What It Is (8 page)

“Oh good! No one stole the money; I was freaking out about that the entire drive down here. Did you get in OK? Did you eat dinner?”

I couldn’t answer Aron’s tirade of questions fast enough. “Aron,” I interrupted, “I’m fine and thank you so much for letting me stay. I promise it won’t be for long.”

“Sarah,” Aron responded, “I’m not putting you out on the street. You take all the time you need.” Hearing those words come out of Aron’s mouth meant the world to me; it meant that I could focus on me and my future with no strings attached to anything or anyone. “Have a good night, honey, and I’ll be back Monday night and we can talk more then.”

I spent the next few days living for myself for the first time in my life. I went to the local community college and enrolled in a business program; I went to the library to create my first resume and walked right into the human resources departments of the largest corporations in town to personally introduce myself; I went where I wanted when I wanted and didn’t worry about answering to anyone. Aron made it a point to call and check in on me every night, and I found myself looking more and more forward to hearing his voice every evening before I went to sleep.

Aron came home on Monday evening as promised and we spent the entire night talking about what I had done while he was gone and the jobs I had applied for. Talking with Aron came so comfortably to me, and I never got the feeling that he was trying to get me into bed; all I felt from Aron was genuine concern for my well-being. We agreed that I would sleep on the pullout couch in the living room while he was there during the week, and Aron insisted that I pay none of the bills, even if I got a job right away.

“Focus on yourself, Sarah. You don’t need to worry about paying me for rent or power; trust me, I know what it’s like to wake up one day and suddenly be on your own. You don’t have to worry about me pressuring you for anything.” Aron had lifted the weight off of my shoulders.

For the next six months Aron and I lived together as friends. During the week while he was gone, I attended day classes at the local community college and continued to apply for jobs until I landed a data entry position at the largest corporation in town. Aron was home just a couple of days each week, which was wonderful for me at first, but as the weeks went on, I found myself missing him more and more, and I began to count down the days and hours until he would be home again.

When Aron was home, it was absolutely wonderful. We would spend the entire evening talking and laughing and getting to know every detail about each other. I spent hours listening to Aron describe the beautiful pieces of jewelry he made on a daily basis and became entranced by the passion he felt for his craft. I got the opportunity to spend some time with Aron and his son on the rare occasions that Aron was allowed to see him, and the love and kindness he demonstrated toward his child made my heart melt. I had never met anyone like him, and being around him made me feel so alive and secure that eventually I was able to share my dark secret with him.

As Aron learned more and more about my past, he started to become extremely protective of me. The once-a-day phone calls turned into morning, noon, and night calls. He starting calling me at work just to say “hi” and would send me flowers weekly. I started to travel to whatever town he was doing a remount show in every weekend and we would go out to eat and go to dance clubs together; but at the end of the night, we still slept in separate beds and Aron never once expected anything out of me but my friendship.

Aron expected friendship and I, on the other hand, had fallen head over heels in love. The more time I spent with him the more I wanted him for myself and the more I wanted to spend my life with him. I didn’t know if he had girlfriends on the road, but since I had been traveling with him, it had just been me with him in the hotel room at night and
I
was the one he had his eyes on in the clubs. I got the opportunity to see him as a father and appreciate him for the wonderful parent he was and feel the passion he had for his career. He was everything I had ever wanted and I had to tell Aron how I felt. It was a chance, but one I was willing to take. If he said he felt the same way it would be absolutely wonderful; but if he didn’t feel the same way I did, then it is what it is. I had a job, I was still taking classes at college at night, and I could feasibly afford to have my own place and live on my own. So a rejection from Aron, although it would hurt me deeply, would not be the end of the world.

 I chose to tell Aron how I felt over a plate of nachos at a local Mexican restaurant. My palms were sweating and I had a hard time keeping eye contact with Aron, which immediately put him on alert.

“Sarah, what’s wrong with you? Look at me!”

