Dear Aaron(126)

“My stepmom, ex-stepmom,” he answered. “She’d only make breakfast and dinner. If we were hungry the rest of the time, we were on our own for food. She wasn’t going to be anyone’s maid, she used to say.”

That made me smile. “My mom would say the same thing.”

I could see him try to make eye contact with me, but I couldn’t get myself to meet him halfway. I couldn’t. I knew I’d cry. I just needed… another second. Or five.

“I’ve found a few recipes on my own too, if you can believe that,” he said sarcastically.

I wasn’t in the mood for sarcasm yet, not when it felt like there was this giant chasm in my chest getting bigger by the second. “It’s hard to believe,” I replied weakly.

There was a pause. A silence. And then a sigh seconds before two arms came around me from behind, a mouth speaking against my ear, “There’s nothing to be sad about, okay? This isn’t our last day.”

I sucked in a breath and didn’t make a single sound before I whispered, “It bothers me how well you know me.”

“Tough shit.”

That had me laughing, even if it did sound watery and almost heartbroken.

“See? Everything is going to be all right. Let’s go eat our breakfast on the deck, yeah?”

And that’s exactly what we did.



“Do you think you bought enough firewood?”

Aaron snickered as he dropped the last two bundles of wood on the blanket I’d laid out when he first asked me to help him set everything up. “This is all they had,” he explained. “I’m surprised they even had this much left after the Fourth of July yesterday. Pass me four pieces, would you, stalker?”

It was my turn to snicker as I handed him what he asked for. We’d come out to the beach right after dinner, finding the spot we’d found earlier that others before us had used as a fire pit. Large heavy rocks had already been lined up in a large circle. I’d noticed that morning when we’d come out to the beach, with me in the ridiculous, large hat, that there were only about half the amount of people who had been sunbathing and swimming the day before. It’d been another painful reminder that this whole trip was coming to a close.

But I tried not to let it show on my face. I smiled at Aaron every time he’d been watching, and every time he hadn’t. I was going to eat up every moment we had left together and store it all up for when we weren’t. And then, then, I’d think about all the things he had said and all the things he had hinted at and all the things he had promised me. I just wanted to swallow up everything else in the meantime.

“Do you need help?” I asked him as he walked in a circle around the pit, looking at the center of it with a furrow between his brows.

Aaron snickered. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t.”

He walked directly in front of me, grazing his fingers across my cheek before stooping. “I was an Eagle Scout.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he answered.

“It’s hard to get your badge for that, isn’t it?”

One of those brown eyes peeked at me over his shoulder. “Yeah.”

“I always wanted to be a Brownie.”

I could see him pause where he was, his hands loose in front of him as he arranged the wood into a teepee-shape. “You couldn’t?”

“No. No money. My mom didn’t have time to take me to meetings.” I wrung my hands. “She had work and night school. It was tough. Maybe one day when I’m older I can lead my own troop or something. That would be fun.”

“Your mom went to night school?” he asked, his back to me.

“Oh yeah. That’s why we were so tight. She went back to get her degree right after my dad left. She’d dropped out of college when they got married. That’s actually how they met. She was an intern at a firm he worked at. She was young and wanted to have kids. Then after that, she got her master’s; she wanted to be an auditor. She’s kind of amazing. I didn’t think of it too much when I was a kid, all I knew was that she was gone a lot and my aunt and grandpa would watch us all the time during the week. Then Saturdays were for homework and Sundays were our family day. She apologized to us a few times once we were older, but we all told her she didn’t have anything to apologize for. She busted her butt for us.”

“My dad worked all the time too, so I know what you mean, but he just likes working.”

The reminder of his dad’s work made this uneasy feeling fill my stomach. Did I play stupid or did I say something? Watching the lines of his back, I knew my answer the second I questioned it. “Aaron.”

“Yeah?”

“You know I don’t care that your dad is loaded, right?”

Slowly, slowly, he pivoted around in his crouch and stared at me.

I smiled. “I know I look pretty oblivious, but I’m not.”

“Ruby—”

“I just wish you would have told me yourself.”

His mouth opened and it gaped, the skin on his neck turning pink and getting darker as the color rode up his jawline and filled his cheeks. “I was going to. It’s just—”

I held up my hand to stop him. “It’s none of my business. I just wanted you to know that I knew is all, okay?”