What It Is (5 page)

Justin wasn’t lying; I opened his glove box and what seemed like hundreds of brochures came spilling out onto the car floor. We talked excitedly for the next hour as Justin filled me in on his plans and helped me figure out what options were available for me. Justin was joining the US Navy to try to become a navy pilot. He had been in an organization called the Civil Air Patrol as a teenager and had fallen in love with aviation and flying. The more I read the brochures and the more I heard Justin’s excitement, the more excited I became about which branch I would join and how I would discover my passion in life.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked. “Do I just go to this office with you and sign up today or what?” It was time to figure out where I would be sleeping tonight and if I would be getting fed. “No, tonight we crash with my buddy Aron and then you’ll come to the recruiting office with me in the morning,” he said.

“Who’s Aron?” I asked with a feeling of dread in my stomach.
I hate meeting new people!

“Aron is one of my sister’s college buddies, and he’s a pretty cool guy. He lives in an apartment right downtown, and I haven’t seen him in ages so it’s pretty cool that it all worked out like this with my military paperwork.”

“Does he know I’m coming?” I asked. “I don’t want to impose.”

“No, no, no!” Justin exclaimed. “You won’t impose! After I talked to you last night, I called him and explained the situation. Trust me; he doesn’t have a problem with us crashing in his living room for a night.” The feeling of dread in my stomach started to dissipate and I began to get excited about our trip to the recruiting office the next day.

 Justin and I spent the rest of our trip doing Cheech and Chong impressions and making fun of our former classmates; by the end of the trip we were both laughing so hard that tears were pouring out of my eyes and Justin had almost gone off of the road at least three times. I was wiping tears out of my eyes for what seemed like the sixth time when Justin said, “Hey look, we’re here!”

As my eyes started to dry out and come back into focus and I saw we were in the parking lot of a small, white apartment complex. Justin laughed and honked his horn. “There he is!” he exclaimed, pointing to the second level balcony of the apartment building.

I wiped my eyes again and looked up at a young man leaning over the balcony, waving frantically with one hand and holding a six-pack of beer in his other. Justin rolled down his window and yelled, “Come on down here, jackass!” He looked at me and grinned. “You are going to love him!” he said.

I didn’t even have time to answer Justin before I nearly fell out of the passenger-side door. Aron was already down the stairs and in the parking lot and had opened my door to let me out. I was a bit taken aback by this gentlemanly act. I stepped out of the car and said, “Thanks,” rather sheepishly as I forced myself to make my eyes meet his.

As a child, I had seen many movies where a beautiful, young actress sees a man across the room and they lock eyes and immediately know that they are soul mates and should be together forever. I didn’t see Aron from across the room, but the moment we locked eyes, I felt a pang in my heart and an almost immediate longing in my soul for his love and acceptance.
God, I’m stupid!
I immediately thought.
I just left Matt less than four hours ago and I’m standing here feeling emotional about a man I just met?
I shifted my eyes downward in embarrassment and shuffled my feet around nervously.

“So, Justin, are all the girls from your town this beautiful or is it just her?” Aron asked as he crossed around the back of the car to give Justin a slap on the back and a cold beer.

“Just her!” Justin said gleefully as he popped open the top of his beer and took a long drink.

Aron walked back around the car to me and held out another beer. “Do you want one?” he asked with a smile on his face.

As his deep-blue eyes locked with mine again, butterflies filled my stomach and my knees weakened. Aron brushed his brown hair back off of his forehead and smiled at me before repeating, “So, do you want one or not?”

“I…I’m underage, I really shouldn’t,” I said shyly, breaking eye contact again and finding another fascinating spot in the parking lot to stare at. I don’t know why all of a sudden being underage meant anything to me, but for some reason, I didn’t want Aron to have a bad image of me; I didn’t want him to think I was a bad girl and unworthy of his friendship.

Aron put the beer on top of Justin’s car roof and held out his hand. “I’m Aron,” he said. “Justin obviously didn’t learn manners, so I’ll just go ahead and introduce myself.”

“Nah! I’m just busy back here unloading all the shit from the trunk; you go ahead and relax and have a beer!” Justin yelled from the back of the car.

