We make eye contact before I burst out laughing, and he chuckles.
“You have your moments,” I say, and any tension that might’ve been lingering from tonight or from his worries of having me here are gone.
I suddenly remember the twins and slap my hand over my mouth, trying to stop my giggles from escaping. Aiden raises an eyebrow at me questioningly.
I remove my hand and whisper, “I’m sorry for being
so loud. It’s, like, super late—aren’t your brothers sleeping?”
“They’re staying at a friend’s house tonight,” he says dismissively, and leads me deeper into the house.
We emerge into a lived-in but clean kitchen with a few dishes in the sink, some notes and photos on the fridge, and an open box of Froot Loops on the table.
“You do eat Froot Loops!” I exclaim and laugh again, remembering our first encounter when I asked him who pissed in his Froot Loops.
He smirks at me. “Lucky guess.”
Taking a seat on a stool by the counter, I laugh and watch Aiden open the fridge and pull out a bottle of water. “Do you want anything? Food, a drink?”
“Water is fine, thanks.”
He passes a bottle of water to me and closes the fridge. “I’m going to make some calls, make yourself at home.”
I fidget in my seat, but the urge to snoop is too great, so I hop off the stool to inspect the notes on the fridge. There’s a fourth-grade math test stuck with a magnet to the fridge with the name Jackson written at the top beside a big red A+. Beside that is an identical test with an identical grade, but with the name Jason written at the top instead.
My heart melts and it takes a lot to resist the urge to awww out loud. Aiden puts his brothers’ tests on the fridge to show how proud he is of them. He’s such a good brother and guardian; it’s obvious how much he loves those boys.
Just underneath the tests is a grocery list, and I’m not that shocked to see that it’s mostly healthy food; you can’t have a body like Aiden’s and eat total crap. I resist the urge to giggle when I see that the twins added things like Twinkies, Pop-Tarts, and Cheese Puffs to the grocery list in bold lettering.
There’s also a picture of who I assume are the twins. They look similar to Aiden, except where he is more closed off, stoic, and serious, the twins look more open, happy, and carefree. They have dirty-blond hair that sweeps over their foreheads, shining bright-blue eyes, and mischievous smiles. They’re almost identical, but there are some telling features that would make pretending to be one another hard to an analytical eye.
There’s also a picture of Aiden with the boys. One is climbing on his back and he’s holding the other one upside down. I smile at the genuineness and playfulness of the three brothers in the picture, committing the rare, carefree smile Aiden’s sporting to memory.
The more I learn about Aiden, the harder it is for me to think of him as that asshole who crashed into me on my first day of school and fireman-carried me up the stairs. Every day I spend with him, the more I think of him as this loyal, intelligent, and resourceful guy who’s a fierce protector of the people he cares about.
I pull off the photo of the smiling, carefree Aiden and his brothers, and smile fondly at it.
There’s still a lot I don’t know about Aiden, but I do know that I trust him more than I’ve ever trusted any other guy, and that he’s dangerously close to breaking down all of my armor and leaving me more vulnerable than I’ve ever been. It’s all different, and I haven’t felt this way before—any secrets I shared with friends back home feel silly now, worrying about gossip or petty, cliquey school politics. Tony is real. The twins are real. And Aiden and I are both totally different people because of them.
BANG! BANG! BANG! The pounding at the door jolts me out of my thoughts.
“Amelia! Can you let Mason in?” Aiden yells from the other room.
“Got it!”
As soon as I open the door, I’m enveloped in a protective and warm hug.
“K-bear, are you okay? Aiden didn’t tell me any details, just said something went down at the school and you were involved.”
I wrap my arms around him and rest my cheek on his solid chest, heartened by his concern and protectiveness over me.
“I’m fine, Mason. My car, however, is not.” I step out of his embrace and he looks at me questioningly.
“What happened?”
We close the door and walk back to the kitchen, where we sit as I explain about my keyed car, slashed tires, and accidentally leaving all of our things in the locked school.
“That bastard!” Mason spits, his knuckles white from how hard he’s clenching his fists.