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When in December (Home Haven #1) Chapter 4 13%
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Chapter 4

four

. . .

Poppy

I wasn’t a prodigy when it came to home design. We all made mistakes; it was how we learned. This was especially the case when the thing you needed to learn and evolve aligned with fashion.

My first project, for instance, like most interior wannabes, had been my own bedroom. I thought I was the coolest, wanting to slather my walls in a rich golden yellow with a classic white border that made the entire room look somewhere between a sunset and a Victorian tearoom. My bedspread was offset by having the comforter in a now-cringe-worthy chevron pattern—because at that point, everything had been chevron.

I knew better than a lot of people how easy it was to get caught up in trends and what was hot right now rather than what would always be classic and homey for years to come while still making guests speechless and wondering how exactly they could live just as stylishly.

Of course now, all the things I learned and all the ways I knew I was more than sufficient to complete a job like the Hayes-Preston holiday home were thrown out the window. I felt like I reverted back to being that same girl—when I had been fifteen in high school, awkward and clunky and desperately trying to pretend that she wasn’t—the moment I stood stock-still in front of Aaron Hayes.

Aaron Hayes, who had once stood in front of me similarly. Only then, we weren’t in a small cabin. We were at school, in a locker room, and I was hidden behind a wall that he didn’t see me or my so-called friends who I soon enough realized only kept me around for comic relief. Or it was more likely that they’d kept me around so that I could tell them about the parties on the college campus nearby, courtesy of Simon, and divulge to them at least one secret to trauma-bond us all together.

“What do you mean, you don’t like anyone?” Cassie, an almost-dreadfully-stereotypical cheerleader—whose mom took her to get her blonde highlights redone every month until she was no longer the brunette—gaped at me. “Come on now. You must like someone. Tell us.”

All the girls pushed in on me closer that day during school.

I bit my lip, and they all squealed, cheering me on to let the name loose.

“Well,” I finally broke, my voice nervous as I picked at my perpetually short fingernails, “Aaron Hayes.”

The next day, they pushed me into the boy’s team locker room to hear Aaron tell all his friends that I would be the last person in the entire school he would ever consider kissing on a bet, let alone asking on a date.

I was that repulsive to him.

And that was how he had looked at me today the when I stepped into his house. Onto his property.

Even though he shouldn’t have. Not when that day on the edge of the locker room, where he and his friends were changing after practice, hadn’t been the final time I came into contact with Aaron Hayes.

No, that wasn’t until a few months later.

After the start of a new school year, when everyone turned a little boyfriend crazy, and after the holidays, when everyone heard about the reason the popular quarterback for the team hadn’t been in school for over a week was due to a tragic car accident involving his parents— One of his football teammate’s, Isaac, had parents were out of town and decided to throw a party.

I snuck out to attend at the behest of Cassie. She’d insisted if I didn’t come, I would be a major loser—even though she barely talked to me when I got there.

Aaron Hayes had been nearly buried alive by a pile of puffer coats in the guest room. He was also very drunk. I asked what he had to drink that night.

“Uh,” he sputtered, squinting at me as if he couldn’t quite place who I was. “I dunno. There was a beer and then some stuff out of a bottle …”

I chuckled.

“You’re laughing at me,” he said, as if he wasn’t sure.

I shook my head. “No. I’m not. Are you okay?”

“Course I am.” Aaron snorted. “Why wouldn’t I be okay? I’m fantastic.”

I looked him over. “I’m sorry. That was kind of a stupid question.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?” he asked, waiting for my answer.

Because I heard your parents died, I wanted to say.

Instead, I sat down next to him. “You’re kind of lying in a mountain of coats.”

He laughed as if I had said one of the funniest things in the world. “Freaking comfy pile of coats.”

I pressed my lips together, trying not to laugh with him. I shouldn’t. I knew laughing with him would be wrong considering the state he was in.

“You can laugh at me.”

“I’m not laughing at you,” I said.

“You are,” he insisted. “I’m certain.”

“Are you?”

He shrugged, less confident in his answer. “Stupid party.”

It was, but I didn’t answer. If I contradicted him, I’d be lying. If I answered honestly, I would be a big loser, like Cassie always said I was.

“ What?” Aaron tried again. “Don’t you think so?”

I shrugged.

“You wouldn’t have any fun.”

He was right; I wasn’t.

“Why did you even come here?” he asked.

