Chapter Thirteen
Aubrey sits back in the passenger seat of Florence’s car. An address is already in the GPS. Their destination is just over an hour away.
Florence shifts to drive. “I kind of love driving into the city now. Weirdly relaxing, like you have time to think but not too much.”
Aubrey studies the inside of Florence’s car—comforting in its outdated tech, with the old radio and the marked absence of heated seats. She huddles in her coat. “And we’re teleporting back home, I assume,” she says, only half joking.
Florence shakes her head. “I’m not drinking. Big shoot tomorrow, I want a clear head. Think of me as your personal designated driver. Nothing better to do than drive you around.”
She smiles. It seems she actually means it.
The road is clear and the drive goes by fast. They weave through other small towns that feel like Lunenburg but not exactly.
Houses line the main road in rows of lit up living rooms and lively kitchens.
Florence has been to most of these towns and speaks of tourist sites that Aubrey forgets about almost immediately.
They bond over their opposite interest in driving—Florence could spend hours behind the wheel, while Aubrey finds it much too stressful.
Florence brings up the bar they’re going to, and the best drink to get there, something blue with Curacao that Aubrey has to try.
“Do you go out often, then?” Aubrey asks, watching the sharp profile of Florence’s features.
“Oh, yeah. I mean, not as often as I used to. Just often enough I still feel like I’m rebelling against adulthood and whatnot.”
“So you like the crowd, and the sweating.”
Florence’s grin grows. “I do, yeah. I don’t know, there’s something about it I’m not tired of yet.
And it makes me feel like I’m doing something to enjoy my life, actively.
Not something to care for my body or my mind, like journaling or running or anything like that. Just for pure fun, and that’s it.”
“Do you ever do this thing, when you go out, where you wonder just for a second if it’ll be the night you meet someone? I used to do that a lot. All the time, really, if I’m being honest.”
Florence lets out a long groan. “God, yes. Drives me nuts. I feel it defeats the whole point of doing something for myself without caring for other people’s opinion.
But then all I can think about is what I look like, and if I’ve caught anyone’s eye, and if that cute guy I spotted is with anyone.
Even when I’m dancing, I feel so aware of how I move, it’s like—well, like I’m in a movie.
And I’m waiting for someone to just yell ’Cut! ’ so I can move on to the next scene.”
“And no one’s thinking about that except you, it always seems.” Aubrey shifts to lean against the window as she speaks.
Her heels dig into the rug under her feet.
“Either my friends are taken already, or fresh out of something and never really in the mood to meet anyone, and the second you mention it you feel like you’re annoying everybody.
And no one else is in that stupid mindset you can’t get out of. ”
“And I feel like an idiot by the end of it.” Florence fidgets with a dial on the dashboard.
“Either I haven’t met anyone and I feel disappointed in a way that—I don’t know, makes my skin crawl and fills me with a kind of shame I can’t even explain, or justify, or I’ve met someone and I’m already getting too excited, and I overthink every little thing, and I know I shouldn’t be getting so hopeful. But I keep doing it anyway.”
On the speakers, a man sings languidly about heartbreak.
In a way, it feels like sharing this with Florence has given Aubrey the space she craves so desperately to feel the way she feels.
It nearly cancels everything out, the doubts and the anxiety.
She sits content for once in it just being the two of them, without the need to end the night by starting a life any different than her own. The feeling is dizzying.
They park the car on a quiet street lined with condos and decide to leave their coats behind.
Their heels dig in the snow packed along the curb.
Three corners over, they find a wide, bright red-brick facade overlooking a large crowd.
People stand around in groups as if it’s not below freezing, smoking and chatting loudly.
Aubrey’s already losing feeling in her toes.
The line to get in is short. Beyond the entrance, the place is dark, long, and narrow, drowning in neon shades of purple and royal blue and blood red.
In one corner, two waitresses wave sparklers strapped to the neck of expensive bottles for a table of cheering men.
A DJ stands along one wall, looking too tired for his audience.
“You should see this place in the summer,” Florence says in Aubrey’s ear as they weave their way to the bar. “The wait to get in is usually enough to convince me maybe I could just stay a virgin forever after all.”
