A little chuckle had me glancing at the man responsible for it. His lips bent in a lopsided smile, distracting me.
“Thank you,” he said, his smile stretching. “Nobody ha
s ever complimented that particular part of my leg.”
I frowned.
Did I say that out loud?
Ah Hell.
Looking at him, still in silence, I opted to drink some more water. My brain was clearly dehydrated if I was going around, voicing whatever crossed my mind.
“Feeling better?” Aaron asked from my side.
“Not yet,” I gave him a wobbly smile. “But thank you.”
His frown made an appearance, wrinkling his forehead. “I’ll take you back to the apartment. Come on.” The legs I had been so busy admiring flexed, ready to push his body upward.
“No, wait.” My hand landed on that very good-looking—and oh, really hard—thigh, stopping him. “Not yet, please. Can we stay here just for a little while?”
Aaron’s blue eyes seemed to assess something, probably my state. But his big body stayed put beside mine.
“Thanks.” My gaze fell back on his stretched legs again. “There’s something I need to tell you. A confession.” I didn’t look back at him, but I sensed him tense. “I Googled you, just once. But I did.”
Aaron seemed to ponder that for a moment. But he didn’t comment on it. Instead, he snatched the bottle of water from my grip, opened it, and indicated to me to drink some more.
I complied and downed the rest of the contents. Then, he retrieved the empty bottle, and I thought I heard him mutter something, but I wasn’t sure.
“I found lots of stuff, you know. That’s why I only allowed myself to Google you one single time,” I admitted with a sheepish smile. “I was scared of finding something that would change what I thought of you.”
“And did you?”
“Yes, and no.” Had what I found changed the image I had of Aaron? I didn’t think I could answer that. “I probably scrolled down photos upon photos of you until Google had nothing else to show me.”
“That’s a lot of scrolling.”
“I guess.” I shrugged my shoulders. “Do you want to hear about what I found?”
He didn’t answer, so I told him anyway, “There was this one image of you in the middle of the field; your back was to the camera, and you had your golden helmet hanging off your hand. I couldn’t see more than your back, but I swear I could tell what your face looked like. I could picture in my head how your eyebrows were wrinkled on your forehead and how your jaw was bunched up—the way you do when you are upset but you don’t want to show you are.”
Aaron had gone quiet, so I stole a glance at him. He was looking at me, and there was something that looked a lot like shock in his expression.
But I was no-filter Lina tonight, and I didn’t seem to care about talking or revealing too much. “Then, there were the articles,” I went on. “There were more than a few, and they all praised you as a player. As an NFL promise. But then it all stopped. It was as if you had dropped off the face of the earth.”
Aaron’s eyes looked vacant, as if he were no longer there with me, sitting on the sidewalk in the Spanish town that had seen me grow up.
I continued, not because I wanted to press him for details, but because I somehow couldn’t stop from explaining myself, “I don’t think there are many football promises who hang the helmet for the not-so-glamorous life we lead as engineers for a medium-sized technology company.” I didn’t know much about how college football worked, but the little I had read during my Googling session told me I wasn’t wrong. “Ever since you told me about it, I have been wondering what could have possibly led you to make such a decision. An injury? Burnout? How does someone jump from one side to the other?”
I brushed my fingers across his forearm. I thought it would startle him, but it didn’t. Instead, his other hand wrapped around mine, and then he placed our interlaced fingers on his thigh.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.” I squeezed his hand. It was really okay, but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel somehow disappointed. “If you don’t want to tell me.”
Aaron didn’t say anything for a long moment. I used that time to come to terms with the fact that he’d never open up to me. Not that I’d blame him. I hadn’t been completely honest with him about my past either. But as much as I tried to tell myself otherwise, the falling sensation in my chest made it hard to ignore how I really felt. I wanted to know. I wanted to unearth and learn everything about his past because I knew deep inside me that it was the key to finally understanding the man he was today. And him not letting me in only reminded me that I wasn’t different from anybody else.
“Catalina,” he finally said, and he followed that with a deep and tired sigh. “I want to tell you. I’d gladly tell you everything about me.”
My heart decided to resume all those shenanigans I had been dealing with that night. He’ll tell me everything about him.