Page 81 of Later Bloom

While Aubrey stands there, she thinks almost exclusively of her life outside of these walls—her home, her family, how she has to head back first thing tomorrow, the things she’ll have to catch up on. The group doesn’t pay her much mind. When she was younger, she used to think it was because she wasn’t really part of who they are, too different from their experiences. She’d blamed herself for lagging behind and digging a well between herself and the friendships of her past.

Now that she’s caught up, and there’s no well to fill or distance to close, she finds that her experience wasn’t to blame at all. The friends we make as kids are simply not the friends we make as adults, and when old memories are replaced by enough new ones, we allow them to fade and keep only the desire to be admired by the people we used to envy.

Marianne suggests that they visit that same room they’d hung out in last time, for old times’ sake. The group moves to the classroom that still looks and smells exactly the same as it always had. When the girls take a seat this time, they do it differently—more conscious of their movement, of how they sit, and they each seem a little distracted, like they’ve got lives awaiting them beyond this school, a constant call only they can hear.

It makes Aubrey smile to notice this, because it highlights so plainly something she doesn’t think about very often anymore: that she feels the same way as all of these women. These girls who used to look at her with pity and tiptoe around her. Who asked questions with puzzled surprise and failed to wrap their heads around her reality. Now she sits with them and knows that if they turn to her and say, “We’ve all been there, haven’t we?”, she’ll say yes.

It doesn’t matter today whether it took fourteen or twenty-eight years. Even if it took more, at some point the differences of life blend in and disappear, until you get old enough to understand that no one really cares in the end.

Everything is different this time, but also oddly the same. Maggie tells the girls she’s been seeing this guy, Colin, for about six months now.

Marianne gasps and says, “Oh, you’re so brave! I can’t imagine still being on the market now. I just about thank my husband every day for sticking around.”

The group laughs as one cohesive unit. Ivory nods along with her hand still on her barely-showing belly.

Rachel interrupts to say, “Well, it’s one month until I’m officially divorced, so I’ll let you know how that goes,” which elicits an aww of empathy.

“I’ll take you out, Rachel,” Maggie insists. “You’ll see it’s not so bad.”

“I kind of envy the both of you, honestly,” Julie cuts in. Her hair is cut short to her shoulders, and she looks exhausted. With pinched lips and angry eyes turned to the ceiling, she says, “If I could get just five minutes to myself without my kids and David asking me where stuff goes, what’s for dinner, whether I can wipe their ass, I might just trade it all in for some peace. Just a little. Not forever, but you know.”

The girls hum in approval. Ivory says, “I think we all would, honestly.”

Maggie and Aubrey share a look. It’s quick and only for the two of them, but immediately Julie says, “What about you, Aubrey?”

“Oh.” The attention shifts to her. “I don’t think I’d trade anything in, honestly,” she says. It feels good but sacrilegious. The girls offer blank stares in return.

“So, things have been good,” Rachel says. It almost sounds like a reproach.

“Amazing, yeah. I’m still up in Lunenburg these days. I’m not sure how I ended up sticking around, but here I am! My family and I manage a couple of inns up there. It’s been great. Not the most lavish living, but you know how things go.”

Julie’s usual hard expression softens. She says, “Must be stunning.”

“It’s hard to beat, yeah.”

Marianne jumps in, “It’s been a while since I’ve seen your name on that column you used to share around.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, that ended a couple years back. Had a great run, but after a while it got a bit repetitive, I think. At some point you just run out of words. But I loved it. I’m working on putting a few of my best pieces together in a collection, maybe.”

Marianne huffs a quick laugh. “Let me know when it’s out. I think my oldest might benefit from hearing about what you went through. She’s not fifteen yet and already worrying about getting her first girlfriend.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, Marianne,” Aubrey says, and she means it. Her smile is wide and almost painful, and for the first time in a really long while, she sits with these women and feels like she could stick around.

They start chatting again about the complexities of seemingly simple lives—how fast the kids are growing, how long it’s been since they’ve hung out like this, if they’ve heard about so and so separating, getting back together, how messy things seem to be. With time, human nature doesn’t change—it still sits comfortably in the fascination of observing others, in human connection, in the emotion that runs so deeply at the very core of existence. Love.

And it’s so funny, how Aubrey had spent so long waiting for it, yearning for it, and now that she’s soaked in it for years, she knows that even though this love is precious and intimate and something she couldn’t imagine parting with, she’s also done a whole lot of great things in her life other than being someone’s lover.

The story didn’t end when she met Arthur, or when they kissed, or when they had their first fight. There is really no beginning or end, because life is both at once, all the time—she sits now among women who are on their own, who wish for a different life, for things Aubrey has. They stand in different pastures and look at each other in envy. And it has to be beautiful, because it’s such an intrinsic part of existing, of growing, of loving. Happiness is simply not a permanent state of being. It’s an emotion that comes and goes, like sadness or anger, and when it passes by, you grasp onto it whether you’ve got everything you could ever dream of or you’re desperately trying to mend yourself.

“Thanks for coming,” Maggie says to Aubrey a couple hours later, when the crowd grows thin and they collect their coats. “I don’t think I could’ve done it without you here.”

Aubrey tucks a strand of hair behind Maggie’s ear. She’s grown more protective of her, now that she has children, and the two of them live so far away from each other. “It’s been wonderful, really.”

Often, she wishes Maggie could enjoy the things she gets to enjoy, but she never says it out loud, because it would sound too much like what she once hated to hear.

“I’m really very proud of you,” Maggie says.

Aubrey blinks, surprised. “What for?”