Page 62 of Later Bloom

“Mhm. Up until today, actually.”

“You’ve never been with anyone?”

“Never.”

“But you’re hot. I mean, not that it means anything. I know I’m fairly hot, and I haven’t met anyone either. I just didn’t—well I didn’t realize it’s so common.”

“You know I didn’t really realize it either.”

Renée leans over a little closer, her arm across her seat, her attention travelling from the group to Aubrey. “I just haven’t cared that much about it, to be honest. Some days I wonder if it’s for me at all. Like, maybe I just like being on my own.”

“It’s great, being on your own.” Some of that is a lie, but Renée doesn’t need to know that. And Aubrey really wants to believe it.

“I think so. I don’t even know how I got here, to be honest. I mean, to this point. I never really thought about it that much when I was in school, and then suddenly it became this thing. Now I’m the single friend, and it’s so weird thinking that could change at some point.”

“Well, there’s more to you than being single. You’re not going to vanish if that changes.”

Renée says nothing for a second. It’s nice silence, comfortable. It makes Aubrey feel like she’s said something right. She takes that moment to steal a quick look over her shoulder, just a glance, to spot a flash of blonde hair and a very nice shirt, a little further away. He meets her eye. Someone is talking to him. They both look away.

“You know what’s the weirdest thing, actually?”

Aubrey spins back. “Tell me.”

“Sometimes I can’t even imagine I’d meet someone who’d be a good fit for me.”

“Mm. I feel that. You know you don’t have to, if you don’t want to. If you do, you do. If you don’t, it shouldn’t be a problem, right?” Aubrey feels so aware of others in the room, of the eyes around her, of a certain specific pair of eyes. She could swear the back of her head is burning, and she wants to turn again and look back, but she can’t. “When I was younger it didn’t really make a difference, what people told me. I didn’t care to hear how it would happen when I least expected it and all that. Everything sounded cheesy and overdone. And now I’m sitting here and I think everything I want to say sounds like that, cheesy and overdone. But some of it is true.”

Renée hums, her eyes dropping to her lap. “It’s fine, I guess. Sometimes it’s just nice to hear it from someone else.”

“I don’t know, it’s not like I’m any authority on anything. It’s just, you should really know it’s fine. Sometimes it won’t feel fine, but nothing feels fine all the time. It’s like happiness. It’s an emotion, right? No one feels one emotion all the time. It changes, and it comes and goes. It’s been like that for me, being on my own.”

Renée’s attention drifts off to Florence, on the other side of the room. “It’s been like that for Flo, too.”

“It’s like that for people in relationships, too. For people who’ve had ten relationships. That’s the thing, I think. No one’s really inherently happier than anyone else. We can only do what feels right to us in the moment.”

“Right. I hear you, yeah.” Renée leans back in her seat, with an expression that Aubrey can’t quite read—something like amusement, reflection, but she seems distracted, too. “Thanks for saying all that,” she says, and then before Aubrey can say anything, she adds, “You know Artie’s been staring at you, yeah?”

Aubrey sits very still. “Artie?” she echoes.

“Yeah.”

“You know Arthur?”

“Everyone knows Arthur.”

“Okay.”

“He keeps looking over.”

“Well, good for him, then.”

Renée breaks into a big smile, wide and goofy. She nudges Aubrey’s leg with her foot. “Come on.”

“What?”

“Flo told me about—you know.” Aubrey says nothing, so Renée adds, “How he’s got a crush on someone. I’m gathering it’s you.”

“Right, okay. Well, I think I’m done here. I hope you liked the advice.”