Chapter Sixteen #2
“What is ’all this’? This was a two-minute conversation.”
“I don’t see it needs to be much longer.”
“It does, because I like you, and I don’t want this to get weird, and I feel it is and this is why I didn’t want us to talk about it in the first place. I hoped it’d go better, and maybe I’d be wrong, and—”
“And maybe I didn’t have feelings for you.”
“No.” Aubrey stares at his profile, sharp and defined by the afternoon sun. “I hoped maybe I had feelings for you.”
He says nothing. If he said something it would be easier, mostly because Aubrey has no clue what to say next, and she’s very aware she’s the one keeping him here now. She just doesn’t want him to get up and leave. It feels too much like the end of something.
When she speaks, her voice cracks only a little. “You’re a great guy.”
He says, “Okay, yeah. Thanks.”
“I don’t understand why I don’t—”
He sighs. He’s growing irritated. “You really don’t have to.”
She watches his fingers, tapping rhythmically on the rocks. “There might be something wrong with me, I think.” She smiles because she wants to be joking.
“Right.”
“I mean, really, any girl would be lucky to have you.”
He doesn’t say anything.
She insists, “It’s true.”
“Any girl but you.” It stings how bitter he sounds.
“Simon,” Aubrey warns again, because this is how they are, usually, calling each other out, no bullshit. But he seems different now, tense, distant. Even when he smiles, it’s short and taut.
“Can we be done with this now? I told you I just need a minute to sort it out. I just thought—” He huffs and grunts, and his frustration is obvious and painful. “Fuck, I don’t know. I thought for sure. And we’d be good together.”
“I thought it might be good enough, being friends.”
“You never got curious to see if we could be more?” He watches her closely, scanning her face. He’s looking for something. Aubrey’s not sure what.
She offers pitifully, “I guess I was happy with the way things were.”
“Right.” Simon stands from the rock wall and wipes his pants, his attention wandering off to the party, the people waving him over. “Maybe that’s what it is, then. You’re content with how comfortable things are.”
She’s not sure how to take that. “Okay?”
“I mean, you won’t get very far in comfort. Sometimes you have to give things a chance. You could be surprised.”
Aubrey rises to her feet to keep up with him. “I’m just trying to follow my gut.”
"Fine! Good, I’m sure your gut’s right, then. I guess mine’s throwing me all the way off.”
“Simon—”
“I just don’t think you get it! If you just gave me a chance. I know we’d be good together. I know it. It sounds insane, maybe because it is, but I feel so sure. I can picture it so clearly. It’s hard to explain.”
Aubrey starts to say, “I understand,” but Simon keeps talking.
“We get along, and we have fun, and I get you. I get you.”
She says, “I know, yeah,” while he insists, “This would be so good, Aubrey. That’s all I’m saying. Maybe my gut’s wrong, but maybe yours is, too.”
His eyes are wild and his cheeks are red.
He often gets like this, in movement, hands flying about and hair undone, and Aubrey wishes he’d stand still for a second.
“I don’t know,” she huffs, with her arms crossed over her chest and brows furrowed.
She’s not sure of anything now, how to get out of this unscathed, or what she’s meant to do or say at all.
And then Simon is standing very close and breathing hard, and his face turns to stone, and he says, “Well I know.” Then his hands are on Aubrey’s face, and he’s drawing her to him.
His lips are hard when they meet hers. He kisses her deeply, frantically, with his hands on her cheeks and his nose digging into her face.
It feels rubbery and wet, and Aubrey is immensely, overwhelmingly aware of every inch of herself, of the air on her face and the grass on her feet and Simon, kissing her. And herself, standing there.
This would be a perfect movie moment if she could leave her body and watch it unfold from afar.
But it doesn’t happen like that. Instead, she has to stand in this spot, and breathe through it, and try not to think so hard about how she doesn’t feel much at all.
Maybe if there was music and the long pan of a camera and a little montage to set the mood.
But there’s none of it, and she waits for the kiss to end.
When he finally steps back, he asks, panting, “Well?”