Aron rolled his eyes and I smiled and took his hand. “I’m Sarah,” I said quietly. “Thank you for letting us crash with you for the night.” Aron didn’t seem to hear me.

“Has anyone ever told you what a beautiful smile you have?” he asked with a look of wonderment in his eyes.

“Not recently!” I said, suddenly extremely nervous.

“Well, you haven’t been hanging around with the right people then!” he said as he shook my hand. His hand was warm and soft and his touch made me blush and shuffle my feet again nervously.

“Is anyone going to help me?” Justin was still trying to unload all of our belongings from the trunk.

“You guys are just staying the night!” Aron exclaimed. “How much crap are you hauling upstairs?” He gave me a wink that immediately made my knees weak again, dropped my hand, and went around to the back of the car to help Justin.

I took a deep breath, took the beer off of the roof of Justin’s car, and shut the passenger door. I suddenly thought of Mom and all of the men she had cheated on Richard with over the years and wondered if she fell for men as quickly as I just fell for Aron; maybe Mom was so desperate for compliments that if she ever received one from a man, she immediately fell in love with him.
Don’t get distracted!
I warned myself.
Don’t be Mom and fall for every guy you meet.

“Let me help!” I said as I walked back to Justin and grabbed one of my Hefty bags.

Aron quickly reached over and took the bag out of my hands. “You don’t need to be hauling this up the stairs. I’ll do it.”

Although I’m sure Aron was just trying to be nice, I reacted harshly to him performing another gentlemanly act for me. “I’m not weak,” I snapped. “I can carry this up myself!” I grabbed the bag out of his hand and started lugging it to the apartment staircase leading up to the second floor, but not before seeing the look of shock on Aron’s face as I grabbed my bag out of his hands and handed him back his beer. I felt a pang of guilt for snapping at him like I did, but I didn’t want to send out the wrong signals. I had to remember that I was not at Aron’s apartment looking for love; I was signing up for the military the next day and I was not going to be diverted from that for any reason.

I lugged the Hefty bag up the narrow apartment stairs and stopped at the top. Aron came up behind me with my other bag in one hand and the unfinished six-pack of beer in the other.

“Stubborn, aren’t you?” Aron said to me with a grin once he reached the top of the staircase.

“Yeah, something like that,” I replied and pointed to the apartment door at the top of the stairs. “Is this your place?”

“Yep—number sixteen is me,” Aron said as he put my bag down and pulled a ring of keys out of his front jeans pocket.

I heard Justin huffing as he struggled to maneuver his large duffel bag up the stairs and I yelled, “Damn, boy! They are going to whup you in boot camp!”

“Fuck off,” I heard Justin mumble, and I laughed out loud.

Aron unlocked and opened his apartment door and then turned back to pick my bag back up. “And a smartass too? Girl, stop toying with my heart,” he said with a giant smile on his face.

God you have a beautiful smile!
I thought as I followed Aron into his small apartment. I was immediately taken aback at how clean his place was and immediately spoke without thinking. “Christ, I was expecting a pig sty!”

Aron put my bag down and put his keys and the beer down onto a small kitchen counter. “Justin! What the hell did you tell her about me?” he yelled jokingly as Justin struggled to get his duffle bag through the door.

“No!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t mean that! I meant you are a young guy and have an apartment and no one to really clean it…” My voice trailed off in embarrassment.
He must think I’m so stupid!

“I know what you meant. Don’t get so stressed out on the little things. You need to lighten up!” Aron exclaimed.

You have no idea
, I thought.

Aron gestured to a plaid couch in his small living room. “Sit, put your feet out, let’s all chill out and talk for a bit.”

So once Justin got done huffing and puffing his way into Aron’s apartment, the three of us took our shoes off and sat in the living room. Aron got on the phone and ordered a pizza, and for the rest of the night we sat around eating and talking and I got to know more about Aron and his background.

Aron had grown up in a little farmhouse near Missouri with his mom and three older sisters. His mother and father had divorced when Aron was very young, and I could tell from Aron’s tone as he relived this part of his life to Justin and me that he still held some resentment against his father for leaving the family so many years ago.

