by Elena Armas
And when my heart resumed, I wasn’t relieved. I simply couldn’t be when it started thrashing against the cavity of my chest with a wildness I had never experienced.
Some people claimed that the most beautiful thing anyone had ever done for them was writing them a poem, composing a song, or confessing their undying love in an epic gesture. But right then, as I was cocooned in Aaron’s long legs, his fingers delicately massaging my neck simply because I’d looked tense, I realized I didn’t need or want any of that. If I never got my epic declaration, I’d be fine. Because his words were, without a doubt in my mind, the most beautiful thing I would ever hear said about me. To me. And for me.
My body wanted to turn, screamed at my head to allow it. But I knew that if I did, whatever he saw on my face would change everything. Every single fucking thing between us.
I’d … dammit. This man. He kept showing me how perfect he was. Kept unveiling all these beautiful parts of him that made me giddy and dizzy and hungry for more.
But I still felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff, looking down at an ocean that whirled in the same deep blue that colored his eyes. Would I dare to jump?
“I fell in love with Daniel in my second year in college,” I said without turning. Not daring to free-fall. Not completely. “I was nineteen. He was my Physics professor. He was younger than any other member of the faculty, so he stood out. Was popular among the body of students—the female section of it particularly. At first, it was a dumb crush. I’d anticipate his lectures. I’d maybe put a little extra care into what I wore and sit in the first row. But I wasn’t the only one. Pretty much every other girl—and a few of the guys—had been charmed by the dimple in his cheek and the confidence with which he strolled across the room. Even when his course was one of the hardest we’d ever had to study for.”
Aaron continued working the tension out of the muscles that corded along my neck and shoulders. He remained quiet, and it felt almost as if—except for his fingers—he had grown still too.
So, I continued, “Imagine my surprise when I started noticing that his gaze would rest on me for a moment, just a little longer than on anybody else. Or that his dimple would come out a little more often when it was me he was watching.” My eyes closed as Aaron’s hands drifted lower, traveling down my spine.
“Throughout that year, it all built up to a point where we would sneak a few innocent touches in between classes or during tutoring sessions. It was so … exciting. Exhilarating almost. He made me feel special, like I wasn’t one more of the students pining for him.” I heard my voice drifting lower, lost in the memory, so I tried to bring my tone back up.
“Anyway, we didn’t start dating until the moment I was through with the two semesters his course lasted. Officially, publicly dating. Not on campus or anything like that, but we’d go out like any other couple. He introduced Gonzalo and Isabel, and they fell desperately in love in the span of a heated look.”
A real smile tugged my lips up at the thought of the moment Isabel and Gonzalo had locked eyes; it had seemed as if they had been waiting for that to happen. As if they had unknowingly been waiting for the other.
Aaron’s legs shifted, cocooning me further into his lap. Or perhaps it was me who kept bending into him. I didn’t know, but I wouldn’t complain or move away.
“And I was in love too. After one year of daydreaming about something I couldn’t have, hoping for it, I was blinded by the joy at finally being able to have him. To call him mine.”
His fingers stopped briefly, as if they hesitated their next move. Then, they resumed and continued kneading at my shoulders.
“It lasted a few months. Then, I heard the first whisper, the first ugly and poisonous rumor that blackened all that happiness. And after that one, many more followed. Whispers turned into loud gossip, which traveled along the corridors on campus. There were Facebook posts, too, and threads on Twitter as well. Never directed at me, but about me. At least in the beginning.” I brought my knees to my chest and hugged them. “The whore who slept around with her professors, they said. Of course she’s the first of her promotion. That’s how she aced Physics when more than half the students fell through. She fucked him, and she’ll fuck her way through college.”
I heard Aaron’s exhale. Felt it on the back of my neck. His fingers tensing and halting very briefly.
“It was all so hurtful.” My voice sounded different—void and bitter. And it reminded me of a Lina I didn’t want to remember. Or ever be again. “The things that were said about me quickly turned into pointed fingers and into disgusting photos that someone had Photoshopped with my face. Into … really ugly stuff.”
Aaron’s touch turned into just brushes of his skin against mine, soothing me, moving me forward, telling me, I’m here. I got you.
“It was all turned into this despicable tale, where I was the cunning, dirty woman who seduced professors for grades. All the hard work and the long nights I had studied were brought down simply because … I don’t know. To this day, I don’t know the reason or the motivation. Jealousy? A laugh? But I know that if I had been one of my male classmates and Daniel had been a female professor, perhaps I wouldn’t have gone through that. It would have been the professor. She would have been accused of being a cougar, and the student would have gotten a few high fives. Instead, I was almost harassed into dropping out. I didn’t want to attend any lectures. I didn’t want to leave the house. I was still living with my parents because I could drive to campus from their house, and I didn’t even want to talk to them. I deleted my profiles on all of the social media sites. I closed myself off from every single person in my life, even my sister and even those few who had remained my friends.” I focused on the soothing circles Aaron was drawing on my skin, grounding and rooting me to him and to the present. “It was all too much. I just felt … ashamed. Worthless. I felt like everything I had done was worth nothing. Consequently, when my grades and performance sank, my average went down the drain. And I didn’t even care.”
