Exotic

~ friend indeed ~

Aaron answered the phone after two rings. He was reliable like that. My one constant. Sometimes I thought I relied on him too much, but my entire body did relax when he spoke. "I'm driving, so don't tell me anything too distracting. I don't have first party insurance."

"Aaron," I groaned, flopping down on my bed. "I've been lying to you."

There were a couple of beats of silence, with only the sounds of Aaron's car growling, before he responded. "Well, no duh. I was wondering when you were going to tell me."

I groaned again. "I'm not that obvious, am I?"

"You've been upset," he clarified. "And I guessed it was to do with your mum, but I suspected it was something more."

I rolled to the headboard, frowning to the ceiling. "I've been a bad friend."

"I mean, you've blown me off nearly every Friday night for a year now," he mused. "But I don't hold grudges. Generally. Unless I think you really deserve it. And you don't."

It was pretty late in the day on Saturday, and after the multiple revelations of the morning, I was in desperate need of some normalcy. The most normal part of my life was Aaron, and the dramatic arc of my life had me neglecting him terribly. I deserve a cold shoulder, but Aaron wasn't the passive-aggressive type. He wasn't the aggressive type. If he thought I had been an asshole, he wasn't going to tell me; leaving it to me to punish myself for deserting him.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"Picking up Max from the game," he told me. "Apparently they got demolished. Their star forward bailed without calling. He told me to park across the street because Aidan is raging hard."

In all the excitement I'd forgotten there was a soccer game on. I wouldn't have blamed Caleb for forgetting as well, although he was going to cop a whole lot more slack for doing so than I ever would. "Yeah, stay far away from that guy."

"Do you want me to pick you up?" he asked. "We can go to my place. Or I can drop Max home and we can go out."

"I can wait," I had been neglecting Max as well, but I was in dire need of a one-on-one with my best friend.

"Cool. I'll be there bout three, 'kay?"

I used the free time to escape back into my closet and attempt some lip art; using purple and pale yellow lipstick to create an ombre sunset and drawing pine trees into the scene with eyeliner. It didn't quite match the reference image, but I uploaded it to Sephora's Instagram nonetheless. It had been lacking the regular posts Zsa Zsa had recommended to maintain a following.

@themagnificent_zsazsa was the first to like the picture and commented a wildfire of flame emojis. It assured me that despite the heartbreak of the morning, we were on good terms. It put me at ease. I didn't know what I would have done with myself if he'd thought of me as a homewrecker. I needed to put more faith in my friends.

By the time Aaron was calling from downstairs, I had scrubbed it clean from my lips and was looking entirely plain, if not a little pink around the mouth. I spilled down the stairs, breezing past Reece on the couch and out the front door before any questions were asked. I ran across the front yard, slipping through the gate and jumping into the passenger seat. Aaron looked up in surprise, hands still resting on the steering wheel, and dressed up for far cooler weather in a striped sweater and toothpick jeans.

"What are we running from?" he asked, as I pulled down my seatbelt.

"The screaming, writhing Lovecraftian horror that is my life as I currently live it," I rattled off.