Twenty-Three
“It’s about damn time,” Aaron complained as I trudged through the door.
“How’d you get in here? Why are you in here?”
He flashed a roguish grin. “Ways. And because I really wanted to see you. Look what I found.”
Aaron tossed a silver and black photo album onto my Ikea coffee table.
“Oh my God. You still have that thing?”
The old photo album was like a forgotten time capsule. Anyone who says she didn’t have at least a few pages of pictures to chronicle her first love is lying. Somehow along the way, my analog shots of Aaron and me ended up at his place. Did he keep them or did his mom?
“Of course.”
After I ditched my bag in my bedroom, I joined an excited Aaron on the loveseat. We began flipping through the pages. We didn’t leave any room between us, and Aaron placed the book on our laps. The first picture was a posed shot I had my dad take during a visit Aaron and I made to his place. I looked so much younger with my face fuller and rounder, but Aaron looked exactly the same.
“Is that your dad’s house?” Aaron asked.
“Yeah.” I ran my finger along the edges of the picture where the cheery yellow walls could be seen. I wished I still lived there.
“Seems like forever ago, but like it was all yesterday at the same time, ya know?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it does.”
I flipped to the next page in the velvet-lined book and two snapshots fell out of place. I gasped, my hand springing to my chest.
“You all right?”
Aaron slammed the book shut, but I ignored him and his question to open it again. The picture that got the reaction was of me. But not just any old picture of me. It was a candid shot my dad must’ve taken.
Aaron hung on me like he was being tugged away by kidnappers, and I was clinging back while in a fit of laughter. My dress was ivory and flowy—I’d thrown it away recently after not wearing it once last season—and my hair was shorter and more manageable. If I had to guess, we were reacting to something my dad had said, which was why the laughing was so hearty and true.
A stranger stood in that photo. A dead stranger at that, because that girl didn’t exist anymore. Never in my life would I be able to laugh at one of my dad’s jokes, and that thought was too sad to bear. The girl in the picture wasn’t worrying about that. She was with her two favorite people in the whole wide world and having one of the best days ever. I could see the sun radiating out of that girl, and it was so beautiful it would’ve moved John Updike to tears.
“Who is she?” I asked under my breath.
“You.” Aaron answered like he knew my whole thought process.
“I wish.”
Aaron gently nudged my face in his direction using his thumb and his finger and forced me to look at him. When our gazes locked, the look in Aaron’s brown eyes told me he was harboring so many feelings for me that we never should’ve broken up in the first place. He kept them buried deep under a layer of affection for Sadie, but they were there.
He traced his thumb along my bottom lip, arousing a muscle memory in my body of when I would respond by kissing him. I didn’t let that happen, of course.
When I look at you, he signed after dropping his hand from my chin, this is what I see.
I shook my head. I longed beyond longing to be that way again, but I certainly didn’t feel that way.
Yes, O. I do. That’s still in you. You can be this happy again. Please let me bring her out in you.
I want to. I really do. But I don’t think I can. Things happened, Aaron. Things even you can’t change.
But I can, because I don’t have to make you different. It’s more like…changing you back. I want you back.
I wanted me back too, and being with Aaron, spending time with him, made it seem almost reachable.
How can you help me?
I’ve put a lot of thought into it. We just need to be us again. Talking like we used to these past few days has meant so much to me. I’m happier when I’m with you too. I think of my life and my future and it has to have you in it.
I swung my legs out from under me and Aaron grabbed them up to let them rest in his lap. Leaning forward to be closer to him, I rested my head on his shoulder.
We’re both with other people. You’re engaged.
I know that, but I’ve been feeling this way for so long now. You have to admit you feel it too. All the time spent with Sadie, she didn’t even need to be there because we’d sign the whole time and she’d get annoyed with us.
True. An engagement isn’t something to take lightly, Aaron.
Despite myself, I was believing him, but that one pesky detail couldn’t be ignored. Maybe I’d be willing to risk my already doomed relationship with Brooks, but the real test was if Aaron was willing to risk a soon-to-happen wedding.
I’m not taking it lightly. I really care about Sadie and I don’t want to hurt her, but if we’re not meant to be, we’re not meant to be. I have an idea.
Aaron’s arms encircled me as he crushed me in a hug that left me feeling like the fizz inside a can of Coke. Dammit, I hugged him back, and though I was fighting to keep everything between us innocent, there was no way our positioning could be seen as such. It felt exactly like it did when I was a teenager and I had never done anything with a boy and I was excited and nervous and so in love and so ready to just be with him that the anticipation was close to being unbearable. Aaron was simply casting a spell on me. I couldn’t say if it was on purpose or if it was just what was happening, but it was real.
What’s your plan? I asked.
We had to pull almost completely apart to be able to sign to each other, which was such a silly thing to do. Talking verbally wouldn’t have meant moving at all, but we used signs anyway. If we were going to recreate the past, we were going to do it authentically.
If we make love, we’ll know it’s right.