Aiden ✔️ NOW PUBLISHED!

4

♥️

The day went by smoothly, Aiden left early to drive to Portland, it's about an hour and a half away. I'm guessing he's looking for apartments there. I wonder what he does? What kind of job he has or what his major was when he graduated earlier this month. My curiosity is high as I search through our small house for Ashley. I don't bother changing out of what I slept in, no one is home but her.

I find Ashley sitting on the couch with her laptop open, typing violently against the keyboard. "Ash? You okay?" I ask curiously as I assess her behavior. She clicks one more button and then slams it shut.

"Yeah, I was just sending my English teacher a few choice words on an E-Mail for giving me a seventy on my final. It was an essay about Love which is supposed to be subjective!" She silently screams. Which makes me laugh.

"Miss. Parks?" I ask.

"Yup, that's the one." She says while huffing.

"I think you'll be okay, you have a what... a ninety-seven in that class?" I ask with humor in my tone.

"I wanted a perfect one hundred, that essay was thirty percent of our grade! She's just angry because her husband left her last year. I mean why make us write that for a final if you're scorned and don't want to hear about love?" She places the laptop down on the table, to the left of it is the book that Aiden was reading yesterday. When I see the title I smile, I take a seat on the couch.

"Aiden reads classic novels?" I say with surprise as I stare at the bent and tattered copy of Jane Eyre.

"Yeah, it's weird right?" She laughs while gesturing to the book. "He's always been a reader, I always wondered why he went down the corporate road. He would have been great at a publishing house."

"Corporate? Aiden?" I ask astounded.

"I know, with the tattoos it seems odd, right?" She laughs as she pulls her thick hair through a scrunchie and leans back on our couch. "He went to Stanford and got his bachelors in Finance." She says proudly.

I nearly choke on air before I compose myself. "Wow, that's amazing! Does your dad have money like that?" I say surprised. I know Ashley is here on a scholarship, her mom doesn't have a ton of money. She has no contact with her dad, but it seems like Aiden does. I remember her saying she originally wanted to go south for school, I'm glad she decided against it or we would have never crossed paths.

She lets out a loud laugh. "No way, even if he did there's no way Aiden would want shit from him. Aiden is completely self-made. He got a full ride for his academics in high school." She's beaming. I can understand why she's proud, that's a huge accomplishment at twenty-one. I ponder this for a second, a full ride to Stanford? He has to be insanely smart. I'm going to feel even more nervous around him. I feel more attracted to him knowing he has brains to go with his looks.

Like she's reading my thoughts Ashley begins talking "He told me about how all of the classmates glared at him for a few weeks when he started." She laughs as she waves her hand absentmindedly. "I mean a guy who looks like Aiden, covered in Tattoos, has to be quite the unusual student at a school like that, but his brilliance showed through and the students there quickly realized it I'm guessing. He made some really great friends there, I know he was sad to graduate but he's ready to start his life in Portland." She says.

"So why Portland?" I ask curiously, my elbows on my knees. I am listening intently.

"That's what he is doing today, he interned through college making investments for high up businessmen. He is so good at what he does he was able to make his own investments pretty early on, he owns some properties in the Portland area so that's why he wants to move there. He's also leasing a floor of a high rise so he has somewhere to meet with his bigger investors, some of them can be... intimidating." She looks at me uneasily. "Others are your normal run of the mill rich men. He's going to check out his new office and see about his lease on the apartment. That's why he's staying here for a couple of weeks, so they can get it finished." She says with another proud smile.