Page 43 of Aaron
TWENTY THREE
No one was talking to him.
There had been times, many of them, when Aaron had wished for that exact thing. For the rest of the band to leave him alone, because he wasn’t, and had never been, interested in being friends with them. But Ken, Lance, and Jamie, they had never quite been willing to leave him entirely alone.
Well, now they were. Ever since they’d seen him with Brad, and ever since Brad’s abrupt withdrawal the next morning, none of them sought him out at all. They left him strictly alone, except when they had to for practice or performance.
Not that he could blame them. Brad had been, Aaron knew, the best manager that a band could ever have. He had worked tirelessly for them and had taken a band that was on the edge of utter disaster, and through sheer effort, he had brought them back to success.
And now, he was gone, and one thing that Aaron had learned about his bandmates was that they were very loyal, all of them, once their trust had been won. Brad had won their trust, and Aaron had been the one to betray them all by driving Brad away.
Would Brad quit now? Aaron wondered if that night, that horrible night, when Aaron had said those horribly cruel, untrue, things to Brad in front of everyone, would that night drive Brad away forever? Had his coldness driven away the only person that Aaron had let into his heart since his parents had died?
Of course it had. And how could Aaron even dream that anything else was true?
Even when Noah and Darien came, things didn’t get any better.
It was strangely quite nice to be around people who didn’t know that they had any reason to be upset with him, and Aaron had always liked Noah, who was almost as quiet and reserved as Aaron was. And no matter how hard he tried, it was impossible not to like cheerful, bubbly Darien, who had once been one of Aaron’s bandmates, at least a little.
They were here to take over Brad’s job for the rest of the tour, while Brad himself dealt with things back in Los Angeles. The way that Noah and Darien both looked at him, Aaron knew that they had heard at least some of what had happened, and anything that they hadn’t, he knew that they would hear soon enough from Jamie or Ken or Lance, none of whom could keep their mouths shut.
So from them, Aaron didn’t allow himself to have any comfort, either. It wasn’t like he deserved it. And soon enough, they stopped trying, although Noah wouldn’t stop looking at him with those huge, round, thoughtful twilight blue eyes.
The rest of the tour progressed, and Aaron found there was at least one positive to having driven away anyone who might have cared about him. He had more time to Skype with his sister, and the strides she was making in her school work were impressive to see.
One morning, while Aaron was somewhere in Texas, about a month before he was set to get back to Los Angeles, Leah grinned at him through her webcam from the moment they were connected, and Aaron couldn’t help but smile a little bit himself. For a while there, she hadn’t smiled much at all, but she was now, more and more often, and the truth was, so was he.
At least he was when he was talking to her, anyway.
“Okay, you look pretty proud of yourself,” Aaron teased, a gentle smile on his lips when he saw how she was pretty much glowing. Seeing her like that, smiling and happy and without the dark circles under her eyes that spoke of too many sleepless nights, it made everything else retreat just a little bit.
“Well, shouldn’t I be?” Leah asked, just the slightest bit of teasing in her voice. She shuffled around on her desk, over the top in her search for something that he knew she must have already had close at hand, and then she held it up to the camera so that a piece of paper briefly replaced her happy face.
Aaron’s eyes scanned it, and then he grinned. Outright grinned, for real, no holding back, no hesitation.
It was her report card, and there was no wonder that she was so thrilled she was practically bouncing. As Aaron scanned the buff-colored paper, his grin only widened with every line that he read.
“Straight A’s,” he whispered, amazed. Her last report card she had been failing everything, simply because she hadn’t bothered to attend most of the classes. He had always known that she was smart enough to do what she had done, but she hadn’t been motivated since they had lost their parents.
“Nope,” Leah admitted, and her finger reached around the paper, the nail, painted black and a little bit chipped, tapping at one of the grades. “In gym I only got a B.”
Aaron laughed softly and shook his head, amused by her over the top, obvious false modesty, as she doubtless had intended for him to be.
“Okay. One B. You’re obviously just beyond hope,” he teased, and it was a sign of how much things had improved that she took the teasing with a grain of salt, lowering her report card, her eyes still glimmering with her joy.
“Yep. Better get ready to serve fries for my whole life. But what can I expect, when my big brother is such a moron himself?”
Instantly, it was like the past few years hadn’t happened. Like he and his sister were young and naive and had no idea what was ahead of them. Siblings who teased each other, and said things that would seem to most people to be cruel to each other, but loved each other and it was all meant in good fun.
It was nice to have it back, though Aaron supposed that, once he was back and he had custody of Leah, he was going to have to stop being her friend and her brother as much. He had to take care of her, right?
The thought was tinged with a hint of bitterness, though he hated himself for it. It was no one’s fault that he had to take on the role of a parent for her, but it wasn’t particularly fair, not to either of them.
“That’s great, Leah,” Aaron finally said, just a little bit more sober now. “Have you shown Julie yet?”
Leah gave him a secret little smile and shook her head, auburn hair bouncing over her shoulders. That hair looked clean, healthy. Cared for. She had really turned a corner, and she had done it mostly on her own, too. Though Aaron should have been there to help her, and he had done his best, but she had pulled it off.
“Go tell her.” Aaron hesitated, not sure whether his next words would embarrass his sister or not, but he thought that she needed to know either way. “Hey, kiddo. I’m proud of you.”
