Page 19 of Pillowtalk

“Good, then I’ll be honest.” She sucked in another breath. “It’s not just the storm. It’s…well, it’s getting late. This was my time with Jared.” Her hand drifted softly over Charlie as he shifted once again on her lap. It was getting easier and easier for Aaron to close the gap between them. He hadn’t even realized he’d been scooting closer. Or had she been the one moving toward him?

“I miss talking with Jared, but most of all…I miss the pillowtalk. So I talk to him like he’s still there next to me while I drift off to sleep. Like he never left.” She looked longingly at the urn. “But he did. Logically, I know that, and every time I’m met with silence at the other end of the conversation, it just…well, it makes me hurt all over again.”

Her frown set an alarm off in Aaron’s head, and he curled his fingers into a fist to keep them from doing what they wanted—to reach out and comfort her in any way he could. Her honesty was so…inspiring. Real. And he hardly felt worthy of being the person to hear it.

He swallowed hard, but it did nothing to keep his next words from tumbling off his lips. “I get it. Not in the same degree, of course, but…I’d give anything to talk to him just one more time. To tell him I’m sorry.” He let out a long breath. “I never really took the chance when I had it.”

The pinch between her eyes would have been insanely adorable if Aaron weren’t so distracted by his thoughts. He scratched at his chin, his finger bumping over his scar. “How much did Jared talk about Lyra Valley?”

She lifted a shoulder. “Not a lot. He liked to live in the present.” Her teeth sneaked out and pulled at her bottom lip. “He told me about the lake, the dirt bike hills, the B&B…but he rarely talked about the people. I don’t think he mentioned anyone outside of his family.”

“No wonder…” he mused. “Are you still overwhelmed by everyone?”

“A bit.” Her head tilted to the side, and she ran a hand over Charlie’s back. “Not at all right now.”

Aaron scolded his heart for the hopeful leap it took at her flattering words. “We had a graduating class of fifty,” he told her, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Out of those fifty, four of us stayed in Lyra after graduation. It wasn’t unusual, either; everyone wanted to fly out of here. More opportunities, college, life…you know.”

She nodded, leaning forward as well. He held his breath for a moment, debating letting in on the secret the one person in a five-hundred-mile radius who didn’t know about what he’d done. No one else held it against him, at least to his face, or over time they’d found more important things to hold a grudge about. But would she?

Maybe it would be fair if she did.

“Jared and I took a gap year. He didn’t apply to any colleges, and I had an open invitation to MIT that I planned on taking the following year. Then there was Austin, and he took a job at the garage run by Jared’s dad.” Aaron paused to make sure his voice was still steady. “And then there was Lissa.”

There was a flash of recognition in her soft, brown eyes, and Aaron realized he’d uttered a name that Jared had voiced to Kennedy at some point. Her bottom lip trembled slightly as she asked, “Jared’s ex-girlfriend?”

“So he did mention someone from here.”

“I didn’t know when he dated her. She was just on the list.” She waved a hand through the air. “You know, the standard talk of how many people you’ve…” Her neck turned red as Aaron bit away a laugh. “Yeah, you get it. Sorry. Go on.”

He let his gaze drift to the rug beneath his feet. “Well…Lissa, she…made my list, too.”

He couldn’t find the strength to look at Kennedy’s reaction. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He involuntarily flinched as if preparing for a verbal—or literal—slap, but when he was met with silence, he chanced a glance up.

She sat as curious as she’d been the entire conversation, only her lips were turned down in the corners. Not in anger…No, it felt more like pity.

He shook his head, not knowing why he was disappointed at her lack of anger toward him. “I should’ve told him how I felt. Or I should’ve snuffed out the feeling altogether. Jared…I mean, he was a lot more forward than I was. When it was the four of us after graduation, we both grew close to Lissa, and she was close to us. He went for her first, of course. I tried to back off, but…I failed.”

Kennedy leaned even more toward him, her hand outstretched as if she wanted to touch him, but she thought better of it and let it drop to the dog. Aaron furrowed his brow at the motion, confused by the response.

“I came clean almost right after it happened, but that didn’t change what I’d done.”

“You didn’t do it alone,” she offered up, something he hadn’t heard before, surprisingly. “She was his girlfriend at the time, right? That’s what you’re saying?”

He nodded. “I was his best friend.” He buried his head in his hands, his glasses crushing the bridge of his nose. He refused to let anyone, let alone Jared’s most recent love, convince him that what happened was excusable. “When he didn’t accept my apology, I got defensive. I told him that I loved her…and maybe I thought I meant it at the time, but I didn’t. I had no clue what that kind of love was. He saidheloved her, and he probably did. We fought over her, put her in the position of having to choose. In the end, we all lost. She said she loved us both equally, he lost her, and I lost…well, I lost him.”

Kennedy licked her lips. “You know…I thought he loved her, too,” she said. “Something in the way his eyes fell whenever she was mentioned. But…well, now I’m not so sure.”

Aaron turned his head, resting it on his knuckles. “Why’s that?”

“I see the same look in your eyes right now. I think he lovedyou.”

A humorless laugh drifted off his lips, his throat feeling thick and heavy. As much as he wanted to believe her, he didn’t. He couldn’t. “No…I tried calling him, see. It’d been years, but it still ate at me. Still does. Anyway, he thought I was only calling because he was, as he put it, on his deathbed. But I didn’t know.” Aaron hung his head. “I didn’t know. I thought he was exaggerating. No one told me about his cancer. I only found out when it happened…when he died.”

He gulped away at the emotion that was breaking through. He remembered that call like it was yesterday—the harsh words that were spoken, the wound being torn fresh open. Then, just three weeks later, his former best friend was gone.

A tentative touch to his chin coaxed his eyes upward, the sensation different from their previous touches, yet not unpleasant. Kennedy’s lips twitched, and she withdrew her hand, settling it back on Charlie.

“Now I’m certain that it was you he loved.”

---