Page 30 of Later Bloom

There’s a sour taste in her mouth. She smiles around it.

“Let me show you to your room,” she offers, somewhere in the jumble of her guests’ memories—two high school best friends reuniting in the midst of divorces and belated coming-outs.

By the time she returns downstairs, the light is on in the kitchen and Louise is kneeling on the floor, going through the nonperishable items still sitting in the crates.

“Hey, there,” Louise says without looking up.

“Hi.” There’s a short pause as Aubrey tries to come up with something to say. She settles on, “I might be going out tonight.”

Louise looks up so abruptly that Aubrey warns, “Don’t ask.”

A smile splits her aunt’s face in half. Her laughter is thinly veiled by irritation, but she seems to take it well. “Fine,” she concedes. “It’s no problem with me.”

“No, I know. I just mean, I won’t be coming in, is all. I’ll leave after we’re done closing up.”

“Mm.” Louise sits back on her heels and presses her hands into her thighs with a small raise of her shoulders, as if she’s weighing her options. “How’s this—let’s get dinner ready and set up, and then after we’re done cleaning up you can leave early and head out.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine. I don’t mind sticking around, it’s not a big deal or anything. I wasn’t even sure I’d go.”

Louise says, “Aubrey,” very firmly, and she sounds like Aubrey’s mother then. “Let me do this for you. I’m not giving you my kidney or anything.”

Aubrey wants to argue. She doesn’t want Louise to hold anything over her, doesn’t want to owe her aunt any answers or explanations. Saying yes feels vulnerable, for some reason.

Still, she allows herself an “Okay, fine,” and even a little smile.

Arthur texts her the address sometime during dinner, followed by a smiley face and an I’ll buy you a drink. Aubrey’s phone vibrates in the back pocket of her jeans and she pretends not to notice while she asks the guests if all is well with their food. At this hour, the last bits of sun soak through the dining room. Someone asks for a refill of tea. In the kitchen, Louise is humming. Aubrey notices all of these things because she’s trying not to think too much about her phone.

The pub is a three-minute walk from the house. She almost wishes it was longer. She loves walking around town, navigating the hills and looking at the sea and feeling like she’s doing something, spending a year here. Sometimes she stops and takes a picture of the view, and she thinks she’s in a movie, that there’s no way this is real and surely something ought to happen to bring her back to her old routine, where she did nothing much and expected the twist in her gut to disappear. She thinks this is how Louise must’ve felt when she first moved here. It makes her feel closer to her aunt, even though they’ve been growing distant.

She walks through streets lined with century-old homes that promise a kind of life she hardly ever allows herself to hope for, with deep roots and a family of her own. Recently it’s been a little harder to feel lonely and miserable. Still, at times she finds a way.

She turns one corner, then a second, and finds herself on the main road. She heads downhill past a pottery studio and a home decor shop that sells a lot of old vases and bundles of olive tree branches.

The place sits at a busy intersection and looks like a cartoonish drawing of an old pub. Hidden behind tall trees and climbed wildly by relentless vines, it sits lit up by sconces that cast an eerie glow on the building’s aging facade.

On her way in, Aubrey takes her phone out to let Arthur know she’s here. He writes back terrible instructions on how to find them, and she weaves her way apologetically through the crowd until she spots him waving her over in a horseshoe-shaped booth in the back corner.

Six or seven people sit on worn, dark-patterned cushions. Their eyes fall on Aubrey one by one. She smiles and raises a hand in a silent greeting, and everyone says “hey” in a mismatched sort of chatter before returning to their conversations.

“Sorry, yeah, let me out,” Arthur says to a man with an impressive beard and a girl with two long braids as he scoots down and out of the booth. “Look who’s made it,” he says to Aubrey.

She tries very hard not to smile. “Let’s not make a big deal of it.”

He wears a simple dark t-shirt and jeans, and he looks freshly showered. “Have a seat, here. What am I getting you to drink?”

“Sorry?”

“You like gin and tonics?”

For a second Aubrey wants to say no, just so he’s wrong. Almost with a sigh, she concedes, “Yeah, I do.”

“Good. Have a seat here. I’ll be right back. Don’t try to order anything at the table, service will take an hour. You see that girl there? That’s Florence. She knows who you are, I’ve told her about you and all. You should say hi.” He touches the back of her arm and then vanishes in the crowd, toward the bar.

Aubrey stands there for a second before turning to the woman with the braids. “Florence?” she ventures.

She’s very pretty, with thick brown hair and a nice, soft smile. Her eyes are big and her cheeks high, and she seems intimidating in the way women can be, like she’s figured out things Aubrey couldn’t even hope to understand. Like she’s got a really long and complicated skincare and wellness routine she has no problem sticking to, or a natural sense of style she hardly ever worries about. She wears a white top that ties at the front and jeans that fit perfectly, the kind made from good denim.

Florence smiles wide and scoots over to make space to her left. “Aubrey, yeah?”