21

Aster

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“What do you think? Gold or silver?”

I try to appear appropriately interested in Missy’s question. She’s been trying to find a new pair of earrings for the past three hours, dragging me to every store in the nearby mall in her quest for a new accessory.

“Gold,” I say, when she keeps waiting for an answer. “Definitely.”

“Hmm.” She holds the hoops up to her ear and studies them. “Good call, Aster. Gold it is.”

I try not to react to the elite black credit card she pulls out of her designer purse; the way she casually buys a pair of earrings that cost more than my groceries for a month. I do a good job looking totally happy with everything. I’ve been doing it for three years, after all. And it had almost started to feel normal.

Until Aidan.

Fucking Aidan.

I’d kill him, but I don’t want to go back to prison.

“I’m starving,” Missy says, tucking the earrings in her bag, alongside the new jeans and the dress and the forty-dollar mascara she bought on a whim. “Do you want to get some ice cream?”

“Ah...how about cupcakes?” I say, scrambling to think of anything other than ice cream. If I think about ice cream I’ll think about Aidan, and if I think about Aidan I’ll scream. I’ll think about how incredibly stupid I am. How I’m supposed to know better.

How I do know better.

And yet.

For weeks after I’d learned what he’d done I’d tried to come up with a plan to ruin him. To build up his heart and then stomp on it the way he’d done to mine with his lie. I thought I’d bring him to the pool and let him drown, except he’d been so genuinely terrified that I hadn’t had the heart. The way he’d looked, floating in the water, believing in me...no one has ever looked at me like that.

The ice cream date. Telling him about Sydney, giving him a shot to come clean. He didn’t deserve a second chance, but I tried to give him one, and he hadn’t taken it. It was a wasted effort, and one I won’t make again.

“I could totally eat a cupcake,” Missy says, navigating through the busy mall and completely failing to notice the way her bulging shopping bags bump passerby.

When I first met Missy at Aidan’s Frisbee baseball game, I’d never in a million years have imagined us hanging out, but here we are. And I never would have imagined myself saying I wish I could be more like Missy Freestone, but I kind of do.

We couldn’t be more different. Missy’s from an old money southern family; her mom has a brand of bourbon named after her and her father owns a plastics factory. Missy’s apartment is professionally decorated and paid for by her parents; I have a dorm room in which I live for free in exchange for agreeing to listen to sobbing and STD-riddled students at all hours of the day.

“I hope they have the coconut lemon one,” Missy is saying. “Ooh, or maybe the red velvet. But once they had cookies and cream and there was a whole cookie inside the cupcake—that was amazing.” She stops walking. “Aster? Are you listening?”

I school my expression into its standard happy-go-lucky blandness. “Of course I am! Sorry! I’m just so hungry!”

She beams back at me and resumes walking. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I dragged you out here on this shopping trip and then totally forgot to eat! We should get two cupcakes.”

My stomach clenches. “Absolutely.”

I don’t want two cupcakes. I don’t even want one cupcake, that’s how bad things are. I didn’t feel this miserable after the break up with Jerry, and that was honestly miserable. When Aidan asked me if I’d really loved Jerry, I wasn’t lying when I said I did. I loved him. I loved everything about him. When we first met I loved the idea of him, this guy from a good family with hope and ambition and a truly huge heart. And then, with time, I loved him, too. And he loved me. He didn’t look deep enough to see all the dents and dings beneath the surface, and he was totally, completely happy with the package I was selling. And I was totally, completely happy to be that package.

Until Aidan ripped it apart.

I shake my head, like that will jar loose all stray thoughts of him.

It doesn’t work, of course. Somehow he’d weaseled himself in there, past all the carefully constructed walls I’d put up, making himself not just my only friend, but my best friend. I wasn’t lying when I told him that, either. Finally a guy who listened to and heard me; liked me and respected me; lied to and betrayed me.

I was furious when I spoke to Sindy and she spilled the details of Aidan’s little plan to have her seduce Jerry. The whole thing made sense...and then it didn’t. He wanted to break us up for a reason, but what? The obvious answer is sex, but he never pushed the issue. Even when I was drunk, pants-less, and sharing a cheap motel bed with him, he didn’t make a move. 

“Oh, man.” Missy moans as we approach the shop, their display case filled with a colorful cornucopia of cupcakes. “They have all the flavors! What are we going to do?”

I pretend to contemplate the selection, but I’m really looking at our reflections in the glass. Missy’s wearing a red dress with a boat neck collar and heels so high I couldn’t walk in them if my life depended on it. I’m wearing skinny jeans and flats and a tank top beneath my denim jacket. When I first got to Holsom I tried to dress fancier, tried harder to fit into this life, the life I wanted. But it was such a far stretch from the life I’d left that I couldn’t do it. Instead of going from prison beige to Prada bags, I’d steered into the safer middle ground of jeans and T-shirts. At least I can afford them.

“Okay,” Missy says, sighing dramatically when it’s our time to order. “We’re going to get four cupcakes. “Coconut lemon, red velvet, cookies and cream, and vanilla. That’s your favorite, right, Aster?” She reads the surprise on my face. “You mentioned it before. Said you were boring vanilla. Like anybody’s buying that.” She winks at me and turns to pay, waving away my money. “If I’m going to corrupt you, I’m going to pay for it,” she says, steering us over to a table in the nearby food court.

Despite her regal southern belle countenance, Missy is a hardcore athlete and ruthlessly ambitious. The second time I turned up to play with the team she’d invited me to a party at her place. I’d turned her down and instead of pouting she said, “I don’t blame you. Let’s go for drinks instead. Do you like bourbon?”

I’d tried to get out of the invite but Missy wasn’t taking no for an answer, and soon enough I’d found myself sitting across from her in a campus bar, listening to her bawdy stories of the lengths she went to in order to maintain her good girl image. “That’s why I wanted to hang out with you,” she’d explained. “I recognize it in you. That wild side, trying to break free. My wild side needs company. Join us.”

I didn’t have the nerve to tell her my wild side had been tamed after fourteen months in a women’s correctional facility. I don’t tell anyone about that side, keeping my past as vague and bland as my present is supposed to be.

Until Aidan.

Missy slices the cupcakes into quarters and steeples her fingers as she tries to decide where to start. “Red velvet, right?” she mutters, as though there’s a wrong answer. “Or lemon coconut?”

I pick up a piece of vanilla and lick off the frosting. It’s delicious, and instead of revolting, my stomach sings its praises. When I haven’t been in class I’ve been moping around my dorm room, pretending to be a good resident advisor, the one who’d had such a loud fight with a guy the week before that another resident advisor had been sent down to scold her.

There was no end to the moping in sight until I bumped into Missy after class this morning and she insisted I come along on her shopping trip. I couldn’t think of a good excuse to get away, so here I am.

“Oh, hell,” Missy says, picking up the red velvet and the lemon coconut and sandwiching them together. “I’ll just eat both.” Frosting smears on her upper lip as she eats, and then she beams at me, cupcake crumbs clinging to her chin. “What?” she asks, when I laugh. “Is there something in my teeth?”

I laugh harder.

All week I’ve been convinced I’d never feel better, never find another friend, but maybe there’s hope. Maybe Missy will be my friend and I’ll never seen Aidan Shaw again and everything will be just fine.