“So sorry,” I murmured as we scraped our seats back up to the table.
“I was just talking about Chile,” Kristen prompted. “I assume Emily told you about our adventures?”
Someone came by with a dustpan, and I apologized again as he crouched and swept.
Denial was one thing—denial was one way of dealing with trauma. But to actively bring it up?
“Oh yeah.” Aaron’s eyes flicked to me. “Seemed like you guys had a little too much fun. She was out cold for, like, five days after.”
“I imagine she would be,” Kristen said.
“Yeah, we did a lot of running around and hiking,” I cut in, my voice high.
Kristen smirked. “Exactly. So much hiking. Have you been to South America?”
Aaron shook his head. “I’m a cold-weather kinda guy. I turn bright pink after two minutes in the heat.”
Kristen chuckled. “We went through about ten gallons of sunscreen.”
“Doesn’t even help. I’m like…a shrimp. Pasty when they’re raw, but toss ’em in a hot pan and suddenly they’re the color of flamingos.”
“Y’know, I’ve always liked cooking things that change color when they’re done.” She set her mug down with a clink. “It’s like a magic trick. Like those purple beans that turn green when you cook them.”
“What’s wild is that shrimp turns pink to tell you it’s done,” he replied, “very handy. But chicken, right? It starts out pink…and turns white.”
“Somebody get this man a nature show,” Kristen cracked, and they locked eyes and laughed. My best friend and boyfriend hitting it off—this was supposed to be the dream. Instead I felt my insides tighten and crackle.
* * *
—
When Kristen went to the bathroom, Aaron placed his hand on mine and stroked my knuckles.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Of course.”
“Did something…happen in Chile?”
The room fell silent and I felt a tunnel, hot and tender, starting at my throat and rushing downward, widening like a shotgun shell.
My voice a caw: “What makes you say that?”
“You seem so tense.”
I stared at his smile, his thin lips in a kind U, and forced myself to breathe. My chest had tightened, as if my asthma were acting up. In. Then out. The dreamy yoga instructor from Pisco Elqui murmured in my mind: Your smile powers your corazón.
“It’s totally nothing.”
He shook his head. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But I’m sure you guys’ll figure it out. She clearly has a lot of love for you.” He leaned in. “I’m sure it’ll all be okay.”
How lucky he was to be able to say that. To trust that nothing bad could ever happen. To never know the weight of a body in his arms, the way the flesh slid over the tendons and bones.
I played with the sticky maple-syrup container. “Kristen and I are fine,” I said. “She’s just—”
“Kristen, hey!” He cut me off as she reached the table.
“Hey there! Did they bring the bill?” She sat and lifted her Bloody Mary, a pint glass filled with viscous red liquid. She sipped until the straw gurgled and then plunked it on the table, and my stomach turned.
I couldn’t help thinking it looked like Paolo’s blood pooled on the hotel floor.
CHAPTER 15
“Sorry I, um, freaked out and spilled OJ all over everyone.”
Kristen buckled her seatbelt. “Oh, it’s fine. Most of it ended up on Aaron.”
I backed out of the parking spot. “Right. But I guess I was…caught off guard? By your bringing up Chile.”
Her eyebrows squeezed. “Why wouldn’t I bring up Chile?”
I sputtered, unable to answer.
“You’re talking like I’m the one acting weird. But you’re being weird.” She dug a water bottle from her bag and unscrewed the cap. “Hey, so Aaron is great. Not the kinda guy you normally go for. I’m surprised.”
She hadn’t eased up on this campaign, not for a second: Everything Is Fine, I’m as Upbeat as Ever. How was she so good at this?
“Yeah, he’s kind of a hipster,” I said. “But he’s a great guy.”
“I’m glad. Maybe different is a good thing. Since you seem to pick bad apples.” She chugged some water as the assessment thudded into me. “I mean, no judgment. I do the same.”
I glanced her way. She wasn’t wrong: Ben the Abusive. Colin the Jealous. “Well, I know I can count on you to give me your honest appraisal.”
“You know it!”
We paused at a red light and time stood still. “Hey, I don’t want you to think I’m abandoning you or anything,” I said carefully. “You’ll always be way more important to me than any dude.”
“Oh, I know that. Take a left at the next light. God, I hate coming here.”
I hadn’t driven to Nana and Bill’s house in years, but my hands on the steering wheel remembered the way. Left at King of Kings, the big brick church and grade school with a marquee on the front lawn: Men’s Fellowship & Bible Study 7 pm. Right onto Beaumont, a fat Dead End sign staked into the corner, and then straight through to the cul-de-sac bulging out of the road: Nana and Bill’s elegant home on the left, a gaudy turreted mansion on the right, and a California-style ranch between them, its driveway flanked by stone-pineapple-topped pillars. The castle-like monstrosity on the right had been built over Kristen’s childhood home—the one she shared with her parents before they were killed in a house fire. I’d always found it odd and a little sadistic that her grandparents stayed put: Living with them meant she was always two doors down from the site of that tragedy.
Nana and Bill’s house was enormous, bigger than I’d remembered, with brownish brick and a peaked roof, windows gazing down at me like watchful eyes. Two massive maple trees framed the driveway and a row of bushes fringed the front door, and all of them had that about-to-burst spring look: crimson kernels clustered on the maples’ boughs and lime-green puffs poking out from the bushes. Normally I loved spring, that period of rebirth, but against the tawny lawn and imposing house, the flora looked defenseless, preemie.
“Do you want me to help you carry your stuff in?”
“My grandparents are going to insist you come in and say hi. They’re probably waiting by the door. Consider yourself warned.”
“We’re gonna go be social?” I raised my eyebrows. “Aren’t you exhausted?”
“I’m hanging in there. C’mon.”
We headed for the front door. Kristen had spent her teen years here, at a high-performing public high school that went to state for bougie sports: golf, tennis, soccer. Kristen had been on the poms squad, a postgrad discovery that delighted me to no end. （It was a dance team that used pom-poms, she informed me, and nothing like cheerleading.） In college we’d rolled our eyes at the girls who rushed sororities, eager to fit in. Picturing teenage Kristen high-kicking to Justin Timberlake was strange at best.
Kristen rang the doorbell, and for the umpteenth time that day, I steeled myself. Nana and Bill always put me on edge. Sure, they were friendly in that folksy, generic way. But I couldn’t quite square my impressions of the nice, slightly snobby senior citizens I’d met with the remarks Kristen had made about them. How Bill had told her, smiling, that she’d never last in advertising. How he’d read her honors thesis （“Female Political Representation and Labor Force Participation in Thailand”） and handed it back to her with nothing but a few passages underlined in the Limitations section, as if demonstrating his agreement with everything her dissertation didn’t do. It was hard to imagine these publicly pleasant people acting so dismissive in private.