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.”

He groaned and it made me think of all the times he’d typed out something that conveyed the same emotion, making this all seem so much more real by the second. More safe. “She was pissed?” he asked.

I wouldn’t say she was pissed, but…. “You can call it that.”

The corners of his eyes wrinkled, and I wondered if the lines were from all the time he spent outside or if it was from him smiling. “She doesn’t know me. I’d be surprised if she wasn’t worried I’d kidnap you and sell you on the black market.” Those irises raked over me for what seemed like the hundredth time since he picked me up, making me feel just a hair self-conscious and grateful I’d hit the airport bathroom before I’d gone outside to wait for him. “She loves you. You’re lucky.”

How the hell he managed to say the same exact thing I thought was beyond me, but I let it go.

“Did you tell them you made it?”

I reached for my phone inside of my front pocket as I told him the truth. “Not yet. I forgot until now. Hold on.” It took two swipes, but I unlocked the screen once I had my cell out. The icon that said I had nineteen unread messages now, instantly made me cringe. They were thousands of miles away. It wasn’t like they were going to pop out of the display and holler at me when I read their messages. They were just being loving and worried, like a good family would. Like I would have done if it were any of them in my position, more than likely. This was what I got for never going through the rebel, hormonal teenager, jerk stage. I’d been the quiet one. The one who didn’t like getting into trouble, never got home late, never talked back, and spent most weekends LARPing or sneaking into the movie theater my friends had jobs at, when I wasn’t doing work for my aunt.

I’d always been the one who listened and tried to make everyone happy.

Until now.

I opened the first message and groaned.

“What does it say?” Aaron asked.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I told him. “These are all from my mom right now.”

I went on to the next one.

“If you get kidnapped, I’m not paying your ransom.”

That one had Aaron snickering. I snuck a glance at him with a smile, before picking back up on the rest of the messages on my phone.

The next one had me snorting. “They’re going to harvest your organs and throw you in the ocean. Tell Shamu I said hi. We’ll remember you.”

He snickered even louder than I did before taking a sip of his beer. “That’s pretty messed up.”

“I told you she’s crazy. Okay. Wait, listen to this one. I’ll name our next goldfish after you.” I had to lower my face to my hand to laugh, and heard Aaron doing the same thing. My mom. My freaking mom.

“What do the rest of them say?”

I was still cracking up as I read the remaining texts to him. “You’re going to give me a heart attack. Why are you trying to kill me? You were supposed to be my good girl, not like these other dipshits. Do you not care about my health? I’m too young to die from a heart attack. Do you even love me?” It was one thing to know I was related to drama queens, but it was another thing to be faced with it via text messaging. “These are from my sister. You’re a dumbass. I should’ve gone with you. I’m not joining any search parties going to look for you. I’m never going to wear the dress you made me if you don’t come back. There’s a few repeats… Squirt, you shit, tell me you made it.”

That last one had my heart hurting, and there was no hesitation in me as I typed out a reply to my mom and another to my sister.

I love you too. Made it to Panama City safe. Aaron already picked me up. Everything’s good. Text you soon.

You can borrow my clothes but touch the ones I have folded on the floor and I’ll put Nair in your shampoo. P.S. I love you too.

“Did you tell them you made it?” Aaron asked.

“Yeah, and that I’d message them soon. My sister threatened to borrow my clothes, and I told her if she took the ones I set aside to take with me to visit our dad, I’d put hair removal cream in her shampoo.”

He raised one of those blond eyebrows of his, a slight smile playing at his pink mouth. “Is she skating again?”

“She’s going early in the morning just by herself still, but she hasn’t worked out with her coach since her last competition. She’s been skating longer each day from what I overheard her coach tell my mom on speakerphone the other day. They’ve been watching her on security footage, but no one has the guts to confront her about it.”

“She’s still mad at you?”

“She was.”

He nodded, his hand still propping up his chin, his other one still resting loosely around his bottle. Those brown irises continued lingering on me. What in the world was he thinking?

I fought the urge to fidget and cleared my throat, trying to be a lot more casual and easygoing than I really felt. “So, you left your friends at the beach house?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Aaron caress the beer bottle with the tips of his fingers. “Yeah, but knowing them, they’re probably sleeping, even though I’m the one who drove all night.”

