Chapter 9 #3
“It feels weird to take Candor’s seat,” I said, circling around the car. “I’ll just sit where I was before.”
“What? No.”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” I said, sliding into the back and buckling my seat belt. “It’s a short drive.”
Aubrey scowled in the rearview mirror. “I’m not about to play Driving Miss Daisy with you, Scrooge. This is weird. Get in the front seat.”
“Why does it matter?”
“It’s just weird! It feels, like, off-balance. Like straightening one side of your hair but not the other.”
“Oh my god, you are unhinged.” I huffed and made a big show of unbuckling my seat belt and stomping back to the passenger side. I plopped into the front seat, jammed my seat belt into the buckle, and threw her an impatient look. “There. Are you happy now?”
“Happy isn’t the first adjective that comes to mind.”
Adjective. Of course she would employ the correct fucking part of speech when she was arguing with me. “Has anyone ever told you how annoying and overbearing you are?”
“Every day,” she said easily, making it clear that I couldn’t wound her. “Has anyone ever told you how impossible and entitled you are?”
“Every day,” I parroted.
She rolled her eyes. “What’s your address?”
I told her. She punched it into her sleek little console, then backed the car out of Emma’s driveway. When she clutched my headrest to make a reverse turn, I caught a whiff of her floral perfume and scowled at how good it smelled.
“You don’t have to turn your body around,” I pointed out. “You have a camera.”
“Oooh, do I?” she asked sarcastically. “Thanks for the tip.”
“I’m just saying.”
“My dad taught me how to drive,” she said, turning back to the front and thrusting the gearshift forward. “He was very adamant that I always look behind me, even with the back-up camera.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure your dad expects the whole world to follow his rules.”
She faltered the tiniest bit, then tried to pretend she hadn’t. “Well, yeah, of course he does.”
I couldn’t decipher her tone. There was something defensive about it, but there was resentment there, too.
“Do you like him?” I asked.
She shot me a look. “Excuse me?”
“Do you like your dad?” I repeated clearly, and I was surprised to find that I genuinely wanted to know the answer. Not only because I considered Rhett Calhoun and his football agenda a threat, but because I couldn’t understand what made this girl tick.
Aubrey was quiet for a long moment. I expected her to tear into me for asking such an invasive question, but instead she seemed to deflate. “No one has ever asked me that before.”
“Seriously? Even with your dad being Mr. Hotshot?”
“That’s exactly why no one asks.”
I waited, but she didn’t continue.
“Wow, you don’t like him,” I said quietly.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
She sat up straighter, gripping the steering wheel with both hands like she was trying to grasp for every last ounce of control. “Forgive me if you’re the last person I want to have this conversation with, Louisa.”
I registered the use of my actual name but didn’t call her on it. Instead I nodded and said, “Okay. Fair.”
We lapsed into silence again, until I could no longer ignore something that had been bothering me for the last hour. “Were their feelings really hurt? Emma’s and Candor’s?”
Aubrey didn’t seem put off by the segue. Instead, she looked over at me like she was searching for something. “Wouldn’t yours have been? If they had come up to Connecticut, made plans with you, and then blown you off?”
I knew she was right. The truth of it cut through me like a hot knife, searing against the shame I already felt from what had gone down with Hatch earlier.
“I feel like I can’t do right by anyone lately,” I said quietly. The shame grew stronger, because why was I admitting this to her?
“Not to be rude,” Aubrey said, “but are you really trying that hard?”
“Excuse me?”
She gave me a look. “Are you?”
“Yeah, actually, I am,” I croaked, caught somewhere between anger and hurt.
“I’m trying extremely hard to roll with all the chaos life has been throwing my way.
I just came out, like, two months ago, and then I got called down here because my uncle died way before I was ready to face everyone, and my whole family is acting like being gay is some kind of fairy-tale thing I made up, and I somehow inherited a real live business that people depend on to feel safe and included, and now I have to figure out how to save it—”
“I, I, I, I, I,” Aubrey rattled off. “Do you hear yourself? ‘Oh, poor me, my uncle died before I was ready to deal with people.’ Do you truly think everything revolves around you?”
“Don’t you dare judge me for—”
“I am judging you,” she said, jerking the steering wheel onto Main Street.
“You have all these people who care about you, you’ve got nothing stopping you from living out and proud all summer, you’re on this cool new adventure with the bar, and yet here you are feeling sorry for yourself.
I get that you’re going through a hard time, but so is everyone else at any given moment, and you’re choosing not to see that because you’re too wrapped up in your own shit.
You may think I have a stick up my ass, but I’ll tell you what, I’d rather have a stick than my own head. ”
I fell back against the seat, my mouth open in protest. I wanted to retaliate, to scream and yell and put her in her place like I’d done in the kitchen earlier, but the words got stuck on my tongue.
Suddenly I was flipping back through every conversation from the past week, with Dad, with Hannah, with Hatch, and I was seeing things in a new light.
My body felt molten, like I had no choice but to sit there in the cushioned leather seat and digest what Aubrey was saying, even if I hated her for it.
“Well?” Aubrey said after a heavy minute. Her voice was shrill, almost self-conscious. “Aren’t you going to throw some vicious response my way?”
“I…” I blinked over at her, still reeling. The question rushed out before I could sit with it. “Am I a selfish person?”
Aubrey swung the car into Dad’s driveway. She thrust the gearshift into park, lowered the music, and looked intently at me. “You’re not selfish, you’re self-involved. There’s a difference.” She paused. “You can’t see past your own nose, Scrooge. It’s what I was trying to tell you earlier.”
We fell quiet. I understood that she was letting me have my reckoning, and I took it, slumping back against the headrest with my eyes on the stars.
“I’m probably going to regret saying this…” I began, “but I think you might be right.”
“Yes, I usually am,” she said, like it was obvious.
“I don’t mean to be self-involved. It’s just …
ever since I came out, and especially since I came back here …
it’s like everything has felt so raw. Like I’ve scooped out my innards and laid them on the table, and everybody can walk up and take a look, and I just have to stand there and hope they’ll be kind about it. ”
The car was absolutely silent. Bullfrogs croaked in the distance, playing off the cicadas. Aubrey bent her head and twisted a ring on her finger.
“I’m sorry you feel like that,” she said finally. The porch light reflected off her eyes: a slash of seashell blue. “Have you told Emma and Candor?”
“No. I don’t know if they’d get it. I mean, you heard them fawning over Asa tonight.”
“Yeah…,” she said, biting her lip. “I’m sorry about that.”
I looked at her. “Why did you lie to them?”
She blinked. “What?”
“About Asa asking you out. You told them nothing happened.”
Even in the dark, I could see the blush settle high on her cheeks. “It wasn’t a lie. It was just … an omission.”
I thought of my family, omitting the truth about Uncle George’s sexuality. Hatch, omitting the truth about the football program buying the land. “An omission is still a lie.”
Aubrey looked away from me. “There are just … some things I’m not ready to talk about yet.”
I studied her. What kind of secrets was this girl holding close?
“It’s late,” Aubrey said pointedly.
I recognized the dismissal for what it was. “Right. Well … thank you for the ride.” I looked sideways at her. “See? I do have some manners.”
“Even Satan was an angel once,” she quipped, and despite myself, I laughed.