“I was invited.”

“So?”

“So, I … my friends …” I tried to come up with a better answer, feeling my heart race as I thought of one that would make me sound better than simply coming up with the answer I’d had all night before I escaped down the hallway, away from the music and people who hadn’t given me a single ounce of care whether or not I’d shown up in the end.

I didn’t know why I was there.

“And where are they?” Aaron asked me. He raised his eyebrows, which had a tint of red to them, especially in the dim lighting of the room.

The lamp on the nightstand was on, leaving the smallest amount of yellow light to bounce onto the bedspread and across his face—warm brown eyes, half closed yet rimmed in a red, which I couldn’t tell if it was from the alcohol or tears. Though this was Aaron Hayes, so it had to just be from the alcohol, right?

His chapped pink lips parted as he took heavy, uneven breaths.

“I don’t know,” I answered him. “Probably out there with their other friends. Dancing, maybe with their boyfriends or getting boyfriends … I don’t know.”

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

I barked a laugh.

“You think that’s funny,” Aaron said.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because.” I shook my head, looking down at myself. I wore my tightest jeans and a turquoise-blue sweater that I thought made my eyes pop, even with the minimal makeup my mom let me use, still telling me I was too young for such things. “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“You’re pretty.”

I shook my head immediately. “No, I’m not. You probably don’t even know who I am.”

He certainly wouldn’t be talking to me if he did, I figured, would he?

“Yeah, I do. You’re nice at least. And smart.”

I felt myself blush so hard that I put a hand on my cheek when he complimented me. He reached up to pull my hand away, and I was forced to look straight at him again.

“That’s a whole lot more than anyone can say for themselves. Your friends. Me.”

“I don’t think so.”

He rolled his eyes.

“I mean it,” I told him, cocking my head to check that he was listening to me. “I think most of the time, you’re a pretty great person, Aaron. You’re a good athlete.”

“A whole lot that does me now. Never even liked it.”

“You didn’t? You’re so great.”

He shrugged. “I mean, I like it. I do, but … my dad was the one who said that it was worth anything. ‘Always keep busy,’ he said. He did. So much so that he was always too busy that he didn’t even show up to the games. Didn’t anyway.”

“Well, you’re a good student too,” I said. “You always have an answer and try to start conversations in English with Ms. Markle. Your interpretation on Romeo and Juliet when we read it last semester as a comedic tragedy and not a romance was really thoughtful.”

“You remember that?”

Embarrassingly, yeah, I did. “I’m sorry about your parents too, you know.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time.

“I guess I’ve just been sitting here, thinking that I have no idea what’s going to happen next,” he said. “I mean, I knew that I was never going to make anything of myself worthwhile to them, not like my sister did, going to school to be a lawyer or that kind of shit. It’s just not me. And now … I’m really not going to.”

He sucked on the inside of his cheek, holding back the water that I watched well in his eyes and sit on the edge of his lashes, never falling.

“You can be whoever you want to be, you know. Make it worthwhile, I mean.”

I tried not to blush again, embarrassment swelling in the pit of my stomach the more I talked. Swirling around with the words I tried to make sound right and sophisticated rather than desperate, like I was sure he must’ve thought I was. He’d basically said so before.

Though as he sat in front of me, red-eyed in a way I could tell then was more sad and tired than tipsy, I didn’t see how we were all that different.

I swallowed. “I think you’re pretty great.”

“Worthwhile,” he whispered.

“Yeah, worthwhile like?—”

I almost missed it when he reached out to hold on to my cheek, bringing my face down to his—and he kissed me. Aaron Hayes kissed me in a pile of random teenagers’ coats that crinkled under our hands as we sought balance.

His lips were soft, and he kissed the same way he talked when he was a little drunk. Or a lot drunk. Smooth and easy.

And kind to me.

He tasted like sharp liquor that burned, sticking around long after I left, making sure he fell asleep on his side before I did.

After that night, I’d never seen Aaron Hayes again. From what I’d heard, after his parents died, he’d moved in with another relative somewhere outside of the city. But still, in the back of my mind, I never forgot him. I never forgot my first kiss. Our kiss.

Or the fact that somehow, it still managed to be the best in my entire life and made the lecture of a lifetime that I’d received from my mother when she realized I’d snuck out—due to the fact I’d never snuck out of the house before and I’d forgotten my key to let myself back in—all worthwhile.

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