“It’s really beautiful.” And then I told him the second truth in my long list of things I couldn’t deny. “I’m going to owe you forever for inviting me and showing this to me.”
He didn’t say another word and neither did I as the sun kept creeping upward, unrushed. I know at one point I held my breath at the same time the sound of two new voices from somewhere behind us broke the silence. I didn’t look back, all I did was keep my eyes forward and swallow the rays entirely.
“I think I want to wake up every day and watch this,” I whispered to him, pulling my knees into my chest so I could settle my chin on top of them. “It would be worth waking up early for.”
And all Aaron said, in his low, soft-spoken voice that he’d been using on me since yesterday, with something in the notes I couldn’t classify that sounded almost like hope, if hope had a sound and if a promise could be made without vocalizing it, was, “Any morning you want, Rube. I’ll watch it with you.”
“So, Ruby… I have an important question to ask you.”
Scrunched into the middle in the back of Aaron’s double cab pickup truck, I slipped my hands between my thighs and accepted that I’d gotten off easy on the way to the grocery store. I’d helped Aaron make a list that mainly consisted of salt and vinegar chips, Fritos, macaroni and cheese, and frozen pizzas while we’d waited around in the kitchen for everyone to wake up. Aaron, Des, Max’s sister whose name I learned was Mindy, and Brittany, Des’s girlfriend, and I had all climbed into the truck at exactly 10:05 a.m. Aaron had invited me to take the front seat, but I had waved him off because obviously Des’s legs were longer than mine. Then, noticing that Brittany was five inches taller than me and that Mindy had a broken arm that probably shouldn’t get jostled around, I’d offered to take the seat on the bench in the middle.
Mindy and Brittany had both been busy on their phones before we’d even gotten into the car and had stayed on them the entire trip to the grocery store. I’d only caught bits and pieces of each of their conversations over the music that Des had started playing in the truck, but I knew Brittany was on the phone with someone she worked with and Mindy was arguing with who I’m pretty sure was the other girl who had been in the accident with her because they’d been talking about pain medication and how it was affecting them differently.
Not that I was paying that close attention. I’d already texted my mom to let her know I was alive and kicking; there was no one else for me to message.
Half an hour later, with the groceries in the bed of the truck, we’d all climbed back in, no one on their phone. So I wasn’t surprised when Mindy finally spoke up.
“Okay,” I told her, taking in her light brown hair and a face whose youth and angles reminded me of Jasmine… if my little sister didn’t have the crazy person glint in her eye.
The younger, very pretty girl had her broken arm propped against the car door. Her expression was serious. “Where did you get those tights from?”
Tights?
“The ones you had on yesterday with the cats on them. Where’d you get them?” she asked, like she’d read my mind.
I blinked, taking a second to process what she was saying. “Oh. Online. There’s a store that I order things from that’s cheap. I’ll write down the link for you if you want,” I answered her, only sounding a little awkward.
The side of Brittany’s thigh touched mine as she asked, “And the skirt?”
My face definitely turned a little pink at the attention they were both giving me. “I got it from a thrift store and redid a lot of it, I’m sorry.”
She blinked. “You redid it, how?”
“She makes costumes and dresses,” Aaron piped in from the front, his brown eyes visible in the rearview mirror.
Brittany leaned further into me, narrowing her eyes a little in a way that didn’t make me feel like it was judgmental, more just… curious. “Where do you live?”
“In Houston,” I told her, cocking my head to the side just enough to make eye contact with the pretty black-haired woman that had been watching me closely on and off with a friendly expression on her face every time I’d caught her. I could do this. Everyone had been nice so far. “Are you in Shreveport?” I asked her, trying to make conversation.
“I live in Haughton. It’s outside Shreveport,” she explained, giving me an easygoing smile that relaxed me.
I nodded and tried to think of something else to ask her. “Have you been here before?”
“Yeah, we came last spring before Hall shipped out,” she said.
I hadn’t known that. Had I? I couldn’t remember him mentioning if this was his first time in Port Saint Joe, the town closest to the strip of peninsula called Cape San Blas, where we were staying, or not. Either way, it wasn’t like it was any of my business to know where he’d gone before we’d met.
Even though I might have wanted to know everything.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
I froze at the random question that came from my right, from the younger girl whose face was suddenly red like she couldn’t believe she’d asked that. I guess I was too, a little. I’d never heard anyone just… ask that kind of question like that before.
“Ahh…” I trailed off, knowing the answer but….
She must have realized what the heck had come out of her mouth because she started stuttering, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t have a filter—”
“It’s okay—”
Mindy waved me off. “That’s so rude. I’ve just been wondering because Max said that Aaron said you weren’t his girlfriend—”
Why that felt like a sock to my stomach, I had no idea. It wasn’t like I didn’t know that. It wasn’t like he didn’t know I wasn’t his girlfriend either.
“—and my mom always says guys and girls can’t be friends, and I’m just trying to figure out why you would come if you aren’t together, and oh my God, I’m still talking. I’m sorry,” the girl, who couldn’t have been older than eighteen, rambled on in the same breath.
I could only look at her.
“Jesus Christ, Mindy,” that was Aaron from the front seat, glancing over his shoulder with a shake of his head.
“It’s okay,” I tried to butt in, even though I was positive my face was red. “I would probably wonder too.” I just wouldn’t ask outright something like that. It was one thing for everyone I knew and had known for years to know my miss after miss in the relationship business, but for this girl I barely knew to ask, was a little bit depressing. The whole world was aware that there was something strange about Aaron inviting me to come. There was no hiding it. There was no pretending like he saw me as something more than a… than a… relative. Ugh. But I told her the truth. “No” and my face definitely turned red, if it hadn’t already been.
“You just broke up with one?”
“No,” I repeated myself. “I just haven’t had one… in a while. Aaron is just my,” I almost choked on the word but managed to get it out with a little bit of fake nonchalance behind it, “friend. One of my favorite friends.”
And there were my two lies before I even knew I was going there.
I was not going to look at Aaron. Nope. Not then.
I forced a smile on my face and asked the girl another question before she could throw a new one out that I didn’t know what to do with, “Do you have a boyfriend?”
The way she shook her head quickly, like she was disgusted. “Oh no. I don’t have time for dumbasses.”
I couldn’t help but grin even as I faced forward again.
And it was Brittany beside me who chimed in with, “It takes a while to find one that isn’t a dumbass, but there’re a few out there.”
I’m not sure why I glanced up at the rearview mirror again but I couldn’t help but smile, especially not when Aaron’s gaze flicked to mine. The way his eyebrows moved said he was probably smiling.
“How long did it take you, Brit?” the younger girl asked.
The woman beside me made a thoughtful noise as Des turned in his seat to shoot her a look that wasn’t meant for me to see. I wondered how long they’d been together. “Twenty-eight years.”