Growing Up and Other Tall Tales

Chapter 76

My loud yawn is drowned by the water pressure as I wash my coffee mug. I shake it and dry it before reaching over to hang it next to Aiden's. I turn around, looking forward to shutting my textbooks and falling into bed when I see him.

Aiden looks ancient, painted in the city lights, his coat slung on the arm rest, his shirt unbuttoned at the top. There's a glass of whiskey in front of him, drunk halfway through. He picks it up.

I blink out the sleepiness.

His chin is rather despondently tucked between his neck and chest but I can see his eyes are closed as he brings the glass to his mouth. I know he knows I'm in the room: nobody gets one over Aiden Romanov. His hand flexes in the dark but other than that he makes no move to acknowledge me. I frown, deciding to take the longer route to my room; the one that brings me closer to where Aiden is sitting.

He reeks of work, weariness and whiskey.

I open my mouth. And then close it.

"Aren't you a sight for sore eyes," I finally comment, my voice breaking through the still night

Aiden doesn't reply; doesn't even open his eyes. Thinking he clearly needs his space, I back off, now regretting taking this way to my room. I pass him, not pausing.

"No wait."

I look at him over my shoulder.

He is sitting up now. His shirt rumpled around his sides, his eyes open, "Sorry,"

"No it's cool. You want to be left alone." I turn away with a quick smile and hope that he notices it in the dark

"I don't," he says quietly and now I pause, one step inside the bedroom and the other waiting to be shuffled inside embarrassedly.

He clears his throat searching for that sardonic insouciance, "Are you busy?"

"My brain thinks I should know how to play three instruments, learn five languages and write a best seller," I let him know, "I don't know what the fuck it wants me to do about it at one thirty in the morning."

A drained smile explodes from his mouth and scatters lazily across his face. I grin back almost instinctively. It feels like I've not seen him smile in years.

He pats the seat next to me.

"What happened?" I ask tentatively softening my usual crotchetiness

He brings the glass up to his mouth again and I watch as he gulps the last of it down. He places it on the table. I nudge it a little further away from him.

"Bad day," he says

"It happens," I want to say but it isn't what he wants or needs to hear because he knows it and because even if you know it, it doesn't matter. Knowing that pain exists doesn't make it any less hard.

"They said I can start my gymnastics practices again," I tell him instead and he smiles at it, sincerely excited for me. He knew how much of energy is building up inside me and how much it ate away at me to not let it out. I tell him about how I definitely flunked that paper for AP Biology on the entire fucking anatomy. I tell him about how Nick and Amy are. But all I can do is distract him, wait for him to get his eyes to open, forget about the whiskey until—

"It can't be too bad?" I ask and his face immediately shutters

"It isn't," he says coolly, "I was just dealt a bad hand today."

I stay quiet for a while. "Is this what you do when you have a bad day? You sit in the dark with your glass of whiskey like a basic villain?"

Aiden snorts, surprised. "Why is it unattractive?"