by Sam Mariano
No wonder he couldn't stand being around Julie—she must serve as a constant reminder, all pregnant and abandoned by her married former employer.
Grimacing, she began to see why he avoided the apartment. After all, if someone that reminded her of the heartbreak that had chased her all the way to Chicago lived at her apartment, she highly doubted that she would ever want to be there to be reminded every day of what she had lost, of the pain she had experienced.
Suddenly, she realized how completely selfish Matt was to be asking his brother to help him out of that particular situation—surely he knew about what Shannon had done, even if they weren't the closest of siblings.
What an asshole.
She found herself regretting letting Aaron delete those texts less and less by the millisecond.
By the time they got up to the apartment and Aaron had managed to get the key in the lock to get them inside, she found her loyalties lining up behind Aaron—strange, since she really didn't know him all that well.
But she knew that despite being a constant reminder of the woman who had obviously broken his heart, he was still kind enough to give her a roof over her head, to buy her books for Christmas, and give her a job at his restaurant—another place he couldn't escape her.
Obviously Aaron was a good guy, just like Leigh said. Maybe he was rough around the edges, but considering the circumstances, she could understand his thin patience with her.
She found herself immediately relieved, however, that she hadn't let Aaron know that technically she had been with Jack when she first got together with Matt—yes, she broke it off as soon as she went home, but still.
"I don't know about you," Aaron said, glancing back at her, "but I'm exhausted and my head is starting to hurt, so I think I'm going to go to bed."
Nodding, Julie gazed at her boat-bed a little droopily. "Yeah, me too."
He seemed to think about it for a second, then he said, "If you want to, you can share the bed with me tonight—just try not to steal all of my blanket this time."
She brightened then, smiling at him as she followed him back to his bed. "See, you can be really nice."
"Don't tell anyone," he warned, walking into the room and flipping the light on.
"I'm just going to throw on some pajamas real quick," Julie told him, gesturing toward the bathroom and then walking in.
As she continued to think about everything she had learned that night, she quickly changed into her pajama pants and probed her brain for ideas about how to make Aaron more comfortable with her around.
If all else failed, she was going to have to move out. She didn't know how she would pay for it or where she would go, but Aaron was being really selfless, and she wasn't going to stick around and cause him unnecessary stress as a daily reminder of his ex-girlfriend either—that was no way to thank someone for their kindness, for helping you out when you got yourself in a tough spot.
She wasn't sure how, but as she walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom she resolved to figure it out.
Julie couldn't tell just looking at the bed whether or not Aaron was awake, so she made sure she was quiet as she turned out the light and climbed into bed beside him, curling up in the blankets as she enjoyed the soft comfort of a real mattress.
"Thank you," she whispered, just in case he was still awake.
"For what?" he murmured.
"For letting me stay in here tonight," she said, although she wanted to thank him for more—for letting her have some insight into his life.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said, yawning and rolling over to face her.
Even in the dark, she could make out his beautiful brown eyes just before they closed, and she smiled a little.
"Good night, Aaron," she whispered.
His eyes opened once more and he half smiled at her. "Good night, Julie. Happy new year," he added.
Smiling into the darkness, she watched him close his eyes again and then she whispered, "Happy new year."
Without another word between them, she lay awake in the bed watching absently as he drifted off to sleep, her thoughts elsewhere, traveling far and fast as she went over the different scenarios in which she made Aaron's life easier.
She could simply remove herself, that was the one solution she kept coming back to.
Unsure of why, she kept trying to push that one away, to come up with some other idea—one that didn't involve her leaving his apartment.
Eventually her thoughts ended up making her tired, and she yawned, her eyelids drooping as she tried to stay awake and keep brainstorming.
Finally, she abandoned her quest until the next day, and she simply enjoyed the fact that she got the bed for the night, twisting and burrowing in the blankets until she was comfortable.
She caused Aaron to stir, his body jerking a little and then he began to move, and she thought for sure she woke him up.
But his eyes never opened. Instead, his arms found Julie's body and even though he seemed to be asleep, he pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close to his chest.
It was inexplicable, the feeling of complete peace and contentment that enveloped her when he held her at night. It was strange, too, because she had never really been what you would consider a "cuddler" with anyone else—she liked her own space, thank you very much. But for some reason, the most platonic embrace she had ever slept in –with a man who didn't really even like her—seemed to make her feel the most at peace.
It made no sense, but it felt incredibly comforting, so she didn't argue or even try to overthink it the way she typically would. Instead, she nestled her head into his warm body and closed her eyes, just enjoying the moment without complicating it.
That night, as she drifted off to sleep with a grin on her face, she remembered the last thought to cross her mind was, Maybe it will be a happy new year….
Chapter Fifteen-
For the first time ever, Julie woke up before Aaron the following day.
At first, she didn't want to get out of bed.
Then she realized she didn't have to, so she smiled to herself and enjoyed the warmth of Aaron's body heat, the scent of his skin—how he could still smell so good after drinking all night was beyond her—and the lovely feeling of his arms still wrapped around her. He had moved around throughout the night, but even when he moved his arms, he put them back around her before she had time to notice they were gone.
