My stomach lurches, and I’m surprised at the fact that it doesn’t burst through my esophagus. Accidentally on purpose, I tighten my arms around Aiden’s abdomen. If he feels my grip at all, he doesn’t show it. He just continues to speed away from the apartment building, my parents; my life.
The wind howls through my ears, and my hair whips every which way. I glance down and realize that my feet have been bare for all this time, completely vulnerable to glass and other hazards.
“Any place is mind?” Midnight Arrow yells over the wind, stealing his voice away.
“No,” I answer, my response unchanging from the last time he asked me this.
“Well, I do.”
“Does it involve weed, alcoholic beverages, drugs in syringes, and/or sex?” I ask, my voice desperate to be heard.
“Hardly.”
“Do you want to tell me where we’re actually going?”
“My parent’s house,” he says, as if I should have already known this.
“But---”
“Just to see my sister and to get a change of clothes. I can’t walk around New York looking like this, I’ll go to jail. Plus, we definitely can’t go back to my apartment,” he reasons, forcing the motor bike to go around a car that he deems as not-moving-fast-enough-for-Aiden Ryder.
“What about your parents?” I inquire, clutching ever-so-tightly to his stomach as he seems to push the poor motorcycle passed its limits.
“What about them?”
“Won’t they like, I don’t know, rip your spleen out?”
“What they don’t know won’t kill them. Or me.”
“So you’re just gonna---you’re just gonna break into your own home?”
“It’s not my home anymore,” he snaps in a defensive tone, a tone that I can still hear over the roar of the air.
“Sorry,” I say.
He doesn’t say anything, so I continue on my original thought.
“And how exactly are you planning on doing this without waking them up?”
“I did it with you, and I’ve done it countless times before.”
“Yeah, but that was when you weren’t with a total idiot who has no sense of hand-eye coordination,” I counter with a laugh.
“Well then, here's your first lesson in stealth.”
For the rest of the way, we drive in comfortable not-so-silence. Although we don’t say anything to each other, his presence is enough to ease my adrenalined nerves, and even though it’s so cold that polar bears would ask for jackets made of their own fur, I nestle my head into the crook of Aiden’s back, but not because I need a shield from the temperature.
***
I’m not sure, exactly, how a person can doze while riding around New York City at a motor vehicle's top speed. Apparently, I managed to do just that as Aiden shakes me awake.
“You literally sleep like a kitten, too.”
“Shut up with the ‘Kitten’ thing,” I order grumpily, slumping off of the motorcycle.
“I would if you wouldn’t make the comparison so easy,” he retaliates cleverly, shutting off the rumbling bike.
I scan my surroundings, curious as to how Aiden’s neighborhood looked like during his childhood.
We are standing in the middle of a white suburban sidewalk, with three (or four) story houses lined up along the streets. Christmas lights twinkle against the night, dangling off the roofs of rich-people houses. White picket line gates connect each home, looking as if they were just placed there this day. The sidewalk is devoid of any cracks, as if just recently paved. The street is a medium gray with perfectly aligned yellow dashes in the middle, though it's empty of any vehicles driving upon it at the moment.
The house we’re in front of is decorated with simple, colored lights. There is a garden leading from the end of the driveway, to the front-porch step. Aiden stares at it with a gaze of nostalgia.
“Is this your house?” I ask him.
My voice breaks through his bubble of memories, and he turns his brilliantly gray eyes on me. Every single light in this neighborhood pales in comparison when it comes to Aiden Ryder’s eyes.
“No, it’s Travis’s. I’m pretty sure he’s in there now. I sent him a text.”
“For what?”
“So he can hang onto the bike until we go home,” he explains, checking his phone.
“So this is where Travis lives?” I repeat, stunned. The house is colored with pale red bricks, and dark wooden double doors with stained glass stare at me from the front porch. The driveway is a long pathway, the pavement matching the color of the house. The lawn is trimmed down to the point of bounciness, a flawless shade of green, even in the dark of midnight.
I can imagine Aiden growing up in a place like this. He has the confidence of a child from a rich family, the posture of pride, a constant, defiant sticking-out of his chin. He’s like a real-life Draco Malfoy. Except, you know, he's not a complete douche-head. Though if he tries hard enough, he definitely can be one.