“You didn’t trust them driving your truck?”

The blond man smirked. “No.” He paused and took another sip of his beer before setting it down on the wood surface of the table, loudly, peering up at me in this way that made me even more self-conscious. “I didn’t want to overwhelm you bringing a bunch of people you don’t know to the airport,” he explained at the same time the pads of his fingers made a trail up the neck of the bottle. His gaze was on me as he said, “And I wanted to hang out with you first. Just us two.”

Of all the responses I could have come up with after that, I said “Oh.”

Oh.

When in reality it was more like, are you trying to kill me? That he knew me well enough to understand I’d feel overwhelmed… I wasn’t going to overthink it. I couldn’t. I wasn’t about to stew on him wanting to hang out with me first either.

Either my tone or blah response must have unsettled him because, for one brief second, a flash of hurt crossed his eyes, but it was gone before the next blink. He smiled at me tightly. “If you’re not comfortable, there’s a couple motels on the way to the house instead—”

He thought….

“No, no,” I stammered. “That’s not it. You’ve done—you’re—” Why couldn’t I get my words straight? “I’m still a little nervous. You’re just—” Too surreal. Too perfect. So much more than I ever could have imagined.

But I said none of that.

“What?” he asked, cautiously, like he didn’t know his billboard-belonging face could reduce anyone with a pulse to a mess of blood and bones.

I mean, I’d grown this giant crush on him just through e-mails. Having him face to face was almost too much to handle when he looked the way he did. But I couldn’t tell him any of that. I knew why I was here. Because he’d connected with me too, because he’d liked me.

As a friend.

Like a little sister, he’d told me that one time recently when he’d been drunk.

That was all…. Even if the T-shirt he had on showed off pecs that demonstrated he’d definitely been hitting the gym regularly while he’d been stationed in the desert and had biceps and forearms that were lined with lean muscles. I could see, but I couldn’t touch as anything more than a friend could or would.

The Friend Zone: The Life of Ruby Santos

I cleared my throat and glanced at his styled hair again, something about it niggling at me. I swallowed and dragged my eyes up to the ceiling for a second before flicking them back down to him, regretting even starting to say something. I blinked at him.

And he blinked right back at me, expectantly.

When I slid my gaze to the side for a moment and then returned it to him, he just sat there, like he was trying his best to look innocent and curious.

“I already told you when we were leaving the airport.”

He blinked innocently one more time but said nothing.

I groaned deep inside of myself. “You’re going to make me say it?”

He nodded, and I thought for sure he knew exactly what I was thinking.

My face flamed up for the hundredth time, and I was tempted to glance at the ceiling so I wouldn’t have to make contact with those eyes of his. I scratched at my neck and peeked at him again, feeling the words scrape against my throat. I needed to quit being a chicken. “I mean this in a totally platonic way, okay?” I warned him.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him dip his chin once more, and I wasn’t going to pay attention to the way his mouth was doing that fluctuating thing again. Amused, happy, mocking, and back all over again. Why? Why couldn’t he just be plain looking or be so good-looking and not be so direct with his stare?

Because that wasn’t my luck, and I knew it. I coughed. Then I did it. “You’re gorgeous,” I said to him almost painfully, prying the words out. “Like… the army should put you on their recruitment ads or put you as the face on their website. I feel like I can’t look you in the eye or I’ll turn into stone, and they’ll need to add my statue to a garden of other women who have made eye contact with you before and lost their lives.”

Aaron just stared at me for a moment, just a moment, and slowly that wavering smile turned into a full-fledged one, one with straight white teeth and warmth to it that couldn’t be faked, that could have had angels singing and playing harps in the background.

“You smile a lot more than I thought you would,” I kept going. “You said you never really smiled while you were over there.”

“I don’t usually smile so much,” was his cryptic answer.

I scratched at my neck again and watched him, nerves making a nest in my belly. Anxiety prickled at the center of my chest, and so, so hesitantly I said, “I was worried you were going to be disappointed meeting me.”

Those brown eyes seemed to twinkle a little, his eyebrows shaping, his mouth doing that turning thing like he was trying to stop smiling.

My hands were starting to get itchy.

