Beautiful Mistakes

"Yes, ma'am," he said a touch mockingly, but followed her in anyway.

The doors closed and they stood there in the silence for a second before he asked, "So, are you going to read that one?"

"Oh my gosh," she said. "It's just a text message."

He didn't say anything for the rest of the elevator ride, and Julie began to wonder if she had made him mad. When she yelled at Jack, he usually got mad at her.

"So… not to pry or anything," she said once they got to her car, "but I'm kind of curious about something."

"What's that?" he asked.

"Why is it that you 'don't date'?" she asked.

"Because women are faithless whores," he said plainly.

Her expression became a slight gape again, and she said, "Wow. Thanks."

"Anytime," he responded.

Julie frowned, contemplating that. Then she asked, "Can I assume that we're at least talking about a limited number of women in your experience? One of them probably being that Shannon girl?"

He grimaced. "She was one of those, yes."

She wanted to ask what had happened, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out she had obviously cheated on him. Still, cheating happened—it didn't turn most people off of dating and women altogether, so she figured it had to go a little deeper.

Feeling a little brave, she said, "Would it be terribly invasive if I asked what happened?"

"Probably," he said, nodding. "It's a long story, I don't really want to get into it."

Nodding, she accepted that and drove in silence, waiting to think of a good topic to bring up just to make small talk.

However, her mind resisted the topic change and stayed fixed on the redhead. She wanted to know really badly.

Her phone gave a reminder beep and she got an idea, her eyes lighting up as she glanced over at him.

"Hey, would you be open to a compromise?" she asked.

Glancing over at her, his eyes narrowed slightly and he said, "Maybe. What did you have in mind?"

"Well, I know it's personal, but so was the text message I got earlier, and I would assume the one I have right now. I let you delete that one, and I'll even let you delete this one if you tell me the story."

He glanced at her for a second, then at her phone, and then back to her eyes. "Fine, but I'm giving you the shorter version—I'm not going into all the minute details."

"Just the gist," she readily agreed.

He took the phone and opened it up, reading the text message and rolling his eyes, then pushing delete. "Gross."

Julie was glad it was dark, because her cheeks definitely flushed as she imagined what the text might say.

Sighing, Aaron said, "Well, I met Shannon when I was in college. She went to school for graphic design, I went for business. We had the same English class, and I guess we had noticed each other in the hallways. Long story short, we started dating our second semester. We dated all through college. When we graduated, I got offered a job in Cleveland, and Shannon wanted to live in a city, so I wanted to take it, but Shannon got a better job offer in the graphic design division of a big company in Chicago. I had two choices: I could go to Cleveland, she could go to Chicago and we could go our separate ways, or I could move to Chicago with her."

"Obviously you chose door number two," she concluded.

Nodding, Aaron said, "I loved her, I thought she was more important. But when I got here, I wasn't having any immediate luck in the job department, at least not in my field. I ended up getting a job at a restaurant as a cook—it wasn't bad, but it wasn't really what I had in mind for myself. Shannon loved her job, she used to tell me it was everything she had always hoped it would be. We lived here for… I'm gonna say two... maybe two and a half years, I stayed at the restaurant because we had to pay rent and I knew what I was doing by then—I was pretty much running the kitchen at that point, and I liked it enough. I was satisfied with my life, so I didn't complain. Shannon made her way to the very top of the graphic design division at her company, and life… was pretty good."

Julie frowned slightly, wondering how the girl could have had a career in graphic design when she had come to see Aaron and told him she went from Subway to Walgreen's—not really jobs in the field she had become established.

"So… what happened?" Julie asked.