TWENTY THREE

 

No one was talking to him.

There had been times, many of them, when Aaron had wished for that exact thing. For the rest of the band to leave him alone, because he wasn’t, and had never been, interested in being friends with them. But Ken, Lance, and Jamie, they had never quite been willing to leave him entirely alone.

Well, now they were. Ever since they’d seen him with Brad, and ever since Brad’s abrupt withdrawal the next morning, none of them sought him out at all. They left him strictly alone, except when they had to for practice or performance.

Not that he could blame them. Brad had been, Aaron knew, the best manager that a band could ever have. He had worked tirelessly for them and had taken a band that was on the edge of utter disaster, and through sheer effort, he had brought them back to success.

And now, he was gone, and one thing that Aaron had learned about his bandmates was that they were very loyal, all of them, once their trust had been won. Brad had won their trust, and Aaron had been the one to betray them all by driving Brad away.

Would Brad quit now? Aaron wondered if that night, that horrible night, when Aaron had said those horribly cruel, untrue, things to Brad in front of everyone, would that night drive Brad away forever? Had his coldness driven away the only person that Aaron had let into his heart since his parents had died?

Of course it had. And how could Aaron even dream that anything else was true?

Even when Noah and Darien came, things didn’t get any better.

It was strangely quite nice to be around people who didn’t know that they had any reason to be upset with him, and Aaron had always liked Noah, who was almost as quiet and reserved as Aaron was. And no matter how hard he tried, it was impossible not to like cheerful, bubbly Darien, who had once been one of Aaron’s bandmates, at least a little.

They were here to take over Brad’s job for the rest of the tour, while Brad himself dealt with things back in Los Angeles. The way that Noah and Darien both looked at him, Aaron knew that they had heard at least some of what had happened, and anything that they hadn’t, he knew that they would hear soon enough from Jamie or Ken or Lance, none of whom could keep their mouths shut.

So from them, Aaron didn’t allow himself to have any comfort, either. It wasn’t like he deserved it. And soon enough, they stopped trying, although Noah wouldn’t stop looking at him with those huge, round, thoughtful twilight blue eyes.

The rest of the tour progressed, and Aaron found there was at least one positive to having driven away anyone who might have cared about him. He had more time to Skype with his sister, and the strides she was making in her school work were impressive to see.

One morning, while Aaron was somewhere in Texas, about a month before he was set to get back to Los Angeles, Leah grinned at him through her webcam from the moment they were connected, and Aaron couldn’t help but smile a little bit himself. For a while there, she hadn’t smiled much at all, but she was now, more and more often, and the truth was, so was he.

At least he was when he was talking to her, anyway.

“Okay, you look pretty proud of yourself,” Aaron teased, a gentle smile on his lips when he saw how she was pretty much glowing. Seeing her like that, smiling and happy and without the dark circles under her eyes that spoke of too many sleepless nights, it made everything else retreat just a little bit.

“Well, shouldn’t I be?” Leah asked, just the slightest bit of teasing in her voice. She shuffled around on her desk, over the top in her search for something that he knew she must have already had close at hand, and then she held it up to the camera so that a piece of paper briefly replaced her happy face.

Aaron’s eyes scanned it, and then he grinned. Outright grinned, for real, no holding back, no hesitation.

It was her report card, and there was no wonder that she was so thrilled she was practically bouncing. As Aaron scanned the buff-colored paper, his grin only widened with every line that he read.

“Straight A’s,” he whispered, amazed. Her last report card she had been failing everything, simply because she hadn’t bothered to attend most of the classes. He had always known that she was smart enough to do what she had done, but she hadn’t been motivated since they had lost their parents.

“Nope,” Leah admitted, and her finger reached around the paper, the nail, painted black and a little bit chipped, tapping at one of the grades. “In gym I only got a B.”

Aaron laughed softly and shook his head, amused by her over the top, obvious false modesty, as she doubtless had intended for him to be.

“Okay. One B. You’re obviously just beyond hope,” he teased, and it was a sign of how much things had improved that she took the teasing with a grain of salt, lowering her report card, her eyes still glimmering with her joy.

“Yep. Better get ready to serve fries for my whole life. But what can I expect, when my big brother is such a moron himself?”

Instantly, it was like the past few years hadn’t happened. Like he and his sister were young and naive and had no idea what was ahead of them. Siblings who teased each other, and said things that would seem to most people to be cruel to each other, but loved each other and it was all meant in good fun.

It was nice to have it back, though Aaron supposed that, once he was back and he had custody of Leah, he was going to have to stop being her friend and her brother as much. He had to take care of her, right?

The thought was tinged with a hint of bitterness, though he hated himself for it. It was no one’s fault that he had to take on the role of a parent for her, but it wasn’t particularly fair, not to either of them.

“That’s great, Leah,” Aaron finally said, just a little bit more sober now. “Have you shown Julie yet?”

Leah gave him a secret little smile and shook her head, auburn hair bouncing over her shoulders. That hair looked clean, healthy. Cared for. She had really turned a corner, and she had done it mostly on her own, too. Though Aaron should have been there to help her, and he had done his best, but she had pulled it off.

“Go tell her.” Aaron hesitated, not sure whether his next words would embarrass his sister or not, but he thought that she needed to know either way. “Hey, kiddo. I’m proud of you.”

