The River Speaks

Chapter Thirty Nine: Frozen Dressing

Chapter Thirty Nine: Frozen Dressing

I'm sitting on my bed and Aiden is leaning against my desk. He looks nervous, his hands in his pockets.
I had gone up to Mama and hugged her and whispered in her ear to get Daddy and meet me in my bedroom.
I hear footsteps coming up the stairs and a moment later, my parents come into my bedroom.
They both kind of hesitate.
"Can you shut the door please?" I ask my Mama.
She shuts the door.
"What is this?" Daddy asks.
I look at Aiden. He sighs slowly.
"I just...there's some stuff from my past that I think you guys deserve to know about. My intentions with Lily are long term. She's your daughter and you should know."
Mama shrugs and sits down next to me on my bed. Daddy remains standing.
"Do you guys remember back when everything went down with Elliot? I took his wallet without him knowing and gave it back?"
"Yes." Daddy says. "You said you used to steal in high school. I never had the chance to question you on it because so much was happening."
"Yes." Aiden takes a deep breath. "When I said that...I think I said it too loosely."
Neither one of them says anything, so he just continues.
"I had a pretty troubled childhood for a lot of reasons. My aunt sexually abused me. She was my Dad's sister and my mom found out. They got divorced, my Dad got custody of my little sister and moved to California. She got, and still does get, whatever she wants because my Dad has money. He's a lawyer." He clears his throat. "I was fourteen and I was finally understand what my aunt had done. There were things I wanted that we couldn't afford and I was...troubled and mad the world, so I started to just...take them. I was doing drugs, I was breaking into houses and taking peoples stuff and selling them." He looks ashamed of himself and I want to go hold him. "Then when I was fifteen, I had a parent teacher conference and my math teacher was wearing this necklace that she got from her husband or fiancè, who died in the military. After the conference, my Mom saw the necklace and complimented her, and they decided I was staying after school. I was a stupid, rude, selfish kid and needless to say, she left to go to the bathroom when I was staying after school and I stole the necklace. It was in my pocket and I forgot about it. Mom did the laundry, saw the necklace, and questioned me. I told her everything and she called the police. I got arrested, tried, and prosecuted for felony theft. I had even stolen a car." Aiden sighs slowly. "I stayed in jail until I was eighteen. I got out and went to college. I had my own job. I saved up a ton of money and went to ever single person I ever took something from and gave them money and the best apology that was possibly. I gave my teacher back her necklace. I went through college to be a police officer, and now I'm working at the front desk in the police station in Boston." He pauses. "So that's it. That's who I was. You guys deserved to know. I'm sorry if that changes things, but I love Lily with everything I have."
Mama normally would wait for Dad to say something and then take his side, but this time she gets up and hugs Aiden. She doesn't say anything.
Daddy looks at me.
"Did you know?" He asks.
"Yes." I say.
He nods slowly.
"I would tell the girls to leave so I can have this conversation but they're both equally stubborn and it's a waste of time." Daddy says to Aiden. "Ever since Lily was a little girl, she's wanted to have her own farm with her own horses and chickens and cows. I was shocked when she moved to the city, and I'm still shocked she hasn't moved back. She should, sometime in the future, decide to move here, even if it was a week from now, what would you do?"
"I knew before Lily and I got together that she's fully intent on moving back here. That's perfectly fine with me. I would come with her."
"Okay. One night you're at a bar with a friend and some girl kisses you. What do you do?"
Daddy doesn't know that Aiden was cheated on before. He looks sick at the thought of that happening.
"That would never happen, but if it somehow did, I would get away from the girl and come home. Tell Lily the truth."
"What if one day you have kids and your son who is...say, six years old, steals a toy from the grocery store. What would you do?"
"I'm under the assumption that I would be a police officer by then. I would probably make him ride in the back of my squad car and lock him into a cell for a while. Tell him this is where he's going to end up." Aiden says. "Actually, I would put him in the squad car and make him take the toy back and apologize to the person at the counter, and then I would lock him up."
"You would put a six year old in a jail cell?" My Dad asks.
Aiden pauses for a second.
"Yes."
We're all quiet for a while and I want to tell my Dad to love Aiden because he's amazing, but I stay quiet.
"I trust you." Daddy says finally. "You fixed your mistakes and that's all you can do. I appreciate you coming to us and telling the truth.it shows that you respect us, and that you respect my little girl. She deserves the entire world."
"If I could hand it to her on a silver platter, I would. But since I can't, I'll do everything in my power to make her happy and put her first." He looks at me and I smile softly.