He still snored, but she could live with that as long as he let her sleep all wrapped up in his arms.
She didn't understand why it felt so good to her—they were just limbs, after all, and she had slept with Jack's arms around her many a night, that had never made her have any kind of warm feeling inside. She had also slept in Matt's arms a time or two, and while it had been a little better than sleeping in Jack's, it was absolutely nothing like sleeping in Aaron's; the next day all she could think about was her neck ache and how she was definitely going to spend a couple nights sleeping alone.
Why did she feel so at home in Aaron's arms?
However, as soon as questions like that would surface, she would open up the special little box in her mind marked "Do Not Open" and jam it in there. She was going to go with her instincts to just completely avoid getting into that—she was not exactly at a place in her life where she needed to contemplate why she felt so good in the arms of her baby's daddy's brother.
Nope.
Not at all.
So that question—along with the others—would stay in that box until such a time as the box busted open and they all came leaking out.
Then she would deal with it.
In the meantime, she would thoughtlessly enjoy sleeping in Aaron's bed and in his arms any night that he would permit her to do so.
Well, unless things got more complicated—sometimes guys has a tendency to complicate things when you wanted to sleep in their bed.
But even though Aaron had been very friendly the night before, she was sure she didn't have to wor
ry about anything like that.
She didn't even know if he would return to the normal grumpy-bear personality that he normally had around her once he woke up, because unfortunately he was sober, and when he was sober he didn't forget any of her sins like he seemed to when he was drinking.
Julie felt like a total sloth—she literally spent a good hour that morning lying awake in Aaron's embrace, not moving, just leaving her arms wrapped around him, his arms around her, her face pressed up against his chest.
It was a lovely morning, even if she got nothing accomplished.
She would have probably stayed there like that for another hour if her cell phone wouldn't have started ringing, and she attempted to grab it and silence it before it woke Aaron, then she ran in the hallway to answer it.
"Hello?" she said a bit quietly, not even looking at the caller ID to see who it was.
"Julie?" asked a calm and collected voice on the other end.
Her eyes widening, Julie jerked the phone away from her ear to see the name and number.
Sure enough, it read "Emma's Cell."
"Hello?" the voice asked with a touch of irritation.
"Hi," Julie said uncertainly, then immediately felt like a dumbass for such a lame greeting.
What was the proper etiquette for talking to one's former lover's current wife?
She would have to check out a book on that later.
"It's Emma," she said needlessly.
"Yes, I see that," Julie said, preparing for whatever curveball was about to be thrown at her.
"Listen, this is going to sound very strange," Emma warned.
"I'm listening," Julie said.
"Can you meet me at 1:30 tomorrow at Café Spiaggia for lunch? My treat. I assume you know where that is."
Julie's jaw went slack for what felt like the millionth time in 24 hours.
"Hello?" Emma said impatiently, then sighed. "I'm not going to poison you, ambush you, have a hit man take you out—nothing melodramatic like that. I assure you, it's a peaceful offer. I won't even say anything offensive about your indiscretion with my husband."
Frowning, Julie said, "Okay, but… why do you want to have lunch with me?"
"I would like to talk to you about something. I don't really have time for this right now, I have a very busy schedule and if I miss my damn flight someone in security is going to wish they had never come to work this morning. Anyway, Café Spiaggia tomorrow at 1:30?"
She had no idea where that was, but she wasn't going to ask Emma and risk looking unsophisticated. "Okay," Julie managed.
"Great. I'll see you then."
The phone call ended, and Julie stared at it as if it were a foreign object.
She was so disoriented that she didn't even sense Aaron behind her until she heard, "You okay?"
Turning around, she looked at him a little dazedly. "It was Emma," she said.
Frowning, he asked, "What did she want?"
"To...have lunch with me? Where's Café Spiaggia?" Julie asked, still reeling from the phone call.
Aaron's frown deepened and he said, "It's right on Michigan Avenue. Why does she want to have lunch with you?"
"I don't know, she didn't say. She was at an airport…I think. I don't know, I feel so confused."
Aaron seemed to think about it for a minute, then he asked, "What did you say? Are you going to meet her?"
Nodding, Julie said, "I kind of felt like I owed it to her…"
Snorting, Aaron said, "You owe her nothing, Julie. If Emma's asking you to lunch, it's not because one of her girlfriends cancelled—she has an agenda. Be careful."
"She said that it wasn't a confrontational thing…"
Aaron gazed at her for another few seconds thoughtfully, then he shook his head. "You're too gullible. Just… be careful, okay?"
Nodding, Julie said, "Oh, I will. I mean, I'm sure she doesn't want to start a book club or anything, I just… don't know why she wants to talk to me."
"I don't either, but I'm sure it's not good." He scratched his head, making a slight face. "Fucking headache. I'm gonna go take a shower, I'll be out in a bit."
