Chapter 33
Aubrey
Sunday Evening
Three Days After the Outing
Aubrey wishes she could use the flashlight on her phone. Despite the abrupt end of Ilena and Felix’s gender-reveal party (it’s
a girl!), the sun has already set and the bricks of this sidewalk are really uneven. But if she uses the flashlight, then
Ethan will know she’s following him.
He turns left toward the Financial District, and Aubrey hesitates. At night, on a Sunday, there won’t be much foot traffic
in this office-heavy neighborhood, nowhere for her to hide if he makes a mistake in his route and spins around or feels like
something’s off, the way you just can sometimes. A microsecond flash. Like you’ve gone somewhere else. Been somewhere else.
A prickle up her spine. Could it be this? The intersecting of universes? Maybe that’s what déjà vu actually is.
Aubrey turns around, but the only thing she sees is a liquor-infused couple tugging on a closed Starbucks door.
She checks the time on her phone. Past ten, her usual bedtime, and a full hour plus of not responding to a request from a
police officer.
Mallory had been shaking, clutching the dog like he was a stuffed animal.
She’d nuzzled his head and said to wait.
For both Aubrey and Ilena to not respond to Officer Middlebury asking to speak with them.
Mallory’s demeanor was enough to convince Aubrey, but still she flexed her power of persuasion, insisting she’s going to get them out of it.
Her dad—Mallory’s dad!—will get them out of it.
She figures he’s in need of some good karma for hightailing it in her world, and so she’ll play the role of daddy’s girl, and he’ll somehow make this all disappear.
Aubrey trusts Mallory, even this increasingly unhinged Mallory, but this .
. . the consequences of what happened to Grayson are suddenly real in a way they hadn’t been and the only one who doesn’t seem to realize that is Mallory.
She acted like it was nothing that her dad was here. Doesn’t she have a thousand questions, doesn’t she want to know what
he’s like, doesn’t she want to know what she was like with him? Doesn’t she need to know if maybe she’s the reason he left?
And what this Mallory did to make him stay?
Ethan stops. Aubrey stops.
She ducks into the vestibule of a redbrick building. She pokes her head out and watches Ethan enter the only store open, a
chain pharmacy. She waits. This is ridiculous. So she asked him to come home with her and he said he had to get up early.
So she asked him to share a car home and he said he had to stop at the gym to pick up his sneakers so he could go running
in the morning. So she asked him how long he’d been running and he hesitated. It didn’t mean anything.
But something tells her that the photo of him kissing another woman, whose face was too obscured to make out, does. So here
she is following Ethan. Not trusting him.
The same feeling Kai now has about her. She thinks of him. Sitting through that entire dinner, the gift bag, the pink confetti
he threw when she was still too shocked by the message from the police officer to do it herself.
Kai is someone who seems to be nice—genuinely.
No drama. No ulterior motives. No posturing.
Kai just is who he is. Not to mention he’s the first person in a long time to look at her without pity or judgment or the rolling of eyes as she debates Uber or Lyft.
And she hurt him. As much as Ethan’s behavior at dinner hurt her.
No, not hurt, not exactly. Maybe incensed.
Whether that’s because of a change in this Ethan or a change in her, she doesn’t know.
Or care. It’s simply a piece to factor into this quest of her trying to figure out if they were meant to be together.
Ethan exits the pharmacy with a small succulent in hand. He’d seen them in her apartment and said they were “cute” and she
wasn’t sure if he truly thought they were or if he thought they were silly, but now, she’s so pathetic, following him like
some stalker. He’s getting her a present on his way to the gym and what was she think—
He stops at one of the new high-rises meant to entice millennials to this residential dearth, with their coworking spaces
and in-house dog walkers and casino-grade poker tables. He hits the buzzer on the side of the vestibule and a woman’s voice
says in a flirtatious tone, “And who might this be?”
He reaches into his messenger bag and pulls out his phone. He holds the screen up to the camera on the intercom, and she laughs,
and the door buzzes, and he disappears inside.
Aubrey’s heart pounds. Still, the woman behind the voice could be anyone. She could be his mom or his sister—maybe he has
one here and she could find out, she needs to find out. Her neck swivels, checking to make sure she’s alone. She rushes to
the building. Names are written below each buzzer. Ethan had pressed something in the top right.
Eric Rizzoli
Preeti Patel
Lauren Stevens
She pulls out her phone, skips past the male name and searches for “Preeti Patel, Boston.” She finds a bio on a local theater site, clicks on the woman’s social media links, and sees her on stage dressed as everything from a gumdrop to a queen.
She scrolls through photos of her with muffins and lattes at outdoor cafés and picnicking in the Public Garden with friends, but there’s no sign of Ethan. Aubrey moves on.
Lauren Stevens seems to have every social media there is—including an AIM account. And there, on the app built from Aubrey’s
sleepless nights and endless days, is the answer she didn’t know she was looking for.
How Wide’s My Smile Rating: 10 out of 10
Reason: Engaged!
Aubrey’s heart echoes in her ears as she clicks on the linked photo. A tall, pretty woman with dark brown skin thrusts her
hand in front of the camera. A sparkling square-cut diamond nearly obscures the man in the background, but he’s there, with
the smile Aubrey ached for these past weeks.
Oh god, she did this. In this world, she wasn’t supposed to be with Ethan. Their date wasn’t supposed to lead to another.
He was supposed to be with someone else, he is with someone else. Aubrey forced it. She made him into a cheater and a liar, she made herself into a cheater and a liar,
all because she couldn’t live with the guilt of what she’d done. She’s been trying to prove that they were supposed to be
together in this world in some perverse attempt to prove that they were meant to be in her world. As if “meant to be” made
the rest of it okay, made him dying because of her okay.
Aubrey’s need to be with Ethan means someone gets hurt. She wanted to know how to not make the wrong choice again. Now she
does. Whatever her gut says, do the opposite.