“I’m glad too.” Sliding my foot off his, I didn’t stop smiling. “I’m sorry for freaking out yesterday and then being so hot and cold.”

“I told you. Don’t apologize. It was fine.”

Clasping my hands on my lap in front of me, I shrugged. “It could’ve been better. I feel bad not talking to your friends more. I don’t want them to think I’m stuck-up or anything.”

It was the tightening at his jaw that told me he didn’t like something about what I’d said. “Somebody thought you were stuck-up before?”

“Once or twice, but I’m just quiet until I feel comfortable around complete strangers, you know? That’s all.”

His eyes bounced from one of mine to the next, his features still taut, and I could tell he was processing my words before he slowly let out a breath. His words were low again, understanding, so freaking Aaron. “I know, Ru. You’re not. They won’t think you’re stuck-up.”

“I hope not.”

His smile was so soft I genuinely felt like it didn’t matter what they thought as long as he liked me. But I couldn’t think like that. “Don’t worry.” He gestured toward the rolling waves lapping close to our feet. “Look, it’s about to come up any second now. Watch.”

We sat there on the edge of the water, with his foot directly beside mine, that long upper body lined with lean muscles within touching distance if I really stretched to the side, and we watched the sun rise directly in front of us. Blue, purple, lavender, orange, red, and so, so yellow in a few places it made my heart hurt. I’d been a lot of places, but watching the sun rise that morning—because I’d never been awake early enough to watch it before—was something I couldn’t forget. It felt like an awakening. Like nothing I had ever seen and everything I had, all rolled into one single, unforgettable event.

And when Aaron asked, “It’s beautiful, huh?” I told him the one and only truth I had.

“It’s really beautiful.” And then I told him the second truth in my long list of things I couldn’t deny. “I’m going to owe you forever for inviting me and showing this to me.”

He didn’t say another word and neither did I as the sun kept creeping upward, unrushed. I know at one point I held my breath at the same time the sound of two new voices from somewhere behind us broke the silence. I didn’t look back, all I did was keep my eyes forward and swallow the rays entirely.

“I think I want to wake up every day and watch this,” I whispered to him, pulling my knees into my chest so I could settle my chin on top of them. “It would be worth waking up early for.”

And all Aaron said, in his low, soft-spoken voice that he’d been using on me since yesterday, with something in the notes I couldn’t classify that sounded almost like hope, if hope had a sound and if a promise could be made without vocalizing it, was, “Any morning you want, Rube. I’ll watch it with you.”

“So, Ruby… I have an important question to ask you.”

Scrunched into the middle in the back of Aaron’s double cab pickup truck, I slipped my hands between my thighs and accepted that I’d gotten off easy on the way to the grocery store. I’d helped Aaron make a list that mainly consisted of salt and vinegar chips, Fritos, macaroni and cheese, and frozen pizzas while we’d waited around in the kitchen for everyone to wake up. Aaron, Des, Max’s sister whose name I learned was Mindy, and Brittany, Des’s girlfriend, and I had all climbed into the truck at exactly 10:05 a.m. Aaron had invited me to take the front seat, but I had waved him off because obviously Des’s legs were longer than mine. Then, noticing that Brittany was five inches taller than me and that Mindy had a broken arm that probably shouldn’t get jostled around, I’d offered to take the seat on the bench in the middle.

Mindy and Brittany had both been busy on their phones before we’d even gotten into the car and had stayed on them the entire trip to the grocery store. I’d only caught bits and pieces of each of their conversations over the music that Des had started playing in the truck, but I knew Brittany was on the phone with someone she worked with and Mindy was arguing with who I’m pretty sure was the other girl who had been in the accident with her because they’d been talking about pain medication and how it was affecting them differently.

Not that I was paying that close attention. I’d already texted my mom to let her know I was alive and kicking; there was no one else for me to message.

Half an hour later, with the groceries in the bed of the truck, we’d all climbed back in, no one on their phone. So I wasn’t surprised when Mindy finally spoke up.

“Okay,” I told her, taking in her light brown hair and a face whose youth and angles reminded me of Jasmine… if my little sister didn’t have the crazy person glint in her eye.

The younger, very pretty girl had her broken arm propped against the car door. Her expression was serious. “Where did you get those tights from?”

Tights?

“The ones you had on yesterday with the cats on them. Where’d you get them?” she asked, like she’d read my mind.

I blinked, taking a second to process what she was saying. “Oh. Online. There’s a store that I order things from that’s cheap. I’ll write down the link for you if you want,” I answered her, only sounding a little awkward.