Chapter Four
Eight years earlier
Aubrey is staying at home for a few days to celebrate her twentieth birthday. It’s a nice little vacation from campus, even though really it’s hardly a forty-minute drive back to her parents’ house.
It’s just after dinner when her mom comes up to her in the bathroom, stands too close by her side, and says, in a sing-songy way, “I’ve got news for you.”
Aubrey’s unsteady hand hovers by her ear where she’s trying to get an earring to obey her command. She meets her mother’s eye in the mirror and lets her eyebrows urge Marie on.
“One of my coworkers, Stacy, she has a son, Oliver. He’s your age.”
The sentence ends there. Aubrey picks at a stray hair and says, “Okay?”
“He’s single.” There’s a marked, heavy emphasis on single.
“Mom,” Aubrey warns somewhat playfully, because it’s hard to deny that a part of her is flattered. She wonders immediately what he looks like, what he’s into. Maybe football, or playing the guitar.
Her mother plays the innocent part to perfection. “I’m just saying, it’s not been so easy for you to meet boys, so I thought—well, it can’t hurt, can it?”
“I’m not too sure about that.”
“Come on. Here, I’ve got a picture.” Marie pulls out her phone and tuts impatiently as she tries and fails to unlock it.
Her face has contorted into a grimace by the time she manages to pull up her conversation with Stacy, and she holds out the device to show Aubrey a picture of a guy in his early twenties.
He’s pleasantly average, with short, neatly cut hair, a crisp polo shirt, and an air that suggests he didn’t want his picture taken in the first place.
Aubrey doesn’t say much. She can’t decide what would be the right thing to do now, staring at this stranger and trying to decide, under her mother’s gaze, whether she finds him attractive. “Well?” Marie urges.
“I don’t know,” Aubrey concedes. “I mean, he’s fine. I’m not sure he’s my type.”
“Oh, now, why do you say that?”
“He just looks a little different than what I’m usually into.”
Her mother scoffs, and even though she wears a tight-lipped smile, the rest of her suggests it’s not funny at all, actually. “How would you know what you’re usually into?”
“Mom.”
“You’ve never been with anyone.”
“I know that. I’m just saying, I don’t know if I’d like him.”
“Well, of course you wouldn’t. But you give him a chance, and then you know. He’s going to be in real estate. Stacy says he’s very outgoing, hardly ever around the house. Has lots of friends, that sort of thing. Plays tennis.”
Absolutely none of those things relate to Aubrey. You’d think a mother would’ve known that. “Okay. Well, thank you for thinking of me. Like I said, I don’t think he’s for me.”
“You should at least give him a try.” Marie’s tone is clipped, as if Aubrey’s just rejected her personally. “Stacy’s already shown him pictures of you, and he’s really interested in taking you out.”
Aubrey’s heart drops to the depth of her ass.
So she’s disappointing this stranger she’s never met, this guy who’s already made up his mind about her only to be told no.
She wishes desperately that her mom would’ve talked to her first, waited for her green light, or maybe taken a good look at Oliver and said on her own volition, “You know, I don’t think that’s my daughter’s type, actually. ”
But no. Aubrey sighs and says, “Okay, fine. I guess it can’t hurt to meet him.
” Because it’s easier. It makes her mother smile, and it shows the world she’s trying, and it makes her feel a little less like there might be something wrong with her.
She’ll go back to the girls at school and she’ll have a story to tell.
They’ll press her for details. They’ll be interested.
And he thinks she’s cute, and he wants to go out with her.
The following evening, Oliver drives by the house to pick her up. He waits in his car and honks until Aubrey comes out. He offers a polite “Hi” when she opens the passenger door and slips in. She realizes just then that she should’ve suggested they meet up somewhere instead.
“I’m Aubrey,” she offers with a small smile.
In return, he says, “Ah, yeah. Hey. I was thinking we might just drive around a bit, if that’s cool.”
“Sure.” Aubrey isn’t sure what’s cool and what isn’t.
The truth is, she’s only been on a handful of dates before, most of which she wouldn’t even consider actual dates, and her heart is in her throat right now.
She looks back at her parents’ house and wishes she’d said no.
Somehow, wallowing in her loneliness in her childhood bedroom would’ve felt like a comforting hug compared to this.
