“I didn’t think you’d come,” he says, and there’s a sadness in his voice underneath the drunken slur, and that sadness cuts into me like a spear into a fish, it goes all the way through and out the other side, leaving me gasping for air.
“Of course I came,” I say, stopping and turning so I can see his face. His beautiful face. “I’ll always come.”
“Then where ya been, Wing? Where ya been?” He’s swaying, so I guide us to a bench under one of the dogwood trees and sit him down and then slide in next to him, as close as I dare, and not nearly as close as I want to be.
“Aaron,” I say softly. “What happened tonight?” I’m not expecting a coherent answer, but I’m curious what he’ll say.
“I miss you so damn much. It isn’t fair. First I lost Marcus and now I lost you.”
I lean closer to him and take his hand in mine. A spark erupts between our palms, and I feel it go straight into my heart, waking it up from a long sleep.
“You didn’t lose me,” I say. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”
“You’re too fast now.” Aaron squeezes my hand. “I can’t keep up. I can’t follow you. You’re too fast for me, my Wing-a-ring-ling.”
I know he’s drunk and he’s spouting nonsense, and that I shouldn’t pay any attention, but there is a truth hidden in his words, a truth that tugs at me. Being fast is all that matters to me now. There is nothing I can say, so instead I squeeze his hand back.
He hiccups loudly. “I’m proud of you,” he says. “I’m proud of you, but it hurts. It hurts that I’m not the one by your side anymore. You don’t need me anymore. Nobody needs me anymore.”
“Aaron!” I can’t have him thinking that I don’t need him. That I don’t care about him. I let go of his hand and roughly pull his face toward my own and kiss him as hard as I can. I enjoy it, for a few luxurious moments. Then I wonder if I’m taking advantage of the situation. Taking advantage of him.
I pull back, quickly, so quickly that I leave his mouth still open, his arms stretching out to wrap around me.
“Wing, Wing,” he says, his words still slurred. “Don’t tease me like that.”
“I’m not!” I say. “Are you going to remember this in the morning?”
“I hope so,” he says, and then hiccups again.
I rest my forehead against his and our noses press together. Even our eyebrows are practically touching. If his could crawl like caterpillars, and they look like caterpillars, they could hop from his face to mine. “Aaron, I do need you. I need you to go be … a better you. The best you. Can you do that? For me?”
His head bobbles back and forth, gently knocking into my own. “I’d do anything for you, Wing. Anything. I didn’t realize, I didn’t realize … it was before the running. Did you know that? It was before the running.”
“What? What was before the running? You aren’t making any sense.”
“My feelings! The feelings I had for you. They were there before the running. They were…” He looks down at his hands and opens and closes his fingers like he’s counting. “I don’t even know how long I’ve had them.”
All the air has left my lungs. And I can’t breathe any more in because I can’t move. I’m sitting frozen on the bench, not quite believing what he’s saying.
“Dionne…” he says, and I frown.
“Dionne?” Is he calling me Dionne? Oh my God, what if he’s so drunk he thinks I’m Dionne? That doesn’t make any sense because he was just calling me Wing … but…
“Dionne used to say all the time, ‘I know you’ve got a thing for Marcus’s sister,’ and I do,” he says, grabbing my hands. “And you aren’t his sister. I mean, you are, but to me you’re just Wing.”
I lean forward and press my lips against his again.
I can’t not.
CHAPTER 54
At some point, we move from the bench to the back of my mom’s car.
Aaron lies down, blinking and yawning, and puts his head in my lap. “I don’t want to go home,” he says, his words still blurry. “Can I stay with you?”
He closes his eyes and falls asleep before I answer. He looks soft in sleep, unguarded. His chest rises and falls in a slow, even rhythm. I match my breathing to his and lean my head back against the headrest, closing my eyes for just a few minutes.
A car alarm goes off, jarring me awake. My few minutes’ rest have turned into an hour or more. The sky is waking up, changing color behind the trees.
My leg has fallen asleep beneath Aaron’s head. I jostle him awake, gently, and grin at how his eyes flutter open like he’s a princess in a fairy tale.
“How are you feeling?”
He looks up at me, and then around the car, and for a moment I worry that he won’t remember how he got here. He won’t remember me picking him up from the Clermont Lounge.
He won’t remember calling me.
Needing me.
“I thought I was dreaming,” he says, his voice raspy with sleep. I love the sound. I want to take it and make a scarf out of it, so I can wrap it around myself and rub my face against it, soft and scratchy. Familiar and warm.