Sunday at Six
Chapter twenty
Hayes Rosewood
Aurora looks down at her phone with a pained expression, the blue light casting her face in an odd glow.
“Something wrong?” I ask as I close the basement door behind me, leaving the party to continue without us. It’s not like me to bail right after a fight, but I’d be bored without Aurora, and leaving with her makes our relationship look all the more real.
Her pink lips purse to the side. She turns the screen toward me.
Mom: I checked your location and saw that you’re out! Are you at a party? Having fun? Send pictures!
Mom: Your father says to be safe and let us know when you’re back home. I told him I can track you but he doesn’t believe the little dot.
The time stamps on the messages are from twenty minutes ago.
“Your mom is happy you’re out late?” I ask with a laugh.
Aurora frowns as she turns her phone back toward her.
“I told you they think I should get out more. I haven’t told them about us yet. I’m sure when I do I’ll get a whole slew of questions.”
I gesture for her to head up the stairs. No sense in having this conversation down here. She starts up them and I follow.
“Isn’t the whole point of this to get them to leave you alone? If you don’t tell them, you don’t get anything out of this relationship. Except more time with me, of course.”
She lets out a huff. “You’re right. I’ll just get it over with.”
Once we’re at the top of the stairs, she pulls her phone back out.
“Wait,” I say, and hold out my hand. “Didn’t you say they’d want pictures? We can take one really quick.”
“Oh—uh, yeah, that would be good.” She looks around the dark living room. The only illumination is the trail of lanterns leading toward the door. “Where?”
“Hand me your phone,” I say, and she eyes me with trepidation but passes it to me. I open the camera and make sure the flash is on. “Come here. Close your eyes and smile.”
“Close my eyes?”
“Just trust me,” I say while holding my arm out for her to slide beneath.
With the hesitation of someone entering a cave full of bears, she does.
Her eyes flutter shut. I can’t see our faces in the darkened screen, so I have to hope we’re in frame.
I turn and press a kiss to her temple right as I click the capture button.
Blinding white light flashes. Aurora stiffens like there’s a gun to her head instead of my mouth.
I pull up the photo to show to her. Aurora’s eyes are crinkled at the edges, her lips turned up in a hint of a smile as I kiss her. The flash puts the focus on our faces, the background blurred out so no one can see where we are. Namely, that we’re in an empty room instead of a raging party.
“Think this will work?” I ask.
Aurora stares at the photo for a moment, her expression unreadable.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “Thanks.”
She turns toward the door and types as she walks. I keep a slow pace to stay beside her, but I don’t spy on what she says. By the time she hits send, we’re on the sidewalk in front of the frat house.
Almost immediately, her phone starts to buzz.
“No,” she groans.
I glance at the screen and see that she’s getting a call from her mom. Even though she clearly doesn’t want to, she answers the phone.
“Hey, Mom.”
Aurora starts to walk down the sidewalk, and I follow her lead. If I had to bet, she’s walking more out of nervousness than the desire to get back to her apartment. Though it could be both. She does really hate parties.
“We just left. Hayes is walking me home,” she mumbles.
I consider reaching for her hand. My first instinct is to try to comfort in some physical way, but I don’t want to make anything worse. She let me touch her a lot tonight—and I’m more than grateful—but I don’t want to push my luck.
“I wasn’t hiding him, it’s-it’s just new is all.”
Her fingertips pluck at the hem of her sweatshirt. I take a chance and hold out my hand. She glances from it to my face, then back again. Slowly, she places her hand in mine and squeezes. I give her what I hope is an encouraging smile.
Aurora places the phone against her chest and whispers, “She wants to talk to you.”
My eyebrows lift.
“I don’t mind, but it’s your call. You’re in charge.”
She lets out a long-suffering sigh.
“Just don’t say anything too”—she scrunches her nose—“you.”
I laugh to hide the sting of her words.
“Got it. Be the opposite of myself.”
She rolls her eyes and holds the phone out to me.
“You know what I meant.”
I do not, but we don’t have time to discuss that right now, considering I can hear her mom’s voice muffled through the speaker.
“Hi, Mrs. Driscoll,” I say, cutting off whatever she had been saying before.
“Oh—hello!” a warm voice chirps. “Is this Hayes?”
“Yes, ma’am, it’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
The last part comes out sounding a little too much like a question, earning me a side-eye from Aurora. But she’s still holding my hand, so I guess I’m doing something right. The mixed signals might give me a migraine later, but it’s worth it if I get to be close to her.
“I wish I could say the same, but our Rory has been holding out on us!”
“Rory?” I mouth to Aurora, and she glares, giving me a sharp shake of her head.
“I think she just wanted to take some time before telling you and make sure it was worth it. She values your opinion.”
Aurora’s head dips. I can’t see her expression, but I’m sure it’s not good. My words might go over well with her mom, but they do serve as a reminder that none of this is real.
“She’s always so careful,” Mrs. Driscoll says, like it’s a bad thing. “But I’m glad she’s finally dating. Though now I’m wondering if instead of you being her first boyfriend, you’re just the first she’s told us about.”
Her musing makes my stomach drop. I glance to my right. Aurora is still looking down as we shuffle through leaves on the sidewalk.
Has she really never had a boyfriend? Her mom could be right that Aurora has had one and simply didn’t tell them, but with how quickly she answered the phone and how she talked about wanting them to stop pestering her …
I don’t say anything for a moment, too stunned to reply. Mrs. Driscoll doesn’t hesitate to fill in the gap, though.
“Anyway! All that to say, we’d love to get to know you better. You should come by the house for Sunday dinner. Do you like pot roast?”
“Oh, sure?”
I’m so thrown off by the new information about Aurora that I don’t realize until after the words come out that it sounds like I’ve agreed.
“Perfect! I’ll see you two Sunday at six. It was lovely chatting with you. Tell Aurora I love her.”
She hangs up as if she knows that talking to Aurora might result in a refusal.
“How did it go? I didn’t catch everything,” Aurora says, her voice meek.
I hand the phone back to her with a grimace.
“Don’t hate me.”
She stops in her tracks and looks up at me.
“What did you do?”
“I might have accidentally agreed to go to Sunday dinner.” I spit the words out fast.
Panic flits through Aurora’s eyes before she squeezes them shut. If I made any progress with her tonight, it was sufficiently ruined just now. There’s no way she holds up her end of the deal and goes on a date with me now.
She lets out a long breath.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” I echo, my brows furrowed.
Her head bobs in a quick nod, then her eyes flutter open.
“We’ll go, stay as little time as humanly possible, then leave and do our best to never go back.” She gives me a pointed look. “That means having excuses ready for follow-up invites.”
“All right, I’ll do better next time,” I promise her. “You’re sure we can’t just cancel?”
She shakes her head. “She’ll just show up here, which would be worse. I think. I don’t know.” Another sigh leaves her. “Either way, we’re not getting out of this.”
“At least we have each other?” I offer half-heartedly.
Her mouth quirks up on one side. And that miniscule smile restores my dwindling hope that I might not have ruined everything after all.
I don’t fully know what I’m even in danger of ruining.
Our relationship doesn’t fit any normal definitions, that’s for sure.
But I like this. I like her. And while deep down I know I’ll have to let go eventually, I don’t want to yet.