Page 21 of Later Bloom

Aubrey recognizes him instantly. He’s leaning against a wooden post and raises his arm to wave her over when she turns the corner, grinning with his hair in the wind. He does look like he belongs outside. Handsome but approachable, like he helps people cross the street and expects to be congratulated for it. She flashes him a smile in return.

“Raphael?” she asks, and tries to make it sound flirty, but something in the way he laughs suggests she failed.

“Aubrey, yeah?”

She stops in front of him and does a sort of bow, suddenly very aware of how she moves, how she looks. First dates have grown to mean repetition, stiff and calculated smiles, nodding in the right places, thinking about the end the second it’s begun. She’s not sure why she falls so easily into its predictable patterns. It’s been months now since she’s gone out with anyone. Surely she can manage to sink back into a sense of wonder again. But it echoes like a bad habit, how she shows up and looks at this person and immediately wonders what she’ll think and feel about them in two hours’ time. She’s ready to skip to the part where she settles back into her own body. Surely with the right person it wouldn’t feel like this.

The problem is, it always does.

“It’s about a twenty-minute walk to this nice viewpoint across the harbour, if you’re down,” Raphael says as they pick up a slow pace. His hands are in his pockets and he stares ahead. He has a bit of stubble and looks like he doesn’t care much what he looks like, but he looks good. He’s got strong features and the confident air of a man who’s definitely done this before. His shoulders are square. He’s tall, maybe too much so.

“Remind me, you’ve been in town how long now?” He’s picking up where their message exchange left off. A nice move.

“Just over a month now, something like that.”

“Helping out your aunt,” he recalls.

“Yes, taking care of the inn she’s just opened nearby. It’s been good. Busy.”

“Fun,” he echoes with an approving nod. “What did you do before that?”

Aubrey pulls a face. Her introductory speech has changed a lot over the years. Sometimes she’s eager to talk and sell herself and show off what she’d have to offer as a partner, and other times it’s this. Not much to show for the last couple years and too few words to choose from to sound interesting. If this man were to ask what she could bring to a relationship, other than a pretty nice rack and a nonexistent social life, she’s not sure what she’d say.

She settles on modest honesty. “Nothing interesting, I fear.”

He smiles as if he gets it. “That’s fine. Jobs aren’t all that.”

The thing she’s come to find is that dating is hard from all angles. Either she’s too conscious of herself or too conscious of the other person, so aware of every little detail, the way they speak, laugh, breathe. She tries to picture herself by their side tomorrow, in a month, in a year. What would Raphael look like cooking breakfast in the kitchen? In his underwear, or a worn t-shirt? Making an omelette, or French toast?

Maggie has warned her not to do this. It’s a slippery slope, because Aubrey has to fight the voice in her head insisting that she knows. She doesn’t know. Everything’s a mystery still. Maybe he spends his time leaving fiery reviews online. Maybe his place is a mess. Maybe he’s got trust issues, maybe he did really well in school and now grants too much power to arbitrary grading systems and rewards. Aubrey knows nothing about the version of him that’s not a highlight reel carefully montaged for this date. She knows this because she does the same. He doesn’t know yet that she bites her nails. That she also did well in school and grants too much power to arbitrary grading systems. That she doesn’t speak to her brother often because she knows her mother likes him better, and it stings. That Marie doesn’t probe at Ben, doesn’t ask him questions about his personal life all that much. Doesn’t care who he dates, or doesn’t. That even as Aubrey approaches the end of her twenties, she feels she’s yet to figure out how to be a proper friend.

For now, she’s just hanging out with a stranger, and the scale is tipped sideways, the way she knows herself much too well and him not at all. It plays with her head how she’s not meant to decide anything right then and there. Spending too much time on her own, she thinks, has warped her perception of what it should feel like to sink into the unknown.

“What about you? What do you do?” she asks in return. It’s a reflex, a routine she goes through faster than she can keep up. Already she’s thinking of her next question, his next answer.

“I work with my dad. Fishing.” He speaks very calmly. “Thought about exploring things elsewhere a few times, but at the end of the day I stick around. Easier than starting over from scratch, I guess.”

“Mm. It’s as terrifying as it seems.”

He finds this amusing, and offers a comforting, “Ah, you’ll be fine. You got here, yeah? That’s the hard part.”

“Right.”

They walk side by side, hands in their pockets, as the sky turns purple and indigo overhead. The air, crisp and chilly, smells like the sea. Aubrey’s lost any control of her hair in the wind. For a second she loses track of the script, what she’s meant to say next.

Before she can think of anything, Raphael asks, “What’s something you wanna do while you’re up here?”

“Oh. Mm. Good question.” She sucks air through her teeth. It gets stuck in her throat for just a moment. Then she says, “I have an answer, but I might regret saying it out loud.”

“Ah. A woman of mystery.”

She shrugs. “I do try.”

“So, are you not going to tell me? It’s a while to go still to get to the viewpoint.”

“I don’t know. There’s something in my life I wish would be different by the time I leave this place.” Tension runs through her shoulders, the muscles in her face. She risks a glance over at him. “Does that make sense?”

Maybe it’s a bad idea to touch on the subject. So soon, and so clumsily. She always does this. Maybe to justify the same ending, over and over again. Maybe as a test, for him or for herself.