Page 51 - In Five Years

Time.
“Aaron.”
He looks at me. Dead on. I hear David behind us laugh at something Bella has
said. I smell her perfume—French rose. The kind you can only buy at the

drugstores in Paris. “I’m not one of the bad ones,” he tells me. “Just because I
know you think I am.”

I exhale. I feel dizzy. “I do?”
“You do,” he says. We start following the hostess. We snake around the bar, in
between the two-top tables with couples bent together over pizza and deep
glasses of red. “I can tell by the way you’re looking at me. And what Bella has

said.”
“What has she said?”

We pass through an archway and Aaron hangs back, holding his arm out to let
me pass. My shoulder brushes his hand. This isn’t happening.
“That she has dated some guys who maybe didn’t treat her right, and that

you’re an amazing friend, and you’re always there to pick up the pieces. And
that I should be warned you’ll probably hate me at first.”
We’ve arrived at the table. It’s in the back room, pushed up against the left-

hand wall. David and Bella are upon us.
“I’ll slide in the corner,” Bella says. She shoves herself in first and pulls me
down next to her. David and Aaron sit across from us.

“What’s good here?” Aaron asks. He gives Bella a wide smile and reaches
across the table for her hand. He strokes her knuckles.
I don’t need to look at the menu, but I do anyway. The arugula pizza and

Rubirosa salad are what we always get.
“Everything,” Bella says. She squeezes and releases his hand and shimmies
her torso. She’s wearing a short black ruffled dress with roses on it that I bought

with her on a shopping trip to The Kooples. She has neon green suede heels
tucked under her, and dangly green plastic earrings clank against her cheeks.
I need to avoid Aaron’s face. His entire person—him—seated twelve inches

across the table from me.
“Bella tells us you’re an architect,” David says, and my heart squeezes with
affection for him. He always knows the things you’re supposed to ask—how

you’re supposed to behave. He always remembers the protocol.