After those were: there were things he hadn’t wanted to tell me about his past, and there were things he didn’t want to tell me in general. I’d put all that together. What I could or would do about it was yet to be determined. I wasn’t the pushy type, and the last thing I wanted to do was force him to tell me something that he didn’t want to, for whatever reason he had. At no point had he given me a reason not to trust him, I knew that for a fact.
But… I really wanted him to trust me. And if I was going to be real honest with myself, it hurt my feelings that he hadn’t and didn’t. And I could live with it or I couldn’t, the choice was up to me.
No biggie.
Right.
Maybe I had been better off not caring about dating and men and relationships. This crap was way too complicated. I wasn’t built for this. At the rate I was going, everything was going to make me cry silently into a pint of ice cream.
With a sigh, and with the remainder of my water bottle in hand, I headed out to the balcony, hugging my legs to my chest once I’d sat down.
There were only four full days left until I flew back to Houston, and the notion made a lump fill my belly… but I tried my best to ignore it and just clear my head and enjoy the moment. I didn’t have to dread whatever came, or didn’t come, in the future. Sometimes things worked out and other times they didn’t. I’d go to San Francisco to visit my dad for a while, and then I’d head back home and keep on trying to expand my business. Somehow. If not… well, I wasn’t sure what Plan B was exactly.
Plenty of people didn’t figure out their lives for a long, long time. It wasn’t a big deal if I still hadn’t sorted out what I was supposed to do. Maybe it was a good thing that Aaron was just my friend. Who was I to be in a relationship with someone when my life was all over the place?
I’d survived having feelings for someone who didn’t share them in return with me before. I could survive it again. I would have to.
I needed to—
It was the sliding of the deck door that had me glancing over my shoulder to find Aaron there, one shoulder coming through the door first before another one followed. His hands were awkwardly up at his sides as he held a plate in each one. How long had I been outside already? Long enough for him to make food? He didn’t bother closing the door behind him as he came out, giving me something that was supposed to look like a smile but didn’t quite.
“Morning,” he said in a restrained voice as he walked over to where I was sitting.
“Morning.” My eyes bounced back and forth between him and the plate in each hand that I still couldn’t see well. “I thought you’d sleep in longer,” I told him.
He shook his head and stopped right beside my chair, extending the plate toward me. “Couldn’t sleep. Eat.”
“Thank you,” I told him a lot more quietly than I had over the last two days, taking the plate from his hands with that strange, uncertain emotion filling my chest. There were two pieces of toast, each topped with scrambled eggs, something that looked like pico de gallo, cheese, avocado, and bacon. I held my breath and watched as he lowered himself to his chair, already picking up a piece of toast with his left hand and taking a bite out of it. I watched him eat it.
We hadn’t said more than fifteen words to each other after we’d gotten back to the house the night before, and yet, he’d still made me breakfast. I didn’t know whether to cry or hug him, I really didn’t.
Who made food for a friend anyway? I loved my friends, and I loved my sisters, but unless they asked, I wouldn’t make them breakfast. Did he not know I wasn’t mentally stable enough for this? That my heart wasn’t in the right place? That it didn’t know Aaron was my friend and would only ever be my friend, no matter how much I told it otherwise?
You would have figured no one in my life had ever been kind to me by the way I sat there.
He’d probably gotten through half of it when he realized I was staring at him instead of eating, and he started chewing slower. “I know you like eggs, and you have to like bacon, what is it?” he asked, hoarsely, swallowing what he had left in his mouth. His eyes went round and he spoke slowly, “If you say you don’t like avocado, I’m going to need to rethink this whole thing we have going on.”
This thing we had going on? Friendship?
We were back to acting like everything was fine and that I hadn’t started being crazy and cool the night before and he hadn’t gotten lost in his mysterious thoughts and stopped talking to me?
I’d worry about it later. Instead, I shook my head, as every cell in my body cried out for this man who always made sure I ate and had made me something to eat for breakfast again. I wanted him. I wanted him so badly I could barely breathe. And…
I couldn’t have him.
Was this a test? My mom always mumbled about how she was being tested: her patience, her wallet, her mental health. Then she’d start mumbling about how God never gave you more than you could handle.
So was that what this was?
Was I being tested by this beautiful man so if I passed, I could hopefully find one just like him that did like me the way I wanted to be liked?
“Is it the avocado, Ruby?” Aaron asked slowly, taking another bite and frowning as he did it.
Swallowing the questions and the frustrations inside of me, I tried to remember I had to be fair. I had to. So I told him, weak, weak, weak, “No, I like avocado.”
Even with his cheeks stuffed full of toast, tomatoes, cheese, avocado, and bacon, he blinked. “You sure?”
Why? Why? Why couldn’t he have been normal? Handsome but not stunning. Nice but not kind. Understanding but not so patient. Thoughtful but not so much.
I should have gone home. I really should have gone home so I could have had a fighting chance of moving on with my life once this week was over. I didn’t need to add a person to my obsessive personality.
But I didn’t do any of that.
“I’m sure,” I promised him, forcing myself to pick up my toast and take a bite.
Maybe this was my test. Maybe I just needed to get through this week as best as I could, and then I’d know I could handle anything. I could be his favorite friend and eventually, at some point, move on and find someone else who might not be so handsome or sweet, but he could be honest and share things with me. And that would be enough. He could still be normal handsome. Who said he couldn’t?
“Ruby—” he started to say before the sound of a phone ringing inside the house cut him off.
There was a home phone in the house? I wondered, knowing I hadn’t seen one.
Aaron cursed, setting his plate on the side table and getting to his feet. “I’ll be right back,” he said to me, giving me a tight expression before practically jogging back inside.
I hadn’t really planned on being nosey and eavesdropping on whatever conversation was about to take place on a phone I hadn’t even known existed, but curiosity got the best of me. Mostly because I wanted to see where the heck the phone had been the entire time. But something bothered me as Aaron headed straight to a cabinet directly beside the refrigerator that I had never opened before, like he knew exactly where it was, and pulled out a corded white handset, bringing it up to his ear.
I guess that shouldn’t have been surprising considering he’d been the one to put up the groceries the second day we’d been there. Maybe he’d looked around the house, or maybe this was the same place that they had all stayed at when they’d come to San Blas last year. That would make sense.
The thing was, I kept watching him as he answered, in a voice that was intentionally low, “Hello?”
I might not be as athletic as Jasmine or as smart and outgoing and pretty as my mom and sister, but I’d inherited my dad’s excellent hearing, vision, and teeth. I wore earplugs every single time I went to a concert and I could usually hear just about everything. So even though Aaron was basically whispering as he reclined against the kitchen counter with the phone to his ear, I heard him and I watched his facial expression, and the tone of his voice change instantly. I mean, instantly.
We’d had our beef the night before, but it was nothing like the tension that strummed through his body, and I definitely hadn’t thought it was possible for him to scowl and frown as he said to whoever was talking to him, “What do you want?”