Page 47 of Later Bloom

Florence hums a tepid sort of response. “Maybe, yeah.” Her tone wavers, undecided. “I wish I’d say oh, yes, absolutely. I can’t wait, it’s all I can think about.”

“I know.” They’re both so tired. It’s late and in the darkness, things always feel a little harder to breathe through.

Then Florence asks, “So what did that guy tell you, exactly?” and as she does, she starts reading something on her phone, her face lit by the blue light of her screen. Aubrey stares a little at the way Florence smiles and starts typing something as they walk.

She doesn’t want to think about Raphael now, or recount the things he’d told her and what she’d said in return. She’s yet to make sense of their conversation and decide how she feels about it, whether she was right or wrong and where she sits in this story. She also can’t stop looking at Florence’s phone out of the corner of her eye, and trying to read the name at the top of the screen—

“Who are you texting?” she asks abruptly.

“Oh, just Artie’s been bugging me.”

“Ah.” Aubrey wants to check her phone, see if another message has come in. “What’s he telling you about?” She hopes so very hard that Florence won’t find the questioning too weird—she’s just so curious to know, to hear a little more about his night, over an hour away.

Florence casts her an inquisitive look. “You’re trying to change the subject.”

An excuse. Aubrey latches on to it. “Yeah, sorry. It just feels like I might actually shatter into dust particles and blow away with the wind if I tell you about this now. Could I possibly take a raincheck on revisiting my unbearable flaws?”

Florence’s smile is soothing, and her arm around Aubrey’s shoulder is soft and gentle. “Gotcha,” she says with a nod. And it’s nice to be understood. “Artie’s not been telling me much, honestly. Why do you ask?”

“No reason. I just know he had a date planned, maybe he told you how it went.”

“Ah, that. No, he knows I’ve brought you out here and he was asking how you’re holding up. He didn’t mention the date.”

“He asked how I’m doing?” She sounds less surprised than she feels. How weird to think that he would talk about her with Florence.

“Of course, yeah. He does that a lot.” Maybe Florence tries to not make it sound very important, but her gaze on Aubrey is close and meticulous.

“So it’s a normal thing, then, nothing to it.” Even to her own ears Aubrey barely sounds convincing.

“You tell me.”

“Well, I hardly ask about him."

Florence laughs, her smile highlighted by the glow of the nearly full moon. “Artie talks a lot, but he sucks at communicating with people, as a general rule. I assumed you have the skills to ask whatever you care to know directly to him. He prefers to pretend he’s better off going through me instead.”

“A talker who can’t communicate,” Aubrey echoes. She hadn’t noticed that about him.

“You should meet his mother. You’d see why he is the way he is. But I just mean—I don’t know, he’s a man. He’s convinced himself he shouldn’t say too much, bare himself too often, show too much interest. He’s got all this advice for me, but I never really know how he’s feeling, or what he’s going through. It’s a guessing game with him. Anyway, I think he asks me because it keeps him at a safe distance. From you, I mean. Makes it seem like he’s being an invested friend, when he asks how you’re doing, what we do when we hang out. He’s been like this a long time, since we were kids. With other girlfriends I had, stuff like that.”

It’s very strange to learn about a man through another woman’s experience. Getting to know someone is so rooted in imagination, filling in gaps with the best and worst of scenarios, and Florence knows Arthur in this way that makes Aubrey think she doesn’t belong here at all. She fears she’s intruding on something intimate she’s not meant to understand, and it makes her feel like she’s entered a competition she didn’t get to prepare for. It feels dumb to sink so quickly into this feeling of wanting to know Arthur better than someone else. She can’t really understand it, this visceral need to be the best, the favourite. Maybe Raphael wasn’t entirely wrong in his assumptions.

Aubrey says, “So you’ve figured him out, huh.”

“You know, it’s funny how both incredibly simple and complex people can be. It’d be ridiculous to claim I understand someone who texts me to ask if you’re having fun tonight, but won’t admit he likes you. It makes no sense to me. I haven’t figured him out at all. I don’t even understand myself most of the time.”

“Right,” Aubrey cuts in, with a tentative, snipped chuckle. “You’re messing with me.”

“Sorry, are you saying you’ve got it all under control? The questioning, wondering whatever makes you act this way or another?”

“No—you said Arthur likes me.”

“Well, we both know that.”

“You and who?”

“Aubrey.”

“He was on a date just tonight.”