Chapter Six
“Aaron! Don’t forget that box that was off the curb! You know my dad won’t see it and will probably run it over if you don’t!” Nicole’s voice was raised just about as loud as she could manage, watching her boyfriend carrying things in and out of the apartment with more than the occasional swear word and glare thrown in her direction. None of which she was focusing on because he was tired and grumpy and having to move all of the boxes pretty much by himself while she spent her time unpacking and organizing inside which was more than enough reason for him to have some leeway. She wanted as much of the apartment put together before her parents showed up to see it as she could manage and he was allowing her to do that, even if it was a bit begrudgingly. He was tired, that was all. Her fingers pushed the wisps that had fallen out of the bun on top of her head back up into some semblance of messy order while waiting for that complaint to register from her words.
It didn’t come, but she didn’t know if that had anything to do with him not hearing her or if he was outright ignoring her by that point. Either one would have made sense, she just… didn’t want to think on it too hard right then, cups and plates being lifted alternately out of that box she had packed them into to be instead stored in the cupboards she was working on organizing. There were so many things that she’d taken for granted living at home, like the dishes all being in the exact same spots they’d been since she was little, never having had to pull anything out of a box that wasn’t new… moving out was just the kind of hassle that Mason had always told her it would be.
Not that she wanted to be thinking about him either, that sharp pang of regret registering in her chest with the forlorn hope that maybe… even though she knew he wouldn’t. Even though she knew he couldn’t, she was still wishfully imagining that maybe despite all of that he would show up with her parents just like he should’ve been able to. Only the fight with Aaron that last month of high school had changed everything. Literally everything. The whole night was almost one large, discombobulated blur by that point and it still gave her anxiety just to have it brought up within her own head.
She remembered clearly how everything had started, she remembered Mason’s very expression when he’d seen the discoloration of her forearm, but everything after that had blurred together with only small, singular details sticking out with any sort of clarity. She wasn’t sure when she’d found the pants to get on her legs to go over after Mason in the first place, or even how long it’d taken her to do so. She didn’t remember the drive over, or how she’d been driving, or even what she had been thinking about in that time frame, but she vaguely remembered pulling up to Aaron’s adoptive parent’s house and seeing the two in the front yard with their fists flying and rolling over one another. She vaguely remembered seeing Aaron’s family on the porch and yelling for one of them to stop them or call the police or something, but they were just… standing there, eyes glassy and hands held over their mouths like breathing statues instead of the people they were supposed to be.
She vaguely remembered other bodies showing up, and the glare of the car lights atop the cop cars was a single, clear image that had captured her attention just long enough away from the tussling pair that when she looked back the whole ordeal had changed. There weren’t two bodies fighting any longer, there was no rolling, there was only Mason on top of Aaron with his fist repeatedly smashing into his face. There was only Mason, who the cops were screaming at, who the neighbors were screaming at. There was only Mason who the police officer was attempting to drag off of Aaron, and then who two and then three, and then five police officers were attempting to drag him off and all she could think about were the words being flung around her, the threat of him being charged, and she hadn’t been able to breathe.
She remembered thinking that almost the whole night, that oxygen was a problem, that the very air around her had closed in to punish her for not stopping him soon enough, for not hiding her mistake better. She remembered screaming his name so harshly that she felt her throat tear, and she remembered trying in vain to get to him, to comfort him- ease that blank, drawn expression off of his face and hug him. She had tried, and she remembered the aftermath of that even more clearly, his eyes on hers as that cop car had pulled away and her parents had come rushing out of their own vehicle at her, all soothing hands and demanding questions.
She had answered them as best she could, but with the officer there taking statements and asking even more questions… she had just wanted it to go away, explaining that bruise on her forearm away as an incident from someone else at school who had stopped her from falling off the auditorium steps when she’d stumbled. The lie had come so easily, so convincingly without any sort of planning- and yet when it had come to trying to explain it to Mason… she’d fumbled. Hours too late.
The discussion with the police was a blur, the interrogation room, their family lawyer moving back between what she assumed was the room they were holding Mason in and the room she and her parents were in… all a blur, endless questions and the three of them having to answer. Endless suspicion that finally led to her being allowed to leave. Without seeing Mason, but then they’d expected her to want to see Aaron more.