Travis? No, he seems to be more of a down-to-Earth man. Almost as if he grew up in a ranch in Oklahoma, riding horses. He has that southern-boy smile and charm; it’s really hard to believe that he grew up in a three-story house.
But how else could Aiden and Travis have become best friends? They obviously have known each other since birth, or something close to that. Which is probably why Travis had refused to give up on him, no matter how bad Aiden had got. If Travis had really spent his time on a ranch in Oklahoma, which I doubt, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be the best of pals. If anything, they might have hated each other.
“Weird, isn’t it? How he’s still living here and I’m not,” he notices, gazing at the house with a faint expression of sadness.
I open my mouth to say something, but then Aiden’s phone blares with the classic ringtone of the iPhone. Before answering it, he puts the phone on speaker-mode.
“Hey, Travis, my man!” Aiden greets.
“What do you want, Ryder? It’s literally one o'clock in the morning, you duck,” a groggy Travis replies.
“I am well aware of the time, Travis, thank you. I need a favor,” he explains, gazing up at a right-hand window on the second floor.
“The answer is ‘no’.”
“Oh, come on. You don’t even know what it is. It’s kind of a major problem,” he says with a slight smile on his face. Aiden apparently loves to get under his best friend’s skin, because he knows that Travis would never leave him. No matter what he says.
“And what is this ‘major problem’ you’re in, Aiden? And you better make it worth it, for texting me at one in the morning.”
“Again with the time. Just look out your window.”
I see the curtain of the room Aiden is looking out get yanked aside, and Travis has his Samsung Galaxy pressed against his sleepy face. He scans his frontyard and stops at Aiden in Midnight Arrow form, and me. Aiden waves and smiles happily at him. He then gestures at the stilled motor bike, then at himself; pointing at his mask and his suit, and then at me.
“Oh, well then in that case… Hell no!” Travis rejects, glowering at Aiden.
“But---”
“No, no, no. I absolutely refuse. Kimberly is sleeping three feet away from me right now, and---”
“Hold up, Trenton is with you?” Aiden checks, slyly smiling at Travis from the ground. “You two going at it?”
“You know, for someone who desperately needs my help, you sure are acting like a prick.”
“Give me the phone, you moron. You and your lack of people skills,” I accuse, my hand out, as if expecting a tip.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I have great people skills,” Aiden disagrees.
“Yeah, when you want to get in their pants.”
“Give Addie the phone, because I can’t deal with you right now, Aiden. If you want my help, let her talk me into it.”
“She can be pretty convincing,” he allows, handing me his black iPhone.
“Okay, so, hi,” I say, smiling at Travis. He slightly waves back as a response. “We really do need your help, Travis. Aiden can climb up to your window, he won’t even get into your room.”
“Um, I did not agree to this,” Aiden protests.
“Shut up,” I hiss, swatting at him.
“I’m listening.”
“Do you know about motorcycles?”
“Interesting question.”
“Just answer the interesting question.”
A pause.
“I’m pretty well-informed, yes.”
“And by ‘well-informed’, he means that he’s practically obsessed,” Aiden substitutes, leaning against the bumper of one of the cars in the driveway.
“You see this baby?” I ask Travis, ignoring Aiden’s comment. I stroll up to the sleek black bike, gesturing at it in a praising manner.
Travis says nothing, but from my place I can see that he purses his lips.
“What about it?”
“All your’s, but you and Aiden might have to make a few adjustments to it. I mean unless you like having big sweaty biker guys come after you.”
“Addie, um hello? We can’t give him the bike, how are we gonna get back home?” Aiden disrupts in an appalled voice.
“We’ll figure something out, what are you gonna use the bike for after tonight? Do you really need it, what with your Porsche?” I chide, covering the mouthpiece of the phone.
He shrugs, defeated.
“Keep talking.”
I smile evilly, knowing that I had Travis hook-line and sinker. “And I’ll throw in a few fired-up compliments about you to Kimberly,” I add, knowing that boys preferred to be liked by their girlfriend’s best friend.
“Come around the side of the house, and I’ll throw down something for the idiot to wear. Last time he used that God-damn grappling hook of his, it left huge gashes along the windowsill. And I got blamed for it. ”
“Okay Travis, we’ll meet you there.” I press ‘end call’ and give the phone back to Aiden, who has a curious look on his face.