Aubrey stifles a snort with her hand, not that anyone would’ve heard her anyway.
A large dance floor fills the centre of the room, busy but not packed.
The bar is more crowded and smells like spilled drinks and fresh lemon.
It’s a little disorienting in a way Aubrey hadn’t realized she’d missed so much.
She squeezes between two sets of shoulders and waves at one of the two bartenders, who nods in response.
When Aubrey turns to her right, she finds Florence by her side.
“Thanks for taking me out,” Aubrey shouts over the music. She wants to say, I needed it badly.
Florence just nods, and it’s enough. The air is scarce. Aubrey watches the men lined up at the counter to her left and doesn’t feel like talking to any of them.
Florence must feel differently—when Aubrey turns to her right again, she already finds her friend smiling and nodding along to something a man in his late twenties is saying, with big hand gestures and very little distance between the two of them.
The confidence that pours out of this woman is impressive, in waves that make it so easy to assume wild things about her.
Aubrey realizes then that she can’t really blame the people who gasp and say “No way! You’re kidding!
” when she tells them she’s never dated anyone, who insist on seeing a truth that isn’t there.
In the dim lights of the bar, it’s so hard to think otherwise.
Out of the corner of her eye, she spots a head of blonde hair and feels for her phone in her back pocket by reflex, just for a second.
It hasn’t vibrated once, which isn’t surprising, but it sends a sting through her chest that she tries not to notice.
She returns to the crowd. She ought to get to work, sit and make eye contact with men and wait for the spark.
Or create the spark. Because she’s a self-sufficient woman, romantic but not disillusioned about love, who knows that hard work goes into a good relationship.
“Whisky sour, please,” she calls to the girl who leans over the counter to take her order.
Her drink comes. Aubrey looks over at Florence again to make sure all is well. She’s still talking to the same guy. When she notices Aubrey, she reaches over to squeeze her arm briefly. They haven’t agreed on any sort of code, but this feels promising.
When Aubrey turns back, someone by her side is having a hard time getting the bartender’s attention.
He seems a little younger than her and almost nervous, looking back at a group of guys standing in the back, beer bottles in hand.
One of them, at the front of the group, waves him on.
The man nods and turns away again, and Aubrey looks at him and thinks maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to say hi.
“She should be here in a minute,” is all she finds to say when she leans over.
His brown complexion catches the red glow of the neons above the bar. He wears a cartoonish t-shirt that Aubrey can’t make out from where she sits. On their stools like this he’s a little taller than her, and when he turns to find the stranger who just spoke to him, he frowns at Aubrey. “Sorry?”
“I mean the girl behind the bar. She shouldn’t be long.”
“Oh.” He seems to consider her for a second. “Okay.”
“Sorry, I just saw you there, I thought you might use a little cheering on.”
“Uh, yeah, no, it’s fine. Thanks for the tip. It should hold me off for a minute.”
“Right.” She hears herself say, “Sorry, again,” and she knows she shouldn’t.
“Okay. You don’t have to apologize.”
Aubrey hums around a tangy sip of her drink. She decides to switch strategies. “I’m not very good at this,” she confesses, hoping for a bit of sympathy, maybe a little bonding.
He ventures, “Speaking?”
“Yes. With strangers, I mean. But I’m trying to go all-in with exposure therapy.”
His face is hard to read. Aubrey’s humour feels wrong, and her tone is off. She watches intently for a smile, even a small one.
Finally he says, with a hint of a smirk, “I don’t really trust people who are good at talking to strangers.”
“Well, there you go, then.” Aubrey indulges in her drink again, for courage. “I’m Aubrey, by the way. If it helps with the whole strangers thing.”
“Sure, yeah. I’m Arjun.”
“Are you having a good time tonight, Arjun?” She fidgets with her paper straw. She’s nervous but in a good way, her foot shaking against the stool and the lump in her throat sitting right where it usually does when things get interesting.
Arjun says, “I am, yeah. I just got here, but no complaints so far.”
Aubrey considers looking back at Florence, or maybe pulling out her phone again, but instead she nods and smiles and thinks this is what she ought to be doing, at this very moment.