Happy Family

Chapter Nine

It might surprise you to find out that I didn't fall in love often, and I didn't have very many girlfriends. Even though I got a lot of attention from the opposite sex. Outsiders intrigued me, sure, but I watched them through zoo glass. 

There were a small few, however, that were more than that.

Mort once told me, back when I lost Aretha, that we all fall in love with three people in our lives. He told me that your first love was the person you want to be. 

It was true for me.

I couldn't think of anyone I wanted to be more than Henrietta Baker: the army brat that had me from the moment she slapped me across my face.

"I didn't need your help, jackass," the girl thanked him.

Aaron could only stare, his hand on his cheek as it pulsed with the sting of her slap. His mouth was gaping, and he could feel his mouth drying from the elements breathing in and out of his trembling lungs. He couldn't quite focus on any individual part of her as she yelled at him, and the world around her blurred into obscurity. 

She stole the sunlight.

His chest felt funny as he took in the sight of her; she was dressed in a school uniform, but she wore blue jeans like the boy she'd just knocked out. Her white shirt had dirt on it and wrinkles from the skirmish, untucked around her thighs. He could tell that she was used to the dirt because the blue jeans were worn and holey at the bottom and on her knees. The girl didn't smell as heavily of hairspray, unlike the other girls he'd seen. She smelled like smoke and fire.

"D-Did it hurt?" Aaron blurted out. 

The girl gathered up her school bag and slung it over her shoulder with a scowl.

"Of course it did, I got shoved, you dunce" she grumbled. "But I'm not gonna sit here and cry about it."

"When you..." Aaron continued, looking on her helplessly, eyes blinking and wide with fear at the same time. The girl stopped and stepped closer to him with her head cocked. "W...When you..."

"You okay?" She asked.

"F-F..."

"Uh, kid?"

"F-fell... Fell fr..."

"Ah, shit, don't tell me I gave you a concussion," the girl groaned. She held out three fingers in front of him. "How many fingers am I holding up?" 

Aaron abandoned the sacred words and scrunched his face up, overwhelmed by the heat in his cheeks as he averted his eyes more with the closer she drew to him.

"Uh, three," he answered. She turned her fingers in and flicked him off with a giggle.

"Nah, only one," she laughed. Aaron looked down at shoes and rubbed his neck. "I'm just joking. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude. Look, thanks for jumping in, but my dad's a captain in the army, you know, so I didn't need the help." She looked over his face and reached her hand out to cup his cheek, running her thumb over his split lip. "I guess I do kind of owe you something for your trouble. Let's at least fix that lip of yours."

Aaron followed quietly as the girl took his arm and led him onto the sidewalk. 

It was an especially rural town, so the pharmacy and the main road led into a dirt road without a sidewalk, with open fields on both sides. He couldn't remember the last time he'd walked in grass like this, struggling to keep his footing on the hilly terrain. They'd driven by towns like this all the time, but they disappeared when he blinked his eyes; walking through it was different.