I love him so much.
Dad seems pleased by that.
He nods slightly and heads for my bedroom door, pulling it open.
"If you two got married tomorrow, I wouldn't protest."
With that, he walks out.
Mama hesitates for a moment, and then I hear the oven beeping downstairs.
"My cookies!" Mama exclaims, rushing out the room, leaving Aiden and I alone.
He seems to me a little relieved.
I get up and walk over to where he's leaning against my desk, putting my hands on his abdomen.
"You would really drop everything and move here for me?" I whisper. "You love Boston."
"I love you more. Besides, I kind of like it here. It's calm and nobody's rushing to anything. If our kid plays outside, I don't have to watch over them."
"That's true." I murmur. "But I don't want you to feel obligated."
"I don't feel obligated." He says, putting his hands on my hips. He fully sits on top of my desk and pulls me between his legs. I rest my hands on his thighs.
"Well what do you want? What's your dream?"
"A wife and kids. I don't care where." He shrugs."Just not in a busy city like New York or Boston...or Philadelphia. The only reason I still go there is because my Mom lives there."
I hum in response, leaning in to softly press my lips to his. He kisses me back slowly, and after a moment I pull away, tugging him to his feet. He stands, and I wrap my arms around his waist, burying my head in his shoulder. He hugs me back, presses a kiss to the side of my head as he does so.
After a moment, he starts laughing.
I pull away to look at him and he's laughing so hard he has tears.
"What?" I ask.
He walks over to my bed and opens the window, reaching out to grab a bottle of italian dressing. He brushes the snow off of it and shuts the window, turning to me.
"Why?" He's smiling and I think back to how miserable I was when I did that. I think back to how much I wanted to show him because I knew he'd think it was funny.
"I didn't want to go downstairs." I smile.
He laughs a little and we both look at the bottle of italian dressing, which is completely frozen.
He shakes his head.
"I love you, you little loser." He says.
"I love you too, you...you very attractive idiot."
He puts his hand on his heart and feigns hurt.
"I'm offended."
"I'm sure you are." I dart out to smack his ass, and then I grab the bottle and run for it.
I hear him running after me and I sprint down the stairs taking them two at a time, almost fall on my face at the bottom, and run for the back door. Everyone just kind of watches me run for it with a frozen bottle of italian dressing in my hand.
I make it out the back door and just as I reach the edge of the patio, his hands lock onto my waist.
And then he trips on ice, forcing both of us off the edge face first into a foot of snow.
I sit up at the same time that he does.
"Are you okay?" He asks, but he's laughing, trying to get the snow from my hair.
It's trying to melt and then freezing, so some of my hair is completely frozen. His is too, so I reach out and mess his hair up, wiping the snow off his face.
"You two are going to freeze." Mama says at the back door. "You're like two giant children. Get in the house." She swats her dish rag at us.
I stand up with the bottle of dressing still in my hand, doing my best to get the snow off my coat. I have leggings on under my jeans and my jacket is still on from when we got here, but Aiden has nothing on under his clothes despite me and Jackie's protests this morning.
He's stubborn.
I stand up and wipe off what I can, walking into the house and removing my coat and pants so I'm in black leggings and a great long sleeve shirt.
"Give me your clothes so I can put it in the dryer." Mama says to me.
I hand them to her and she turns to Aiden.
"My clothes are upstairs." He says.
"You're not tracking water all over my carpets."
Somehow, he managed to fall half into the snow, and Mama always sweeps the snow on the deck into the yard, so his jeans are hardly wet, but his shirt is soaked.
Mama holds her hand out to him and wiggles her fingers.
He looks like a punished child and I snicker as he removes his shirt in front of my entire family.
"You should've thought about that before you chased me down the stairs." I say.
"Why were you chasing her?" Jackie questions her son. "That's not right."
"She hit me!" Aiden exclaims.
I gasp, putting my hand over my heart. "I did no such thing!"
What is he going to do? Tell my entire family that I smacked his ass?
"Lilliana, did you hit him?"
I spanked him. It doesn't count.
"No." I say, laughing at the look on Aiden's face.
He hands his shirt to my Mom, unaware that my sisters and cousins are staring at him.
Calmly, he removes the bottle of italian dressing from my hand and darts at me, grabbing my body like a rag doll and throwing my over his shoulder.
"Aiden!" I shriek, pumping my fists against his back.
"She? She's hitting me." He says.
With that, he goes upstairs, carrying me with him.
I wrap my arms around his waist.
"You better not drop me, you big fool!" I say.
"I won't drop you if you stop moving." He says.
I scowl and hold still.
He carries me upstairs and shuts the door with his hip, and then he flops me onto my bed.
Before I have a chance to process that he put he down, he climbs on top of me and starts to tickle me.

