Dear Aaron(97)

“Then he made me throw it back in,” I told them all with a sideways glance to Aaron, who was sitting beside me at the restaurant we were at.

He smiled, and beneath the table, the side of his shoe bumped into mine. “I told you we were releasing them.”

“Yeah, but those had all been tiny. We were out there for what? Six hours before I caught the big one?” I’d gotten fried out in the surf with him and had the sunburn on my neck to prove it. It had taken about an hour for him to teach me how to use the spin casting rig, and even then, my technique had been pretty iffy. But we’d wandered out into the water and cast line after line out for hours, whispering jokes to one another as we tried to stand as still as possible, failing at being quiet at least five times when I’d feel something brush my leg and I’d shout.

Aaron had only made about four shark jokes the entire time we’d been out there.

I hadn’t touched the first two fish I’d caught that had been too small, but by the third one, Aaron had made me poke it. When he’d caught one, he made me hold it for a second and I might have wailed. By the time I caught one so big I’d figured he would prepare it and make for dinner… I’d held it in my hands—wiggling, thrashing—at least until he’d unhooked it and then tossed it back into the water to live another day.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to eat fish again after holding a live one in my hands, but the day had been a lot more fun than I ever could have imagined. Fishing. Me. Who would have thought?

A gentle hand came up to cup the back of my neck then, conscious of the swollen pink skin that had taken a beating under the sun’s rays, and I could sense Aaron leaning closer to me as he said, loud enough for everyone at the table in the pub to hear, “I’m really proud of you.”

I did know he was proud of me. He’d kissed my forehead once more after I’d caught the fish and told me those same exact words, and when I’d gone to hug him for the first time since the day he’d picked me up at the airport, he’d hugged me back. Squeezed me. Needy, needy, needy. All warm and solid and affectionate and perfect.

“We were going to meet up with you, but someone suddenly started feeling bad,” Des chipped in with a smirk.

Brittany rolled her eyes from her spot across the table from me. “My stomach was hurting. It’s not like there’s a bathroom out there for me to use. What was I supposed to do? Go in the water?”

Des shrugged and had her mumbling “nasty.”

“You did great for it being your first time,” Aaron repeated.

It was sad how much I ate up his attention and praise, like I’d never gotten it before.

“Need more time to decide?” came a voice from my left that had already become familiar to me. It was the waitress. The very attractive waitress. One of the handfuls of women I’d already spotted eyeballing the heck out of Aaron.

It had taken all of two minutes after we’d gotten out of his truck for the looks to begin. I wasn’t sure if I’d just been too overwhelmed the first day to notice all the attention Aaron got or if I was just that oblivious, but the truth was: there was no ignoring it now. The teenage hostess at the restaurant had taken one look at Aaron and Max and turned redder than I ever had. She’d stuttered her way through a greeting before leading us to a table, only turning around every two steps to look at both of them.

And then the waitress had appeared.

“You’re back!” the woman had basically shouted before we’d gotten to the table.

Everyone except Mindy and me apparently knew who she was because they had immediately greeted her. From the bits and pieces I picked up as the four of them greeted her, they knew her from the last trip they’d taken to Port St. Joe. All I could gather was that they had gone out drinking together, or something like that. It wouldn’t have meant anything.

Until she’d turned to Aaron and Max with a smile on her face and asked, just asked, “You both still have girls?”

Like that. Just like that.

To give him credit, it was Max that answered with a “Not anymore” that had me looking away and, at the same time, reminding myself that it was true. At least Aaron was single now. And if he’d been here before he’d shipped out, he hadn’t been back then. He was now.

The woman had taken everyone’s drink order in between playful touches of shoulders and more than one wink I hadn’t been sure who it had been aimed at, but while she’d been gone, Aaron had jumped into our fishing story, distracting me with the way he told it, sounding so pleased. But the waitress was back, and I didn’t like the way my stomach felt in reaction to her presence.

“What do you recommend on the menu?” Max asked, still holding the menu in his hands.

The friendly, pretty waitress didn’t even think about her answer as she stood at the foot of the table, directly between Aaron and Max. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her because she was so attractive; no one held a flame to the women in my family. Also, I wasn’t that kind of person. Mostly, the ache in my intestines came from the blatant attention she was showing Max and Aaron. Realistically, I knew I couldn’t blame her. I did. They were both too good-looking for their own good.

But… she’d touched Aaron’s shoulder twice since we’d sat down. I’d counted.

“The chicken and waffles is one of our bestsellers,” the woman answered Max’s question, her eyes settling on Aaron for a moment as her flirting smile turned into a coy one highlighted by her bubble gum pink lipstick.