The Wall of Winnipeg and Me - Mariana Zapata Page 0,43
with you. I haven’t tried to be nice, that’s true, but I’ve never gone out of my way or wanted to be mean to you either.”
I snorted, the scene at the gym, and at the radio station at the front of my brain.
He must have known exactly what I was thinking about because he shook his head, frustrated or resigned, I didn’t know or care. “I’m sorry I took that out on you. Apologizing doesn’t change anything, but I mean it. I’m sorry.”
Did I want to ask what other things he was angry with? Of course. Of course I did. But I knew if I asked him to elaborate it would seem like a sign he was on the road to maybe, possibly winning me over.
He wasn’t.
So I kept my mouth shut. There was a lot of things I would be willing to forgive, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized he’d let me down when I didn’t have high hopes for him to begin with. Aiden became just another person who didn’t live up to the expectations I had. What kind of crap was that? Plus, the stresses surrounding him being an asshole for a short period of time didn’t explain the rest of the months and years he’d never given me the time of day.
Aiden kept watching me with those coffee-colored eyes, watching, watching, watching. “I’ve been incredibly stressed lately,” he said, his words like bait.
All this stuff I had already known.
He licked his top lip and tilted his head down before letting out a long, low exhale. “Can I use your bathroom?”
I pointed in the direction of my bedroom and nodded. “It’s in there.”
He disappeared through the door between my living room and kitchen a second later, and I took that moment to let out my own shaky breath. My head had started hurting just a little bit at some point, and I knew it was the result of hunger and tension. In the kitchen, I grabbed my now-cold sandwich, and leaned over the sink while I took a few bites out of the grilled cheese.
I wasn’t even halfway done eating when Aiden appeared, leaning against the doorway that led from the kitchen into my bedroom, crossing his arms over his chest. If I wasn’t in such a shitty mood, I would have appreciated the breadth of his shoulders, or how his arms were perfectly proportionate to the rest of his massive size. I didn’t need to look at his thighs to know those things had the width of a redwood tree.
“I’ll pay you,” he said while I was not checking him out.
Ready to tell him one more time that I was fine money-wise, Aiden kept going before I could.
He laid the bomb. “I’ll pay off your student loans and buy you a house.”
I dropped my sandwich in the sink.
Chapter Eight
To say that I had an Achilles heel would be an understatement.
Growing up in a family with five kids and a single mom, money had always been tight. So, so tight. Scarce, really. Crayons in elementary school were those off-brand ones that didn’t color so well. I’d worn mostly hand-me-downs exclusively until I was old enough to pay for new things myself, and that hadn’t been until I was with my foster parents.
But if there was one thing that having so little for so long had taught me—it was the value of money and appreciation of belongings. No one respected money more than I did.
So, it had been to my utmost horror, when I applied to college and received zero scholarships. None. Nada. Not even $500.00.
I was smart, but I wasn’t an extraordinary student. I was shy in school. I didn’t raise my hand much in class, or joined every extracurricular activity available. I didn’t play sports because there wasn’t disposable income lying around to buy uniforms, and there hadn’t been any for us kids to join league teams either. My favorite thing had always been hanging out by myself, drawing and painting, if I had paints. I didn’t excel at anything that could have gotten me a scholarship. My high school hadn’t had a fine arts program worth anything; the closest class I’d been able to take was Wood Shop and I’d excelled at it. But where did that lead me?
There was a very clear memory of my high school guidance counselor telling me how average I was. Really. She’d said that to me. “Maybe you should have tried harder.”