But then he said the words that made a dozen more butterflies explode into existence. “I’m really damn happy to see you, Ruby.” His voice was quiet, not hesitant but more cautious. “I look at you and I can’t stop smiling. That’s all. You’re adorable.”

I couldn’t in a million years envision Jasmine or Tali turning red at someone calling them adorable, but I did. Scarlet, red, garnet. I was covered in invisible lava all of a sudden.

And then with my dignity swimming out of my grasp, I hacked out an, “It took me an hour to decide what to wear before I left the house. I almost brought my Ghost Rider costume with me, but I thought I’d be too hot.”

Aaron shook his head again, brown eyes trained on me, hands folded. “I like you just the way you are, stalker.”

Looking back on it, it’s weird thinking about the moments you don’t realize are important. The sentences, the touches, the actions that seem so innocent in that second, you take them for granted. The words that make water into wine in the course of your life. But I would never forget the way his words made me feel. The way he made me feel right then.

I had no idea.

“I’m really happy you came, you know that, right?” he asked.

I nodded again, too quickly, the emotions and words and gestures and Aaron in general too much, stealing the words right out of my mouth until I had to scarf them back down inside me. “I know. I’m happy I’m here too,” I said, pretty much whispering, definitely blushing. “Thank you for inviting me and paying for my ticket and coming to pick me up. As soon as I get steady work again—”

Something nudged at my foot, and I didn’t need to look down to know it was his foot. “I’m not hurting for money, Rubes. You don’t owe me anything. I wanted you to come, remember?” he reminded me in that warm voice of his just as the waitress brought over two plates of food and slid them across the table in front of each of us, only standing there a second longer than she needed to before moving away because she saw it. She saw us staring at each other.

Neither one of us talked much as we ate; we were both that hungry and tired. It didn’t take long to pretty much inhale everything, to the point where Aaron scraped every crumb off his plate, and the only thing left on mine was a single burned french fry. When the waiter brought the check, we both eyed each other as I pulled some cash out of my pocket and he pulled his wallet out. We silently each put down an appropriate amount of bills to cover our meals.

I kept my mouth shut when he pulled out more cash to leave a tip.

I tried to tell myself to quit being nervous and awkward, but the pep talk did nothing. We made our way back to his white truck and got in, with Aaron shooting me a closed-mouth smiled as he started it up and backed out of the spot.

I was going to talk to him, I told myself as I buckled in the seat belt.

It was going to be just like when we messaged each other, I swore to the universe.

I was fine now. We were going to have a good time, get to know each other even more than we already had, and that was going to start right then… as soon as he was back on the road.

I told myself all of this over and over again as he pulled the truck back onto the highway to drive the rest of the way to the beach house.

I told myself all of this, really believing it, feeling pretty darn determined… and I still passed out almost immediately after he began driving. Because the next thing I was aware of was gasping awake, jolting in my seat, the air getting ripped out of my lungs when I felt my head droop so far forward it scared me badly enough that I jerked backward and hit my head on the rest behind me.

That’s when I heard Aaron choke.

I watched him out of the corner of my eye as I raised the back of my hand to wipe at the area around my mouth in case I’d started drooling, because it wouldn’t be the first time that happened. I fell asleep at my work table every other day, that was my norm. There were more than likely at least fifty pictures of me passed out with drool on my face floating around my family members’ phones. One picture had been Jasmine’s screensaver for six months, until Christmas had come and Tali had drawn that penis on Sebastian’s face.

Aaron did that choke again, his whole face scrunched up, and I watched him press his lips together then tuck them in as his shoulders shook. I was pretty sure those were tears making his eyes glassy and not allergies.

“Laugh all you want,” I mumbled, wiping at my mouth anyway because he’d already caught me. What was I going to do? Pretend it hadn’t happened? But I still said, “I wasn’t joking when I told you I hadn’t slept in a while.”

To give him credit, he kept his lips tightly sealed. What he did do was reach toward his face with his right hand and press the tip of his index finger to those long, curling blond eyelashes of his, swiping upward as he choked back another laugh. And in a quiet voice that said how much control it was taking him to not burst out laughing, he gasped, “Your face was almost on your knees….”

