“Natalie, this is Allison.” Aidan gestures from me to her then turns to her. “Natalie is my best friend.” The tension in her facial muscles relaxes.
No, Allison, I’m not a threat to you and whatever it is you two are going to do tonight.
Aidan says hello to Savannah and jokes that her hair is bigger since she came back. Mari and Charity haven’t met Aidan, so I introduce them, and then… well, there’s not much else to say. The awkward silence stretches on and I have the insane desire to scream and stomp, shout and dance, because suddenly I’m filled with this bizarre energy and it’s pulsing through my drained, exhausted limbs. Aidan’s gaze is on me, and he’s doing that thing where he tries to read me. He looks confused as if maybe I’m a book and my sentences are jumbled, and I feel a childish sense of pleasure at not being so easily read.
“So,” I start.
“Well,” Aidan says at the same time.
But I’m not waiting for whatever he’s going to say. “Enjoy your night.” I fake smile at Aidan, and then tell Allison it was nice to meet her.
Aidan smiles tightly, nods at my friends, and turns around, his arm still around Allison. They walk away, and Allison resumes the game they are playing, the one where she gazes up at him like he’s a god.He picks his nose at stoplights. He says he’s not doing it, but he totally is. When he was little, he thought he was Aquaman and jumped into a pool without knowing how to swim. His mom jumped in after him and he was pissed because she’d ruined his fun.
Mari’s voice jumps into my head. “Girl.” She lays a hand on my shoulder. “What the hell was that?”
I eye her. “What?”
“That man is your best friend?”
I nod.
“Since when is a man and woman best friends?”
“We’ve been friends since high school.”
“That’s when you were a girl and he was a boy.”
I laugh, but the sound is empty. “And what? Now he’s a man?”
She lifts her head and brings it back down slowly. “Precisely.”
“He’s not my type, Mari. That’s why we work. That girl you just met?” With my thumb, I gesture behind me in the direction they went. “He met her on an app. They are going to have sex. He won’t see her for longer than a month, two at the most. That’s what he does.” I shrug. “That’s what he hasalwaysdone.”
Mari makes no attempt to hide the skepticism in her eyes. “For someone who only fucks for fun, he seemed very interested in how you werefeeling.”
With a wave of my hand, I dismiss her words. “He’s not an unfeeling asshole. He’s actually very kind. He doesn’t” —holding up my fingers I air quote— “fuck for funbecause he’s a jerk.”
“Then why does he?” Savannah asks.
My mouth opens as if I have an answer, but really I have nothing to say. My head shakes. “I don’t know.”
“Childhood trauma,” Charity says, smacking her lips and chewing her last bite. She rolls the foil from her burrito into a ball and tosses it into a nearby garbage can.
“No.” I shake my head. “No childhood trauma. His parents are the personification of perfect. Remember the bookFor You I Will?”
Mari and Savannah nod. Charity says, “I only saw the movie. But” —she pretends to drive a knife into her chest— “oh my god, I cried like a baby. Best romance I’ve ever seen.”
“I think it’s universally agreed upon that was the best love story of our generation. And Aidan’s mother wrote it.” Three shocked expressions look back at me. “It’s based upon her relationship with his dad.”
“No,” Mari gasps, grabbing ahold of my forearm. “The marriage of convenience when she was actually in love with him, but he was in love with the other girl?”
“He wasn’t in love with the other girl,” Savannah breaks in. “He was in lust. And the other girl didn’t truly love him back. That’s why Grace married Alejandro. So he could stay in the country and pursue his feelings for the other girl. She loved him enough to sacrifice for his happiness.” A gargled sound comes from the back of her throat. “We have to stop talking about it. I’m going to cry.”
“You know how it ends,” I remind her. “They fell in love, made a baby, and lived happily ever after.”
Mari looks over my shoulder as if Aidan is still visible. “And that was the baby they made? Dammmn they did a good job. He’s dark, like his father. Wait.” She holds out a hand, her face serious. “Is Alejandro really Venezuelan?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Yes, he is. A lot of the story is accurate.”
