youth, aaron taylor johnson

xxi. phonecall

incoming call from aaron!
✧∘ଂ ࿐

máire's phone rang through her car, stopping her music as she drove through london to the airport, she answered it without thinking — one press of a button on the bluetooth attachment in pedro — and upon hearing aaron's voice on the other end, immediately regretted it. they hadn't spoken since the previous night, and she hardly wanted it to be across a speaker phone in her car.

"hey, where are you?"

aaron's voice was still in morning mode, groggy from waking up as he rubbed his eyes and walked into their kitchen searching for a glass of water. his head pounded from the hangover he was suffering as a result of the night before.

"going to pick liz up
from the airport, bout ye'?"

máire tried to seem nonchalant, tried to focus on the traffic. but she was holding her breath seeing what aaron would say, or otherwise fail to. upon hearing elizabeth's name though he suddenly seemed to be more awake.

"shit, that's today?"

aaron straighten up, and looked down at himself — still only clad in his button down from the previous night and the boxers he'd worn to bed.

"yeah. i figured your
hangover was going to
be awful, so i didn't wake
you. i put the paracetamol
out on the table though."

as soon as she mentioned it, aaron spotted the two small ibuprofen's on a napkin on the counter. he thanked whatever god was above for máire; she knew he had a hard time opening up the bottles sometimes, particularly when hungover.

"right, thanks. you're
a life saver."

he switched the phone from his one hand to the other to take the ibuprofen and then leaned his weight on kitchen counter, debating wether or not to say anything about the night before. he considered acting like he didn't remember anything, but he knew it was going to be awkward anyways and didn't feel like lying.

"you know i remember
last night, don't you?"

maire bit down on her tongue and nodded once, shortly, as if she was searching for a way to constraint herself so he wouldn't be able to see any signs of the way the mention of the night before seemed to affect her. even though he couldn't see anything, and in actuality was miles away, her instinct was to suppress.

"right, 'course
you do."

"do you want to talk
about it?"

aaron asked the question cautiously, as if scared he had hurt maire and didn't want to see her upset. maire answered quickly, hating the idea of the conversation turning into that direction while she was half awake on coffee and they were both still working through the night before.

"not if you don't — i mean,
you were plastered. we were
both steamin. it's okay if it was
just a fluke, i understand."

partially, máire knew she was lying — or, at least, trying to make it seem like it was less of deal than it actually felt to her. but it was the safest way, really, to preserve the relationship they had. if she admitted to what she really felt — what had been relentlessly turning over in her mind since the night before — she knew she ran the risk of ruining their friendship