’re going through—the trauma you went through. It’s not trivial. And I— I was a jerk for saying it was.”
For a moment, we sat there staring at each other, letting the words settle between us. Something shifted in the darkness of his eyes, and even though I didn’t know what it was, I watched it anyway, captured.
“It’s funny,” Aaron murmured, leaning into the palm of his hand. It pressed into the mattress beside my thigh, dipping down. “I don’t usually care what people think about me. Not really. Not unless it’s family. Everyone else—I can ignore it. I always have. But when it comes to you…” He hesitated. “It’s like I can’t breathe until I figure out why I’ve upset you.”
I swallowed, my chest tightening. “You seemed more angry than worried yesterday.”
Aaron’s eyes softened, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt like a secret just between us. “It hurt.” He paused, and I could feel the weight of his words before they even landed. “That you thought I’d do something like that to someone who didn’t deserve it.”
I felt my shoulders drop, the confession like a blow to my chest.
“But it wouldn’t have hurt, had it been anyone else. That’s my point. If it’d been Fiona accusing me, I wouldn’t have batted an eye, but it was you. And it hurt .” Aaron shifted his hand on the mattress again, moving so that his knuckles brushed my leg. A spark lit inside me. I fought to steady my breath. “I care about what you think of me.”
The quiet, earnest confession wrapped around me like a breathless embrace. The words from last night floated back into my mind, thick with meaning: Because I care about you. And that scares me. I bit my lip, fighting the tremble that threatened to invade my voice.
“So you didn’t mean what you said yesterday afternoon,” he went on. Was it my wild imagination, or did he shift a fraction of an inch closer? “But what about last night?”
I almost was too afraid to ask. “Which part?”
In truth, everything I could remember—telling him I cared about him, that he had my approval, that he was made for love—I’d meant. I wasn’t sure I’d necessarily say all that again sober, or I’d at least try for a bit more clarity, but I’d meant it.
Aaron, though, didn’t specify. Instead, he was quiet, watching me as if he hadn’t asked a question at all. The expression on his face caused my stomach to flutter, and I realized where I’d seen it before. Aaron had on the exact same expression now as he had last night, except last night, the moment had been ruined by my vomiting.
Marrying me is catastrophic?
Not marrying you. Falling for you .
Now, though, in the light of the morning, there was nothing but an unspoken line between us. I waited for him to cross it first, to bring up that conversation, but he didn’t. No matter how much I wanted to go back, to follow that train of thought to the end of its road, I was too much of a coward to. So, instead, I took a long drink of water, pulling my leg away.
“Do you work today?” Aaron asked suddenly.
“You think I’d drink that heavily if I did?”
“You constantly surprise me,” he reminded me. “I told you it’d be fun if you kept surprising me.”
A corner of my mouth tugged, unconsciously mimicking him. “Me throwing up on you is fun?”
“‘Fun’ might not be the right word.”
We shared a laugh at that—his more amused, mine more mortified. “Did you have something planned?” I asked him, reaching up and trying to comb my fingers through my hair. Unsuccessfully. The tangles were definitely knots. “Are you waiting for me to leave?”
Aaron tilted his head. “I want to see your mother’s house.”
That was the last thing I expected him to say. “My mother’s?—”
“Her dream house. I want to see it. 1442 Everview Road, right?”
My breath caught again. He remembered the address ? “I?—”
“I looked online and found the realtor for the property. If I can convince him to give an impromptu weekend showing, I want to tour it. With you.”
Aaron’s words weren’t as hope-inducing as they should’ve been. Really, I should’ve jumped at the offer, at the chance to see my mother’s dream home from the inside. I’d never toured it, only looked at it from the outside. But instead of being excited, I only felt sick. “Why?”
“I’m just curious.” Aaron looked off into his room, thinking. “I want to see what you’ve been working toward these past five years.”
Something urgent in me rebelled against the idea. “I—I’m not sure if I’m feeling up to it today,” I said, setting my cup down on the nightstand. “I’m—gross.”
“You can shower first,” Aaron said, and stood from the mattress.
I had no idea if he was offering me to shower here, in his bathroom—in the bathroom he’s showered in before—but I quickly began shaking my head. “I—I have to go home. I have to change, water my plants?—”
“I’ll pick you up from there, then.” He stretched a little, rolled his neck again, before starting off toward the bathroom. “It only takes me ten minutes to shower, so don’t dawdle with your freshening up for too long, hmm? What’s your apartment’s address?”
And that was how the door to Aaron’s hotel room clicked shut behind me a moment later, leaving me in the hallway. He’d given me his black slippers to wear to my trek down to the front desk, because I had no idea what room Paige dropped me, my bag, and my sneakers off in last night. I looked down at the black plush of the slides, and could still see a dark outline of where housekeeping had to use the carpet cleaner.
I thought of going downstairs and doing the walk of shame to whoever was at the front desk. Hopefully they just thought the vomit outside of Aaron Astor’s room was unrelated to the drunk girl they’d housed for the night. Hopefully Trisha’s shift already ended and she went home.
It was official, though: I sure did know how to embarrass myself.