The people on set sort of know me by now that I’ve been here so often over the past few months, braving the Canadian ‘spring’ and walking the few blocks over from my bus stop to the studio, getting passed right through when I show my phone with the digital visitor’s pass I’ve had since Ayden and I started seeing each other back in the fall. It could be just my imagination but there’s definitely some stony look, and cold left and right shoulders as I walk through, nodding my head in hello to some of the PAs, making sure I’m out of everybody’s way, and finally exiting to where Ayden’s trailer still sits, the one he’s going to have to abandon for a real-life apartment now that Leviathan has been picked up for another season and production in Toronto is going to keep on happening.
It’d be super cool actually, if he finds an apartment in my own building, and then we could be neighbours. Now that would be a story.
I stand in front of Ayden’s trailer, his name clearly printed in block lettering that’s a font I should know but don’t, and all I have to do really is raise my hand and knock, just knock, a rap of my knuckles against the door, a one-two-three combo like I’ve done so many times before.
I clasp my hands together, steeling myself for what I want to say, even though I agonized over word choice and what to really say behind it all that has me all tangled up inside. I could say the wrong thing, I could say something mean, or trivialize my feelings or his feelings and make a whole big-ass mess of the whole thing.
But what I really want to say is this, the bottom line—Ayden, you’re not your job, and the only person I want to be dating is you.
So why is it so hard to raise my hand, to knock against the door, like I’m being dragged by a Hummer and fighting to keep my place?
If I stare down at my boots any longer, I’m going to question my whole existence, so without looking up, I just lean forward and move my knuckles along the not-so-hard surface that feels a lot like a—“Oh, oh, no!” I blurt, trying to take a step back, sizzling in my winter coat from the walk over here but knowing I’m going to freeze in two seconds, the night sky starting to get inky dark the way it does later on in the day now until we change the clocks again. “How did you even get here, and how did I not hear you?” This is bad, like mega bad, I’m not ready to pour my heart out. Maybe I should go home and re-think about what I want to say, maybe write it down, type it out on my phone, just something.
I shouldn’t be here, I’m not ready, I’m not.
Is anyone ever ready to spill their heart out?
“Uh, hi. Hi, Ayden.” I wave, like an idiot, when he just keeps staring down at me, his cheeks flushed from the cold, a tuque pulled over his head bearing the Toronto Maple Leafs logo, blue and white, and a blue pom-pom on top, moving around in the wind. “Hi,” I say again, in case he didn’t notice that I was here.
Jesus, this isn’t going how I planned out at all.
Then that’s the problem, isn’t it? Always expecting things to go one way and they end up going another?
“Aria.” He says my name on an exhale, like he’s been holding it in all this time. “Would you like to come in for some hot cocoa?”
Wow, hot cocoa and Ayden? Yes, please!
“Do you have marshmallows?” I ask, not knowing why I ask, as if I’m forestalling the inevitable.
“Yeah, I’ve got some of the ones you like. Come on in, get out from this wind, right?”
I follow him into his trailer, feeling the space close around us when the door shuts behind me, the smell in here like fresh linens and day-old coffee and the sandalwood scent of Ayden’s body wash coming from the bathroom. He takes off his coat before looking to me, and I take mine off, too, just to be polite, not wanting to look like I’m ready to bolt for it at any given second. That would be rude, especially when I came here to say something.
“Let me get the cocoa on,” he says, turning to his kitchenette, pulling out a saucepan and some milk from his mini-fridge, and getting to work at putting it all together, the bag of marshmallows placed in front of me, ready to get ripped into and eaten. It’s like he knows me.
I squirm while I wait, shifting from side to side, running over my speech in my head, knowing what I want to say, but not really knowing how it’s going to come out. I’m terrible at winging everything, unless there’s been a week’s worth of preparation, but while I know that winging it has its time and place, I feel like I should go back home and regroup, talk to Maddie and Raleigh again, just for good measure.
Finally, Ayden sits across from me, handing me my own steaming mug of hot chocolate, and I carefully blow on it, intent on that first, scalding sip, but push myself back into the seat, waiting for Ayden to get comfortable.
And now that he’s comfortable…now what?
“How are you?” I ask, as if it’s the real question I want to ask and not just filler, but I am interested. There’s a hollowness to his cheeks that wasn’t there before, and the circles under his eyes have gotten more prominent as the days go longer now for the final sprint until the end of production. Or maybe it’s because he’s been as miserable as I’ve been, too? I point out the circles under his eyes, then point to my own cheekbones, too.
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” he says, voice rough, his knuckles flashing white, cupping his mug.
I hand over a peace offering of marshmallows after putting five in mine and watch him select three to put in his own mug. Something in my chest loosens, makes it easier to breathe. “I’m sorry to hear that. I haven’t been sleeping so good, either. And I think…” I pull in a deep, deep breath, making sure I’m looking at him, looking at this man who has turned my fangirl life upside down and around and somehow wants to be part of it, wants me to be part of his. Ayden always seemed more sure of me than I was of him. “I think you’ve been incredibly patient with me, for all this time.”
