AIMEE + JARED, pt. 7

A serial short story

Read part 1 here and part 2 here and part 3 here and part 4 here and part 5 here and part 6 here.

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“In my twenties,” Tabitha begins, “I had very little and wanted much more.”

It’s unclear whether she means money, sex, success, all of the above.

“I knew I deserved more and I knew it would come at a cost.” Her friendly eyes have lost their benevolence. “I left my home abroad—” is she talking across-the-pond or somewhere more far flung? “—and, in doing so, abandoned my family forever.” She let the barely-there plot sit on my skin and permeate my pores. I have half a mind to tell her I think she’s full of shit.

“The man I left with was a friend of my father’s. He brought me here and gave me everything.” There was now an unwarranted gleam in her eye, a look of resilience. “And when he died, I kept it all.”

“How did he die?” I ask, wanting to hear it from her mouth.

“He was old,” she says flatly. “That’s it.”

A waiter comes by with refills, switching out our cups silently. A man in a short-sleeved button down walks his dog into the bar and is promptly turned away; he scoffs at the offense.

“I am not a victim,” she tells me. If I appeared to be pitying her, it wasn’t intentional. “The plan was mine, it was the life I wanted, and I’m grateful for it, despite.”

“Despite?”

She sighs. “We had two daughters together—beautiful things, exactly two years apart. When their dad died, my youngest stopped speaking to me. I know she needed to process her grief, but it came out in accusations, like I had set her up. Like it was my fault that, by middle school, she lacked a father.”

She studies my face for recognition, emphasizes: “She ran away.”

Whether she’s weaving half-truths or not, I’m enthralled. “Does your other daughter know where she is?”

She waves her hand. “She went no-contact once she found out about Jared.”

My phone buzzes on the table: Aimee calling. Tabitha raises an eyebrow: “What does your friend want?”

I put the phone back in my tote. “No clue.”

“But trust,” Tabitha says, “this started with trust. What I need you girls to realize is—and the sooner you learn this, the better—is that we are all animals trying to live, not just men, but women, too. Sometimes living is simple, sometimes it takes hard decisions, but you must—you absolutely must—know what you’re aiming for. A North Star, a dream, a target, whatever you want to call it, make sure that you name it.

From a young age, I knew I wanted comfort for myself. I knew my family would not provide the life I needed, so I found my way out.”

“But why Jared?” I need to know what she sees in him, exactly. Why she’d take a man who wanted other women, too.

“Jared listens to me,” she says, bored at his very mention. “Jared does things when I need them done. Jared needs direction, and I give him that.” She sips. “He likes it.”

I picture the boy Aimee spoke of, the boy I’ve never met, only defined by a couple screenshots on a dating profile and his rare mystique in being off of social media. By all accounts, and to Tabitha’s credit, he does seem lost, does seem like he’d accept the help of an older woman willing to invest in him long-term.

“And so he dates other women?” I ask. “Is that the trade off?”

Tabitha looks at me like I’d slapped her. “Trade off for what?”

“The…the relationship.”

Tabitha’s head is in her hands. “I am telling you what you must hear: that men will not save you, your families will not save you, and you must save yourself. And you’re stuck on this part? Like my age makes me unfit for loving and fucking?”

“No,” I slow her down, taking my voice low and scooting closer, “no, no, it’s just I can’t imagine knowing that someone I love is—“

“You are young but you’re not so young. You should be able to understand this by now. That you do not own anyone, that they do not own you. That this was not Jared’s idea, this was mine.” I’ve pushed her to the edge and she clutches her bag, as if about to leave. Instead, she takes out a photo, throwing it onto the table.

“And this is our North Star This is what we, together, want.”

I flip the image over and at first it doesn’t register—the matte milky black, the pearls of gray. I blink and see it in full: a sonogram.

“You’re…wait—”

She snatches it back. “No I’m not pregnant,” she hisses, “but we found someone.”

As the conversation trails off, I space out with possibility. Was Aimee a someone? Did she know that she was being assessed as a willing—or worse, unwitting—surrogate?

TO BE CONTINUED—