Close Behind || Aaron Minyard

14

A few hours later, after all the other girls have gone out and left Naomi to be by herself, there's a knock on the dorm door. She groans loudly and pushes away the book she'd been reading to jog towards the door.

When she opens it, she's faced with Nicky. Naomi frowns and him and he anxiously rubs the back of his neck. "Have you seen Andrew? Or Renee?"

"Renee went out with everyone else," Naomi says, she starts shutting the door.

Nicky puts his hand in the way and she seriously debates slamming the door on his hand, but doesn't. "How about Andrew?"

"Do you think I've seen Andrew?"

"No, no, you're right," Nicky says with a chuckle. He looks down the hall, both ways, probably waiting for Andrew to appear or something. "Can I use your phone to call him? He- ha- he isn't answering my calls."

"I don't have a phone," Naomi says bluntly.

Nicky stares at her for a few seconds before choking out a few laughs. He nods, like it makes sense even though it probably shouldn't. "Right, right. Sure- um- sorry for bothering. Tell Renee to find me later?"

He walks away from her and heads for the stairs, he makes it to the end of the hallway and goes down instead of up. Naomi frowns, Andrew probably doesn't want to be found if Nicky doesn't know where to look. She'll just leave it alone.

Instead of going back in her room, though, she heads over to the cousins and sees that Nicky left it unlocked. Rookie mistake. Naomi walks in and looks around. No ones in the living area, one of the doors is open and the other is shut.

"Aaron? Kevin?"

"In here," Aaron calls back to her.

Naomi wanders around the living area for a few seconds and takes in every detail exactly as she can before heading to the room Aaron's voice came from.

The door isn't locked but it's dark, Kevin must be sleeping. She pushes it open and looks up the bunk bed to see Aaron leaned over and looking down at her, like he'd been waiting.

"Hey," He says.

"Hey," Naomi responds. She looks down at Kevin for a brief second and he doesn't move. "Sleeping?"

"Passed out a few minutes ago after making his body 70% vodka," Aaron says with a shrug. He leans back against the wall, Naomi can barely see him. "What are you doing here?"

"Nicky came looking for Renee, said Andrew was missing," Naomi shrugs. She looks at Kevin again. His blanket has fallen to the ground, she makes busy work of putting it back on him. "I figured someone should watch Kevin. Didn't know you would be."

Aaron shrugs at her and stays silent for a few seconds, they just look at each other. He sighs and starts getting off the bunk, Naomi steps back for him. "I'm not really watching him. He's sleeping anyway."

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," Naomi mutters.

He gets off the final rung and looks at her, Aaron doesn't have to look up because she's only an inch taller than her. He nods to the door. "We've got the tv to ourselves, may as well abuse it."

It makes Naomi chuckle, she'd have laughed but she was conscious of Kevin sleeping. Not knowing if he was a heavy sleeper or not. "No horror shit. It's always so..."

"Inaccurate," they say together. Then they burst out laughing. Kevin groans from his bed and they silence immediately, Naomi grins and they sneak out of the bedroom quietly.

In the living area Naomi claims one of the bean bags with a flourish and falls into it gracefully, definitely gracefully. She watches Aaron scoff at her, watches him set up the tv they have, watches him fuck around with cords for a while.