Ayden just blinks, mouth parting in surprise.
I nod to myself, a little mental pep talk to keep going. “You’ve been waiting for me to see you, instead of your character; you’ve been waiting for me to get used to the job you have by showing me how it works, how you kissing other people works; you’ve been waiting for me to be more open with you besides my love for the show, my love for the work you do on the show.” I sniff a little. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry for making you wait so long, I was…I was scared. It didn’t help that those fan sites are truly awful, and the people on them are awful, but there’s nothing I can do about that, and there’s nothing you can do about that, either, and I think I was blaming you for them, when it’s just as much out of your control as it is out of mine.”
I tap my nails against the mug, making a chiming sort of sound, lean down to sip up my hot chocolate, and groan in appreciation, licking the chocolate and marshmallow concoction away from my lips. I sigh, knowing I need to keep going.
“I thought of you as nothing more than a dream within a dream, you know? Like, how could you possibly be real and wanting to be with me? I just…it felt a little too real, too fast, and I’m sorry that I didn’t let you know what was going on in my head, I’m sorry I didn’t give you the opportunity to hear me out, and I’m sorry I in turn didn’t listen to you.”
“Aria—” He tries to break in, face gone pale, eyes bright.
“I’m almost there, Ayden, just let me get through this, okay?” I pull in another deep breath and let it out just as slowly. “Now that you’re in my life, however it happened, I want to keep you there, if you want to be, that is.” I watch his face for clues, but he’s giving me nothing. “Unless there’s someone else who’s taken my place?” I think back to that photo of him and Bekah holding hands, knowing that it means nothing, but a niggling seed of doubt is still there, waiting to be fed with any sort of stray thought. “Unless you don’t want me anymore?”
No, maybe I am too late, maybe this is all too late.
It’s been three weeks, three freaking weeks.
Ayden’s shaking his head, and the blood’s pounding in my ears, and I let out the breath I was holding in a whoosh. “That’s not it, that’s not it at all. God, you drive me crazy. I don’t hear from you for three weeks, and everything’s been utter shit, and you’re here and all I want to do is hug you close and take forty naps in a row.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Forty naps? In a row? Guess you weren’t lying about not sleeping, huh?”
Ayden shakes his head again, moving his mug to the side, reaching out for my hands. I do the same and put my hands in his, Ayden sighing when we make contact. “I can’t change my job or who I am.”
“I know,” I murmur, watching his eyes soften.
“That doesn’t mean that I just expect you to accept it, or to not tell me what’s going on in that head of yours. It doesn’t mean that I’ll know what to do always, but that’s why we have to talk, to get through it together. I want to be with you, in any way you see that happening.”
“Even if I don’t want to go to cons, or photo shoots, or go on lavish dates where we’re bound to have our photos taken?” I can’t imagine being photo-ready all the time; it must be exhausting.
Ayden smiles, his eyes almost closing with it. He brings my hands up to his mouth, kissing me along the knuckles, and my heart does acrobatics in my chest. “We do whatever you’re comfortable with. I don’t care for those; you already know that. I just want to be with you, and no one else.”
I look at him, tracing his features with my gaze alone, watching him for a long, long minute.
“I want to be with you, Aria. I’ve fallen in love with you. You’ve made it so easy to fall in love with you.”
Ah, no, that hits me hard, crushing my heart in the best way possible. “Yeah?” I croak, my throat raw.
“Do…do you think you could love me, too?” His words are vulnerable, carefully asked, like he might scare me off.
And of course, of course, my brain takes the opportunity to make a Leviathan reference, like an asshole. “You bet.”
Ayden blinks at me, then starts laughing, pressing the laugh against the back of my hands while his whole body shakes with it, making it echo, hitting off the surface of the table.
“You bet?” he asks, leaning up to look at me, still chuckling, but his eyes are wet, and he won’t stop kissing my hands.
“I love you, Ayden. I do.”
He sniffs, and I get up, tugging on his hands to lead him back to his bedroom, knowing that everything isn’t always going to be perfect from here on out, but it sure is going to be a hell of a lot better with Ayden by my side. “How about those forty naps in a row?”
“We’re not going to nap and you know it,” Ayden says, allowing himself to be tugged.
I grin at him over my shoulder. “Oh, I know.”
Ayden licks his lips, his eyes bright with want and need. He frowns. “We don’t have to, you know. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
We’re finally in the room he sleeps in now, and the backs of my knees hit the bed and knock me flat on my ass. The mattress jumps with my added weight. I’m still holding onto his hand, Ayden’s thumb soothing the back of my hand.
His fingers shake in my grip like he might just be more nervous than I am.
My heart catapults its way to my throat.
“I want to. I want to be with you,” I say. “Because we belong together. Please?”
His stormy eyes are filled with something I can’t name.
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