She thinks of the sappy movies she’s watched five times over, the dates she’s dreamed of going out on, the stories her friends told her that made her nauseous with envy.
In this sea of dating failures and successes, she wonders where she’ll fall.
Already she thinks of how the evening will end and goes over the words she’ll choose to say goodbye.
Thanks for the evening, this was nice. Yeah, maybe we should do it again, we’ll see. A polite smile. Burning ears.
Oliver stares at the road as he speaks. “So, my mom says you’re studying classical languages.”
“I am, yeah. A bit of creative writing, too.”
“Cool.”
“Mm.” Already the silence creeps in. The neighbourhood around them is steeped in darkness, save for a few traffic lights here and there, blurry through the windshield. “What about you?”
“Oh, I’m getting my real estate license.”
“That’s fun.” Aubrey’s head rolls against the headrest. She hugs her purse to her front.
She dreadfully needs this to go well, to be proven wrong.
She wants Oliver to catch her off-guard.
Maybe he’s not what he seems, and she’ll be taught a lesson, and this will be it.
She’ll even go so far as admitting her mother was right.
“So, do you do this kind of thing often?” she asks. “Blind dates?”
He lets out a disheartened chuckle. “No, not really. It’s kind of desperate, right? But I figured, eh. Makes my mom happy. You’re pretty easy on the eyes. I might as well.”
“Right. Well, thanks.” Aubrey takes a second to think of what to say next, and nothing feels quite right. Reluctantly, she settles on, “What music do you listen to?”
They drive for a while after that without talking, letting Oliver’s playlist fill in the silence instead.
He skips a lot of songs, mostly rap. Sometimes, one of them asks a question and the other offers a short response.
It’s a fine conversation. Aubrey can’t pinpoint exactly what’s wrong with it.
Oliver’s an okay guy. They bring up their moms and bond over how annoying they can be.
The way he doesn’t seem to care much about most things would probably charm Maggie and the girls in Aubrey’s dorm, who get wasted and compete over who can match with the hottest guy online.
It’s hard to tell whether Oliver’s boring or shy.
Probably he thinks the same of her. Aubrey looks over a lot to catch a glimpse of his profile.
She’s so painfully aware that he’s a perfectly suitable option.
She tries very hard not to estimate how long it’ll be until they get back to the house.
As usual, she’s too conscious of herself, of every part of her body, how she should feel.
She waits for the butterflies she’s been promised and wonders what part of this is meant to feel natural.
Her knees are pressed against the side of the door.
“Sorry,” Oliver says then, startling Aubrey a little. When she looks over, she finds him watching her. He pulls a face. “I’m not too good at chatting and stuff.”
“Oh, no, you’re fine.”
“You’re not saying much.”
“I don’t have much to say.” She taps her fingers nervously against the edge of her knee. “I don’t really like doing this sort of thing, honestly.”
“Driving around?”
“No, just, this. Hanging out with guys I don’t really know. Talking about things we’ll probably forget about really soon.”
He says, “Mm,” and frowns. It’s hard to tell whether he agrees or not. Aubrey’s cheeks grow hot. Then he says, “That’s what dating is, though, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” The notes of a familiar pop song play on the radio. “I don’t do much of that.”
“Ah.” Oliver drums his fingers over the steering wheel. His face is illuminated for a second by a passing streetlight. “How do you meet guys, then?”
Aubrey hesitates. She wonders for a second if there’s a point in lying.
Sometimes she does, other times she doesn’t.
It depends on the person, though she’s come to learn she’s usually wrong in anticipating their response.
But tonight it’s late, and she and Oliver don’t have much in common, and she’s exhausted.
Lying feels hard. So she says, with a defeated sigh, “I don’t. ”
The radio takes centre stage for a moment. Then Oliver says, “Cool,” and Aubrey turns to look out the window. After a minute, he adds, “I’ll take you home, alright?”
She doesn’t say anything in return. She’s used to this.
Already, at twenty, it seems she’s missed this unspoken deadline that people consider acceptable for her not to engage in casual dating on a regular basis.
The pressure started to mount when she was around eighteen, and now she can’t imagine it getting worse.
She knows it will. It’s a terrifying thing to sit with, this ticking time bomb, the fear that she’ll turn twenty-one and still be a woman who’s never been in a relationship.
