Dear Aaron

by Mariana Zapata

Ruby, This is Aaron again. Haven’t heard back from you… Can we start over? -A

“You’re gorgeous,” I said to him almost painfully, prying the words out. “Like… the army should put you on their recruitment ads or put you as the face on their website. I feel like I can’t look you in the eye or I’ll turn into stone, and they’ll need to add my statue to a garden of other women who have made eye contact with you before and lost their lives.”

And when Aaron asked, “It’s beautiful, huh?” I told him the one and only truth I had. “It’s really beautiful.” And then I told him the second truth in my long list of things I couldn’t deny. “I’m going to owe you forever for inviting me and showing this to me.”

And all Aaron said, in his low, soft-spoken voice that he’d been using on me since yesterday, with something in the notes I couldn’t classify that sounded almost like hope, if hope had a sound and if a promise could be made without vocalizing it, was, “Any morning you want, Rube. I’ll watch it with you.”

“Like maybe you like me, but when we’re not together, we go our own ways and date other—” “Hell no.” I blinked. “No?”