A beat of silence that seemed to stretch too long made me realize Aaron hadn’t spoken a word. I knew he wouldn’t judge me, but I wondered what he thought. If the way he saw me had now changed.
“What did he do?” he finally said. His voice sounded rocky, rough. “What did Daniel do about everything that was being done to you?”
“Well, things started looking a little bad for him. There was no rule that stopped him from dating a former student. But everything that was going down got to be too much for him.”
“For him?” he repeated, a new edge to his voice.
“Yeah. And so, he broke things off, told me it was too complicated and relationships shouldn’t be that hard or messy.”
Aaron’s fingers halted, not moving any longer. Simply hovering above my skin.
“He thought that we weren’t supposed to make each other trip and fall and that the moment we did, then it didn’t make sense to be together. And I … I think he was right. I guess he was.”
Aaron didn’t say anything. Not a word left his lips, but I could tell there was something wrong with him. I could feel it in the way his breath had quickened, deepened. And the way his hands remained frozen above my shoulders.
“I often wonder how I managed to graduate, but I did. At some point after the breakup, I woke up. Showed up to the exams and passed. Then, I somehow put together an application for an international master’s program and left for the US.”
Aaron’s palms resumed. Very gently, but I felt them move along my shoulders. Nothing like before, but at least he was touching me again. And I needed that, more than I cared to admit.
“I wasn’t escaping him, you know? Everybody thought I was, but I wasn’t. Daniel had bruised my heart, but I wasn’t running away from that. It was everything else. Everybody looked at me differently. Like I had changed or something had changed in the way they saw me. As if I were this broken thing now. Dropped by Daniel, harassed, made fun of. Everybody whispered, Oh, poor t
hing. How is she going to bounce back from this? They treated me as damaged goods. They still do. Every time I came back home alone, they look at me with pity. Every time I said I’m still single, they nod and smile sadly.” Shaking my head, I released all the air in my lungs. “I hate it, Aaron.” I could hear the emotion in my voice choking my words because I did hate it. “That’s why I came back as little as I did.”
But then I also hated how much I feared that a part of it was perhaps true. Why hadn’t I been able to trust anybody with my heart otherwise?
“Everything that had happened hurt me, left a scar, but it didn’t break me.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, wanting to believe my own words. “It didn’t.”
A sound, deep and husky and pained, came from behind me. Before I knew what was happening, Aaron’s arms came around my shoulders, and I was engulfed by him. Wrapped into his chest. Warm and hard and safe and … a lot less alone. A lot more complete than I had been seconds before.
Aaron buried his head in the nook of my neck from behind, and I felt the urge to comfort him. So, I did.
“I’m not broken, Aaron,” I told him in a whisper, although perhaps it was for my own reassurance. “I can’t be.”
“You are not,” he said on my skin. Tightening his hold on me. Bringing me closer. “And I know that even if something did break you—because that’s life and no one is invincible—you’d still put the pieces back together and remain the brightest thing I’d ever seen.”
My hands went around that pair of arms wrapped around my shoulders, which pulled me into his chest, as if he were scared I’d go up in smoke if he didn’t. And I hung on to him equally desperately. As if my next breath depended on it.
We remained that way for a long while. And slowly, very slowly, our bodies relaxed into each other. They melted together. I focused on Aaron’s breath, on the earnestness of the moment, on his heartbeat against my back, his strength. On all the things that he’d kept handing to me so freely, like they were nothing. Like he was supposed to give them away and I was entitled to take them from him.
Neither of us said anything as time stretched, our holds gradually loosening as we lost the battle to sleep.
My eyelids eventually fluttered shut, but right before darkness engulfed me, I thought I heard Aaron whisper, “You feel complete in my arms. You feel like my home.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
What an idiot I had been.
A big, dumb, foolish idiot.
Earlier that morning, when my alarm had gone off a little after dawn and I had slipped out of Aaron’s warm embrace quietly—but not panic-ridden—I had immediately regretted agreeing to meet my sister hours before the wedding. So, once I got everything packed and was ready to go, right before sneaking out the door without waking him up—even though I had learned by then that he, too, slept like the dead—I leaned very silently and brushed a soft kiss against his jaw. Because I didn’t want to go, not really, and I was a weak, weak woman when it came to him.
Just in case, I left Aaron a note, telling him that I’d see him in a few hours because I’d be getting ready with Isabel. Charo would be driving him to the wedding venue.
Be strong and don’t succumb, I wrote down.
Then, I signed it with, With love, Lina.
My choice of words had my heart skipping a beat, but I promised myself it wasn’t a big deal and left it there.
Not more than an hour after leaving the apartment, I started to miss him—like properly brooding and sighing and wondering what he was doing—so I texted him.
Lina: Did you get my note?
To which, he replied no more than a couple of minutes later.
Aaron: Yes, I’m hiding in the bathroom. Charo was trying to sneak a photo of me with her phone. Martíns are relentless creatures.
