“Yes, well...” She wishes Mallory were here to tell her what to say. “Okay, so then, about all that?”
“All that...” Kai swivels his head, checking to make sure no one’s in earshot as if to emphasize how wrong this all is. Satisfied, he leans over the desk, his head in line with hers, pretending to look at the monitor in front of them. She feels the warmth of his shoulder against her own. She hasn’t touched anyone other than Mallory and Ilena in what seems like a lifetime. Except that’s not true, she touched Grayson this morning. And apparently Kai last night.
“All thatwas incredible,” Kai whispers, his voice confident yet also somehow seeking confirmation she cannot give. “Thatwas something—”
“Don’t, just don’t.”
Kai’s warmth contradicts Grayson’s cold; the suppleness of his limbs a sick contrast to the rigidness of Grayson’s; Kai’s dancing eyes a mocking of the lifeless ones whose lids Mallory closed with the tip of her finger as the dog whimpered at their feet.
“Aubrey, I’m sorry, did I misinterpret—”
“It’s just...” Aubrey wrings her hands in her lap before shoving her chair back. “You’re just so, so—”alive!“—young!”
Kai’s face contorts like he’s been stung by a jellyfish. “It didn’t bother you last night.”
But it should have! “I’ve got to go.”
Aubrey hops up from her chair and rushes to her door just as the head of marketing arrives. Or at least, someone she normally knows as the head of marketing.
“Aubrey, we know how busy you are,” Ella says, nervously pushing back her overly short bangs, making Aubrey wonder if she’s only recently gotten them here. “But a half hour is a record for you! Honestly, we just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
Aubrey bites the inside of her cheek. “Uh, yeah, sure.”
“Sure on the summer sunset or the river blues?” Ella says, raising a color swatch of each.
Aubrey stares at her blankly.
Ella’s eyes dart. “More options, maybe? Certainly, we can do that. We should have thought of that.Ishould have.” She presses a hand to her chest. “I apologize, Aubrey. Your decisions are always instantaneous and spot-on when you have all the information.”
InstantaneousandAubreyare two words that would never go together. UnlikeAubreyandpro-con list.
Aubrey’s palms begin to sweat. And is the floor tilting?
“Oh no,” Ella says. “Perhaps you delegated the color palette for the listing party to someone else? Of course you did, what with all you need to decide in a single day—hour! Our interns, they’re new, we must have missed—”
“Aubrey?” Kai says, approaching. “Is there anything I can—”
“Stop,” she says, fighting the black polka dots clouding her vision. “Just stop!” Ella and Kai draw back, fumbling for the door. “Oh, no, no, it’s not you, it’s...” This can’t happen, this can’t happen here, she can’t let Mallory and Ilena down by having a panic attack. “I’ve got to just—”
Aubrey brushes past them, through the room full of codingpods, past the kitchen where a redheaded Noreen pauses her filling of custom tea bags to enthusiastically wave, and to the elevator, jamming on the button, accidentally calling the up instead of the down, pivoting and throwing herself at the door for the stairs and sprinting down the four floors past the rehab center on the first floor and out the building, spilling into the plaza and barreling into a man in jeans and a short-sleeved, slim-fitted collared shirt she knows is from Banana Republic because she bought it there.
“Ethan?” Her mind’s playing tricks on her in this dream or hallucination or coma or—
“Yes?” His head tilts to the side like it did during every single one of her Aubreyisms and she can’t draw in a breath, can’t see straight because Ethan? Ethan?
“What are you doing here?” she blurts out.
His sandy hair’s shorter, clipped tighter to his head, but his eyes are still pale green, and his cheeks have that slight ruddiness and he’s the same, he’s Ethan,herEthan.
He looks at her quizzically, those same two vertical lines that come when he’s sorting something out etching themselves in the space between his eyes, clearly visible despite the new addition of dark-rimmed glasses. “Autumn, right?” He points at her. “The arcade? What was it? Must have been six months ago?”
“Six months?”
“More? Don’t you remember? We talked about the coincidence.” He juts a thumb behind him. “This is my building.”
She nods. Of course she remembers that his building is opposite AIM, just as she remembers that their first date was at the adult arcade in Boston. His choice. But their first date was more than a year ago. They were together ever since. Except not here. Here, apparently, they had the one date and he left it thinking her name was Autumn.
“Actually,” she says, “it’s Aubrey.”