Aron’s mother remarried a few years after she divorced Aron’s father, to a man she had gone to high school with. She moved Aron and his sisters to a military base in Arizona where his new stepfather was stationed. Aron spoke fondly of his stepfather and said numerous times during the evening that the times he spent in Arizona were some of the best times in his life.

“Then why in the world would you leave?” I couldn’t help but ask with a look of astonishment on my face.

Aron flashed me a sly grin and leaned over and patted my leg. “Because, believe it or not, I was a bit of a teenage hellraiser,” he said, getting his face close to mine.

I blushed and moved away. “Got it. OK, so then what?” I asked. “How did you get from Arizona to here?”

Aron took a swig of beer and continued his story. He had gotten into trouble—which he refused to elaborate on, to my dismay—on the military base, and his mother had been unable to control him anymore so she’d sent him to live with his father in Illinois. He enrolled into college for a semester and ended up leaving college when his girlfriend became pregnant.

“You have a child?” I asked in amazement, looking around the apartment for pictures or any other sign that a child was there.

“Yes I do, and he is the greatest kid!” Aron replied proudly. “His mother, though…” His voice trailed off.

I continued to press him. “His mother what?”

Aron put his head down and slowly shook it side to side. “His mother is not right and I barely get to see him because I work so much. On the couple days I am home and I want to see him, I have to pay his mother extra money on top of the weekly child support she gets or she won’t let me have him.”

I looked at Aron’s eyes and could see that they were starting to well up with tears. I felt terrible for making this man with so much life and energy break down, so I quickly changed the subject. “And now you are here in your own little man cave!” I said as I leaned over to punch him playfully on the shoulder.

“And I’ve been here in apartment sixteen for about a year now,” he said, sitting up straight and blinking the tears out of his eyes. “It is what it is!”

Justin’s laugh broke the tension in the room. “That’s the second time I’ve heard that today and I haven’t gotten a chance to use it yet!”

“Heard what?” Aron asked.

“It is what it is,” Justin answered. “Sarah just said that on the way down to your place.”

“Ah, great minds think alike, I see,” Aron said and winked at me.

My heart skipped a beat, and I said, “I think I’m ready for one of those beers now!”

“No! You’re underage, remember? You can’t drink; you have a big day tomorrow,” Aron said. “Which I’ve been meaning to ask, I know why Justin is joining the military, but why are you?”

I opened my mouth to answer him, but nothing came out. I didn’t have a good reason and I didn’t want to sound stupid by telling Aron that I really had no other place to go.

Sensing my hesitance, Justin spoke up for me. “Sarah’s just looking to get out of the small town we came from.”

Aron looked at me, cocked his head, and raised his eyebrow. “Escaping, huh? Well, that’s one way to do it I guess. I suppose you aren’t going to tell me what you are escaping from, are you?”

I shook my head no and smiled at him. I was definitely not ready to start sharing my past with a man I had just met. This was a new start for me and a way for me to change my identity from Sarah: weak, abused child to Sarah: strong, successful woman. I was going to do my best to keep my dark secret from coming out.

Later that evening as I was lying on Aron’s couch trying to fall asleep amid Justin’s obscenely loud snoring, I thought of Mom. I wondered what she would say if she knew that I was about to join the military, and I started to imagine her running up to me and hugging me and telling me how proud she was of me for doing something positive with my life. The thought of finally getting Mom’s love and approval made me want to leap off of the couch and call her to tell her my news, but before my legs would move, her taunts and hateful words started to echo in my head:
Loser! Piece of shit! I should have aborted you!
My eyes welled up with tears; I curled myself up into a small ball on the couch and squeezed my eyes shut.
Please, God, please help me find someone to love me. I need it so badly.
I continued to whisper pleas for love to God until I drifted off to sleep.

“ARE YOU READY, SOLDIER?” I snapped awake to see Justin’s flushed face two inches away from mine.

Holy shit! Today is the day!
I thought. Justin stood up and held out his hand to help me up off of the couch.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked me.