Page 3 of Later Bloom

“Ah, no, I know you’re right.” It’s hard not to like Ivory, not to warm to the softness of her smile and the hold of her gaze. It’s back on Aubrey now, heavy like it’s searching for something. “I just wanted to make sure you’re good.”

“You’re sweet. It’s Maggie you should worry about. She’s already run into Victor.”

Ivory’s “No” comes out as a gasp.

“Still insultingly fit and everything, so I hear.”

At the mention of Victor’s name, Maggie’s attention snaps back to them. “What’s that?”

“How’ve you been, hon?” Ivory asks, moving her perfectly manicured nails from Aubrey to Maggie.

“Oh, you know. Grand.” Maggie’s voice cracks on the last syllable—it’s clear and impossible to miss, even through the noise. The music starts then, a slow, classical string melody that rises above the crowd and unfolds across the room from speakers hidden in the ceiling. “Ah, good. They’ve figured that out.” Maggie smiles, but the crack is still there.

“Oh, love. Alright, come on.” Ivory grabs Maggie’s wrist to pull her away from the crowd and further down the hall. To their left, they find a door like the improvised cloakroom’s, but closed and much more imposing—dark wood and a freshly polished brass knob, which Ivory is quick to wiggle and nudge open.

“Wait,” Maggie argues, “I can’t go in there, there’s the speech coming—”

Ivory scoffs. “No one’s drunk enough for that yet.”

Aubrey stifles a laugh against the back of her hand. The room is eerily quiet, though the commotion of the evening still filters in. Moonlight floods the space through towering windows. The desks are still lined in perfect rows, like they’ve hardly moved over the past decade.

“Was this room always this big?” Aubrey asks no one in particular. The ceiling is high. The wall to her right is still lined with a green chalkboard taking up the full width of the room. There are posters on the walls of grammar rules and landscapes, shelves filled with textbooks, and a cupboard in the left corner of the room that Aubrey remembers but has never seen open.

“What’s going on, Mags?” Ivory is asking now, kneeling by Maggie’s side as she strokes her hair softly. Ivory’s voice is gentle and poised, different from when they were kids, when she would gasp and press Maggie for details in an impatient, nasal tone. She’s grown. She told them a few years back that her parents paid for her to go to therapy.

Aubrey knew their relationship as a trio had evolved when they’d stumbled into their twenties. Once held together by similar taste in music, identical class schedules, and malleable identities, they’d branched off in the way teenage friendship often does, a Venn diagram of sorts with Maggie in the centre. Watching the two of them like this, Aubrey wonders how much time they’ve been spending together lately, how often they’ve been hanging out. She and Maggie never talk about Ivory together, which feels strange now.

“And work has just been insane, you know,” Maggie is saying now, her eyes raised to the ceiling, head tilted back to keep tears from flowing down her perfectly powdered face. “And my mom’s been trying to match me up with her new trainer, and he’s gorgeous, I mean, ridiculous, but he’s messaged me a few times and then nothing.”

In the background, voices grow closer until three heads poke through the door.

“Oh, my god, what’s going on in here?” Rachel Toro wiggles her way past Julie Cross and Marianne Henry, who’ve all hardly changed since Aubrey last saw them carefully adjusting their gowns and caps for a picture at graduation. “Aubrey, hey,” one of them offers as they gather on the desks surrounding Maggie.

Aubrey smiles, quiet, in return. It’s always been a bit like this. She’s never been one to talk much unless absolutely necessary, and in school there always seemed to be people around to fill in the silence anyway. Things don’t feel too different now. Maybe a decade was too short a wait for a reunion—it feels like she saw all these people just yesterday, like there isn’t much she could tell them about herself now that they wouldn’t already know. It’s probably different for them.

“You’re kidding!” Marianne gasps at something Maggie just said. They sit in a semicircle around her, like moths drawn to an entertaining, spluttering flame. It brings a smile to Aubrey’s lips, just for a second, though she can’t quite decide if it’s happy or sad, or maybe something else. She feels for her phone in her bag and pulls it out to read the notifications still waiting on the screen.

Just let me know by tomorrow morning at the latest, Louise’s oldest message reads. Then, timestamped a couple minutes later, This would do you some good.

A strong argument. Most things that aren’t spending another six months in her apartment, waiting for life to somehow take a miraculously fun turn, would probably do Aubrey some good. It’s summer already. Half of the year has gone and she’s in the same spot she was when Louise made her offer six months earlier. A fine spot. A spot where she hangs out with Maggie and no one else, a spot where she struggles to get enough hours selling scented candles to squinting, grimacing women who request coffee grounds to cleanse the fragrance from their noses, a spot where she rewatches the same few series on a loop and tries to make time to read but not really, a spot where she stares at dating profiles on her phone and fails to muster the strength to start another tepid conversation with a stranger. A spot she knows other people must be in, yet when she glances around, it seems everyone else is moving just a little faster, with just a little more grace. At least when they take a step back it’s because they’ve dared to move forward. Aubrey is just standing still.

“Honestly, I’m so embarrassed I ever let this man see me naked,” Julie is saying, watching the other girls’ reactions a little too closely. A concert of “Oh, my god, don’t!” quickly follows. Julie squeals, “I know, I know! But the post-relationship clarity is so shit, you guys. I mean he shaved his toes, for fuck’s sake. And I called his mom to get him to talk to me!”

Aubrey only realizes she’s still staring at the locked screen of her phone when Maggie calls her name and shoots her an inquisitive look, the kind that quietly begs her to join in on the girl chat. She’d used it a lot when they’d shared a room in college, back when Maggie insisted on dragging Aubrey along to parties with other journalism majors, where they’d discuss the woes of college dating at length, and someone, at some inevitable point, would beg Aubrey to please take a picture of all the other girls together in a carefully orchestrated candid shot.

“It’s pointless beating yourself up over it, honestly,” Ivory says as Aubrey makes her way over to sit closer to the girls. She drops her phone face down on her lap. Ivory adds, “We’ve all done much worse,” and they all nod along.

Everyone but Aubrey.

They shouldn’t notice, really. Except they make a very serious sort of eye contact as they nod, like when you knock your glasses together in a toast and stare at everyone for good luck, and Marianne’s gaze falls on Aubrey. “Right, Aubrey?”

She blinks. “Sorry?”

“You okay?”

“Oh, yes. I just, well. I’m sorry for you, Julie.” She turns to Julie, watching her carefully rearrange the strands of blonde hair hanging loose from her updo. “That sounds like it would suck.”

“Come on, no it doesn’t,” Rachel cuts in, with a wave of her hand that feels personal to Aubrey, even from the opposite end of the circle. “We’ve all been there, it’s fine. Part of the game, I think. You haven’t really dated until you’ve regretted letting a man with an awful haircut suck on your nipples, yeah?”