Wing Jones(77)

“No.” I slide over, sitting closer to him. “I’m glad you did.”

“Are you?”

I know he’s asking me more.

“I mean … I don’t want to make picking you up from a strip club parking lot a regular occurrence…”

He snorts.

“But … I’m glad you called.”

“How about I take you to breakfast to make up for it?”

I drive and Aaron directs, telling me he knows just the place. It’s a little French bakery, tucked down a street lined with dogwood trees. It opens at five, but we’re still a few minutes too early.

“Simone will open up,” he says, rapping on the glass door.

Simone conjures up images of a leggy brunette with dark eyes and a mysterious smile. I’m not expecting a lady who is almost as wide as she is tall to open the door, hair tied up in a scarf.

I’m even less prepared for her to open her arms and scoop Aaron in for a hug, babbling in French.

And when Aaron replies, in French, I nearly fall over. I don’t know what he says, but Simone lets him go and is suddenly hugging me.

I put my arms gingerly around her, patting her on the back. She’s still speaking in French, the words pouring over me like some kind of exotic perfume. It smells delicious.

Not just the words. The bakery smells delicious too.

“I don’t speak French,” I blurt when Simone stops for a breath.

“Oh, no problem! Come, sit! The beignets are hot.” Her accent isn’t exactly French, but it isn’t Southern either. She leans toward Aaron and sniffs loudly. “Woo, boy! You stink! I’m guessing you need a coffee too.” She shakes her head, clucking to herself. “Silly boy!”

She bustles off into the kitchen, whistling as she goes. I sit in one of the tiny cafe chairs. It’s so tiny I think I might break it, or at the very least spill off it.

Aaron looks like a giant sitting on dolls’ furniture.

“Simone?” I say, eyebrows raised.

Aaron grins back at me. “Told you she’d open up early for us.”

“Who is she?”

“She used to look after me. When I was little. Her and my mom used to be real close … but then … well … my mom said a bunch of real stupid crap. Crap she didn’t mean. But she hasn’t said sorry either.”

“How does your mom know her?” My mind is whirling. I can’t picture Aaron’s sullen, mean mom being friends with this welcoming woman.

“They grew up together. In New Orleans. That’s why Simone makes beignets.”

“Your mom is from New Orleans?” I don’t know why this surprises me so much.

“Yep. Taught me French when I was growing up. She doesn’t speak it anymore, though.”

I thought I knew all there was to know about Aaron. And here he is, like one of those Russian nesting dolls, holding all kinds of different Aarons inside him.

Simone comes back and puts the piping hot beignets down with a flourish. “Ta-da! Beignets to save the day. And hot coffee.”

“I don’t drink coffee…”

“Oh, let me get you a hot chocolate, then. But this one” – she rolls her eyes in Aaron’s direction – “this one needs coffee. He looks like the cats dragged him down the alley and back up again.”

She goes into the kitchen, leaving us alone with the smell of the beignets and the steaming coffee. Aaron takes a small sip, wincing at the heat.

I pick up a beignet and take a bite. It’s fluffy and soft and perfect. Powdered sugar goes everywhere.

“Here,” Aaron says, leaning toward me and wiping the corner of my mouth with his thumb. He pauses, still close. “Wing,” he says, and something in the way he says my name makes me stop chewing, stop breathing, it stops everything.

“Everything has gotten kinda crazy, huh? You and your running, the whole Riveo thing. Look, I’m supportive of it, I know what it means to you, I know what it could do for your family, but it hurt, it hurt a lot when you pushed me away. Hurt so much that I let Jasper and those guys talk me into a night out at the Clermont. And the hurt, it wasn’t just because of how I feel about you, although that was most of it. I was…” He pauses, and I can tell he’s searching for the right word. “Offended. I thought … I guess I thought I discovered you. Discovered what you could do. How talented you are. And then here you were, telling me you were better off without me.” He holds his hands up. “I know, I know, that sounds ridiculous. But I mean, all these years, Marcus never knew you could run like that? At first I was doing it for him, you know, because I thought it was what he would have wanted. What he would have done. And then, then I was doing it for you, because I loved seeing you run, loved seeing how happy it made you. And then I think maybe I was giving myself too much credit for something that was just yours.” He pauses again and takes another tentative sip of his coffee.

Maybe it’s the coffee, maybe it’s the conversation, but I feel more grown-up than I ever have in my whole life. I feel like we aren’t high schoolers in Atlanta, wearing the same clothes we went to sleep in last night, but like … like we’re lovers (just thinking the word makes my face hot) in a sidewalk cafe in Paris.

“Wing, you’re really good. You’re better than good, you’re great. And I wanna help you however I can,” Aaron says. “If that means running with you, great. If that means backing off and letting you do your thing, hell, I can do that too. You let me know.”