Page 57 of Later Bloom

“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?”