Just as out of breath, Aubrey echoes, “Well?”
“How do you feel now?”
“I feel the same.” It’s a lie. She doesn’t feel the same. She’s disappointed, and embarrassed, and she wants to search for Maggie in the crowd. She thinks back over the last few months and wonders how long he’s been waiting to do this. Her heart splinters.
Quietly, she says again, “I feel the same.”
He sighs, heavily. “So this was a waste, then.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“My friendship was a waste?”
“No, it’s—I just thought there’d be more. I thought—” He seems too conscious to keep talking, to say what’s really on his mind, but Aubrey reads it in his eyes. He shrugs. “Whatever. I gave it my all, I guess.”
All she finds to reply is, “Okay.”
“Yeah.” He steps back and begins to turn, hands in his pockets, face still closed to the world he readies himself to return to. Further ahead, people are laughing and shouting at him to join. “Enjoy the party and all,” he says.
“Simon.”
“It’s fine, Jesus. Let’s have a good time, alright?”
He doesn’t look back as he walks away, with his hair in the wind and his back squared in irritation, maybe anger.
Aubrey feels terrible. She’s let him down.
Maybe she ought to have made more of an effort.
Maybe he’s right, maybe she got it wrong.
But she’s too drained to try, it seems, or maybe she doesn’t have it in her to figure this out.
Maybe she’s missing the gene that would bloom feelings into intimacy, into romance.
Maybe her friends know something she doesn’t, about the intricacies of first relationships, how they picked their favourite boy in class and agreed to be with them and they dated for a month and professed their love for each other on social media.
About going through their first heartbreak and finding their experiences reflected in songs and movies that ring so relatable, while Aubrey watches and wonders when it’ll be her turn.
She blinks and suddenly Maggie is hurrying over in her direction, with her mouth open and her eyes wide. “What the hell was that?” she exclaims as she slows to an abrupt halt.
It’s pathetic, but Aubrey stammers, “I don’t know,” twice and nothing else. It’s easier, and she chooses easy. Maggie doesn’t ask any more questions, not for now, but she draws her into a hug and says, “Don’t worry about it. You’re better off without him.”
Later, the two of them sit in an empty living room while everyone is still outside.
The sun has set and fairy lights soak the yard in a warm orange light.
In the distance, a camera flashes once in a while, and Aubrey pretends very hard not to pay attention to the sound of Simon’s voice.
She and Maggie have agreed he’s an ass and she’s not a terrible person, which she nodded along to, but she’s not entirely convinced of it still.
“You’ll know when it happens,” Maggie insists now. “Trust me. I don’t know how to convince you, but you’ll know. There’s no way in the world you’ll miss it.”
“Maybe with time—”
“Life is short as hell, Aubrey. Don’t waste it forcing feelings for a guy.”
“Right. I get that.” They sit on the couch with their feet intertwined.
It’s a ridiculous space, much too big yet crowded nonetheless, with too many pieces of furniture and oversized plants.
The couch is an intimidatingly pristine shade of cream.
A few candles are burning here and there, as if someone’s been specifically assigned to set the mood.
The windows, rising up to a high ceiling, are open to let in the breeze.
Aubrey stares at the decorative medallion centred overhead.
“But maybe I’m just a slow burn kind of girl.
Like I need to get to know someone before I catch feelings. ”
“Yes, okay. But you know Simon.”
“I do.”
“And you don’t have romantic feelings for him.”
“Right.”
“So that’s done, then.”
“Yes, but maybe there’s something I haven’t seen—”
“No. Aubrey. You don’t need to justify not having feelings for someone. No is enough of an answer. You don’t have to make sense of it, or put the right words to it, or explain it to anyone. Especially yourself.”
Aubrey tries to hear it, really hear it, but it’s hard.
So hard. Her heart is too big for her chest. She sinks into her weight and drops her head on Maggie’s shoulder, and they sit there, listening to the conversations outside.
Quietly, Maggie says, “Don’t worry about it.
I’m sure you’ll meet someone soon. It’s not like you’re twenty-five and still single or anything. ”