Vacant Heart

Chapter Twenty-Six

Mrs. Castillo is oddly enough absent from her usual dwelling place in the lobby when Aidan and I finally enter the premises a quarter to nine. Both of us too worn out from the excitements of the day, we agreed on take-out, more specifically greasy Chinese food, which we picked up and brought here to eat in the comfortable confines of my apartment.

Despite meeting my mother, and enduring every bit of energy she drained herself of, directing it toward him, Aidan is in high spirits, mostly listening to me rattle on about the time I was arrested for trespassing, to which my mother let me spend an entire night in jail as punishment. He voices how odd it is that I was arrested for that, rather than my secret adventure inside the White House.

"You really go all in then?" he says behind me as we climb the stairs. A jazzy Jingle Bells is playing over the speakers of the building, despite it being nearly two weeks after Christmas.

"Yes. I told you I did." I smirk, shrugging. "You didn't believe me?"

"To be honest, I didn't anticipate the lengths you'd go to."

I turn to him, curiously. "I drove three hours to meet you without making any contact."

"You must have been very confident that I'd even want to meet you."

"Well, seeing you in the diner, I hadn't guessed that. That was a trick of fate, so to speak. I winged it, as you so easily realized because you had been tipped off. You know, it's not usually my job to convince someone to tell their tales to me. They're usually open to it."

"Mmm," he hums, nodding to himself, grasping onto the railing. "As alluring as you were, you showed a little late."

"I'm sorry about those other people."

"What people?"

"The ones who made those signs that are still outside your gates."

The signs pegging him a murderer, a criminal, a sick man. To know him now and remember the clusters of trash he's never even bothered picking up, left by a viscous mob of reporters and journalists, it all seems a waste.

If only he'd spoken out, if only he'd explained the circumstances, they would have seen what I see. A man incapable of harm.

"I have accepted their suspicions and accusations, Josephine. I could care less what anyone says or thinks of me."

"Then you're a rare man indeed," I say, not expecting a response. He doesn't offer one. He's unabashedly truthful, almost forceful in his beliefs, and yet, he's hiding a monster of secrets within him. As my mother probed him with questions, he worked around them with finesse, ensuring he could redeem himself in her eyes, in a way he cannot in mine.

I know too much. I know more than most.

His lies, or rather his segways, make him somewhat ordinary in her eyes. Just a sweet, possibly naïve man in my life. I think he likes it that way. By the end of the night, her memory of the day was more scattered due to exhaustion, and we left her when she had fallen asleep. I'd planned for us to leave sooner, but she was so consumed with Aidan that I couldn't bear to disappoint her.

Simply put, she may be unresponsive tomorrow and I must try to cherish the moments I still have her. Unfortunately, that subjected Aidan to hours of being on top of his game, hours of smiling, which is rare to see on him.

We step from the elevator together, and it becomes increasingly difficult not to notice how we both begin to fidget. He watches as my hand sinks into my bag, searching for my set of keys to unlock the door. A chuckle leaves my lips, weak and breathy when I hold them up, showing him I've managed to locate them.