I forced myself to lock eyes with him and I simply said, “I love you.” I didn’t think I needed to say more than that; I figured that he knew me well enough to know how difficult that was for me to say, and I was right. He got up from the opposite side of the booth and ran around to squeeze in next to me and he held me tight.

“God, I’ve wanted to say that for so long!” He buried his face in my hair. “I didn’t want to come off as some pervert or push you into something you didn’t want.” He lifted his face up and looked at me. “Sarah, I wanted you from the first moment I saw you in my apartment parking lot.” He stroked the side of my face. “You are so beautiful and I wanted to know you and know everything about you. Once I got to know you and saw you were just as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside, I knew I couldn’t let you go.”

Aron got back up and walked back around to his side of the table and sat down. I reached out and grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly. “The circumstances as to how we met are so absurd, Aron…” My voice trailed off and I couldn’t find the words to express my feelings to him.

“All I want to do is hold you and protect you, Sarah. You tell me these horrible things your mother did to you and all I can think of is my mom and how she would just die if she knew what happened to you. What you went through is not normal and it wasn’t right and as long as I’m here, no one will ever hurt you like that again.” Aron squeezed my hand back and said the words I had been dying to hear. “I love you too.”

***

I opened my eyes and lifted my head off of Aron’s shoulder. I thought of my desperate pleas to God as a little child for Him to swoop out of Heaven and take me away from Mom forever, and as I looked at Aron and the way that the sunlight was hitting him at that moment, his image made me realize that God did send an angel to save me, and he was standing right in front of me. My pleas to Him may have seem unanswered at the time, but maybe I had to go through everything I did so I could be with this wonderful man at this very moment.

“Let’s go home,” I said, and we began our trek back home to apartment sixteen.

Things in my life couldn’t have been better. Aron and I were approaching our fourth year together, I was quickly proving my office skills to my bosses, rapidly moving up the corporate ladder in the accounts payable department, and I was just a little over six months away from finishing my bachelor’s degree. We still lived in apartment sixteen, and it wasn’t too long after Aron and I had expressed our feelings for each other that Aron worked out a deal with his company to go off of the road and become a full-time, in-town corporate jeweler.

Once Aron got off of the road and was able to be home every night of the week, we contacted a free legal aid department, went to court on our own, and obtained the right to have twice-a-week visitation with Aron’s three-year-old son, Ryan. Ryan was a joy to be around, and the times the three of us spent together were absolutely wonderful, but I was very careful to portray myself as a babysitter or someone “fun” to Ryan. I was not ready or comfortable to assume any sort of parenting role at that point in my life.

Emily moved out of Richard’s house and married a young man she had graduated high school with. She moved with him to North Carolina when he joined the military. It wasn’t long after she moved that the daily phone calls to me began. She was lonely and isolated without any family or a friend to take care of her while her husband was away for days or weeks at a time. As I sat and listened to her, I was reminded of how I’d felt at the farmhouse with Matt, and just as I was about to open my mouth to give her some sisterly advice, I would hear a beep.

“Oh, it’s Mom. I’ve got to go,” Emily would say before she hung up.

Knowing Mom was just on the other end of the phone made me sick on the inside.
You aren’t alone, and you have no idea what it is like to be alone!
I would think angrily. I was extremely jealous of the mother-daughter bond they continued to have, and I found myself often skipping meals after phone calls with my sister in an attempt to cope with the empty feeling I had in my heart. Emily eventually divorced her husband and chose to move into Mom’s new house where Mom and her new husband lived. Once Emily moved back in with Mom, the phone calls abruptly stopped and I was again the black sheep of the family.

But the emptiness that I felt in my heart because of my family was always filled by the love Aron showered me with on a daily basis. Being with Aron made me want to be a better person, and instead of falling into a depression or falling fully back into my anorexic habits after I lost touch with Emily, I strove to make him proud. I asked Aron for help in finding other ways to channel my emotions, and his response was to go out and purchase me my first pair of rollerblades.