That had me snorting so hard that the makeup artist ended up brushing eye shadow all across my forehead. She tried to play it cool, but I could tell she was pissed.
But none of that was the reason why I was pretty sure I was a big, dumb, foolish idiot.
Somehow, somewhere between slipping into my velvety fawn heels and the graceful, airy burgundy gown I was wearing, my head had started spinning questions. Important ones. Will I be able to find Aaron in the crowd? And also: Will he be okay? Will he get to the venue and find his seat? And the star of the show: Maybe I won’t see him until after the ceremony. What if I can’t find him?
So, when I came to my place to the right of the bride, on a glorious summer day, surrounded by arrangements of peonies in all shades of baby pink and pearly white, in front of the people who had seen us grow and turn into the women we were today, my head turned.
My gaze effortlessly zeroed in on a pair of ocean-blue eyes.
And all those questions immediately died out.
What a big, dumb, foolish idiot I had been to even question that my eyes wouldn’t be drawn to Aaron Blackford in a matter of seconds. How in the world could they not?
He was dazzling, standing under the sun in a navy-blue suit. And when he smiled, that wide and furtive grin that I was beginning to think was only for me, I swore he could have blinded me if I hadn’t blinked. That smile—Aaron’s smile, his handsome face, him completely and entirely—made my knees weak and my chest tight.
That was exactly why, once the ceremony ended and Gonzalo made a show out of eating Isabel’s face right then and there for everybody attending to see, I turned around on shaky legs. The crowd proceeded to throw rice and confetti as the bride and groom made their way down the aisle, and by the time they were jumping inside a yellow Volkswagen Beetle to drive to where they’d have a pre-dinner photo shoot, everybody started shuffling to the restaurant area. A quiet silence was left behind, except for the sound of my heart, which was trying to stumble right out of my throat.
Aaron waited by the exit, standing with his hands in the pockets of his navy pants and his jacket partly opened. Right where the rows of creamy chairs ended. A few tiny pieces of confetti stuck in his hair.
His gaze stayed on me as I walked down that aisle, my legs feeling like I was walking on sand. Heavy and clumsy.
Only when I reached him did he take a step toward me; it was fast and rushed, as if he had been stopping himself from running to me and couldn’t hold it in any longer.
I watched his throat work, his eyes swiping up and down and up again, eating up what was in front of them.
“You look like a dream.”
What a silly thing to tell me when it was him, the one who couldn’t be real. The one I couldn’t believe was here, making my chest full with things I didn’t understand.
I shook my head, trying to pull myself together enough to answer. “You look amazing, Aaron.”
His gaze searched my face for a brief moment, and whatever he found made him smile. Again, that grin. Only for me. What a lucky bitch I was.
Aaron offered his arm, and I struggled not to launch myself at him right then and there. “May I have the honor?” he asked slowly.
A deep belly laugh left my lips. Slowly, I took it. “Now, you are just pushing it.”
His palm fell on top of the one that was resting on the crook of his arm. “What do you mean?”
“Only romance heroes say stuff like that. And we are talking about the ones in a Jane Austen novel. Not even your run-of-the-mill romance hero would butter up a woman that much,” I explained as we moved forward, in the direction of the adjoining restaurant, where everybody else was, probably a glass of wine—or two—already in hand.
“In my book, having the most beautiful woman on my arm classifies as an honor.”
I hoped the foundation the makeup artist had had to apply for a second time covered the way my cheeks flushed. “If the bride so much as gets wind of what you are saying, you’ll be in so much trouble.” I heard his chuckle, but he didn’t retract his words. “She’ll kick you out of the wedding, and I will not be able to help you. You are too tall and big to sneak in, unnoticed.” And too damn handsome to
o, but I kept that part to myself.
Aaron chuckled again, the noise traveling down my spine and leaving a trail of shivers. I was finding it really hard to ignore how good his arm felt under my fingers or how right being tucked in his side was.
It was only when we were a few feet away from the open area, where all the invitees were gathered, that Aaron spoke, “It would be worth it, you know.”
My head turned, taking in his profile as he kept his gaze up front.
“For seeing you in that dress and having you enter any place on my arm, I’d endure pretty much anything.”
My lips parted, and had Aaron not been providing his support, I would have tumbled down to the floor, rolled the rest of the way, and probably stopped only when my back came against a chair or a table.
“Even your sister’s rage.”
Then, a flash went off right in our faces, snapping me out of my trance.
Blinking away the bright white spots, I got a glimpse of a camera.
“Maravilloso!” a high-pitched voice I was well acquainted with screeched. “What a beautiful couple you two make.”
My mouth snapped shut and then opened again. Not having my sight back completely, I kept blinking until a bright red mane started coming into focus. Charo.
“Oh, your babies are going to be the cutest things ever.”
I cursed under my breath and smiled tightly while Aaron seemed surprisingly unconcerned. The dumbest mental image took me by surprise. One of Aaron holding a chubby, blue-eyed baby in his large arms.
Stepping out of my cousin’s trajectory and veering for the wine, I tried to recompose myself.
“And so it begins,” I muttered under my breath. The day I had feared and dreaded for months.
