Page 40 of Later Bloom

“Sorry. Believe it or not, people are texting me to invite me out.”

Maggie lets out a long whistle. “You really have changed. Will I recognize you when you come down for the holidays?”

“That’s very funny.”

“Thanks for hanging out with me on the phone tonight. I can see you’re in high demand.”

“Thanks for hanging out with me on the phone tonight, too. I really do miss you.”

There’s a short silence. Maggie says, “I do, too.” It sounds a little polite. Aubrey wants to ask again about the man she’s seeing. Maggie’s not one to keep these things to herself, usually.

After a moment, Maggie adds, “You will come back to us, yeah?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re just making Lunenburg sound a little better today. Which is good, I mean. I’m glad for you.”

“Of course, yes.”

“There are new guys around here, too.”

“Right.” Aubrey frowns at her phone. She says, “I don’t pick my location depending on the presence of eligible men.”

“Sure. We all do a little.”

“I came here to get away and figure out the next steps of my life. That’s why I’m here. So I don’t agree with what you’re saying.”

“I just mean, it’s a bit disillusioned to think we don’t make our decisions a little based on the possibility of finding true love. It’s on our minds and such.”

Aubrey wants to say no, but she’s not a great liar. “Well, whatever,” is all she finds to respond.

“Okay.” There’s clanging again on the line, the sound of a plate on the counter. “Did I tell you Nicolas picked up jogging on a psychotic level?” Nicolas is Maggie’s neighbour, a guy just a few years older who rivals Maggie in his rotation of men around his apartment. “I swear, marathon fever takes new victims every day. He’s got these tiny little shorts. You should see them.”

Aubrey sits up in the tub and pulls up her conversation with Arthur. Her fingers hover over the screen for a second. She hopes he’s already watching the movie and won’t respond for a while, maybe not until tomorrow. She’s not sure how to go about this or how she means for it to sound.

She types, Raincheck for tomorrow? and sends it before she can change her mind. To Maggie, she says, “You’ve got to take a picture and send it to me.”

“I will, yeah. About what we were saying just now, I wanted to ask—you’re not really staying in Lunenburg until next summer, are you?”

Aubrey sets her phone on the top of the toilet tank, next to the tub. When she stands from the water, she’s covered in suds and catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She wonders for a second what she would look like through someone else’s eyes. “What do you mean?” she asks Maggie.

“Well, you know, it’s just a long time. You went there, you gave it a shot. You can come home earlier, no?”

“Why would I do that?”

“I feel like you’re miserable over there.”

Aubrey almost wants to laugh. Just a minute ago, Maggie was saying she seemed to enjoy herself more.

She doesn’t laugh. Instead, she says, “Not more so than I am at home, I don’t think.”

“Then I’m the one who’s miserable, I don’t know. I just feel like you’re trying to prove something you don’t have to. I think I’ve decided the whole moving away for a year thing is so glamorized, and why? You’re away from your family and your friends and everything you know, and we talk on the phone all the time when we could do it face to face, and I could see your expression and figure out if you’re really interested in what I’m saying or not.”

Aubrey wants to say something. She doesn’t. Adult friendships are so fragile in their balance of what can be said and what can’t, a brittle ecosystem built on nostalgic history and a mutual agreement to endure adult life together without being quite so honest with each other.

“Maggie.”

“There’s a bottle of hair dye in the bathroom now, just sitting on the sink. I bought it the other day and I’ve nearly used it twelve times by now.”