Page 62 of First-Time Caller
He keeps looking at me. The same steady, studying look he always seems to be giving me. Like I’m an equation he can’t figure out. Or a particularly interesting constellation that he’s trying to orient himself with.
“What do you think?” he asks, our knees slotted together like puzzle pieces. “You ready? You okay?”
He’s always doing that. Asking me. Checking in.
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
One dark eyebrow climbs his forehead.
“I am,” I tell him again. No one ever has ever fussed over me the way Aiden does. “Promise.”
Aiden nods. “All right.” He studies me for another beat, his body swaying closer before he tugs himself away. He reaches behind him for the headphones and hands them to me.
“So you can listen,” he explains as he gently tucks them over my ears. His thumbs brush the sides of my neck.
“All right,” he repeats with a heavy swallow, and then he’s back in his chair across the room, slipping his own headphones on and starting the show.
I close my eyes and listen to his voice in my ears. It melts into my bloodstream and slinks through my body, relaxing my shoulders, curling around the place on my ankle where his hand was just a few minutes ago. I listen to the rhythm of his vowels and consonants and the way he says some words fast and others slow and let myself drift to a place where expectations don’t exist and my feelings aren’t a fragile glass balloon.
An hour later and the show is over for the night. I’m sitting on a wobbly picnic bench outside the station in front of a blinking red tower that reaches to the sky. I told Grayson I’d meet him back at the house, but my feet carried me to this spot instead of my car.
I sit on the bench and swing my legs back and forth, watching the city sprawled out beneath me. I can see the lights in the harbor from all the way up here. The massive cargo ships that inch their way under the bridge, coming and going from the ship-to-shore cranes that stand sentry at the docks.
Aiden drops into the space next to me with a sigh, his hip pressed to mine. The bench groans and something heavy slips over my shoulders. I think I left my jacket inside, over the back of the beanbag.
“It’s cold,” he mutters when I touch the edge of the sweatshirt draped over me in silent question. He glances once at my bare legs in the glittering moonlight and then out at the view. His jaw tightens, then releases. “I didn’t want you to be cold.”
“Thank you.”
He hums a low sound and we sit in the silence. My breath forms little white clouds in front of my face and I wrap Aiden’s sweatshirt tighter around me. It’s the one he was wearing earlier, navy blue with an embroideredHeartstringslogo over the left breast.
“Grayson is something,” he finally says. “I can see where Maya inherited her . . .”
He hesitates and I fill in the blank. “Scheming?”
Aiden scratches at his jaw. “I was going to sayshowmanship, but yeah. Let’s go with that.”
I laugh. Grayson’s appearance onHeartstringswas just as colorful as I thought it would be. He divided his time equally between advocating on my behalf and absolutely eviscerating some of the candidates who were brave enough to call in.
“Do you think Maggie has regrets?”
Aiden shakes his head and leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “Not with the amount of people we had listening tonight. She’ll be fine.” He opens his mouth, then shuts it again, shaking his head.
“What?” I ask gently.
He looks at me over his shoulder. The moonlight paints shadows along the angles of his face. “Back when you first started the show, I thought some of your hesitation with dating might be because of a sordid story with Maya’s dad.”
I laugh. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. Grayson is my best friend.”
“Then why didn’t you two . . . ?” He lets the rest of his sentence drift.
“Stay together?” I ask. He nods. “He offered to marry me when I found out I was pregnant. It was what our parents demanded, but I said no.”
“Why?”
I smile softly. “Because I knew I wasn’t the love story Grayson deserved. Gray and I have spent our entire lives together, but we were never in love. We were kids when I got pregnant. I didn’t want to ruin his chance at finding his big love.”
Aiden watches me, his face unreadable.
