Chuckling lightly, I start to turn away when I see more movement. A second person.
I guess Shawn is already having a snack. A very specific kind.
The second person steps into a swath of moonlight, and everything inside me seizes.
Shawn's hand reaches, caressing the face of the second person, and he leans in for a kiss.
Aidan's dad leans in too.
“Oh my fuck,” I say, turning away from them. Embarrassment slips through the cracks in my shock. I wasn’t spying on them… I didn’t mean to see…
“What's wrong?” Aidan rounds the couch and sits down beside me.
“Nothing,” my voice squeaks as I say it. I can't tell him. How do you tell your best friend that his father is cheating on his mother? With his best friend, of all people? Oh my god oh my god oh my god. My fingers are shaking.
I peek at Aidan, but he's not looking at me. He is gazing out of the windows, seeing what I saw.
His jaw is set in a hard line. There is no hint of surprise in his eyes.
“You know?” I whisper.
He rips his gaze away from the guest house. Staring into the fire, there is a hardly perceptible nod of his head.
“How long?”
Aidan doesn't answer, and his jaw remains tense.
My insides start to feel hot, and it's not from the fire. How dare Diego do this to his mom? How dare Shawn? How can a love story as amazing as theirs end up this way?
“Don't you want to kill him? To kill them both? I do.” I sit back on the couch, my arms crossed in front of me, and stare at the flames licking against the walls of the fireplace.
The fire doesn't care about this middle of the night revelation, and it doesn't appear as though Aidan does either. Aside from his tension, he doesn't seem that upset.
As a woman, shouldn't I do something? Female solidarity, and all that? Don't I owe it to Aidan's mom to tell her what's happening under her nose? Unless…. Maybe she wouldn't want to know.
“Come on.” Aidan surprises me by standing up suddenly. He reaches down for my hand and pulls me up with him. Keeping a tight grip on my hand, we walk together across the living room to turn off the fire, both of us avoiding looking out the windows. When the fire is out, and the only light is from the moon shining in through the windows, Aidan looks down at me.
“Can I stay with you tonight?”
I've never seen such vulnerability on his face. “Yes,” I hear myself say, even though I haven't taken more than a moment to consider the possible repercussions of what he's asking. He turns, leading me back through the dark house. When we are in my room, he closes the door behind us. This is another line we are crossing, and the air around us is thick with our awareness.
We climb into the bed. The sheets are cold, sending a shiver down my body.
Aidan reaches, pulling me into him. Pushing my hair back from my face, he gathers it into a loose coil and releases it onto the pillow behind me.
We are quiet, our eyes closed. We are breathing the same air, closer to one another than we've ever been before.
Aidan's breathing gets heavier, and before he drifts off, I ask the question that’s been running through my mind like NYSE ticker tape. “Why haven't you told her?”
Seconds pass, and I open my eyes. Aidan is staring at me. He opens his mouth, and his whispered answer floats over me.
“She already knows.”
* * *
I knewthe moment Aidan left my bed. Before I reached over and found his space empty, I sensed he was gone. Perhaps he wanted to save us the awkwardness of waking up next to one another. Much like my question on the night of my drunken bath, we cannot go back. You cannot stop knowing something.
Diego. And Shawn.
