Page 44 of Later Bloom

He turns then and gives a curt nod. “Good luck with the chat lottery.”

She’s smiling when she turns away. It does feel like a lottery. And it’s a hard one, not the kind you can hope to get a couple bucks from once in a while. Because even when you think you’ve struck a winning draw, you realize easy conversation and a shared discomfort with meeting strangers isn’t always enough to lead to anything more, even if you’ve decided that for once you actually want to sit there and talk to this person, maybe just a little longer.

When people ask Aubrey why she’s still single, all these scenes play through her mind in a loop. But she can’t replay all of them, can’t put into efficient words the overwhelming story they weave to lead her here. So she says, “I really can’t explain it,” or “I just haven’t found anyone I really click with yet,” or some other excuse, but really, it’s all of this. It’s summer camp, uncomfortable blind dates, going to bars and feeling drained before you have a chance to get tipsy. She admires the women who try again and again, and the women who hardly have to try at all.

Aubrey spins in her stool to catch Florence’s attention but comes face to face with someone else she knows instead.

He recognizes her just as fast, she can tell. At the exact same time, they both say, “Hi.”

It’s stilted, which hits Aubrey right in the chest. She feels compelled to smile.

Raphael looks exactly the same, though surely he wouldn’t have changed in just a few months. Still, it’s weird to see him standing there.

He stares like he’s buffering. Then he leans over to give Aubrey a stiff sort of shoulder hug. “How’ve you been? It’s been a while!”

Everything feels weird—the tone of his voice, the expression on his face, the black leather jacket he’s wearing.

“Good, yeah, I’m great,” she hears herself say. She knows she’s staring. “You look like you’ve been well.” She wants so desperately to ask why he cut her off the way he did. If she’s right in the assumption she replays over and over in her mind. Instead, she smiles and tries to look like the detached, somewhat elegant woman she’s set on projecting.

Raphael offers a bashful “Thank you.” Then he asks, with a quick glance at the space around them, “Can we head outside to talk for a bit?”

“Oh.” She gawks at him for a second. The question is so unexpected, different from the well, see you she anticipated. “Should we?”

“There’s just a couple things. I think you might want to hear them.”

Aubrey wishes she’d hesitate more before saying, “Sure. Okay.”

Chapter Fourteen

Aubrey leans over quickly to Florence, hidden behind Raphael’s torso, to let her know she’ll be right back. Florence is still busy talking to a man at the bar, not the same one as earlier, but a seemingly funny man nonetheless. They share a look of understanding before Aubrey turns to follow Raphael.

Outside, the air smells like winter and permeates her lungs. Earlier, not wearing a jacket felt like a bold, rebellious statement against the impact of temperature on her body. Now it feels like a mistake. She tucks the flimsy fabric of her sheer, low-cut blouse over her knuckles and hugs it to her chest.

“I’m glad you’ve been good,” Raphael says to bridge the awkward gap between this moment and the brief exchange they had inside.

Aubrey allows herself one petty comment, because it’s too cold out not to indulge in the easy, familiar taste of bitterness. “I would’ve been happy to keep you up to date on my well-being, if you’d texted.”

“Right.” They head in the opposite direction from the lineup and find a quiet spot on the edge of the building. “I’m sorry about that. Really. I didn’t think about what I was doing, I should’ve considered the consequences, et cetera.” A verbal eyeroll. It catches Aubrey off-guard, but not quite as much as she expected.

“Simple as that,” she says flatly.

“I’m just summing it up.”

“It sounds like you’ve memorized your summary.”

“Come on.” Already he grows a bit irritated, like this wasn’t his idea. “We’d only been on one date. People do a lot worse.”

Even in the cold, Aubrey’s face is burning. “Great,” she says. The word tastes like metal.

“I’m sure you felt the same way.”

“You assume this very definite thing about me, even though we’ve had no communication that would indicate I should feel this way.” She looks around to see if anyone’s staring, if they’ve noticed how embarrassing this is. She’s not sure what she expected, but she’s sure she feels shame blooming in her chest now, making it a little harder to breathe.

Raphael is true to the person she spoke with on the shore months earlier—amused even when annoyed, seemingly keen to play along. He says, “I guess so, yeah. Can I tell you what I’ve come to realize?”

Aubrey sits a little with the silence, because it feels too easy to say yes. This conversation is for him more than it is for her, she knows it, but she can’t bring herself to walk away. She wants to hear what he has to say, just in case it makes this feel a little less personal.

“It did bother me when you told me you’d never been in a relationship,” he says. Aubrey should’ve seen it coming, but hearing it so plainly, she comes to find, still sucks. “It’s hard not to see it as a red flag. I mean, how come you’ve never committed to anyone before?”