“I thought I saw a stain on my tights…,” I muttered, pinching my own lips together because the urge to laugh at him, with him, was right there as his hands squeezed the steering wheel so tight his knuckles went white and his shoulders shook even more.

He snickered deep in his throat and cocked his face away from mine just as his shoulders trembled even harder. “Is that what happened?”

“Yes. It was.”

Aaron coughed, earning him a side-eye and a frown. “Sure. Whatever you say, Rubes.”

I’d gotten what I wanted, hadn’t I? Us being back to “normal?” “Do you know how much longer we have until we get there?” I asked, trying to change the subject. The scenery had started to change again. Beach houses clustered together on the left side, and even though I couldn’t see it, I knew water had to be close by.

“Five minutes, ten minutes max,” he informed me.

Ten minutes to meet more people. No biggie. I squeezed my left hand into a fist. “Do you mind if I use your mirror?”

He shook his head.

“Thanks,” I told him as I flipped the visor down and then opened the panel for the lit-up mirror. I tried to ignore the nerves in my stomach as I swept my hair into a low ponytail and started wiping below my eyes with the side of my finger.

I could feel him glance at me. “You already look nice.”

I blushed and flipped the visor closed like a little kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “You only get one first impression—”

“What?”

“You only get one first impression,” I repeated myself, pretty sure I was still blushing. “I don’t want them to not like me.”

Aaron’s mouth screwed up and his forehead furrowed as he shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye. “They’re not going to not like you, Ru.” Then he slid me a full look. “You don’t have to be nervous. You meet your friends’ friends all the time, I thought.”

One explanation after another backed up inside my throat, and I couldn’t pick one that made me sound less lame and self-conscious, but I had to. I tried to reason with myself that he already knew nearly all the worst things about me and I was still here. What was a little more embarrassment after I’d already called him gorgeous? “But these are your friends,” I explained, hoping he’d understand what I meant.

Which was that he was special to me. More special than he should have been. But there was my newest truth out in the open.

And Aaron must have known what I was trying to tell him, because he smiled so tenderly, so freaking sweetly, like you’d look at a puppy being cute, that I felt like a nut cracked in half. “You’re my friend. I want you to like them too. I told them not to make a mess before we got back.”

He…

“Don’t worry, all right?” he said in that gentle, calm voice that could have made him a Ruby Whisperer. When I didn’t respond, he reached over and touched the side of my arm with the back of his hand briefly. “All right?”

“All right,” I agreed, even though my stomach was still all knotty and uneasy, and it wasn’t all because of his friends.

Luckily, he didn’t say anything else as we drove for all of six minutes longer before he turned left into a neighborhood of massive, colorful beach houses, one right next to the other. We drove passed aqua, blue, green, and white homes, but it was a bright purple house on stilts he headed toward. To one side was a small, fenced-in pool, and on the other side of where he parked was a silver Alero. Aaron shot me another calming smile as he opened his door and got out. I only felt a little nauseous as I got out too, hopping down. Aaron was already opening the back door as I pulled my bag out from the front and tossed it over my shoulder, looking around at the rest of the homes and listening for the waves that had to be close by.

“Come on,” he said, snapping me out of looking around, as he stood there with his hand extended toward me.

Neither one of my sisters would have taken it. I knew that.

But they were them and I was me, and I didn’t wait until he realized I had to think about it before I took the two steps I needed to get to him and slipped my fingers through his, like we’d done this a thousand times in the past. His fingers were cool and rough and his palm was broad, and somewhere my subconscious was aware that these hands might have done something that wasn’t nice or tender, that Aaron had lived in dangerous places for a long time and might have done things he would never want to talk about.

But I took his hand anyway and wrapped my fingers around his, hoping mine didn’t feel as warm and clammy as they would have with any other human being in this situation.

The tiny smile that came over that beautiful mouth made the lines at the corners of his eyes crinkle, and for one moment, I couldn’t believe his crap about how he claimed he wasn’t in the business of smiling. I couldn’t see it. He seemed so good-natured and thoughtful and warm, I couldn’t see him for anything else but the man who went out of his way to make me comfortable.