"Okay," Julie said, offering a smile. "Do you want some breakfast?"
"I'll throw it up," he stated.
"Got it, no breakfast," she said with a decisive nod. "How about coffee?"
"Now you're talking," he said, offering her a slight smile before disappearing into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him.
---
The whole day was just strange.
Aaron didn't go back to being mean to her like before, but he seemed vaguely awkward, like he wasn't quite sure how to act around her.
As it was, even though he was being more civil toward her, he only stayed home until a little after noon, then he left—and she had no idea where he was going, because the restaurant was closed, but it felt too weird to ask him.
He returned later in the evening, but he merely sat down on the couch with a notebook, a folder and a calculator and did some sort of figuring that she assumed was related to the restaurant.
Julie had to bring some work home from her second job—there was another damn pirate party coming up, and it was all on Julie to put together 15 pirate hats and take them back with her so she could set up for the party. She was getting paid an extra half hour for it, but it was still kind of annoying to have to sit on her boat-bed with her pirate hat materials, cutting and stapling in dead silence as Aaron sat in the same room concentrating on whatever was in the folder.
Completing the task took much longer than it should have, but she spent the time with her thoughts, contemplating her budget and how much she anticipated on spending for school books when the new semester started. She got a little bit of financial aid, but definitely not enough, and she sure wasn't raking in much money waitressing a few hours a week.
She considered asking Aaron about getting more hours, but she didn’t want to pounce on him with a request for favors the first day he started being a little more friendly.
Oh well, maybe she could pick up an extra shift if someone called off.
If not, there was always begging on the streets and in the subway. It was Chicago, after all.
That evening when Aaron went to his room alone, calling a goodbye to her, Julie sullenly sat on the couch watching TV for a little bit, then she resigned herself to climb into her stupid boat-bed.
However, when she looked at the bed, she thought it looked a little bit…flat. Frowning, she tested the theory out by standing on it, and sure enough her foot went right down to the hardwood floor.
"Oh no," she muttered to herself, stepping off the deflating bed and grimacing.
She thought about trying to fix it herself, but in the back of her mind was the thought that if she didn't get it fixed… she would probably have to sleep in Aaron's bed. Even if she went in to tell him, he wasn't going to drag himself out of bed to go fix her bed. Surely he would just invite her to share his again, right?
So she really didn't look for the problem long, she just turned out the lights and went back to Aaron's room, quietly opening the door and slipping inside.
When she sat down on the side of the bed she debated whether or not she really wanted to wake him up. He looked so peaceful, she hated to disturb him.
But she also needed to go to sleep, and she wouldn't feel right just crawling in bed with him and not even telling him, so she still made herself peck him on the shoulder and say, "Hey."
He made a face, then his eyes reluctantly opened. "What's wrong?" he asked in a gravelly voice, rough from sleep.
"My bed seems to have deflated," she whispered.
Sighing, he pulled the blanket back and said, "Climb in."
"Thank you," she said, beaming a smile at him and climbing into the bed.
He murmured, "Mmhmm," and rolled over, seeming to go right back to sleep.
Julie waited for a good ten minutes before she realized he wasn't going to roll back over and wrap his arms around her like h
e had the nights he had been drinking.
One thing she discovered—the peaceful feeling she seemed to have when she slept in his arms didn't seem to apply when he had his back to her.
With a feeling of deep discontentment, Julie finally managed to fall into a restless sleep, but before she did she had the thought that she might have been better off sleeping on the couch.
---
The next day was lunch with Emma, and Julie was more than a little apprehensive.
She didn't know what to wear either—she didn't want to wear something too nice, but she didn't want to dress down and look like an idiot either. Aaron had told her that the café Emma had selected was a nice Italian café, and she probably wouldn't be able to say anything on the menu, then he told her two things that were edible and suggested she go with one of them.
In the end, she dressed sophisticated-casual, figuring it would be a win-win.
The café wasn't very hard to find since it wasn't far from the apartment, and Julie tried not to think about it too much before she showed up.
She spotted Emma almost immediately upon arrival, already seated at a table sipping a glass of wine as she waited for Julie. Discreetly checking her phone, Julie saw that she made it with only a minute to spare.
Emma glanced up as Julie approached the table, but she didn't waste a fake smile, she merely nodded in acknowledgement and waved over the waiter.
Not a word was exchanged between them until the food was ordered and the waiter was gone again, and then Emma just sat back, clasping her hands and giving Julie an appraising once-over.
The silence was awkward to Julie, although Emma looked completely at ease, and Julie tried to think about how best to be polite in such a strange situation.
"How was your trip?" Julie finally managed to ask.
"Fine," Emma remarked, not seeming at all eager to contribute to the conversation. "How is the first trimester treating you?"
No-nonsense—Julie could work with that. "Fine," Julie responded in turn.
A brief smile touched Emma's lips, but it never reached her eyes. "When I was pregnant with Anna I couldn't even think about food without getting sick."
"Actually, it hasn't been that bad," Julie said.
