Page 28 of Later Bloom

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.

Chapter Nine

It’s a late August afternoon when a knock on the back door steals Aubrey’s attention away from her phone. She sits at the small kitchen table, the cleaning supplies she’d set down before taking a break waiting patiently at her feet. Two couples will be checking in soon. It gives her a headache.

“Coming,” Aubrey calls on her way to the door. Outside, the sun is bright and a cicada is desperate to steal the show. Standing back from the entrance, Arthur is waiting with a tower of crates by his side. His face, familiar now, is hidden behind the rim of a navy blue cap.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says.

Aubrey teases, “You better be,” and sets the door stopper down to keep it propped open. She doesn’t mind the heat in the kitchen. Most of the windows are already open, and the breeze keeps late summer at a respectable distance inside the inn.

“How’s it been?” Arthur asks as he picks up the first crate and steps into the kitchen. Aubrey opens the door to the pantry and tries to catch a glimpse of what they’ll be eating over the next week. Absentmindedly, she replies, “Fine, yeah.”

He doesn’t look over but nods along to her answer. His hair is a mess at the nape of his neck, and his clothes need a wash, like he’s been out in the dirt. “Is that the real answer?” he asks.

He often does this. Aubrey can’t remember when he figured out that she answers without really thinking most of the time. She laughs and says, “I think so, yes.”

“Things have been good with Louise, then.”

“Mm. They’d be better if she stopped with this weird thing she’s got for the two of us. Do you know when I told her I went on a date the other day, she said, ’Oh, so you’ve gone out with Arthur. I knew that was coming.’ And the look on her face when I said it wasn’t you.”

Maybe she shouldn’t tell him this. Maybe this only feeds into the crack in her chest when she thinks of her aunt. But it’s been hard, the way Louise has been acting since Aubrey arrived. She clings now onto her moments with Arthur if only to feel a little bit less alone. She misses Louise often.

Arthur wears a hint of an amused smile. “She’s not so bad,” he offers, but he doesn’t seem to mean it.

“She’s not, it’s just not how I thought she’d be when I agreed to come here. She must mention you in conversation at least once a day, and you should see the way she checks for my reaction.”

With his arms full, Arthur looks over with an unusual expression, raised eyebrows, and pinched lips. “Like this?”

“Uncanny.” Aubrey moves the crates a little closer to the pantry and takes out a few items she carries to the fridge. The vegetables are fresh and smell like dirt and the sun. There are courgettes, aubergines, Brussels sprouts. “I don’t know, I guess we’re less similar than I thought.”

“You should talk to her about it.”

“A dreadful idea.” Aubrey can’t risk fraying things further. She still clings onto the possibility that Louise is just playing a very odd prank on her.

Arthur pauses on his way out. He leans for a second against the door frame with his hands in his pockets and says, “You know what else you should do, is come out with me and a few friends tonight.” He smiles softly, like asking this is easy and not a stressful endeavour. “It won’t be just the two of us. Louise won’t get any satisfaction out of it.”

“Oof. Very tempting.”

“It’s at a nice bar, and with friends who won’t mind if you lay low. But there’s a girlfriend of mine I think you’d get along with.”

He says a girlfriend of mine, which is certainly not how people refer to their significant others. Aubrey wonders who this new character in Arthur’s life is.

She asks, “Why’s that?”

Arthur shrugs, his back turned to her. “You’ve got things in common, is all.”