*****

Hours after, after dinner, we're all sitting around the table listening to May talk about how much she wants to quit her job because her boss who is the only veterinarian in our town aside from me when I'm here, is stressing her out.
May works the front desk, and she lives with April in a house and her boss Ms. Belle is having her give the animals shots when she doesn't know how.
Listening to her talk about how stressed she is with work makes me think about how stressed I am with work.
Because I haven't shown up in two weeks, I haven't heard anything from my boss. My apartment is trashed...
I sigh and run my fingers through my hair.
"What's wrong?" Mama asks me.
"What?" I ask.
"What's wrong?" She repeats.
"Oh, nothing." I say.
"I doesn't look like nothing." Noah says, leaning back and crossing his arms.
Everyone is looking at me, including Aiden who looks concerned.
"Oh uh, there is a chance I didn't tell my boss I was leaving...and I may or may not have not shown up to work in the last two weeks. So yeah, I got fired."
"You got fired?" Aiden repeats. "Did she tell you that?"
"Well...no."
He nods slowly and clears his throat.
"Um...you know when I came here after you left and you kinda told me off?" He asks.
I hate thinking about it, but I nod.
"Yes."
"Before I went to the airport I kind of went to your work..." he trails off.
"You what?" I sit up slightly.
"And I told your boss you lost your phone but that you had appendicitis..."
"Aiden..." I trail off, shaking my head.
"So as far as your work is concerned, you were getting your appendix removed and you can't come back to work until January sixth."
"So I'm not fired?" I ask.
"No, you're not fired."
"Isn't she going to want a doctors note?" Mama asks.
"Oh yeah, I kind of know how to forge those."
I pause.
"So...you went to my work, told my boss I was getting surgery and I couldn't work for two weeks just so I wouldn't get fired, and then you got on a plane and begged me to love you, and when I told you I pretty much hated you, you flew to Italy?"
He drums his fingers on the table.
"That sounds about right, yeah."
I hesitate.
He's too good for me.
With a sigh, I lean across the table to kiss him on the lips in front of everybody.
"Thank you." I whisper.
"You're welcome."
I sit back and pause.
"Did Reese know where you were?"
He hesitates.
"No, nobody knew where I was."
"Which wasn't smart." Jackie says. "Something could have happened to you and I wouldn't have found out."
"Mom, we've been over this."
"I know." She says. "But if you ever pull a stunt like that again, I will call the police and have you known as a missing person."

*****

Okay it's supposed to rain all day and at my work you walk up to a window and there's literally not been one Customer since I got here at 10:40 and it's almost 2. So yay me
~Sam