Page 2 of Aaron
“You didn’t come last week,” Leah accused, and she had her arms crossed protectively over her chest, pulled back away from him and into herself even as she flung the accusation at him.
“I know. I’m sorry,” Aaron told her honestly. She was sitting on her bed, and he was glad to see that she at least had her homework spread out around her. When she had left Julie’s office, he wouldn’t have laid very good odds at all that she had intended to do what she was told, but she could still surprise him sometimes.
“It’s no big deal,” Leah told him, with a negligent little shrug, but Aaron didn’t make the mistake of believing that. It was a big deal, or she wouldn’t have said it, and once more he made the resolution to get better at this. Seeing her was a reminder of all of his failings, but he probably should be reminded of that.
“I’ll come next week.” Aaron dropped down into the chair by her desk, looking into her eyes, trying to read her. Trying to understand her. For all of her spunk and fire, she seemed so damn sad sometimes, like now. Just a lost kid, and Aaron wished to God that he knew how to help her.
She didn’t say anything, and Aaron waited and then glanced at her piles of school books. The sight of the textbooks and the binders brought him right back, and he smiled a little as he saw that some of the textbooks were exactly the same as the ones that he had been using, and it didn’t seem like that many years ago, either.
“You want some help?”
It would be a mistake to mention Julie here, he knew instinctively. So he made the offer as casually as he could and hoped that he remembered this stuff well enough that he could actually be of some help.
She looked at him, her big, round eyes slightly narrowed, a cynical look in them that Aaron didn’t care for at all. But slowly, she nodded and shifted some of the books out of the way so that Aaron could join her on her bed.
“It’s math,” she explained. “I fucking hate math.” Hardly a unique sentiment, though Aaron didn’t like hearing her swear so casually, not at all. She was so young still, but commenting on it would probably only drive a wedge between them more than ever.
Aaron just nodded, and they got down to work. Hours passed, and they switched from math to history to the novel she was reading in English, and for a moment, it felt like everything was back to normal. Like their parents dying was nothing but a bad dream, that Aaron and Leah were just kids, teasing each other, annoying each other, loving each other.
How long he would have stayed, Aaron wasn’t even sure. Leah was starting to open up, and she’d even mentioned how she was going to start on the work that she needed to do to get out of here. It was a huge binder full of papers that she needed to fill out, life skill exercises and stuff, and she thought it was stupid, but she was going to try to power through them.
In all honesty, they probably were pretty stupid, but it was all just red tape that she had to go through, and they both knew it, though it was the first time that she had shown any indication that she was aware, and that was comforting.
Suddenly, though, just after Leah had told him that, Aaron’s phone buzzed. A voice that he only barely recognized, and had only spoken to a few times before, was on the other end of the line.
It was their new manager, Brad, calling a meeting, and Aaron sighed softly but bowed to the inevitable. He didn’t trust Brad as far as he could throw this entire house, but the guy was his boss, in a way. And he didn’t call meetings frivolously.
“Sorry, kiddo, I have to go,” Aaron told his sister, and it really was a shame because she had actually smiled a few times and even laughed once or twice. Every time he came and put the effort in, it was rewarded, but it was so hard to find the time sometimes. “Duty calls.”
“I bet it’s about a tour,” Leah commented and then smirked a little bit at Aaron’s surprised start. “I mean, you guys did just drop a new album, right?”
Well, that was a shock. Aaron hadn’t had any idea at all that Leah was paying attention to anything like that, though she did, of course, know who he was. He nodded slowly because her guess was a shrewd one.
“Yeah, I bet it is.” Aaron frowned as he looked into her eyes, and more than anything, he did not want to leave her. They were just getting somewhere here, and, as always, his job called him away.
“Okay, see you,” Leah said, and the smile had faded from her face and the happiness from her eyes. Aaron hugged her, acting on impulse, and she clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder, her grip surprisingly fierce and strong from someone so small.
“I want you to work on getting out of here,” Aaron murmured to her when the embrace had ended. “So you can come live with me.”
“But the social worker said …” Leah started, and Aaron shook his head.
“I know. She said you couldn’t live with me because of my job. I’m away too much. So after this tour, I’ll quit the Lost Boys.”
Until he said it, he hadn’t even known that he was thinking about it. All of those calculations had been going on under the level of his conscious thought. But it felt right, speaking the words out loud.
Quit the Lost Boys. Yes, that was the right thing to do, and she flung her arms around him again, this time initiating the hug. Neither of them spoke again, and shortly after that, Aaron left her bedroom, her homework all done.
She had her job to do, and he would finish his obligations, as well. He wandered out into the street, the gray concrete echoing the steely color of the clouds which had rolled in. It was a chilly day for Los Angeles, and there were even a few droplets of rain, a cold, dull, fall day.
But the clouds, he knew, wouldn’t last forever. And neither would this situation. He and Leah would pull through this, and he smiled a bit to himself as he started to look around for the distinctive, brilliant yellow of a cab. He had a meeting to get to, after all.
It was a busy time of day, apparently. Aaron walked as he looked around, and he didn’t see a single taxi that wasn’t already with someone. Gazing around with more desperation, Aaron finally spotted one with the light on top blazing brightly, and he raised his hand, summoning it over.
He hated to be late. Hated it more than most other things, was the sort of person who would rather be half an hour early than a few minutes late. So even though he still had half an hour to get to a building that was only about fifteen minutes away, at most, he still reached for the handle of the cab door with a sense of urgency. If he didn’t grab this cab, it seemed likely that he wouldn’t be able to get another one, not with how thick the crowds were this time of day.
Indeed, even as he was reaching for the door, someone else was, too. Aaron’s gaze caught on a strong hand with long, tapered fingers, the cuff of an expensive, dark suit jacket, as someone else tried to hook their fingers into the handle even as he did.
His fingers brushed over the stranger’s, and Aaron glanced up, eyes narrowed, fully intending to tell the man off. Or that was the intention, at least until he looked up, and up, right into the annoyed amber eyes of a man who wasn’t a stranger at all.
Where had he seen this man before? Somewhere, he was sure of that, but it was hard to think, for some reason. Maybe it was the din from the street, or the annoyance from almost having his cab taken, or the situation with his sister.
Or maybe it was just that he couldn’t seem to look away from this man, and neither of them pulled their hands away, both still locked around the shiny metal door handle.