Chapter One #3
Aubrey only realizes she’s still staring at the locked screen of her phone when Maggie calls her name and shoots her an inquisitive look, the kind that quietly begs her to join in on the girl chat.
She’d used it a lot when they’d shared a room in college, back when Maggie insisted on dragging Aubrey along to parties with other journalism majors, where they’d discuss the woes of college dating at length, and someone, at some inevitable point, would beg Aubrey to please take a picture of all the other girls together in a carefully orchestrated candid shot.
“It’s pointless beating yourself up over it, honestly,” Ivory says as Aubrey makes her way over to sit closer to the girls. She drops her phone face down on her lap. Ivory adds, “We’ve all done much worse,” and they all nod along.
Everyone but Aubrey.
They shouldn’t notice, really. Except they make a very serious sort of eye contact as they nod, like when you knock your glasses together in a toast and stare at everyone for good luck, and Marianne’s gaze falls on Aubrey. “Right, Aubrey?”
She blinks. “Sorry?”
“You okay?”
“Oh, yes. I just, well. I’m sorry for you, Julie.” She turns to Julie, watching her carefully rearrange the strands of blonde hair hanging loose from her updo. “That sounds like it would suck.”
“Come on, no it doesn’t,” Rachel cuts in, with a wave of her hand that feels personal to Aubrey, even from the opposite end of the circle.
“We’ve all been there, it’s fine. Part of the game, I think.
You haven’t really dated until you’ve regretted letting a man with an awful haircut suck on your nipples, yeah? ”
And then, out of nowhere, Maggie says, “Oh, Aubrey hasn’t really been dating at all, actually,” like it’s no big deal because to her it’s grown into a funny, passing anecdote.
But Aubrey has come to learn that to other people it isn’t, and she notices in the girls’ demeanour the familiar tilt of the head, the small frown, the puzzled purse of the lips.
The uh before one of them, she’s not sure who, echoes, “At all?”
“No, I mean, I’ve been on dates,” Aubrey clarifies, because it’s what she does, tries to defend this thing about herself that feels much bigger to the world than it does to her.
“First dates and such. I just haven’t really committed to the whole thing yet, I guess.
” She tries to say it in an amusing way but it doesn’t land the way she hopes.
She smiles and thinks of Louise then, of the messages on her phone.
She adds, “It’s no big deal, really.” The room has grown hot.
Rachel says, “Yeah, sure,” and then there’s a pause, too long and too quiet, and then she adds, “I mean, not even just casual fucking? Messing around even though you know it won’t lead anywhere? Or saying you’re not committing to any labels, but really, you’ve met each other’s parents?”
“I just haven’t got around to it,” Aubrey says. It feels like a lie. She’s not sure what the truth would be.
“Wow.” Rachel sits back, stunned. “I mean, good for you.” Everyone else nods again, with the same eye contact. Marianne and Ivory say, “Yeah, really, good for you,” and Aubrey knows they don’t really mean it.
“Actually, Aubrey’s got some really great things coming up,” Maggie says then, catching everyone off-guard, including Aubrey. “A big career change, exciting stuff.” She sounds so confident that Aubrey can’t even bring herself to point out that that’s not exactly true.
She opens her mouth to say something but nothing comes out. The girls don’t ask for more details, which is a relief and also a little insulting, when she really thinks about it. Maggie is watching her with wide eyes and an expectant smile.
Suddenly, from beyond the classroom door left ajar, some guy shouts, “Oh, hey, something’s going on in there!
” and people rush in, buzzing with the thrill of taking over a space they’re not meant to, gasping and pointing at the old desks and shouting, “That used to be my seat!” and “Write something on the board!” The growing crowd fizzes with the intoxicating high of nostalgia.
Aubrey hops off the desk to slip away and back into the now quieter hall, where a few people stand chatting in pairs.
She spots Victor among them, nearly unchanged but decidedly a grown man now.
She thinks of Maggie, of the picture of the two of them at prom she still had framed when they were in college.
Just like that, there’s no more looking forward to the reunion, arguing with Maggie over whether or not to go, wondering who she might see there, what people might think of her.
She’s here now, and nobody really cares, at least not nearly enough for any of it to matter.
Just enough to make her feel a little badly about herself, no matter how hard she tries not to.
Enough to make her notice how different she feels still, even a decade later.
She wonders when that’ll stop. Whether she’ll ever sit among these girls and share stories they’ll relate to.
Regrets they’ll bond over. Sometimes she thinks mistakes would be better than this nothingness of having yet to experience anything at all at nearly twenty-eight.
She doesn’t always feel this way—feelings are seldom linear.
It’s just a little harder to play the role of the confident, independent woman on nights like these.
On a lot of other nights, too. It might be easier if she’d decided this was a choice, something she did on purpose and could explain and justify without much care for other people’s opinions.
She’s almost there. It’s a work in progress.
Her mother would argue that maybe if Aubrey stopped rejecting men after one or two dates, she might actually get somewhere. Maybe Aubrey is to blame. She tries not to think about it too much, and she fails often.
She’s going to think about it tonight, and tomorrow too, probably.
The reunion is already morphing into a memory.
She doesn’t have anything planned in her calendar that hasn’t been there for years—birthdays and holidays and maybe a reminder that says FIND ANOTHER JOB in a bright red font.
It pops up weekly on Monday mornings and she often sees it on her way to work.
She’d set it up five months earlier, in January, shortly after speaking with Louise.
Heading further down the hall, past the wide mahogany staircase and the administration office, Aubrey pulls up her conversation with her aunt.
On the wall across from her, rain knocks relentlessly against a tall, narrow window, fragmenting the moonlight into specks of silver.
Aubrey thinks of tomorrow, of Ivory and Maggie.
It sucks to realize there’s no real excuse to say no to Louise.
Nothing keeping her anchored here, not really.
In a not quite small town, not quite big city, an in-between of 90’s neighbourhoods, short but crammed highways, and a comforting but stifling surrounding of mountains.
Maybe the sea air would help. Maybe starting over with people who have no idea who she is might hold off a full-blown meltdown for a few months still.
She holds her breath when she presses send. Her message is short. She regrets not adding an exclamation mark at the end to seem a little more enthusiastic.
But Louise’s answer comes in almost immediately.