Maybe she should have, maybe she was as awful of a girlfriend as he had insinuated when she’d finally gotten to the hospital room. He was a bloody, beaten mess, with more than one fractured bone and honestly, she wouldn’t have at all been surprised if he sent her away. She was expecting him to send her away, so many apologies ready on her lips, but by the time she’d gotten there, he was already cursing at the nurses. His bed pan flying past her face in her way in and his diatribe turning instantly to how long Mason was going to rot in jail for and ‘who the fuck did he think he was’. She had been desperate.
So desperate that she’d immediately starting apologizing, just as she’d meant to, and begging him not to press charges, promising him it was her fault and not Mason’s and trying to find any way to convince him to drop the charges completely. There would still be the matter of the cops having been called in the first place, and whatever it was they charged him with for the inconvenience of the whole incident but she was sure their family lawyer could work through that much easier than he could the assault charges being leveled against him.
She didn’t even remember what all she’d promised him, she was sure that there were some pretty fantastical things mixed up in there with all of her offerings, but he’d only been at all interested in the one, holding his hands up like he had when she offered to move in with him following graduation. It had been a sticking point for them and their plans for college for months at that point, their back and forthing over whether moving in together right off the bad was a good idea, and it had just escaped her in her rambling interest in finding anything at all to tempt him with. She hadn’t expected for that to work, or for him to ask her to promise right then and there, as if she were signing the contract in her blood, he was so serious about it.
It was easy, conceding that point in that exact moment, where before even the suggestion had gotten no more than an absolutely not from her. She didn’t have to think to make the trade, she didn’t have to pause. Mason’s continued freedom for her doing something that, as she kept reminding herself over and over now, she probably would have ended up doing eventually anyways. She didn’t like that uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach when it was she paused to think too long on the fact that she had moved in with him, or the way in which her justification kept returning to the fact that it was for Mason and his wellbeing that she had done so. She was supposed to have been ecstatic, over the moon, about moving in with her boyfriend finally. She was supposed to have been thinking about all the different ways that they could begin building a home together, only she wasn’t- and that meant that something was wrong. Another thing she didn’t like was dwelling too long on or looking at too closely.
She had to keep reminding herself, just like right now, that it was a good thing that Mason wasn’t coming with her parents. That with the tensions between he and Aaron it was for the best and that this meant she had more time to work on the both of them in order to ensure that when they did meet next it wouldn’t be as bad. To ensure that she could repair that fracture that it had caused in her relationships with both of them. She was just glad Mason hadn’t gone to jail, she was willing to give Aaron anything he wanted if it meant Mason’s safety.
Was it wrong of her? The lines between acceptable and not acceptable were blurring so badly that she had difficulty even attempting to sort it in her own head, but there definitely wasn’t anyone with whom she could have gone over it with. One word to her parents, one even slightly suspicious phrasing and they would be demanding that she leave, or worse. She couldn’t afford it, she couldn’t afford to deal with any of those repercussions. Which meant that she needed to find a way to make it work without dwelling so much on all of the what ifs and negatives as she was. She was just… sad, which was another realization she didn’t need to face.
“Babe,” Aaron’s voice sounded from close enough behind her to make her jump, wide eyes turned back to him and her heart thudding in her throat like somehow he could have heard her thought process just by coming up on her as he had. “Pretty sure your parents are here.” He didn’t sound as enthused about it as he had earlier that morning, but he was tired. That was all. “Pretty sure your dad ran over that box out there too.” Of course, he had, just like of course Aaron had heard her reminding him to get the box.
His eyes were on her though, searching her face like he could pull the words right out of her head and she forced that overly-excited, pleased grin onto her lips with only marginally more difficulty than it had taken her to do this morning when they’d unlocked the apartment. She was eighteen, living with her boyfriend, and her parents were coming to visit their first home together. She was supposed to be excited. She was supposed to be pleased. She was supposed to be feeling all kinds of positive emotions. Her body shifted, arms thrown around Aaron’s neck and her lips pressing into his cheek repeatedly with a laugh that was forced easier and easier every time she was called to do so. “I can’t wait to show my mom our shower!”
She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t even look like she wanted to cry. “And the kitchen sink! She’ll be so jealous we have a working vegetable sprayer!” Lips stopping between her words only once Aaron’s own lips started to lift, the sound of her parents arguing over what apartment number it was supposed to be reaching her just as she pulled back, readying herself for a day of more fake smiles and laughter where she would to try and force to look genuine. She just couldn’t help still wishing Mason had come with them….