7. Aaron Black

Chapter 7: Aaron Black

Kelsey's POV

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"Aaron, what are you doing here?" I asked him, as he and I walked towards the sea.

I wanted to take our conversation away from the others. They were having fun, and I didn't want them to think that I ruined it all because of some non-existent drama.I was shocked, and most certainly surprised, but I did not want to make a scene.

"My parents decided to come here for summer vacation, we arrived yesterday."

I couldn't understand why he had arrived back in town and not even bothered to contact me. He hadn't even bothered to contact me while he first went away for that matter. We may have been broken up, but he was quite an important part of my life and I felt hurt that he didn't even think about talking to me again.

"Why didn't you call?" I asked, fretting the answer.

"I thought that if I called you wouldn't answer," he explained.

Upon hearing those words, my first instinct was to laugh. It was preposterous to think that the reason he did not call me was because he was afraid I wouldn't answer. The laughing feeling soon faded however when I saw the look he gave me, a look that showed that he was being honest to me.

Even if so, would he have truly blamed me if I wouldn't have answered?

"Kelsey who is he?" Noah asked me, making me turn around to find all of them looking at me with curiosity.

So much for finding a quiet space to talk.

"He's Aaron, he's Kelsey's ex-boyfriend," Ethan said, making everyone turn to look at him in surprise, including myself.

I knew that Ethan and Aaron were on the same basketball team together, I just never knew that Ethan was ever aware about my relationship with Aaron, or that he would even remember about it.

He never seemed to care about anything that went on around school, especially not who broke up with who.

"Why did you break up?" Lara asked, looking between Aaron and I, interest and curiosity written all over her face.

If any of them were holding popcorn in that moment, they would certainly have been munching on it like crazy, waiting to see what the next thing to unfold would be.

There was an awkward pause for a couple of seconds, before Ethan decided to break it, clearing his throat and looking sternly at his sister. "Lara, I think you should go apply some sunblock."

"But I just put on sunblock," Lara said, staring at him in confusion, clearly oblivious as to why her brother had told her to do so.

"Well, go put on some more," he said, before looking at me and giving me a sympathetic smile.

I smiled at him, giving him a grateful nod. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to ease the tension, and try to avert the conversation so I wouldn't have to tell everyone why Aaron and I broke up.

No matter how sweet I thought it was, however, I didn't really mind talking about our break up anymore.

I was never one to hold a grudge for years on end. Things fade by time, and that was exactly what happened to the pent up anger I had towards him. Seeing him there in front of me was a shock, but it was not enough to revive that fire.

"We broke up because Aaron was moving away and we thought it would be best for us to just stay friends. It would have been hard for us to keep seeing each other," I said, shifting my gaze to the ground.

"Yeah, and he never bothered to even call or text her. Not even send a lousy email," Meg said, glaring at Aaron, clearly sounding mad.

Meg was always that kind of friend that would always protect you, no matter what. She was also the kind of person who did not forgive so easily when someone hurts her or one of her friends, even if the person that got hurt would have somehow managed to.

Looking at Aaron and trying not to feel embarrassed about what Meg said, I instantly noticed that he was staring at Meg in surprise, his eyes widened and his lips parted slightly.

"I'm sorry about that Kelsey but you never bothered to call either," he said, his voice gentle as he turned to look at me as soon as he noticed me staring at him.

I froze slightly, unable to believe what he was insinuating. It was true that I never called him, but that was only because I thought that he didn't want to talk to me. He was the one who promised he'd call as soon as he landed, not the other way round.

And yet he never did.

"It's whatever," I said, pretending that I wasn't even that affected by it, right before giving Meg a look that told her to drop it.

I loved having a best friend who would always be there too look out for me, but I had managed to move on from the entire thing, and I did not want to relive the past.

"Well I'm sorry Ron or whatever your name is, but we were all heading to the water, Lara and Ellie are really excited to swim and we wouldn't want to keep them waiting," Noah said, trying to get us all out of the awkward conversation that was about to pursue.

"Can't you take care of them Ethan? There's some things I really want to tell Kelsey," Aaron said, giving Ethan a pleading look.

I shook my head in disbelief. He was talking to Ethan as if they were best friends and he had all the right in the world to ask such a thing of him. I almost scoffed at the thought, noticing how rude it was for him to even say something like that.

"I don't want Ethan, I want Kelsey," Ellie said, grabbing my hand and looking at me with the biggest puppy dog eyes ever. "Ethan never teaches me how to swim anyways."

"Yeah, I want Kelsey too" Lara said, grabbing my other hand, looking at me with one of her angelic smiles that always found a way to melt my heart.

"Well I guess the kids have spoken," Ethan said with an amused smile on his face, clearly enjoying what was happening.

I kept feeling as if everyone was trying to protect me from having a conversation with Aaron, but in all honesty, I knew how to protect myself. I needed to know why Aaron left and never even thought about giving me a sign that he was still alive and kicking.

I also did not feel great about people thinking that I needed them to protect me. Sometimes, there were things which I needed to handle on my own, and that was one of those moments.

"You can come with us if you want?" I told Aaron, trying to be polite.

I knew that it was not what the rest wanted, but I really hated being rude to people, and it always made me feel guilty afterwards. Besides, all he wanted to do was talk to me for a little while, and I honestly did not see a problem in that. We had both grown up and matured enough to speak without any hard feelings.

Or so I hoped.

"It's okay Kelsey, your boyfriend doesn't seem too happy with me tagging along anyways, I'll just go back to my parents," he replied, giving me a small, sad smile and turning around, ready to walk off.

I looked at Ethan, who was practically trying to shoot daggers at the back of Aaron's head. I could not understand why he was acting that way, him and Aaron had never had any type of bad blood with each other, in fact they were known for being the two people who worked together the most on the team.

"He's not my boyfriend," I said, wanting to clarify.

It was enough that there was a lot of tension in the air because of Aaron, I did not want Aaron's words to cause any tension between Ethan and I, or with Ethan and his siblings.

Aaron turned around and raised an eyebrow at me, staring between me and Ethan.

I looked at Ethan, wanting him to give me a sign of what we actually were. Last time we talked about it, we were still trying to work on becoming friends, but I also knew that we had gotten a long way since then.

"We're friends, and I'm currently babysitting his siblings."

"Oh, okay," Aaron said, smiling at me. "But I still think that I should go, they're waiting for me so that we could go grab some ice cream together."

I smiled back at him and nodded in understanding. I was relieved that he knew that I had no resentment towards him, and that if he ever wanted to talk about what had actually went down between us, I was willing to listen. It didn't mean that I would have forgiven him so easily, and most definitely not that I would forget, but I would at least try to understand his reasons.

"Kels, where's Ethan?" Meg asked, tapping me on the shoulder.

I looked around, my eyebrows raising in confusion at the fact that I had just seen him only moments prior. After looking around for a while, however, I confirmed that he was in fact nowhere in sight.

"He ditched us again?" Lara said, sounding hurt.

Honestly, I was hurt too. The day at the beach was supposed to be a fun day where we could all enjoy each other's company, and instead, all because of my telenovela of a life, I had probably lead Ethan to ditch, even if I could not understand why he had acted that way.

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