The Stars Will Shine (25 page)

“I want to take you on a date.”

I groan. “Seriously, Aiden, we’ve been over this. I—”

“Don’t date. I know. Like I’ve said before, you’ve told me a billion times.”

“And yet it hasn’t seemed to stick.”

“Go out with me tomorrow night.”

“You don’t really want that, trust me. I’m not a—”

“Nice girl. Yeah, I know, you’ve said that a billion times, too, but I’m not any closer to believing it.” He leans his head back against the door. I can feel my back turning red where the water incessantly hits it.

I grunt and resort back to the other tactic. “Really, though, don’t take it personally. I haven’t been on a date with
any
guy.”

“Never?”

“Never.” Unless you count the time I woke up in Jason Weaver’s bed after a night of drunken, meaningless sex and my stomach was groaning ferociously—which was probably my body telling me it wasn’t very satisfied with the whole ordeal—so he took me through a McDonald’s drive-thru and bought me an Egg McMuffin before he dropped me off at my house.

Nope, no real dates ever. Not even with Lyle. Though that’s not to say the guy didn’t try.

Aiden cocks his head to the side. “See, that’s just sad.”

I scowl at him. “Look, we’ve got, like, two minutes before we’re busted.”

“Say you’ll go out with me tomorrow night and I’ll leave.”

“Aiden!” I squeeze my hair in frustration, and water pours out like Niagara Falls.

“Say it.”

“No.” I disappear once more behind the curtain and hurriedly condition my hair. So much for shaving my legs.

When I peek back out, he just smiles at me, still there, his stare steady.

“One minute now, Aiden.”

“I like to live on the edge.”

I know I won’t win this game because a large part of me believes Aiden doesn’t really care all that much if he loses. Which forces me to be the one to back down.

“Shit. Fine, I’ll go out with you tomorrow night. Now, just—”

I make a shooing motion with my hands, at a sudden loss for words in my disappointment with myself.

Aiden’s smile widens, and he slips backward out the door. The parting words, “Wear something nice,” fade in his wake. I roll my eyes as I wash the conditioner from my hair and slam off the faucet.

Dylan bursts in thirty seconds later just as I finish wrapping my towel around myself. I grab my hairdryer as he pushes past me and undoes his pants. I’m out the door a second later, shutting it hard behind me before I’m forced to witness an atrocity.

***

Fighting over the bathroom seems to be a constant occurrence these days.

Be there in fifteen.

That’s the text I get from Aiden that reminds me I agreed to go out with him tonight.

I didn’t mean to fall asleep after work, but Trevyn had me going like a workhorse all day, and now I still need to shower and figure out what the hell I’m going to wear.

Wear something nice
, Aiden said. What is “nice” exactly? It’s subjective, isn’t it? For example, I find sweatpants to be very nice.

Nice and comfortable, that is.

With a groan, I push myself from my bed and make a break for the bathroom. As soon as I turn on the shower and strip down, a loud pounding erupts from the other side of the door.

“Delilah!” Damn, it’s Dylan. Talk about déjà vu.

I ignore him as I hang my towel over the bar on the shower door.

“Delilah!” he yells again and pounds the door with his fist five more times. “I need the shower!”

“I got it first!” I shout back.

“I
need
it though, like right now!”

“So do
I
!” I jump into the spray of water without checking the temperature first and whip the curtain closed behind me.

“Shit!” I hiss through my teeth. The water feels like it’s boiling my skin. I turn the shower knob all the way to cold, curse again, then turn it to a more tolerable temperature.

I hear Dylan’s elongated and extremely frustrated growl outside the bathroom, followed by a thud, like he’s let his head fall heavily to the door. I’m done in five minutes flat, even with shaving my legs (though I can’t exactly claim they’re silky smooth). When I turn off the water, the pounding starts again.

“Delilah! Hurry it up!”

I squeeze out my hair and wrap the towel around me. I swipe my hairdryer and bag of makeup off the vanity before throwing open the door with a glare.

“What are
you
in such a hurry for?” I pry. Water still drips from my hair down my back and into the towel.

Dylan pushes past me hard and mumbles, “A date,” before slamming the door at my back.

“That makes two of us,” I grumble to myself.

I’m surprised at how quickly I’m able to get ready when I’m in a rush, and at how presentable I still look. Which just goes to show I no longer ever need to spend thirty minutes primping myself. For anything.

I receive another text from Aiden that lets me know he’s out front in his car and that I should hurry before Aunt Miranda spots him. I’m about to head out when I squeeze in one last glance in the mirror and realize I’m still in my pajamas, which I put back on after my shower in procrastination of choosing an outfit.

“Shit.” I rummage through my closet, tossing things to the floor and onto the bed, slowly realizing I have never owned anything “nice” to wear. I curse myself for caring this much. After all, I refused, even after I accepted his invitation, to call this a date. With a self-chastising shake of my head, I reach for a black chemise and a light-washed pair of blue jeans.

Then my eyes fall on the dress I bought the other day at Lacey’s Boutique. The one that brought back memories of my mother. At the time, I had no intention of ever wearing it in public, but I wanted to keep it nearby, if only just to wear it in solitude in those moments I missed my mother most.

After a long hesitation, I slip it off the hanger and over my body then observe my reflection in the mirror. Once again, she’s here with me, around me, in me. My beautiful mother. I choke back a swell of tears as I slip into a pair of suede nude-colored pumps.

I have no idea where Aiden is taking me, but we’ve been driving for about five minutes when his phone rings through the Bluetooth connection in his car. It trills a couple times, and I see the name “Dylan” light up the screen on the dashboard.

Aiden steals a glance at me out of the corner of his eye, but before he can end the call, I say, “Go ahead. This isn’t a date. You can use your phone.”