“Well?” he asks.
“He says for us to come around the side of the house, and that he’ll throw something down for you to wear,” I explain. “Had you still been talking to him, I’m pretty sure you two would be having a screaming match by now. You’re welcome.”
“Whatever, I could have had him,” he argues, pocketing his electronic.
“Yeah, because making sexual comments about someone’s girlfriend is sure going to get you on their good side.”
“I wasn’t making sexual comments. I was making an observation,” he debates stubbornly with a rebellious frown.
“Yeah well, call it whatever you like, but it pissed him off.”
“You---”
“Travis is waiting for you, and I’m freezing. Could we please hurry this along?” I scold, wrapping my arms around myself.
“Ugh, come here, you big baby,” he scoffs, pulling me into his side. His trapped body warmth beneath his suit warms me comfortably, and I snuggle into his embrace.
Aiden stalks toward the white picket line fence and pushes it open, like he’s already done this countless times before. We make our way over to a tiny window that’s on the side of the house, almost as if Aiden knows exactly where Travis wants him to be.
“Took you guys long enough, I feel like--- AIDEN, PUT THAT THING AWAY!” Travis orders from the small circular window that he’s now opened. Aiden accidentally drops his grappling hook, looking like a yelled-at toddler.
“But how am I---”
“Just put these on, dumbass. I don’t think it’s necessary for you to climb into the house,” Travis answers his unfinished question.
Suddenly, a pair of dark blue sweats and a 2011’s Brooklyn Tech. High Soccer Team T-shirt sails down from Travis’s window, and the shirt lands on Aiden’s head. I catch the pants.
“Ah, so your parents has still banned me from your house?” he muses, taking the soccer shirt off of his head. He gathers the sweats from my offering hand.
“Technically, I’m talking to myself, so shh,” Travis says with a smirk and a mischievous finger to his lips.
“When are your parents ever going to get over it?” Aiden snaps, trudging toward the backyard to change his clothes.
“When you get my dad a new company car, and fix that priceless vase that was passed down for, like, a hundred years. Oh, and get rid of your jizz stain on my parents' priceless sheets, you sick bastard,” he responds in a bored voice.
A rueful Aiden calls from the backyard.
“That party was awesome.”
“That party was a disaster, and got me grounded until the next millennia.”
“You’re worse than Addie when it comes to being high-strung, Adams.”
“There’s a...a stain?” I ask, mortified.
Travis beams at me, as if I’m much more tolerable than Aiden is.
“Yes. Out of all the things Aiden’s done, I’d say my parents were the angriest about that stain.”
“They can’t handle a joke, that’s why,” Aiden concludes, stepping around the corner of the house, his mask gone, revealing the full extent of Aiden’s eyes. He smiles at me as he rounds the corner, as if he was looking forward to seeing me when he was out putting on clothes.
“You wanna explain to me how that’s a joke?” Travis snaps, throwing a shampoo bottle at Aiden. He maneuvers out of its Pathway of Death with ease. The Herble Essence bottle plops onto the ground with a low ‘thump’. So Travis is in his bathroom.
“I don’t know, the sex was,” Aiden retorts with a nonchalant shrug.
I respond to his comment with an abrupt smack to Aiden’s chest, my mouth agape.
“Ha, ha, ha. Learn to keep that thing in your pants,” Travis orders, showcasing his middle-finger.
“Charming,” Aiden comments, bringing up two of his own.
“You guys have no public manners,” I complain, watching the two stick their middle finger(s) to the world.
“And tell my why we need public manners when it’s one o'clock in the morning,” Aiden requests with a sugary-sweet smile.
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” I bark, crossing my arms.
“Fuck doing the right thing. And come on, I think you’ve been following the rules for way too long,” he says.
“Yeah, speaking of that, why are you with this moron anyway, Addie?” Travis inquires.
I open my mouth to answer, but Aiden beats me to it.
“Daddy’s Little Girl decided that she wanted to be Aiden’s Little Girl for the night,” he muses with a cocky grin.
“Yeah, keep dreaming, Ryder,” Travis scoffs, rolling his eyes, “she’s way out of your league.”
