I was panting and trying not to pant at the same time, as the baritone voice on the phone seemed to steamroll my entire soul to the carpet floor. I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting from Aaron, but I hadn’t been expecting the not-too-soft but just-deep-enough voice on the other end of the line. It was just in the middle. Friendly. Deep but not too deep. A little raspy. Perfect.

It was right then that it sank in.

He’d answered. I’d called Aaron and he’d answered.

I was on the phone with Aaron.

“Rubes?” the male voice came over the phone again, still that beautiful pitch, a natural narrator, sounding… amused? What was he amused over? “You there? I hear you breathing.”

I stopped breathing. Through my mouth at least. And I swallowed even though I was fairly certain it sounded more like a gulp.

Then the man on the line chuckled, easygoing and almost sweet. “What are you doing?” he asked like he’d asked me the same question a thousand times before. Like we hadn’t been pen pals for almost a year and instead had been friends for the last ten.

This was Aaron. Aaron. The only person other than my best friend who knew I’d stepped in human crap once. And just like that… “I ran up the stairs and I’m out of breath,” I told him, holding my phone away from my mouth at the end so he couldn’t hear me panting.

His—Aaron’s— relaxed chuckle lengthened and somehow, someway, relaxed me. It reminded me of our IMs when we were messing with each other. Normal. Playful. Friendly. Like always. Like my friend. “Just from running up the stairs?” he asked, and for some reason I could picture him raising an eyebrow of a color I wasn’t sure of, like he was teasing me. Like normal.

“It’s a lot of stairs.” I didn’t even realize I’d started smiling into the phone until I laughed. This was Aaron. No big deal. “I’m so out of shape.” And there it was. What in the world was coming out of mouth? “That’s embarrassing, I’m sorry. You can probably run ten miles at a time. The only time I run is… never. I never run. I don’t want to lie to you. I’m rambling, I’m sorry. I get nervous and I ramble.”

“What are you nervous over? It’s me,” he drawled, steady and consistent, that slight Louisiana accent tinting his words just enough. It’s me, he’d told me a few times before, and each time, just like this one, shot an arrow straight into my heart that seemed to cripple every excuse I gave myself for why being more than a little in love with him was a stupid idea.

Because it was a stupid idea.

A really stupid idea.

And you would figure with my track record of stupid ideas, I would know when to get rid of them.

But I hadn’t. Knowing me, I wouldn’t because I was an idiot like that. Weak. I was so weak. That term “wearing your heart on your sleeve” had been written with me in mind.

Oblivious to the fact he’d taken an imaginary baseball bat to my kneecaps with his tone and his words, he kept going in that smooth voice that I would listen to read the dictionary. “You sound…” He made a noise of hesitation.

“Like an idiot?” came out of my mouth before I could stop it.

Aaron laughed that time, clear and loud, sweeping my legs out from under me one more time, because it wasn’t like he could be awkward and graceless and unlikeable and laugh like a donkey. That would just be too easy. And fair. This was the guy who’d had two dozen crazy girlfriends for a reason. It all suddenly made sense. “No. Your voice is different than I thought it’d be.”

Taking another deep breath to try and not sound like I was as out of shape cardio-wise as I was, I finally took a step away from my door, ignoring the clothes hanging off two chairs and the pile of dirty clothes that was way too close to the pile of clean clothes I’d pulled out of the dryer and dumped on the floor three days ago. This is Aaron, I reminded myself. I could do this. “What do you mean?” I asked him, sounding more like myself than I would’ve expected while on the verge of flipping the heck out.

It wasn’t my imagination he made another hesitating noise.

I got this sinking feeling…. “What? Did you think I was going to sound like Minnie Mouse?”

His “Uh” didn’t even take a second. I burst out laughing, forgetting I was out of breath and that I’d been nervous all of ten seconds ago.

“You did?”

He started chuckling, like he was trying his best not to and failing. “I don’t know! I thought you were going to sound younger, not—”

“You’re wounding me, Aaron. You’re wounding my pride here.” I snorted into my cell as I plopped down on the edge of my messy full-sized bed, feeling too at ease.

It was his turn to laugh again, louder than his chuckle, the sound fuller and from the belly. “You don’t sound like you’re twenty-four,” he tried to argue, his words getting broken up by his steady laugh.

“That’s not what you mean. You thought I was going to sound like a fifteen-year-old cheerleader from the Valley or something. Didn’t you?” There was no response, just a hint of a sound that was suspiciously distant… like he was laughing with his face away from the receiver… That was it, wasn’t it? “I cannot believe you.”

“I’m sorry!” he tried to say, but he started laughing harder, that time directly into the phone, the sound making me smile so wide, I was glad no one was around to see it, otherwise they’d ask questions I didn’t want to answer.