Page 41 of Later Bloom

“What colour is it?”

“Red.” Red. On Maggie’s incredible natural dirty blonde.

“So it is serious, then.” Outside, the snow is still falling steadily. Aubrey wraps herself in a towel and drains the tub.

“I mean it, you know,” Maggie says. “I think you should come back. You’re sticking around this place because you agreed to help your aunt, but she’d be fine without you, you said it yourself. And things are weird between the two of you. I don’t think you’re having a good time over there, but you won’t really admit it. And this whole thing kind of makes me feel shitty, honestly. Like you don’t want to be hanging around in the real world, where the rest of us are.”

Aubrey says, “That’s just not true,” but the problem is it might be. Maybe just a little. She moves her phone from the toilet to the vanity, and just as she sets it down, it lights up with a new message. She pretends very hard not to notice, but in the mirror her reflection makes it impossible.

“I do worry about you, is the thing,” Maggie insists. “I’m not just being selfish here. I thought it’d be a good idea for you to do this but I think you’re avoiding things, and telling yourself they’ll work themselves out, or maybe they’ll fall into place if you take enough planes and trains and car rides and remove yourself far enough from the elements of your life that you think are ugly. It’s fine if you don’t like everything about your existence. But maybe this is just delaying solutions by a year.”

There is a very long silence. Aubrey is staring at herself in the mirror. So Maggie also thinks she’s not doing the right thing. As is Louise. The list of people who seem to support Aubrey’s decisions is growing so short. Maybe she is getting all of it wrong.

When she looks away, she realizes she’s holding her phone now, her other hand holding the towel to her chest. Maggie adds, softly, “Sorry about all this.”

“You’re just catching me a little off-guard,” Aubrey confesses. Her heart is in her throat. She pretends it’s because of what Maggie said even when she pulls up Arthur’s response.

She reads an apology, and something about the date he’s got planned tomorrow night. In the background, Maggie is saying, “It’s just something I’ve been thinking about recently. I guess I just had to tell you about it now. Maybe I’m wrong.”

“No, yeah.” Aubrey rereads the sentence on the screen. She wants to ask Arthur who he’s going out with, where he met her. She’s not sure why, but she feels she wouldn’t like her. “I’m sorry,” she hears herself say. “I’m not—can we talk about this later?”

She takes one, two steps back to sit down on the toilet lid. In the back of her mind, she hears Maggie’s words, and she fails to make enough sense of them to agree. Even if she did, she wouldn’t know what to say. Maggie sighs. “Fine.”

“What do you want me to say to that, Mags? I’m not going to fly back home tomorrow morning because you think I’m making a mistake. You told me I should go out and fuck up and regret things, but you also want me to sit by your side and iron every little aspect of my life out and have all the answers by staying put. I don’t think I’m entirely in the right, but I don’t agree you’ve got it all figured out. And I don’t think I’m delaying everything by a year. By that definition, everything is delaying everything. I’m just living. The days will pass whether I’m here or elsewhere. I mean, I don’t know.”

Again, Maggie says, “Fine, yeah. I guess neither of us knows best.”

“I feel that’s pretty obvious.”

“Okay. I should let you go, then.”

Outside, the snow is relentless. Aubrey says, “I actually do like it here. Even if I can’t figure Louise out, and the house is frigid, and the days are long. I’m enjoying my time here. I think that’s all that matters.”

“Mhm.”

“I do want to see a picture of those shorts.”

“Of course, yeah.”

“And if you decide you don’t believe in jinxes anymore, I’d like to hear more about that man who’s keeping you company, too. If ever you feel like getting validated on how hot he is and whatnot.”

“You know me well.” There’s a little smile in Maggie’s voice, though maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

Aubrey says, “Yeah.” And she thinks about how knowing someone well is knowing what they like to hear. How she omits very purposely to remind Maggie she’s yet to visit her, too.

They bid each other goodnight, and then silence returns for the first time in over an hour. Aubrey sits there in the bathroom with water running down her legs, snow outside the window, and Arthur’s name on her screen saying he’s got a date the next day. Good for him. Some adults go out on dates with other adults in hopes of finding a lifetime partner. It’s what Aubrey ought to be doing, too. She’s not sure why she’s been holding off on that these past few months. It feels like summer’s just ended, and how did it get to November? This is such an intrinsic part of adulthood. Wondering how it got to a season, though you were there the whole time.

She doesn’t write back to Arthur. She’s not sure what to say, anyway. She pulls up her conversation with Florence instead and writes, Tomorrow night, let’s go out?

Florence responds very quickly. Aubrey buries her head in her drawers to pick an outfit. She leaves her phone in the bathroom.

Chapter Thirteen

Aubrey sits back in the passenger seat of Florence’s car. An address is already in the GPS. Their destination is just over an hour away.

It’s 9:07 p.m. Louise has agreed to take over for the night, though it doesn’t really matter. They only have one room occupied, and their guests are quiet and most likely already in bed.

Florence shifts to drive. “I kind of love driving into the city now. Weirdly relaxing, like you have time to think but not too much.”