Page 82 of Just a Footnote

Aiden rests a comforting hand on Liam’s thigh. “What do you want? Where do you want to play?”

Liam covers Aiden’s hand with his own as he thinks about it. “Somewhere in the northeast maybe.”

“Maybe Boston with Miles? That would be fun.”

“Yeah.” Liam nods with a slight frown. “We’d be close to each other too.”

Aiden pulls his hand away, looking down at his empty plate. “Sure.”

Liam cleans up the kitchen while Aiden feels like he might be sick. Being a country apart from Liam hurts but it’s also for the best. The farther apart they are, the less it will inevitably hurt when Liam gets a girlfriend. When he has a wife. When he has children. If he’s in Boston with Miles then maybe Liam will come visit Archer in New York City. He’ll bring his girlfriendalong, she’ll be nice. Aiden won’t be able to hate her if she's nice. He’ll have to play pretend as his heart breaks a little more each time he sees them.

“Hey,” Liam says, waving his hand to get Aiden’s attention. “Where’d you go?”

“I should call Archer.”

Liam nods although there’s that familiar furrow between his eyebrows. Aiden wanders out onto the balcony. He doesn’t call Archer. Instead, he calls Anna, knowing she’ll be awake because she wakes up at the butt crack of dawn to run. He knows because she’s dragged him with her on multiple occasions even though Aiden prefers to run in the evenings.

“Hey! This is a nice surprise,” Anna says sweetly through rapid breaths.

“Are you running right now?”

“Yeah but I have my AirPods so we can talk.”

“You’re next level.”

She laughs. “No different than you listening to audiobooks as you run.”

Aiden supposes she’s right. “Listen, I’m not in New York right now.”

A car honking filters through the phone. “Okay asshole! I was yelling at the car, not you. But I guess it can go for both of you. I’ll bite. Where are you?”

“Uh,” Aiden awkwardly clears his throat. “Washington?”

“...Seattle?”

“I thought I was going to Seattle, but instead he brought me to a cabin in the middle of the mountains.”

Anna laughs loudly, and she doesn’t stop. “You’re on vacation with your boyfriend?”

“No,” Aiden emphatically denies. “There was an incident in New York with a family member. I kind of lost it? The next thingI knew Archer was putting me on a plane to Washington and then Liam was picking me up at the airport.”

“So, let me get this straight. Some shit went down, you needed someone, and your brother put you on a plane to see Liam Walsh because he recognized it was Liam that you needed?”

Aiden doesn’t know how to respond to that. He looks into the cabin, watching as Liam gets dressed in the loft. “I’ll be back after the New Year.”

“Enjoy your vacation. And if you want to talk about whatever happened…I’ll listen?”

“Thanks but it’s okay. Are you going to go out on New Year’s Eve?”

“Yeah, my sister and I are going to this party her current guy got us into. If you were here, I would’ve brought you along.”

“Maybe next year.”

“Yeah.”

They catch up for a little bit longer before hanging up. Aiden looks through his notifications from overnight. He didn’t miss much except for a text message from Skye. He feels bad for not immediately reaching out, but yesterday was such a blur.

Listen, Miles told me what happened. If you need anything. I’m here.

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