“Strawberry mule. Totally lit.”
The voice comes from behind Aubrey just as the bartender sets down her drink.
Aubrey considers the frosted glass of pink liquid as well as the “lit.” “That’s what this is?”
Kai, a new part-time hire, places his identical empty glass on the bar top. “So I was told, though it seems a bit insulting.”
“To the original?”
“To the alpaca.” He juts his rounded chin to the three white Muppet-looking creatures ruminating on hay and presumably the ridiculousness of the line of AIM employees waiting to take selfies with them.
For the first time since she arrived, Aubrey smiles. He seems young, but an infusion of frivolity might be just what she and her team need right now. The bartender hands him another strawberry mule. As he clinks Aubrey’s glass, she tries to remember if he’s part-time because he’s still in grad school. Or is it college? Is he even old enough to drink? Does she have to report him to HR? To herself? Should she do something or say something or—
“Don’t tell me,” he says. “Your favorite animal’s the mule, and now I’ve gone and completely offended my new boss.”
“I’m—no, no, that’s not...” Her face betrays her again. Every Christmas, every birthday, her mom always said Aubrey never needed to verbalize whether she liked a gift or not because it was written in her every crease, lip curl, and blink. She couldn’t fake it even when she wanted to. “It’s just, are you sure you should be having one?”
Kai lifts his goody bag, and Aubrey realizes Grayson Fields has little on him by way of those biceps. Stick a surfboard under his arm, and Kai is a living, breathing travel poster for Hawaii, where he grew up. “The owners of this company kindly gave us all coupons for free rideshares. And this.” He pulls out a fluffy white Koozie. “Explains the alpaca at least.”
“Nothing explains the alpaca,” Aubrey says, before she realizes she said it and takes a swig of her drink.
Kai laughs, his skin flushing with the barest undertone of peach. It sounds nothing like Ethan’s laugh, but still, that’s who she thinks of because she can’t not think of Ethan.
She’s fallen in love twice in her life. Once, nearly a year ago, when she attended a speech by Grayson Fields and was introduced to Ethan Sonders, and seven years before that, when she clinked forks loaded with microgreens at a table in Silicon Valley with Ilena and Mallory and created AIM.
She nervously excuses herself from Kai and heads for them,both now seated in Adirondack chairs surrounding a sandbox. Her best friends, her colleagues, the women she’ll make history with. If they don’t kill each other first.
Aubrey settles into her Adirondack and forces herself to sip her strawberry mule slowly. She isn’t the biggest drinker, even less so since Ethan, and the gin’s already making her scalp tingle. But Kai was right; it is lit, iflitmeans refreshing, something desperately needed since the microclimate surrounding these Adirondack chairs is stifling.
If she’d known going public would cause so much discord, she’d have never said yes. Though in truth, there’s no version of Aubrey that wouldn’t say yes to Mallory and Ilena.
Ilena is the first person you’d call if you needed a lawyer to get you out of jail and the first person to lecture you for needing a lawyer to get you out of jail. Whatever got you into the mess in the first place was likely Mallory’s idea. They would brave ice storms and nor’easters, Boston traffic on graduation weekends in May, and the subway on a ninety-five-degree day if you needed them. They knew what wine to order to complement everything from oysters to French fries, how to make hibiscus palomas, how to tie a scarf a hundred ways, how to build a company into an empire. They also knew how to be a best friend. Something a young Aubrey never knew mattered as much as it does. Something this Aubrey is scared of losing.
Mallory polishes off her bubbly and whips out her phone. “Is it rude to text Noreen to bring me another?”
“Yes,” Aubrey says at the same time as Ilena rolls her eyes.
It’s the latter, Aubrey’s sure, that sends Mallory’s thumbs tapping. They sit around the sandbox filled with plastic shovels and molds for castles and starfish, and Aubrey searches to make sure there aren’t any pitchforks.
“All this...” Ilena presses her hand against the arm of thewhitewashed chair made of reclaimed barn doors. “Is this truly the vibe you want AIM to have?”
“First, it’swe,” Mallory says, “and second, it’s the vibe they expect. It’s not just our user base that’s half our age, Ilena, it’s our employees. You never exactly were the life of the party, but parties do require life. Besides, just think how it’ll look on social media.”
“I know exactly how it will look. Like some of us don’t take things seriously.”
The air stretches taut like a rubber band about to snap.
“Well, it’s too late now,” Mallory says as she brushes her hair off her shoulder. The dirty-blond bob she had when Aubrey first met her has become brighter, longer, and more bronze over the years. Her waves now cascade down her back, more fitting for someone with the bravado of a wild peacock in perpetual preen. “You should have weighed in when Noreen sent the email. Even Aubrey did.”
Ilena shrugs. Unlike Mallory, the dark, flowing hair Ilena had back then has gotten progressively shorter, now nearly a pixie cut. “Sorry if my life has bigger issues than party planning.”
Aubrey lifts her drink to take a sip, but the tremble in her hand makes the glass ting against her front teeth.
Ilena’s face pales. “Oh, I’m sorry, Aubrey. I wasn’t thinking.”
But she was. Just not about the same thing as Aubrey. They’re all drowning in something. Aubrey and Ethan, Mallory and taking AIM public, Ilena and her ovulation cycles.
Aubrey feels the weight of their stares, wishing she knew what to say to tighten this widening gap between them, but all she can do is place her hand on top of the good-luck stone in her pocket—jerking back when Mallory slaps it.
