Close Behind || Aaron Minyard

39

Having the entire team going to Sweeties and Eden's is a little bit of a mess and Naomi thinks it's one of Neil's worse ideas. He couldn't have found a better first date for the entire group?

Andrew had genuinely needed to make a reservation at Sweeties that night. Naomi hadn't even known that was something you could do at a place like this.

The booth was meant to fit eight people, not ten, and it was a bit of a squeeze to fit all of them in costume because some people, Matt, took up a seat and a half somehow. It was a good thing that the Minyards were tiny as hell and Naomi had no problem siting mostly on Neil's lap.

It was a little weird for them to be there and getting actual food. Naomi didn't know they even served things that weren't liquid sugar or cracker dust. Which was very stunning for her. She didn't order anything purely based off her shock.

Beside her, Aaron didn't say a word the entire time. He ate his food in an aggravated silence, only grunted or hummed when she'd whisper something to him and handed over some of his fries to force her into eating. Naomi huffed at him each time he did something like that. Stubborn ass.

Andrew was more cooperative than Aaron the entire night which would have been shocking had he not popped a pill at half time. He spoke almost exclusively to his group and Renee but did answer to occasionally mock one of the others.

Which was more than mildly entertaining.

The most grating part of the entire thing was how Nicky, apparently allergic to silence, never let there be a moment of fucking silence. Which was also reciprocated by Dan, Renee and Matt. Kevin and Allison were apprehensive but followed in occasionally.

It was her and Neil who talked the least beside Aaron, which seemed strange seeing as they were the entire reason the groups were together. Neil had convinced Andrew to allow it and Naomi had convinced Aaron to still come.

Sure enough, as they were getting to desert Andrew's high started wearing off and he slowly got colder. The first level of his coldness was in that terrifying little way, he'd grin and it'd feel like a person was being sliced open.

He'd probably do it as well, more likely to when he was first coming down. Naomi doesn't think she's seen his third and, apparently, most violent stage yet to compare. He'd probably even make good on his threat of stabbing Kevin if he tried pulling out the pills again. Naomi was a little disappointed that he hadn't done it.

She also pointedly ignores the french conversation going on beside her between Kevin and Neil about why the former has Andrew's meds. Not her business really but she won't forget what they've said.

When Andrew starts showing pictures of Bee in a bee costume Naomi feels a little bad that she'd been so standoffish with the shrink. It wasn't anything against Dobson personally, but it was personal.

It's not entirely a thing about her not trusting shrinks, which is certainly part of it—Naomi would never trust someone's whose entire job is around knowing things about other people like some world keeper— it was a little about her being a women. She reminded Naomi too much of the idea of a mother.

She'd never had a mother, not really. She had Mary, who wasn't a mother in anyway other than the title. Naomi thinks that at some point Mary was a mother, when she was young, but she turned into something else as they grew up. Naomi barely remembered her mother being nice to her as a kid—maybe it had never even happened.