We Were Never Here(4)
Kristen had beamed, her honey-brown hair fluttering from the open window. “You know you never have to repay me for anything.”
CHAPTER 2
We hiked in silence back up to our hotel, on a serpentine mountain road flanked with abrupt drop-offs and the occasional barking dog. The region was known for its stargazing, so streetlights were nonexistent and porch lights were hazy orange.
“What should we do for dinner?” Kristen asked. She paused to sniff a bough of fuchsia flowers. “No smell.”
“I’d go back to where we had lunch.” I fished in my bag for my inhaler; the steep walks and thin air didn’t bother Kristen, but I wasn’t in excellent shape like her. “Your quinoa bowl looked insane. And—I never thought I’d say this—I’m kinda sick of empanadas.”
“Oh God, same.” She paused at our hotel’s driveway. “I was hoping you’d say that. I’m gonna shower before we eat.”
“No rush.” I pulled the keys from my purse and fumbled with the gate. In the dark, we squinted at the brick path. The hotel had an odd setup: rooms clustered in four separate buildings, with doors that opened to the outside, motel-style. It was fancier than the hotels we normally chose, and pricier, too, but Kristen had insisted on picking up the tab, ignoring my objections as she handed over a wad of cash.
Kristen was wealthy in a way that’d intrigued me in college, prodded at my bubble-wrapped middle-class mind. She didn’t talk about it, but I began to catalog the evidence in secret: While I made my bed with a striped comforter from Target, Kristen spread a creamy duvet, bleeding from teal to cobalt like pliable art. My standing lamp was a cheap plastic thing with limbs sprawled out like Medusan snakes, while an elegant torchiere stood in Kristen’s corner. She mentioned trips to exotic places, their names like something out of a sci-fi paperback (Ljubljana, Brno, Zagreb, Baku), but never name-dropped, never alluded to her background with showy pride or even showier humility.
The key clunked and we tumbled into the suite with that instant release of making it in from the outside world. I dropped my bag on a chair and Kristen closed herself in the bathroom. We’d been upgraded to a suite for some reason—either because we were the only people there or because it was the only room left, per my mediocre Spanish comprehension. I could usually piece together whatever we needed to say, but my mind went blank when a local responded, mumbling at high speeds like a rock tumbling down a hill. No matter how much I begged them to slow down (“lentamente, por favor, palabra por palabra”), they repeated themselves at the same tempo, then smiled expectantly. Kristen would stare at me, too, everyone waiting for my sluggish brain to work as I grew more and more exasperated with myself.
In here, we only had to speak English. I plopped on the couch, a horrific aqua thing, and glanced out the window: During the day it was a glorious vista, brown mountains with a few colorful houses sprinkled across its base, but now there was just star-spangled sky, the land below it a jagged blank. I listened to the rush of water on tile coming from the bathroom, then pulled out my phone and connected to the Wi-Fi. A long string of texts from Priya recounting a hilarious moment I’d missed at an all-hands meeting. And three texts from Aaron: the kookiest Milwaukee news stories he could find.
A smile stretched across my face. He’d passed my test—I’d fill Kristen in on him this evening, when the time was right. She’d understand why I hadn’t mentioned him; she’d appreciate that I hadn’t wanted to spend the whole week analyzing dates. Of course, I wouldn’t mention the other reason I’d stayed mum: Kristen, with her sky-high standards for me, tended to be critical of my love interests. She picked up on the red flags I missed, the warning signs I didn’t want to see. Thank God Aaron had passed my test—Kristen’s scrutiny would almost certainly be harsher.
Still, Aaron, shock of shocks, really did seem to be one of the good ones. Our meet-cute was a movie cliché: We chatted as he made my daily oat-milk latte at Café Mona, just down the street from my office, and over time I learned he was recovering from a breakup. Then, last month, I was slack-jawed when he asked for my number.
I liked going on dates, but things never seemed to go anywhere with the men I met on apps or through setups. And then a year ago, I’d sworn off dating completely, every male hand reminding me of the one that’d threatened my life and bruised my skin that night in Cambodia. So I surprised myself by agreeing to a first date with Aaron: clapping to polka tunes at a homey concertina bar. I entered the night with friend vibes and finished it with a crush. He was patient, never making me feel bad for not being ready to veer beyond make-out territory. (That was when the panic flared, Stop. Stop. Stop.) And he was weird, with his tortoiseshell glasses and dark floppy hair and manic, beat-poet energy. Not my type. And yet…
Aaron was nothing like my college beau, Ben; maybe that’s what I liked about him. I kept seeing shades of Ben in men from dating apps: a sighing superiority, obscure pop-culture references and I’m-too-good-for-this overtones. Aaron had an openness that struck me as refreshing. He completed colorful graphic-design projects in the middle of the night. He’d grown up in the area and liked to wander through old-school museums on his days off, like the Pabst Mansion and the slightly creepy Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit at the public museum. He was interested in everything, but especially in me.