Chapter Eight
Six years earlier
The week after she turns twenty-one, Aubrey meets Rami at a house party. It’s early September. The semester has just started.
Someone introduces them, it’s hard to remember who, but they quickly realize they’ve got a class in common.
He offers to fill up Aubrey’s drink. She politely declines with a gentle tease that he might spike it, so instead he accompanies her to the kitchen, where a little plastic table holds an improvised bar.
She makes her own drink and he asks her about herself, and suggests they find somewhere to sit so they can talk.
Her ears are hot and she has a hard time not smiling. They sit on a couch in the living room, and he says, “I mean, it’s crazy how easy it is to talk to you.” Aubrey can’t really tell if he’s drunk or not. Rami is attractive and smells musky like generic cologne, the kind her dad wears.
She finds him easy to talk to because he, like nearly everyone else, is looking to talk about himself, and she enjoys sitting there and giving him a little space to redefine who he is through polite conversation.
It’s easier, anyway, to listen—in conversations she often can’t seem to think of things to contribute, at least when it comes to most politics, or sports, or the career goals that await them after they graduate.
Her friends always come up with quips and witty remarks that don’t come so naturally to her yet.
In groups, Aubrey listens to insightful theories on school and popular TV shows, and she wonders how come she’s not brimming with opinions herself.
It’s not the same when she texts Maggie or Ivory—then she comes up with long-winded paragraphs and has to stop herself from ranting.
“Meeting girls is just crazy these days, you know,” Rami is saying now, looking off to the side.
In one-on-one situations like these, Aubrey finds it harder to blend into the background and nod along to others’ contributions, but she’s good at saying “Absolutely” and “That’s so true” to keep the attention off herself.
“It’s like no one really talks anymore,” Rami continues. “We don’t really connect. Like everyone’s constantly on to the next thing. Dating apps are poison. I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud. You seem like you get it.”
“I do, yeah,” Aubrey says. She wants Rami to continue to tilt his head to look at her, and to keep smiling with his knee close to hers.
“It was so much easier when we were younger,” he says.
“Everyone was just friends with each other, just like that. And then sometimes we’d look at one another and think, hey, I think I’d like for us to make out.
Relationships were just... I don’t know, simpler.
Pure gut feeling, right? No question about long-term compatibility, childhood trauma, baggage from previous relationships and whatnot.
Just restless to fall in love for the first time. ”
“Mm. I think it can still feel like that,” Aubrey leans sideways into the thick cushions of the worn orange sofa. Her legs, folded underneath herself, are growing numb. “Falling in love’s still pretty exciting, I find.”
“Right, yeah. It is. It just gets a little harder not to settle into pessimism, doesn’t it? Like you know what heartbreak feels like, and getting over someone and all that, so it just gets a little harder to fall headfirst into something new.”
Relationships are the exception, the one thing Aubrey has almost too much to say about.
She’s had too long to mull the topic over, to dissect it to its bare bones.
“Maybe at some point, yeah, but don’t you think everyone goes through different experiences in their own time?
And isn’t it exciting to meet someone at this unique point in their life, and discover just how different your paths have been?
Doesn’t it always feel kind of thrilling to begin something new? ”
She asks out loud questions she doesn’t have answers to. She blames the red cup in her hand. Rami is touching Aubrey’s knee, and he nods along to her speech.
“I think it’d be awfully cynical of me to disagree,” he says, amused. This is something Aubrey’s noticed when talking to men—they find it hard to disagree with women they’re flirting with, and they enjoy pointing it out.
Aubrey laughs and says, “It’s fine if you think otherwise.”
“I’m assuming you haven’t had any bad breakups and get along well with all your exes, then,” Rami says. He’s joking, entertained by the ludicrous implications of his assumption, and Aubrey doubts he even notices she’s not laughing along with him.
She shrugs and admits sheepishly, “I don’t have any exes, actually. Never had a breakup either.”
“Right, okay.” His sarcasm glares like a barking laugh.
Aubrey insists, “Wha—it’s true!”