“What did you get me these for?” I asked as I held the shiny silver pair of rollerblades up in front of me.

“If I have a bad day I know a good sweat makes me feel better, and these are cheaper than a gym membership,” Aron responded.

I was dubious at first but when I snapped those buckles down onto my feet and rollerbladed my first mile on the local bike trail, I was hooked. It was the feeling of flying through the air without my feet ever leaving the ground, and I felt euphoric by the time I reached the end of my first mile. Rollerblading made me feel happy and strong, and I soon began rollerblading miles every night after work and going on longer treks on the weekends. I started to become physically toned, and muscles began to form on my arms and legs. As I became stronger on the outside, I also started to become stronger on the inside. I started to really like the person I saw in the mirror and began to believe Aron when he told me how beautiful I was. I stopped starving myself to cope with my feelings of emptiness, instead choosing to strap on my rollerblades and sweat out my frustrations. Rollerblading was my way to maintain an emotional balance in a healthy manner.

One warm summer day, Aron and I had just finished another ten-mile rollerblading trip. We sat on the concrete curb next to the entrance of the bike trail and began to unstrap the buckles.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Let’s get a burger or something,” Aron said as he took his rollerblades off and laced up his sneakers.

“Sounds great to me!” My stomach was growling and a bacon cheeseburger would definitely hit the spot. We walked back to our car, threw our rollerblades into the trunk, and headed to a local burger joint. “Oh, we can’t go through a drive-through? I look terrible!” I pulled down the passenger-side mirror and hastily smoothed my ponytail and wiped the sweat off of my face.

“Oh God, Sarah, it’s just a burger. Besides, I think you look hot, so who cares what anyone else thinks?”

I pushed the mirror back up and smiled. “You are such a dork!” I laughed.

Aron parked the car and we got out and walked inside. The restaurant was fairly busy that day; numerous people waited in line while customers standing to the side impatiently tapped their feet and checked their watches.

“Are you sure you want to stay here?” I asked.

“Yeah, I really don’t want a drive-through burger. This is fine. We aren’t in a hurry to get anywhere.” Aron put his arm around my shoulder and kissed the top of my head. “You look fine, honey, just relax.”

Aron and I had finally weaved our way through the line, placed our order, and were standing to the side waiting for our food to come up to the window when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see a middle-aged gentleman in Dockers shorts and a green-collared shirt smiling at me.

“Do I know you?” I asked.

Aron spun around. “Can I help you?” he demanded.

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card and handed it to me. “My name is Marcus, and I know this is going to sound like a line, but I’m a modeling agent and you are someone I would be interested in representing.”

Before I had a chance to respond Aron grabbed the business card out of my hand and looked at it. “Premier Modeling in St Louis? I’ve never heard of you before. What kind of outfit are you?” Aron kept questioning Marcus but I had stopped listening.

This is a joke—a modeling agent? What the hell is he doing here and why he hell is he talking to me?

“Sarah!” Aron’s voice snapped me back into reality. “Are you listening to this?”

“Not…not really,” I answered. I looked at Marcus. “To be honest, I’m not sure why you are talking to me.”

Aron put his arm around my shoulder again and squeezed me tightly. “I tell her all of the time how beautiful she is and she never believes me!”

Marcus looked at me and smiled. “Well, you should listen to your boyfriend more often because you are absolutely gorgeous. You have my card; check out the website at the address listed on the bottom so you can get an idea of what the agency is all about and the type of clientele we have. If you like it, give me a call and we can set up a time for you to come down and shoot with us.” Marcus shook my hand and then shook Aron’s hand. “Seriously, check out the agency and I think you’ll feel OK about her giving it a shot.”

“We’ll see,” Aron said, and Marcus walked out the door. Aron spun me around and held me in his arms. “Baby, I’m so proud of you!” he whispered into my ear.

I pulled away from him. “Proud of me?” I said. “You were treating that guy like he was a porno producer or something.”