Leaning forward, his words and his pink cheeks and his smile with a dent in it still fresh on my mind, I asked him, still practically whispering, “Are you drunk again?”
That dimple that was for sure a dimple went even deeper and his smile went full-powered on my heart, almost knocking the wind and every thought out of me when he snickered.
“Are you going to hug me or are you just going to stand there?” I asked him.
I had no idea right then that, for as long as my soul resided in my body and I could reminisce on the best parts of my life, I’d remember how Aaron Hall leaned forward and wrapped those long, tan arms around my back and pulled me into his chest. Me who was still on the bench. The way he hugged the hell out of me would be something that sickness and death could never take away. And in the time it took me to suck in a breath, I put my own arms around him. I’d hugged dozens of men before. Dozens and dozens, hundreds of times. And Aaron’s upper body was just as wide and solid in front of mine like the best of them.
But better. So much better. Because his hug was the greatest. He smelled like a hint of cologne with cedar in it. And I would remember it forever.
My friend had come. This man whose beauty had nothing to do with what was on the outside. I only tightened my arms around him and felt him do the same thing to me. He hugged me and kept on hugging me, one hand going to the back of my head and sliding its way back down again. Affection. That was exactly what he was giving me, and I drank every sip of it up.
When he pulled back after a few moments, those tan hands went to my shoulders and stayed there. His face couldn’t have been more than a foot away as he asked one more time with that expression that I couldn’t properly process, “You didn’t say. Are you hungry?”
I couldn’t help but do anything other than nod, taking in his features and filing them away for later. Who would have known?
Aaron smiled again as he reached out to take the handle of my suitcase from where it was propped against the wall. Who or when it had been moved, I had no idea, but later on, when I could think about it, I’d be happy no one had stolen it while I’d been having a mini-meltdown. “Let’s go. I was waiting to eat in case you were hungry too.”
I nodded and watched as he pulled my suitcase to his side, then tipped his head across the street toward the giant parking lot. Without another word, I followed just to the right of him, the suitcase on his left, finally taking him in fully. In a V-neck, olive green T-shirt that fit the width of his shoulders perfectly, brown cargo shorts that showed off tan, muscular calves, and running shoes, he looked so… normal.
But better.
Aaron must have sensed being eyeballed because he glanced over his shoulder and raised those sun-lightened eyebrows. “Do I have something on my face?”
I could feel my cheeks get red; that’s how bad it was getting caught. “No. It’s just… weird to see you in person.” I hesitated for a second and told him the truth, because I’d promised not to lie, and something in my gut said if he’d known when I was full of crap online, he could tell the same thing in person. “You’re just… not as hard on the eyes as I thought you were going to be.”
His mouth did that hesitating grin again that fluctuated between a grin and a controlled smile before he winked.
He winked. At me.
Then he said the most perfect words that could have come out of his mouth. “If it makes you feel better, we can talk about my….” He waved the hand closest to me behind his butt. A butt I’d have to totally catalogue later when it wasn’t so obvious.
I pressed my lips together and tried not to smile.
And I totally failed at it.
Chapter 16
Aaron was smiling at me.
This could-be runway model, with cheekbones that could cut glass if they wanted to, a jaw that was so defined it would give a sculptor a hard-on, and a mouth that must have given hundreds of women over the years countless raunchy dreams, was smiling at me from across the table. Me. And he wasn’t looking anywhere else.
The most important place this not-looking-anywhere-else part included was the waitress who had been playfully pouting and trying her absolute best to make eye contact with him when she’d come by to take our drink orders a few minutes go. She’d struck out. Then she’d struck out again when she’d brought them over and taken our food order. Her squeezing her boobs together with her upper arms hadn’t been enough to get him to look elsewhere, and she had girls even I had glanced at twice. But Aaron? He’d been constantly sneaking looks and smiles at me while we’d been in the car, and hadn’t stopped doing so since we’d been seated at the café he’d pulled over at.
I’d be fooling myself if I tried to deny that on the first leg of the drive, I taken some sneaky glances to my left. Neither one of us had said much yet. When I hadn’t been busy looking at Aaron, I’d been focused on the scenery outside the window, eating up the darkening landscape that was so different from what I was used to back in Houston.
Most importantly, as we sat facing one another, I was smiling at him cautiously and he was giving me that smirking little smile that seemed like it had secrets stitched in some compartment below his practically flawless skin. If he had pores or blemishes, I hadn’t been able to see a single one… and I’d looked.
Luckily, Aaron wasn’t as quiet as I was, because it was him who finally broke our silence with his elbows on the table we shared. He had his chin on his hand, not looking at all like he’d driven hours on end to get to the beach house and then had to drive to get me.
“You look really tired,” was what he decided to start off with.
I blinked and bit down on my bottom lip as I struggled not to take that as an insult. “Do I?”
The corners of his mouth flexed upward just a bit, a smirk hiding in plain sight. “You know what I mean.”
Uh.
His mouth lost the battle when that quiet laugh of his came out. “You know what I mean.”
Raising an eyebrow, I nodded enthusiastically, trying not to smile and mostly failing at it. “You’re saying I look like hell.”
One of those hands that had been on my knees less than an hour ago palmed a lean cheek. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
I squinted at him that time and tipped my head to the side. “Pretty sure that’s what it seems like you’re saying.”
“It’s not,” he argued, his gaze still totally focused on me.
I wrinkled my nose. “It’s okay. I haven’t slept much the last two nights thanks to someone I know. I’m sure I do look like hell.”
That had him groaning as he seemed to push his chair closer to the table from the scrape of wood on tile. “I didn’t say you look like hell. You just look tired.”
I’m not going to smile. I’m not going to smile. “There’s a difference?”
He cocked his head to the side and made his eyes go wide as he nodded. Apparently it was his turn to bring out the sass. “Yeah.”
Aaron stared at me and I stared back at him.
“Hmm.”
“Hmm,” he repeated.
I smirked and he smirked right back.
This really was just like our conversations online. It relaxed me. Made me feel better about… everything. “If you say so.” I held back a grin, snickering before letting out a yawn I tried my best to muffle but failed at. Wanting things to be as normal as they could be, I fidgeted with my hands, trying to think of what to ask him. Of all the things I could have brought up, I went with, “How was your drive?”
Those muscular shoulders I hadn’t gotten to ogle much yet both went up casually. “Fine.” The hand, the one he wasn’t using to cup the side of his face, reached blindly toward his beer. Those brown, brown eyes still hadn’t left my direction. “Your flight was okay?”
“Besides having an old man use my shoulder as a pillow, and having my mom yell at me before I walked out of the house, everything was good.”