It’s irrational. She’d never say it out loud.
She’s too conscious that twenty-one is laughably young to be worrying about this, that she’s still got so much time.
Anyone over the age of twenty-two would scoff at her.
She’d deserve it, probably. And yet it’s there and it won’t go away, the worry at the pit of her stomach, gnawing at her with the reminder that she’s doing something wrong.
Something weird. That at twenty, moved out of her parents’ house, she’s missed out on a number of experiences she’ll never get back—asking for permission to have a boy over, going to prom with someone eager to make a first move, showing the poster collection on her wall to a guy who’d gently tease her and remark at the childhood photos on her dresser.
It’s overwhelming. She focuses on the streetlights.
“Should I come out and open the door for you?” Oliver asks as he parks along the curb in front of Aubrey’s house.
The lights are still on in the living room.
Aubrey lives in a dorm now, on the other side of town, and there are no posters on the walls there.
She often wonders whether she’ll ever bring a boy over to her dorm before she graduates.
With each next step, the fear has compounded, and she wishes she’d enjoyed life when it was easier to bear.
Like looking at old pictures of yourself and thinking you were so pretty then, how come you didn’t like yourself in that moment?
She knows the fear will grow and she probably won’t meet the perfect guy the following day, or week, or month.
And she’s barely twenty. But things just feel so big at twenty.
“It’s fine,” she says, opening the door with a small, polite smile. “Thanks for the drive.”
“Good luck. With dating, and stuff.”
Without thinking, Aubrey replies, “Good luck with talking.” The radio isn’t playing anymore. She hops out of the car and shuts the door behind her before he has a chance to respond. By the time she steps inside the house, the car has driven off.
In the living room, her mom is sitting on the couch and pretending to read a book. Marie asks, “Well?” and though she doesn’t look up from the page, the smile she fails at biting back says enough. She can hardly sit still.
Aubrey tries not to audibly sigh when she drops her purse to the floor. “It was fine.”
“Was it?”
“No. I told you he wasn’t my type.”
Marie looks up, aghast, as if she’s been directly insulted. “Wha—well, you’ve gotta give him a real chance. You guys barely hung out for a couple hours!”
“We’re just not a fit. It’s fine.” Aubrey begins to climb the stairs leading to the second floor. She can hear her mom scrambling to get up and rush over from the other room.
“But it’s got to work! I’ve already talked to Stacy, and we were thinking we might go on holiday together, all of us, she’s got this great cabin I’ve been dying to check out, and Oliver is such a sweet boy.
I mean honey, really, you’ve got to stop being so picky, you’ll never find anyone if you keep looking for the impossible—”
Aubrey counts the steps as she climbs up the stairs, one, two, three, four.
“Don’t you think you should hang out with him at least a few times before you make up your mind?
” her mother goes on behind her. “I mean, of course it’s not going to be fireworks and whatnot from the second you meet, I swear, you’ve got to stop watching so many movies.
Real love takes time, you know. Listen, I’ll give Stacy a call and we can probably arrange something.
Or better yet, do you have his number? Maybe if I give him a call myself—”
Aubrey doesn’t even bother trying to come up with a response she hasn’t used before. She turns the corner, vanishes in her room, and pretends she hasn’t heard her mother’s tirade for the eighth time this year.
Two days later, she’s on her way back to campus—nearly the same as she was when she got there, yet just a little different.
She always feels a little less sure of who she is after a date that doesn’t lead to anything more, as if it’s further blurred the edges of the person she so desperately wants to be.
It makes her wonder if she should be funnier, if she should pick up a new hobby, if she should start putting more effort into her hair.
The feeling lasts for a few days and then it fades away, or seeps into her bones, whichever.
Her mother doesn’t talk to Stacy, but she also never quite lets go of Oliver, of what he could’ve been.
She makes him into the symbol of Aubrey’s lack of effort and brings him up every so often, with a sad little shake of her head and a tut of her tongue.
She says things like, “He was such a nice boy,” and “Have you looked him up recently? Maybe he’s still single,” and “Really, it’s like you didn’t even try at all.
And you wonder why you’re still on your own. ”
At twenty-seven, the fear of turning twenty-one without having ever been in a relationship has turned into a nostalgic memory, one that Aubrey smiles and chuckles at when she thinks of turning twenty-eight.