Page 66 of Charm City Rocks
She’s brought a thick flannel blanket out, but she’s still cold. The firepit sits empty at her feet.
The side door opens, and Aaron appears holding the bottle of cab. He fills her empty glass without comment and then goes about the quick work of building a fire for her. He puts on a pair of gloves, arranges wood into a tepee, twists some old newspaper. She watches, taking note, aware that she’s going to have to do this on her own soon. She’s getting the house, so she’ll be staying here. Aaron will move to an apartment downtown. He knows a few divorced guys who live in some big complex on the water. She imagines a building of lonely men, their TVs the size of sideways refrigerators.
Aaron strikes a long match and sets it into the structure he’s built. Smoke appears, and then a weak flame. “There we go.” He sits in the chair beside her.
Warmth touches her skin as the flame grows. “Thanks.”
They listen to the muffled sound of Billy’s piano.
“So, what was all that in there, Robyn?” Aaron asks.
Billy and Margot left fifteen minutes ago, and Robyn headed out here without comment, leaving the dishes and cleanup to Aaron and Caleb.
“Do you have feelings for him again? Is that what this is? Two decades later?”
“No,” she says. “I mean, yeah, of course I do.”
“Well, that clears it up.”
“I haven’t had feelings for Billy in years, Aaron. But obviously I have feelings for him. Again, before, probably always. That’s how it works.”
She notes the hurt on his face and then watches it dissipate like the smoke from the fire. They know each other’s backstories, each other’s pre-marriage loves and losses. “It’s complicated,” she says. “Like how you and I are no longer in love, but we love each other.”
This was the realization they’d had, articulated over the last year of talking and reflecting. Maybe if they’d had kids, it would’ve been different—perhaps a family would’ve tethered them to each other in a way that felt permanent. Or maybe they’ve just run their course. Who knows? They tried, sort of. Last summer, Caleb stayed with Billy for twelve days while she and Aaron went to Hawaii. They stayed at the same hotel they’d stayed at during their honeymoon. They snorkeled and got day-drunk and sunburned. They had a pleasant time together, because it was Hawaii, but they both knew that nothing between them would ever go beyond simply pleasant again.
Aaron stabs at a log with a metal poker. Orange embers float up and quickly vanish. “If it makes you feel better,” he says, “I would’ve chased after you.”
“I know,” she says, and smiles, because he’s going to be a good friend. Her other divorced friends will be jealous of how amicably they fell out of love, like a blueprint for the end.
“Who would’ve thought,” he says. “Apparently inviting your ex to live above the garage was a mistake.”
“Oh, go to hell,” she says.
He fills his own glass. “I meant what I said the other day at the arbitrator’s office,” Aaron says. “I’ll help with Caleb’s tuition. I’m happy to. The one good thing about him picking Hopkins…it’s cheaper, right?”
The fire is at a full roar, crackling and bursting.
“That’s very nice. But he’s mine, Aaron.” In her head, that seemed like a nice way of telling Aaron that Caleb isn’t his. There’s no nice way to say that, though. The hazards of nontraditional household situations.
“Are you nervous about being single again?” she asks. “About, I don’t know, sex and stuff, dating?”
He holds up his glass and inspects the red wine against the flame. “Sometimes I look forward to it, like an adventure. Sometimes, though, it just seems like so much work.”
“Right?”
“Dating apps,” he says.
“Ugh,” she says.
The music from the apartment stops, starts again. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard Billy sing before,” Aaron says.
“It’s not great, is it?”
“No. I guess we know why he never became a real musician. My God, is that an electric guitar? How many people are up there?”
Robyn looks up at the stars. There are planes up there, too, dozens slowly streaking across the sky. She used to track planes like these with her eyes when she was young and watching the nighttime sky. Other people would look up and point at constellationsor try to spot shooting stars. Robyn just wondered where all the planes were going. Paris, London, Hong Kong?
“If you met him now?” Aaron says. “The forty-whatever version? And if Margot wasn’t part of this weirdness? If it was just you and him, and the last twenty years hadn’t happened?”