"Ha. No one's out of my league."
"I can think of a few."
Ignoring their bickering about who’s out of Aiden’s league and who isn’t, I can’t help but genuinely smile for Travis’s gentleman-like behavior. Had Aiden not had the influence of Travis Adams, I honestly have no idea where he would be right now. Certainly not living in a comfortable, above-middle class apartment in New York.
“I asked Addie, not you,” Travis points out in an exasperated voice as I come back to reality.
“Oh, um. Aiden is really convincing.”
Travis raises one of his eyebrows in a “that is total bullshit” way.
The thing is, I just didn’t want to talk about my fight that I had with my parents. Because the more I think about it, the guiltier I start to feel. Maybe I shouldn’t have left with a wanted thief; my parents probably think they’re never gonna see him again. And they probably think Midnight Arrow is not only a weird robber who likes to use arrows, but a psychopathic kidnapper as well. Whatever the right choice was, I obviously didn’t choose it. I was incredibly selfish.
Aiden shoots him a look that oozes “don’t press further”, and Travis does exactly that.
“Well, you wanna tell me where that super sexy motorcycle is?” He laughs charmingly, thankfully straying off topic.
“It’s in the frontyard, you can get it now, if you like,” I say.
“Uh, hell yeah I’m getting it now. I can hide it in the basement for now, then I can figure something else out. You two go ahead, I think I hear Kim waking up. I’ll get it soon,” he promises, tuning into the room next to him.
“Are you sure, Travis? We can help you get it to the basement,” Aiden offers in a surprisingly generous way.
“Nah, you two go ahead. I’ve seen enough of you, Ryder.”
Aiden does a gesture that looks as if he’s tipping off his hat to a fellow gentleman. He then loops his arm with mine and drags me off.
“Bye, Travis! I had fun!” I call, waving at him.
He grins at me from his bathroom window. “It was great seeing you, Addie. Don’t let him influence you into sex!” he parents.
I laugh, and continue to be dragged off by Aiden.
“Don’t listen to him, I’m pretty sure he took a dose of SHUT-THE-FUCK-UP!” he yells, directing his made-up drug toward Travis, who said goodbye with a single middle finger. Then he closes his bathroom window, leaving us alone.
“So, onto your sister?” I check.
“You know it. I haven’t seen the little squirt in a while, I kinda miss her,” he sighs, an endearing flush forming on his cheeks because of the cold.
“Okay, let’s go. I kinda wanna meet this girl anyway,” I urge.
Aiden smiles a most dazzling smile, as if I’ve just said something that really touched his heart.
“Let us be gone, milady,” he pushes.
“Wait, where did you put your Midnight Arrow suit?”
“That is for me to uphold the knowledge of, and for you to---”
“You’ve been reading too much Shakespeare.”
“Maybe. But only because I’m really nervous around you, and all I want to do is this.”
He envelopes my lips with his, causing a swarm of butterflies to take flight in my stomach. It isn’t a hungry, teasing kiss, or a fluttering, barely-there kiss. It’s soft and sweet, and unlike the other two we’ve shared, you can tell that there’s something between us. A sort of tenderness, as if he’s afraid he might break me, which I doubt he’s treated other girls like.
Our lips roll together in perfect timing, no fight for dominance. Just a kiss. His lips are slightly cold from the weather, and his breath has the faintest scent of cinnamon bread. I seriously hope my long-lasting toothpaste didn’t fail me now.
Our breaths mix together, and I suddenly forget about the temperature. All I can remember is right now, and it’s hard to believe that I’ve ever felt cold before this moment. The crisp, end-of-November air causes our breaths to fog around us, creating a misty curtain. I can feel the welcoming Christmas lights gleam all around us, which must have made this kiss look like the cover of a cheesy romance novel, or something like that. I tilt my head so that I can get the full impact of Aiden’s lips, and I feel my hanging from my head in dark brown waves.
We pull apart at the same time, and the flush across his cheekbones is obviously no longer from the air. His eyes shy away from mine as I stare at him, which is strange since he’s usually so confident.
“We should go,” he rushes.
