Chapter Eighteen
The morning after Florence’s party, the light is hazy through Aubrey’s bedroom window. When she wakes she’s exactly the same, but also, entirely different.
Her bed is the same. Her hair curls against her temples as usual. She must look unchanged. To the outside world, nothing has shifted at all.
Yet nestled deep in the cracks of her chest, with roots tangled all the way to the pit of her gut, sit feelings for Arthur. Fierce, and breathtaking. They’ve bloomed under the moon and crash over her now, not like a wave but like a bucket of ice-cold water.
Aubrey lies there staring at the ceiling. “Fuck,” she says very quietly.
Downstairs, Louise is rummaging around. Through the floral curtains the world is white and bright, and the comforter is heavy and stifling on Aubrey’s chest. “Fuck,” she exhales again.
There’s nothing she can pinpoint that would explain this.
But she lies there soaked in the certainty that she has feelings for him, and that were he there now, she would press her mouth to his, this very second, and then again, and again.
She would run her fingers through his hair, and she would listen to him talk, and she would make him soup, should he suddenly crave some soup.
She blushes at the thought of his eyes on her, and all she wants, to her dismay, is for him to care.
For her, only her. To reciprocate the way she feels for him.
She’s so stunned by this, in the nest of her mattress, but it also feels embarrassingly obvious, as if it’s smashed through the back of her mind and washed over her as it was always meant to.
She wants to tell Maggie and maybe Louise and maybe Florence, but she also thinks no one should know, because how shameful it is that it took her so long to see it, after she’d insisted the opposite for so long.
What would they think of her? Of this? What an impossible task to admit they were right.
Fuck.
She disappears under the weight of the blanket.
Over the next few days, she tells no one but herself, quietly in her mind, as she gets ready to head home for the holidays.
She feels the taste of it on her tongue, on her fingertips, as she packs, and she cleans, and she helps Louise close down the inn until the new year.
She tries to wrap her heart around this new reality she’d waited so long for that she’d feared it would never come.
And now it’s here, and it makes her breath short, makes her feel nauseous.
She doesn’t text Arthur, though she wants to.
She doesn’t know what to say to him. She can’t think of a normal thing to message him, especially after their last conversation, and even more so now.
Even “hello” feels strange, too formal, too generic.
She’s never thought as much about word choice and punctuation as she does then, staring at their past conversation, wondering if she’ll ever talk to him again now.
On the plane home, she sits and thinks over their last talk—her feet in the snow and his face in shadow—and looks for the moment it clicked.
She doesn’t find it, but she finds something else.
Something crushing in the way he said he didn’t want anything to change, didn’t want to discuss feelings or the possibility of ever liking her.
Surely he knows too much about her. How she’s yet to be enough for anyone, how there might just be something wrong with her.
Maybe something is missing for him, as it was missing for her.
So they can only ever be this, friends who drink tea in the kitchen and share cheesy advice and tell each other it’s all going to be okay even though it’s not really true.
Next to Aubrey, Louise is sleeping. Aubrey opens her email and reads through the messy thoughts she’s collected over the past few months.
They read a little better than she remembered.
In the dim light of the dark plane, she starts a new draft and writes about Arthur in ways she’s yet to let herself speak of him, think of him.
She writes about his face, his hands, the things he’s said.
How she pictures their days together, rising in the morning, a domestic rhythm of clothes hanging off chairs and slow kisses in doorways, on their way somewhere.
The taste of a reality Aubrey’s yet to even graze, how painfully she aches for it now that the image is so clear.
It’s a good thing she’s off the surface of the earth.
Nothing about this feels real. Everything about this feels intoxicating.
The draft is twice as long as the others.
She takes a taxi to Maggie’s apartment. She’d packed all of her stuff before leaving Lunenburg—she’s yet to book a return ticket and didn’t want to leave anything behind, just in case.
It felt too scary, leaving her things in a future so unsure.
A superstition of sorts, as if her luggage could directly impact Arthur’s thoughts and feelings a world away.
Now, with her luggage in the trunk of the car, Aubrey thinks she’s left the most important behind.