“Shut up,” Leah replied promptly, but her cheeks glowed pink with pleasure, and he knew that he had embarrassed her, but only in a good way. She quickly ended the connection, and Aaron rested his head back and closed his eyes.

He still needed to call Julie, to check in with her, but the truth of the matter was that Aaron had seen everything that he needed to see in her eyes. He would make it official and check in with Julie, but he could give it a bit, let Leah give the woman her good news in peace.

And it was good news. Leah was holding up her end, getting herself ready to be discharged from the group home, and Aaron was all set to do his own. Soon enough, he would have what he wanted, what he had thought that he should do since he’d found out that he and his sister were on their own.

He would get her set on her path, and his own life could wait until she was settled in school or a career or whatever she chose. It was a bleak future, maybe, at least for a while, but it was the right thing to do.

How long he daydreamed, he didn’t know. He was pulled out of it by a phone call, and he glanced down at his phone, then smiled a bit and let the ringing, and the sight of Julie’s phone number on the call display, pull him out of the funk that he’d inadvertently fallen into.

“Hey,” he greeted, “I guess Leah showed you her report card. Pretty cool, right?”

No matter how oddly he felt about the whole thing, he couldn’t deny that he was proud of his sister. Proud of the work that she had done, of the changes she had made in her own life. He supposed those emotions showed through in his voice, but he wasn’t ashamed of them, for once.

“Pretty cool,” Julie admitted, the smile on her face very evident, even though he was only speaking to her over the phone. “You’ve done amazing things with her, you know. Six months ago, she was about to be kicked out of school completely, and now this.”

Aaron shook his head, going to look out the window, gazing to the south and to the west, where he knew that Los Angeles lay. He was in Toronto, soon to head down to New York. It was almost over.

“It wasn’t me. It was her. She did everything.”

Julie was silent for a moment, and then she gave a soft snorted that sounded amused to Aaron.

“She says it’s all you. You say it’s all her. Well, whatever the case is, you two together have done something pretty incredible.”

Without Julie having to say it, Aaron understood that it was pretty rare for her to find a win. She took on a lot of kids that everyone else had given up on, and that was a hard, thankless job.

Which made him think of Brad. Another one of Julie’s children, another success story. Aaron frowned, his mind drifting off to Brad, to the man that he had betrayed so badly, and he didn’t mean to say anything at all, but the words came out all the same.

“Do you remember all of the kids that you have had through your home?”

Another long pause, and then Julie replied, her tone just a little bit cautious, as well it should be. It was an odd question, and Aaron knew it.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember Brad …” He trailed off suddenly, realizing just how stupid he was being. “But you couldn’t say even if you did, could you? Because of confidentiality.”

Which was all for the best, no one wanted their most private, intimate moments from when they were at or near to rock bottom spread around. And Brad deserved his privacy as much as anyone did.

“No,” Julie admitted. “No, I couldn’t say anything even if I did.”

The silence between them was distinctly awkward, and Aaron found it hard to know what to say. He was the one who had made it weird, just because Brad was never far from his mind these days. He hadn’t been, from the moment that their fingers had met on the car door handle.

“But I had another reason for calling,” Julie finally spoke, smoothing over the moment before it could get too strained, bless her. “It’s about Leah. She doesn’t need to be with me anymore.”

Aaron frowned a little bit because while it was, of course, exactly what he wanted to hear, the timing was all wrong. He couldn’t be back in Los Angeles for another four weeks, but Julie was going on.

“She’s obviously attending, and passing, all of her classes, and she’s done well in the counseling that you set up for her, too. There’s no reason for me to keep her, and I know you can’t be back yet, but I’ve found another foster home that can keep her for the time being.”

Aaron sighed softly, and there was this weight that settled onto his shoulders then, like an oversized backpack. Well, he’d better get used to that weight, because it was responsibility and he was going to need to carry it for at least the next few years.

“A foster family?” Aaron managed, which was enough to keep Julie going.

“Yes. They’re really good, Aaron. I picked them out personally for her. They have two children themselves, this couple, and they only foster very rarely. They can provide a stable home for her for the foreseeable future.”

Aaron rubbed at his temples with his free hand and then shook his head.

“They sound fine,” he admitted, “But they won’t need to keep her for long. I’m almost through this tour.”

This family sounded more than fine. They sounded great, really, the sort of thing that most foster kids would never find. But Aaron wasn’t about to foist his responsibilities off on anyone else. His sister belonged with him.

“Okay. I’ll send you their contact information. They know, the foster family, that you’re involved, and they know to expect you.” Julie’s voice was so relieved that it shone through, even when the contact was only through the phone call. This situation, it really was a good one, wasn’t it? Julie wouldn’t be so pleased about it, otherwise.

“Okay.” Aaron was a bit uneasy, but he tried not to show it. This was a whole new idea to him, though perhaps it shouldn’t have been. After all, what had the chances ever been that the timing would work out perfectly enough that Leah would be ready to leave Julie’s at the same time that Aaron was ready to leave his career?

And yet, the strangest feeling stayed with him, even as he said his goodbyes and hung up with Julie. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, though. He was probably just out of sorts because of the tour, and the fatigue that came along with that, not to mention the whole Brad thing.

Yeah. When it came down to it, there were plenty of reasons for him to feel strange, and it was really no wonder. The trick was just to get through the next month, and then he could bury himself in relative obscurity and focus on what mattered, his sister. His family.

And then he could do his best to try to forget about all of this.