Aiden gives me a look and mouths,
This
is
so a date
, as he turns down the music. “Yeah?” he answers the call, his voice breezy enough.

“Thank God, man. I need your help.” Dylan sounds utterly desperate, which has me regretting I’m now privy to a conversation I have no business hearing.

“Anything for you, my friend,” Aiden says, avoiding my eyes like it will somehow make this conversation more private. “What’s up?”

I turn to look out the window.

Dylan breathes heavily into his phone, and it comes out really loud through the speakers. All I can think is the fact that I’m intruding on something Dylan wouldn’t want me to hear. I fidget with the lacey hem of my dress.

“You remember that girl we met, like, a month ago? The one at Barton’s?” Which, by now, I know is a bar in town. “Before we got our asses handed to us by those dickheads you beat at pool?” Suddenly, I remember when Dylan and Aiden came home late with muddy clothes…Dylan’s ripped shirt, his split lip, and his bloody nose. I remember the stench of alcohol on his breath and making fun of his fake I.D.

“The Indian girl?” Aiden asks. “Sure, I remember her.” There’s a slyness to the way he says it, so I get the impression Dylan must have hooked up with her in some way or another.

“Yeah, well, I have a date with her that I need to leave for in about fifteen minutes.”

Aiden smacks the steering wheel and grins. “Good for you, man!” He laughs a little. “So, what’s the issue?”

Dylan groans, and by the shakiness of his breaths, I imagine he’s pacing circles in his room. A strangled sound tears through his voice.

“I don’t know what I should talk about with her.”

I look sideways at Aiden and see that his mouth has softened into a fond smile.

“Well, first, tell her how nice she looks.”

Dylan huffs impatiently. “Yeah, and that’s about as far as I’ve gotten in my head.”

I blush, remembering how as soon as I stepped outside the Kyler’s front gate, Aiden slowly came out of his car, staring at me like he was enraptured. When he came around the front of the car and opened the door for me, he said low in my ear, just before I slid into the passenger seat, “You look stunning,” which shot tingles up my spine, where they settled at the base of my neck and lingered for a long while. I graze the spot with my fingers now.

“Dude, relax, you’ll be fine,” Aiden replies with a gentle laugh. “Just start with asking how her summer’s going. Once you get rolling, the topics will come to you, alright? Whatever she responds with, show interest and ask more about it.”

“Shit, I haven’t done this in so long,” Dylan lets out, his voice tight. “My nerves are shot.”

“You’ll do awesome. I know you two weren’t doing much talking after the bar—”

“Shut it—”

“But she was super easy to talk to
at
the bar, remember? It’ll all be good.”

Dylan sounds exasperated and only a little more at ease when he says, “Okay. Thanks. I just needed…you know…”

Aiden’s smile grows, and he looks away from me out the driver’s side window. “Anytime, buddy. Let me know how it goes.”

“Yeah.”

There’s a click as Dylan hangs up.

Following a pause, Aiden says briefly, “The girl’s eighteen, an upcoming college freshman.” I get the feeling he’s clarifying this for me since she and Dylan met at a bar. He turns some music on and mentions nothing further about their conversation.

We pull into a small parking lot at a tiny but exquisite-looking Italian restaurant with a façade of gray stone and ivy. We share a meal of aged porterhouse steak, spinach, and rosemary roasted potatoes, probably the best meal I’ve ever had.

But I don’t say this.

In the quaint ambience of the restaurant, our conversation is limited, mostly because I’m having a hard time looking at Aiden. Ever since he got off the phone with Dylan, my heart has been pounding in a way that hurts; every flutter is like I’m being shot. I keep looking at him, and all I see is this overwhelming brightness, like he’s all lit up from within, so wholesome and beautiful and good. It pushes against the edges of my darkness, the shadow of my being. It’s foreign and terrifying, and all I want to do is bury myself in the earth as it comes at me, as it tries to transform my shadows into light. I stare at Aiden…I stare at him with a scream inside me, and all I want is my darkness back.

“Is something wrong?” he asks me after he pays the bill and we leave the restaurant.

I try to smile, to reassure him, but it’s so hard because it’s empty. He takes my hand in his and I don’t pull away.

I like him too much, and I’m terrified because of that. Because in my experience, the more you want someone around, the more inevitable it is that they will leave. It happened with my mother when she died. With Tommy when he rejected me. With Dave when he left for college. With my father when he sent me away.

I always lose the ones I love.

So I can’t love Aiden. I can’t even have him if I don’t want yet another person to lose.

Aiden drives us to a vineyard. It stretches for acres, up and over hills, a kind of congeniality in the vines, all verdant and twisted together in the hazy orange warmth of the sinking sun. Glimmering specks of dust rise up all around us. He parks on the side of a dirt road and wordlessly leads me into the vineyard, far into its heart. When we get there, he takes both of my hands in his and looks me right in the eyes. His own are guarded and sad. And I suspect he knows what’s going through my head right now. He’s known it since the restaurant. Since before, too. He’s always known it—that he could take me on a date, but it would never change what I allow myself to feel for him.

“I want to hold you,” he says. His voice is carried away softly on a breeze that passes through, one that moves my long hair across my face, hiding me for just a moment. Aiden tucks the hair behind my ear then gently places his hand on the side of my neck. “Just once,” he says. “I don’t care anymore…Just once, I want to know what it’s like. With you.”

I turn my head away, but his hand stays where it is. He’s breaking every rule he set in place for himself.

“Aiden…”

Something tells me this will only end badly. And not only because he’ll get hurt but because I will, too, when I leave him afterward.

He brings my face back to look at his. “I see it in your eyes,” he says. “You’re breaking up with me.”