Page 64 of Just a Footnote

“Cut the shit,” Skye turns to him, smiling sweetly. Aiden swallows loudly. “Let people love you.”

“No.”

Skye shakes her head in some mix of fond exasperation and actual irritation. The game goes on around him, but he zones out. Let people love him? Fat chance. It costs him enough to let Archer love him, by extension Miles. Love has a cost. If people love you then they have power over you. They can hurt you, break you, use that love against you. His mother taught him that before he could even walk. Her love cost Aiden his childhood, his innocence, and he’s paying for it now. He knows there’s something broken inside of him because he can’t let people in. He can’t let people close.

Growing up, Aiden liked when his mom was high. It made her quieter. Usually, she’d sleep or she’d screw whatever guy she was hanging out with that week, leaving him and Archer alone. Left to their own devices, they’d carve out a little happy world. Just the two of them. They’d play make believe in the backyard of whatever house their mother could afford at the time. They’d learned how to drive the car around the neighborhood by one of them pressing the pedals and the other steering. Usually Aiden got the shitty job of pressing the pedals.

Most of the time their mother was neglectful. They learned how to cook for themselves before they could read. Other times, she was cruel. She blamed them for their dad leaving because he had been overwhelmed by the idea of twins. When really he just didn’t want to deal with her shit probably. She learned what made each of them tick, using that weakness against them. Aiden hated public embarrassment so when they went out she’d raise her voice to publicly draw attention to every mistake Aidenhad ever made. Archer hated when she raised her voice at all so it was a two for one deal sometimes.

Archer learned to be quiet. It was hard to make her mad if you were silent and unassuming. But what Archer didn’t know is that Aiden learned to be too loud to take the brunt of her attention off of him. He was fine with that. If she was being cruel to him, if she was leaving bruises on him, then Archer was fine.

Aiden accepted at a young age he probably wouldn’t live to see eighteen.

He could make sure Archer did though.

That all changed when they were eight years old. A teacher noticed some of the bruises on Aiden’s arm. It also appeared that many teachers along the way had made reports to child protective services about their mom. A social worker came to their house, did an entire inspection, finding their mother was not just doping but also selling drugs. Archer and Aiden were taken away from her less for the abuse and more for the fact she was going to jail for her drug related crimes.

“Aiden?” Miles asks softly from behind him. A gentle hand rests on his shoulder, he shakes it off before turning his gaze to a concerned looking Miles.

“What?”

“You zoned out. The game is over.”

Aiden rubs at his face, looking around at the emptying arena. “Did they win?”

“Yeah…”

Aiden stands. Miles follows him radiating rare concerned energy that Aiden desperately ignores.

“I’m going outside. Are you going to the locker room?”

“No,” Miles shakes his head, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “I’ll come outside with you.”

Aiden frowns, but doesn’t argue. They make their way out of the arena to stand in the frigid cold of Canada. The biting colddoesn’t calm his racing heart or his anxiety. Aiden doesn’t know what he’s looking for until he finds it. A guy, probably about their age, stands smoking a cigarette outside the arena.

“Hey man, can I bum a cigarette?” Aiden asks him.

The guy smiles, tilts the pack, shaking out a cigarette for Aiden. “Here you go,” he says in a thick french accent.

“Need a light too,” Aiden says with a cocky smile.

The man brings the cigarette to his mouth, puffing a few times to bring it to life, then holds it out to Aiden. In another life, Aiden would’ve ended up fucking this guy. But his stomach turns at the idea of it. He takes the cigarette with what he hopes is a grateful smile.

“Aiden,” Aiden says as he takes a long drag.

“Pierre.” Pierre takes a long drag of his own cigarette. “See you around?”

Aiden blows smoke out of the corner of his mouth in the douchiest way he can. “Maybe.”

He ambles back over towards Miles who is staring at him in frustrated amusement. The cigarette is a bandaid against a bleeding wound, but it calms Aiden’s nerves enough that he no longer feels like he’s spiraling. He presses the heel of one hand to his forehead to calm his still racing heart. After fighting so hard to quit smoking, not having one for years, all this with Liam makes him want to smoke a pack in one sitting.

“You wanna talk about it?” Miles asks when Aiden is halfway done with the cigarette.

“You’ve known me for almost a decade. Do you think I want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Then there’s your answer.”

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