Page 57 of When in December

He knew what I’d meant. Even though the real question remained. Where was I going to end up sleeping when the time came? It wasn’t as if I could stay over on his brand-new couch that hadn’t been delivered.

My eyes caught on to what he was doing next. “No. Don’t use that small of a screw. You want it to provide structure for weight. Those are for the molding when it goes up at the end.”

Aaron dropped the metal in favor of the one I was rapidly pointing at.

He wasn’t terrible at following directions.

“First time building something?”

“Sort of,” he said. “I didn’t have a father who was around much and did projects by himself. My family used to live closer to the city, where my sister still is. Whenever there was a leak or issue, you called it out to be fixed.”

“That makes sense,” I said, not letting on to how much I knew about his family.

“I know how to sew.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“In the barest sense of the word,” Aaron clarified. Not that I saw him sewing ball gowns or anything in his free time, but still, consider me impressed. “Can’t even call it a party trick really, though it sounds super impressive when a guy says it, doesn’t it?”

“It’s sexist, but yeah.”

“We were encouraged to learn how to manage the basics in the army. You should at least know how to sew a button back on. Then, there were sewing patches and making things last as long as you could. I wasn’t the worst at it—that was for sure,” he went on, pressing the drill to connect the shelves into place.

I focused on the work and not him as I asked more questions. “You weren’t close to your family?”

He paused as if truly thinking about it. “Close enough. My parents were busy a lot of the time. My sister got that gene. My unit in the Army became my family.”

“That’s nice.”

“For a while,” he half-heartedly agreed.

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked.

“Pretty sure you’ve already asked a few,” said Aaron. “But go on.”

“Before, when you were taking me to urgent care, you said something.”

“And what was that?”

“You said you didn’t want another person bleeding out on you,” I reminded him.

He paused his work.

I was encroaching upon a topic that he likely didn’t want to talk about. Who would? He hadn’t even wanted to accept metelling him that I understood that he was grieving the other day, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Did that happen before? I mean, I assume?—”

“Yeah.” He nodded, turning back to look toward the mess of screws lying around. The ones he needed were right there, but he ran his fingers through them anyway, sending one or two rolling to the side. “Sort of anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” I quickly tried to correct, seeing his attitude start to turn. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“I don’t remember much of it.” He focused on finding the next board that I must’ve put in the wrong spot earlier. “When I was deployed this last time, there was an accident. We weren’t supposed to be there. There was an old mine no one was lucky enough to run over until we did. My buddy took a hit. I took a hit.”

My eyes scanned over the puckered skin on his leg and under his shirt, where I remembered scars running up along his torso when he couldn’t be bothered putting on a shirt. Perhaps there was a reason for that. Maybe he liked to see those scars every day, to be reminded of what had happened.

“I was still conscious enough to try to get to my friend. I tried to stop the bleeding, but he was … it was already too late. They told me that I must’ve been in shock when I tried to save him. I was trying to bring him back to goddamn life.” He chuckled lowly. “The only sound after we hit the mine was his dog. He wouldn’t stop whining or crying—I don’t know.”

Both of us glanced toward Oz. He was lying next to me, maw in his paws.

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