Beautiful Mistakes

Julie nervously put the phone down, wondering who she had been speaking to. She hadn't sounded very pleased about Aaron having a girl over, and since Julie had no idea how to explain herself, she didn't even know how to reassure the girl.

Did Aaron have a girlfriend? She wasn't sure why, but she had come to the conclusion –without any basis really, aside from his personality—that Aaron was probably single.

But even if he wasn't, she thought logically, if he had a girlfriend, shouldn’t she know about Julie staying on an airbed in the living room? And wouldn't she come over?

Unless that was why Aaron was never home, she realized. Maybe he was always at the girlfriend's house after work—maybe it wasn't that he was avoiding her, he was just spending time with his girlfriend who might not even know his brother's former mistress was knocked up and living with him for the time being.

Had she just caused trouble in someone else's life?

Sighing, she sat down on the couch, wishing she knew Aaron's cell phone number.

---

Aaron did finally return home at around one, leaving him just enough time to put whatever he had in that folder he always seemed to be carrying away and get ready for work, then he would go in at two.

As soon as Julie got the opportunity, Julie approached him hesitantly. "Um, Aaron?"

She wasn't sure what to expect of him once morning came. Mainly, she was hoping he would stay the nicer Aaron he had been the night before, but as he turned to face her, a look of bored indifference on his face, she thought that was probably unrealistic.

"Hm?" he responded.

"Somebody called for you—it was a woman, and I didn't know if I should answer the phone or not, but I thought it might be you so I did, and I don't know who she was, I never got her name, but she…didn't know that I lived here, at least I think." Sighing in frustration at her inability to effectively communicate –a course she had ironically gotten an A in—she tried again. "I don't think that she was extremely…amenable to me answering your phone early in the morning, so…I don't know who it was, but I'm sorry, I didn't know if I shouldn't answer the phone; it doesn't normally ring."

Shrugging

, Aaron said, "Don't worry about it, it was probably my mom, she's due to be calling. I never got around to telling her about you and if she kind of sounded like a bitch… probably her. I got my winning personality from her,” he stated with a brief, half-smile.

Smiling slightly, Julie attempted to put a finger on why she felt… almost relieved?

"Oh, okay," she said. "That's okay, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't… your girlfriend or something, and have her get the wrong idea and get you in trouble?"

"Nope," he answered.

She had been hoping he would expand on that, saying whether or not he had a girlfriend, but since he didn't, she moved the conversation along.

"So, how are you feeling this morning?" she asked him, smiling a little.

"Fine," he returned, and it looked like the truth. Despite being thoroughly drunk the night before, he seemed perfectly normal.

Then something flitted across his face for a second and disappeared, and he appeared to shift a little uncomfortably.

"I'm sorry, by the way, for… last night. That was inappropriate, and I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable."

She didn't know why his apology made her smile falter a little, made that feeling of rejection come back, but it did.

"Oh, you didn’t. It's no problem, really," she said quietly. "You weren’t inappropriate, just…"

"Well, regardless, I apologize," he said succinctly. "I have to go get ready for work," he told her, pulling a paper out of the folder. "But here is your schedule for the week."

"Thank you," she said, trying to inject some enthusiasm into her voice and cover the unwarranted feeling of rejection and unworthiness that she seemed to always feel when Aaron was around.

Nodding, he disappeared into the bedroom.

Julie sighed and sat down on the couch, glancing at her schedule briefly and calculating the hours. Quickly doing the math in her head, she concluded that she was at 23 hours for the week. Not great, especially since she literally had nothing to do when she was off.

If she had the money to spare, she would stop at a bookstore.

Maybe she should resort to actually going to the library. When she first moved to Chicago with Jack he had shown her the library—because he knew she was a bit of a dork and a total bookworm—but she had never managed to actually make it there.