He didn’t say a word as he tugged me toward a white door in the center of the carport area below the house, opening it with the hand he’d been using to drag my bag behind us. Aaron didn’t let go of my hand as he led me into a mudroom and then reached back to drag my suitcase in and close the door behind us. He kept right on holding it while we walked up a flight of tiled white stairs that weren’t really wide enough for two adults and a suitcase, but we made it work somehow as anxiety at meeting people who had been in Aaron’s life for decades filled my thoughts and stomach even more than they already had.

He smiled at me lightly on the next landing when he dropped my bag off besides the stairs with a “Your room’s on this floor. I’ll show it to you after we find everyone.” Then we were back going up the stairs, and it was subconscious when I squeezed the fingers still entwined with his, this man I’d barely just seen for the first time three hours ago.

Aaron didn’t let go when we made it to the third floor, which opened into a huge living area painted in a bright blue with sea-themed frames and knickknacks highlighting white furniture. It was the sound of voices talking over each other that had me glancing to a big kitchen tucked to the right, further into the wide-open layout. I sensed Aaron perk up, his spine straightening, and something about him in general just changing. There were two men and two girls standing around the white kitchen island, arguing.

One of the men, the tallest of the two, who might have been stunning if I hadn’t seen Aaron first, happened to glance up just as he finished saying, “I don’t want pizza either, but it’s the only thing open,” and spotted us. A grin immediately crept across his sharp face. I almost paused, but when Aaron kept walking, so did I.

“Where have you been?” the man asked, almost immediately, looking back and forth between Aaron and me, not being very shy or sneaky about it.

My friend, who had been nothing but soft spoken with me, tightened his hold on my palm. “We stopped to eat. I texted you.”

The handsome stranger opened his mouth for a moment before slamming it closed. He reached into his front pocket and pulled out a cell phone, then frowned down at it in the time it took us to stop a few feet shy of the island, where the rest of Aaron’s friends were doing the same thing I would have done. Looking at the odd person out. Me.

“I had it on silent,” the man admitted with a laugh.

If Aaron screwed up his mouth into a smirk, I wasn’t positive. What I was positive of was how hard he smacked his friend on the shoulder. “Told you. You barely woke up?”

The second man, with light brown skin and bright green eyes, nodded as he gazed directly at the hand I was clutching, his eyes seeming to sharpen and narrow enough so that I started loosening the grip I had on Aaron’s hand. He held my hand tighter. “Not all of us can run on three hours of sleep like it’s no big deal,” the green-eyed man commented, still watching that spot between Aaron and me.

My friend made a dismissive noise in his throat as his hand slipped out of mine all of a sudden, and before I had a chance to snatch for it again, he moved it… and settled his palm on my lower back. The next thing I knew, he was leading me forward as he shifted to the side, giving me room to stand beside him directly in front of the island. I hadn’t even realized I was standing partially behind him.

“This is Ruby. Ruby, this is…”

I didn’t mean to zone out as he pointed from one man to another and then moved on to the two girls, but I did. One of them was a younger girl in a cast, and the other was older than me. They were both smiling genuinely… at least I hoped it was genuine. All I could do was freeze there and breathe as I stood and listened to one name after another, going in one ear and out the other.

I think I blinked and I might have smiled, but my heart started beating so fast, fast, fast again, there was no way I could be sure.

What had to be Aaron’s palm rubbed at my lower back and swept up my lower spine to the middle of it, landing right by where my bra strap lay. That big hand had outstretched fingers spanning what felt like most of my back, and I swear I heard him whisper, “It’s fine.”

And from one moment to the next, the hand on my back disappeared, and I sensed it move further up my spine before moving to cup my shoulder and gradually ease me in closer to his side. More than a little distracted and only slightly aware of what was happening, I reached out to shake each person’s hand across the island, trying to rack my brain for their names and who was who but failing miserably. One of the fingers on my shoulder rubbed a circle there.

“We’re going downstairs. Neither one of us got any sleep. See you in the morning,” Aaron told them, the hand on the back of my neck sliding down to palm my lower back once more.

The guy with the darker skin and light eyes was still glancing back and forth between us as he said, “We need to go grocery shopping, but the store closed at eight.”

“We’ll go in the morning then. You good with going at ten?”

The tall, good-looking man almost blanched. “Ten? In the morning?”