When she nudges open the door to apartment 4E, she’s greeted by music and Maggie’s smile from across the room. She’s wiping down the kitchen island and she exclaims very loudly, “Finally!”
Her hair is different, shorter. She’s not quite as tan as she was, and she’s not wearing any makeup, which is new. She sets down her rag and circles the island with her arms outstretched.
The air is fresh and smells like lemon. Aubrey draws in a deep inhale and immediately feels as if she’s never left.
Maybe it’s been a day or two, tops. Not half a year, not even a little.
The apartment looks the same except for the kettle, which is a fancy brand-name model now, and the clutter, which has grown and spread but in a good way.
“Well, look at this!” Aubrey says, which pleases Maggie tremendously.
They lean in for a familiar hug. Then it doesn’t feel like it’s only been a day. Aubrey lingers. Against Maggie’s shoulder, she says, “Very cozy.”
“How was your flight?”
“Fine. Just agitated enough to remind me of my own mortality.”
Maggie steps around Aubrey to wheel both of her suitcases past the threshold. “What about Louise?”
“Headed to my mom’s. Very weird to think that she’ll hang out with my mom before I get to speak to her myself, and what Louise might tell her about the last few months, right?”
Maggie shuts the door as Aubrey kicks off her boots. It’s impressive how quickly they return to their routine. “What do you mean? You hung out and explored a bit, made a couple friends. It’s not exactly a wild life you’ve been living. I don’t mean that in a bad way, obviously.”
“No, no, I know. I’m just saying.” Aubrey’s back is turned to Maggie now. She fixes her eye on the window, tries to breathe somewhat normally, and says, in an almost normal tone, “Oh, by the way, I’ve had a sort of realization. About Arthur.”
There are footsteps behind her—Maggie must be in the kitchen again. “Jesus, this Arthur guy. You talk about him so much I’m fully convinced now you’re in love with him.”
The silence that follows is long. Very long. It keeps on lengthening. Finally, Aubrey says, “Not in love with him, obviously.” It echoes like she’s just run up a flight of stairs. Weakly, she adds, “That would be ridiculous.”
She hears herself, obviously she does. She knows it’s safer to keep her back to Maggie, because turning around would render her efforts pointless.
Maggie would see it in her face. She would feel it in the way Aubrey smiles, a little off like she’s forgotten how to do it properly, and the way she can’t settle her eye on one thing for too long.
“You’re joking,” Maggie says.
“What do you mean?” It’s a genuine question. Maggie’s inflection is difficult to read. Aubrey’s not so sure about this now.
“Are you actually into him?”
Aubrey pivots a little. Reluctantly, she says, “Yes, well. It seems I am. Just woke up one morning, and there it was.”
“There it was?”
“Ah, you know. The feeling. Thinking about him, wondering if he’s thinking about me.
Rehashing the last thing I told him and coming up with ten alternatives that would’ve been better.
Wondering what it would be like to wake up next to him, and also knowing where he might be that day and thinking it might not be too insane to go there too and just happen to run into him, like at the supermarket.
I don’t know.” Aubrey winces. “Well, I do know. That’s what I’m saying. I know—I know I like him.”
“Fuck off!”
Aubrey can’t find much else to say, so she offers a shrug and outstretched hands. She knows she looks cartoonish, but suddenly Maggie is squealing and leaping in her direction, and they’re hugging again.
“Fuck off!” Maggie says again, a danger to Aubrey’s eardrums. “You’re kidding me!”
“Afraid not!”
“Jesus.” Maggie drops the hug and sighs in relief. “You’ve done it.”
“I’ve done nothing.”
“You’ve fallen for a man.”
“Oh. Well, that. You know I’ve had crushes before.”
“That’s not the same. It’s—I can tell this is something else. Full honesty, I wasn’t sure the day would come.”
They’re just standing there in the living room, which feels comical. Aubrey wants to sit, but she’s not sure which spot would be hers now. “I wasn’t sure either,” she confesses.
“So you know.” There’s a lot in the way Maggie says these words—relief, finality, maybe joy. “You see what I told you—you know.”