I didn’t expect him to clasp my hand, but when he does, I don’t pull away. He then leads me up the street toward the most lavish-looking house in this neighborhood. I lean into him, my cheeks stinging from the wind, and hurting inwardly because of my inability to stop smiling.
The four-story house he stops in front of has almost blinding Christmas lights strung around the roof and fake Christmas trees peppering the yard. The front porch has a black gate in front of the actual door, and the driveway is made of gravel instead of regular pavement. Aiden kicks aside one of the rocks with annoyance, as if he imagined someone’s face on it. A miniature pong from the front porch steps casts a haunting blue-ish glow against the pale tan bricks of the house.
“So, this is your childhood?” I ask, soaking in the house that deserves to be on the cover of a magazine.
“I don’t like to talk about it, but yes.”
I whistle, taking in every detail.
“So, what? Do we just wait out here for your sister?” I’m painfully aware of Aiden’s hand still wrapped around mine.
“No. We set up our own little code. Come one,” he says excitedly. I follow obediently as he leads me to the gate of his backyard. We round the corner of his house, standing directly below a bedroom window. The pool in the backyard is eerily still, the diving board looking as though it’s never been used. The hot tub is bubble-less, and the small waterfall is devoid of any falling droplets.
Aiden releases my hand, which makes me feel more upset than it should, and he picks up a small pebble from the rose garden that we’re ahead of. He throws it at the window, and for a second I was afraid that it would crack because of the impact. Thankfully, it bounces off, but creates a clear sound that should have woken anyone in that room.
He cups his hands around his mouth and does the Hunger Games’s whistle, the four-note whistle that everyone seems to know how to do nowadays. (Everyone except for me). It’s really hard to believe that a creature didn’t make that sound, so no wonder his parents or curious neighbors didn’t wander into the backyard, grumbling about stupid eighteen-year-olds making stupid Rue Whistles.
“She loves the books,” he tells me, turning his face to meet my eyes.
About five seconds later, the bedroom light flickers on, and an incredibly blue-eyes face peaks from behind her curtains. She scans her backyard and stops on Aiden and I, her mouth splitting into an ecstatic grin.
“Aiden!” she mouths.
He waves at her.
She seems to jump up and down for a split second before running away from her window.
“She’s going down the stairs. Could take a while,” he enlightens, seeing my confused face. “But in the meantime…” He pulls me nearer to his face, his lips looming ever-so-closer. Just as they’re about to touch, Anna bursts through the double doors of the backyard, carrying a tan cat in her arms. That didn't take a very long while at all.
“Aiden!” she greets happily. The cat seems incredibly bored as she barrels into Aiden’s already-opened arms. I step aside to let them share their brother-sister moment.
Anna giggles into Aiden’s chest, crushing the poor cat.
“I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you so much! I have so much to tell you, and who’s this?” she shoots, gazing at me curiously.
There’s the slightest moment of hesitation between Aiden and I. What was I to Aiden? A friend? A friend with benefits? A...a somethig else?
“My girlfriend,” he answers in a determined voice.
“Like, your friend that’s a girl, or your girlfriend?" she asks, wiggling her eyebrows sneakily.
“My girlfriend,” he laughs, poking her in the stomach.
She snickers and pushes his hand away, and then inspects me.
“She’s pretty,” Anna decides, after studying my features.
“I agree,” Aiden says, smiling at me.
************************************************************************************************************
A/N: Aw, aw, AWWW. So they're officially boyfriend and girlfriend now. You're welcome.
I'm sorry for not updating for the past seventy years, I got off track with school and such. But I'm back, baby!
Thank you so much for sticking with this story. I love you all to death.
Dedicated to Beautifullytragic919 because she was the final push to UPDATE THIS SHIZ. Plus, she read this in under, like, three days. I'm not sure how that's possible.
I really enjoyed writing the banter between Travis and Aiden, I almost did it between Aiden and Kimberly, but then I didn't because a.) She doesn't know that Aiden is Midnight Arrow, and b.) I really wanted to accentuate Travis's character.
Favorite line (Aiden, Travis, Addie) in this chapter? What made you laugh? What about the kiss? :) :* HUGS AND KISSES TO EVERYONE!
(Also, what do you all think about Anna?)
On the side, there's a song that really reminds me of Aiden/Addie. You know what you should do? You should listen to it.