Aubrey turns. It is Kai, holding a leash. Harley bounces upon seeing Aubrey. Kai, pointedly, does not.
“It’s not what you think,” she says to Kai.
“Oh, but it is,” Ethan says with a wink. “Not just once, twice. With a third to come. Pun intended.”
Aubrey whirls around to face him. “You don’t know me, you never really did know me. But if you did, you’d understand how much it means for me to say ‘Fuck you.’”
His lips thin, then he shrugs. “Whatever, crazy bitch.”
“Aubrey,” Kai says calmly despite the tightness of his jaw. “Do you want to go?”
She nods.
“Do you want me to walk with you?”
She nods again. “If you don’t mind.”
“No hard feelings, then?” Ethan says, but she keeps her back to him, eyes straight ahead on the logo for AIM beside the front door of the building.
When they reach it, Kai picks up Harley. “Here. Noreen asked me to get him to Mallory before Mr. Fields’s secretary took him.”
Aubrey accepts the dog despite the scratchiness building in her throat. “I’ll get him to her.”
Kai places his hands in his front pockets, exhaling, like he’d been punched in the gut. He turns and heads for the entrance.
“Wait!” Aubrey says. “I can explain everything. Well, maybe not everything. There’s a lot I don’t know how to explain, but most of that isn’t important. But what is important, well, I still can’t explain that, actually, when it comes down to it. Because how do you explain things you don’t know but simply feel? Which is this: I like you.”
“I liked you too.”
She breathes a sigh of relief. “Great, then great, so—”
“I just don’t think I can trust you.”
He enters the building, and she can’t blame him. She huddles Harley to her chest, the orange fur a surrogate for her grandmother’s afghan, and she’s back to the day her teenage self curled beneath it, having lost her virginity to a boy she realized too late didn’t deserve it or her, knowing she’d never trust herself again. Except, maybe “never” doesn’t exist across universes. What she feels right now about Kai, she trusts it implicitly.
43
Ilena
Monday Afternoon
Four DaysAfterthe Outing
Three peppermint teas and two scones, apparently that’s Ilena’s limit. She wraps the third untouched cranberry and orange pastry in a napkin, tips the young girl behind the counter for letting her commandeer the table, and exits into air radiating the perfect amount of summer heat.
She never went to AIM. The police wanted to question her, and she didn’t show. Entirely out of character, and yet, Ilena feels fine. Good, even. She wanders down Mass. Ave. toward Boston. There was a time she’d have walked all the way in, to Newbury Street and the Boston Public Garden, even to the Seaport. She wouldn’t do it now with her swollen belly and even more swollen ankles. Though part of her feels like she could, like maybe it’d be good for her. She doubts Felix would agree. Would Jonah?
The thought of how Jonah would treat a pregnant Ilena causes her to halt in the middle of the sidewalk. A guy with a backpack the size of a small house knocks into her, sending her off-balance.
“What a loser,” a young woman in leggings and a sports bra says. “Are you okay? Come inside, let me get you a water.”
Ilena nods, meaning she’s fine, but the young woman takes it as agreement to the second part and ushers her inside a warmly lit yoga studio.
“Sit, sit,” the young woman says, lowering Ilena into a beanbag chair she’ll never get out of by herself.
“Thank you, but really, this isn’t necessary.”
The woman brings her a glass tumbler of water that those three teas left no room for.