The fingertips on my back did a little tap. “Nobody told you to nap.”

The tall guy and the one with the green eyes made a noise that had Aaron making a noise in his throat.

“Go by yourselves then. I’m going at ten. I’ll see you in the morning,” Aaron said as he took a step back.

Nerves started to clog my throat, but I managed to mutter out a, “It was nice meeting you all. See you in the morning.”

The four of them waved at me, two more nicely than the other two. With another bye, I followed after Aaron as we headed toward the stairs we’d just come up. He stopped to scoop up four bottles of water from a pack on the floor I hadn’t seen on the way up when I’d been too busy looking around at everything.

Neither one of us said much as we headed down and turned off onto the second floor where he’d left my suitcase. He stopped almost immediately and frowned down at me. “You don’t have to go bed if you don’t want to. I just figured you were tired.” He paused. “We can stay up if you want.”

Was I tired? Yes. It was only eight, and it wasn’t even pitch-black outside, but for the first time since I was younger than ten, I was more than ready to pass out before midnight. Plus… “I can go to bed.” Then I thought about it. “Unless you don’t want to.”

Aaron flashed me a lazy smile. “I’m tired.”

I nodded at him and let out a breath that was supposed to be calming but really felt more embarrassed. “Will you tell me everyone’s name again tomorrow?” I whispered.

That mouth smirked. “Yeah.”

“Was the girl with the cast Max’s sister?”

“Yeah.”

I nodded. “And the other girl?”

“Brittany. That’s Des’s girl.”

I wasn’t sure which one was Des but hopefully tomorrow I would. Just standing there, I could feel my eyes getting droopy, and Aaron must have noticed too because he let out another tiny snicker. “Let me show you your room before you pass out.”

With sweaty hands I had clenched at my sides, I nodded, almost relieved. “Thank you so much for inviting me again,” I told him as he led me toward one of six doors I counted, stopping at the one furthest away from the stairway. “I’m sorry for being so awkward, but hopefully tomorrow—”

Aaron shook his head. “Stop saying you’re sorry. Everything is all right, Rubes. Right? I’m just me. You’re just you. We’ll be fine. You’ll be back to giving me hell in no time with everyone around.”

That had me smiling.

Which must have made him smile.

Something brushed against the balled-up hands I had at my sides, and I didn’t need to know it was his knuckles. “I’m in the room right next to yours,” he said, gesturing to the door just behind his shoulder with the hand he’d just touched me with. “The bathroom is the door in front of mine. There’s another one upstairs. If you need me, any hour, wake me, all right? Get some sleep.”

I nodded at him for a moment before reaching forward to grab ahold of his wrist. His skin was warm and his wrist thick, and that focus on me was almost too much. Sliding my grip down the length of his fingers, I dropped my hand and swallowed, trying so hard to act like this was all normal. “Goodnight. Thank you for inviting me again.”

He dipped his chin down and handed over two of the four bottles of water he’d been holding before taking a step back, toward his door. “Night,” he whispered, that smile still playing at his lips. “I’m glad you’re here.”

I was screwed. Here I’d come, expecting and hoping that this weekend would help me get over him and… I was screwed. Even if I knew this road went one way and one way only.

A little sister. That’s what he saw me as. I couldn’t let myself forget it.

I flashed him a smile I only partially felt before turning around and pushing the door open, dragging my suitcase in behind me. More white walls and seashells and sea dragons stared back at me in the small room that was quickly going dark as all traces of the sun completely disappeared. Flicking on the light switch, I kicked off my flats and stumbled toward the bed, ripping my clothes off and dropped the bottles of water beside the frame. Too tired to shower after wiggling out of my tights, I crawled on top of the mattress after shutting the gauzy mint-colored curtains. I’d just tugged the sheets up to my neck when I thought twice about it and jumped back off, grabbing my computer and phone from my weekend bag and hooking the smaller device up to charge. I’d call my mom tomorrow, or at least text her. She hadn’t responded to my last message and I wasn’t surprised.

I opened my computer and found a Wi-Fi connection, thankful that whoever owned the house had a framed portrait with the password on it directly in front of the bed. I launched the Skype app without thinking. It had barely finished logging me in when it pinged with an incoming message.

* * *