The floor shakes a little from music booming in the background. Around them, the crowd stands in groups and the chatter is indecipherable except for laughter and squeals that echo from every corner of the room. The air is dim. Rami’s face creases in amused disbelief.
“Come on, no it’s not!”
“It is, yeah! Really!” It’s a nice feeling, for a second, that Aubrey’s biggest insecurity is a source of fun and teasing and a smile on this guy’s face. She likes to watch his lips split in a grin and his eyes squint. He throws his head back and says, “No way!”
Aubrey laughs into her cup. “Come on, it’s not that big a deal!”
“No, no, I know! It’s just, you know. Damn.” Rami scratches his jaw as he casts a slow look around the stuffy room. “Lucky you, right? No baggage and all.”
“That’s one way to look at it, yeah.”
His eyes are a little heavy. He says, “I do think you’re cute,” almost like he’s doing her a favour.
Aubrey snorts. “Wow, thanks.”
“So, what’s wrong with you, then?”
Rami’s expression still promises he’s kidding. It’s funny, and light, and there’s music, and they’re at a party.
So Aubrey just smiles and says, “Very funny.”
“Ah, I’m just messing with you. Everyone’s got red flags, yeah?”
He doesn’t wait for her answer, and probably doesn’t notice when she fails to keep her smile from wavering.
Just like that, he turns and signals at someone across the room, and he shouts at a friend and holds his finger up as if to say, just a minute.
Then he turns back and says, “Listen, I guess we might see each other in class?”
All Aubrey finds to say is, “Okay.”
He gets up and returns his attention to whoever he spotted elsewhere.
For a moment Aubrey just sits there on this oversized couch, watching the bodies and faces moving and interacting around her, hands on arms and waists and lips on cheeks and lips.
She feels impossibly detached from the scene, out of place as if she doesn’t have the right to be there.
She texts Maggie asking where she is. A response comes in almost immediately—second-floor bathroom.
Maggie is bent over the counter to stand as close to the mirror as possible when Aubrey knocks and nudges the door ajar.
“Come in,” Maggie says, in an odd voice because she’s got her mouth open and her head tilted back. She’s reapplying gloss and groaning at her reflection. “Where have you been?”
Aubrey smiles at Maggie in the mirror. “You missed me.”
“I hope you were having a good time.”
“I was talking to a man.”
“Oh.” Wiping at the corners of her mouth, Maggie twists her neck to look back at Aubrey. “Very intriguing. Tell me all of it.”
A collection of beauty products is lined carefully along the vanity, face creams and cleansers and toners from different brands. There are six different toothbrushes in a single holder, a rainbow of colours.
“Not much to tell, really. He was cute, sort of funny. We have class together.”
“Cute and funny? Such passionate language.”
“Ha ha.”
“Why are you here now instead of with him?”
“Conversation came to a natural end, I guess. He spotted a friend.”
“Did he get your number?”
Aubrey says, “He said we’ll see each other in class,” because it’s easier than saying no.
Maggie does a weird sort of smile in the mirror. “Okay,” she says. “That’s good, yeah.”
Chewing through her nails, Aubrey asks, “Is it?”
Maggie clicks her gloss shut and turns to face Aubrey, and she’s so pretty it’s stifling. She says in a confident, stern voice, “He’s going to walk up to you in class and say hey, it was nice chatting the other night, and he’s going to ask for your number.”
Aubrey downs the rest of her drink.
In class three days later, she gets to the auditorium third and picks a seat high up so she can watch people coming in, but she tells herself the whole time that she doesn’t actually care, and she isn’t actually thinking about him.
People file in and lean into each other to giggle and show each other things on their phones.
Soon the seats are nearly all filled, and Aubrey rests her chin in her palm on the desk and realizes she hasn’t looked away from the door in ten minutes.
When Rami walks in, it’s one minute before class begins. He’s on his own, a bag swaying across his shoulder. He scans the room. When he meets Aubrey’s eye, it takes most of everything she has not to sit up and wave him over.
And his gaze passes.