by Jay McLean
“Well, yeah. I guess.”
“But why—”
“I don’t know, Ava,” he says through an exhale. “It just kind of came out in frustration.”
“Because I pushed you?”
“A little.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Moments pass, neither of us saying a word. I listen to him breathe, and I wonder if he’s doing the same.
Finally, he says, “I don’t know what happened to her if that’s what you’re wondering.”
It was exactly what I was wondering.
He adds, “There was no evidence she got on a plane, at least under her name. And there’s been no evidence of her existence since.”
“Do you—” I start, my voice cracking with emotion. “Do you remember when you stopped looking for her?”
“It happened when I was three. The last time my dad ever mentioned anything about it, I was in third grade. That was probably when we stopped looking. But looking and hoping are two very different things.”
I want to ask him when he stopped hoping, but I’m almost afraid of the answer. I get through each day searching for hope, so the idea of losing it the way he has…
“Connor?” I whisper.
“Yeah?”
“I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For so many things. But mainly… I’m sorry about what happened to you. About how it happened, and what that must’ve felt like. I think, as kids, all we truly need are our parents, and your mom—I think I feel the sorriest for your mom... because she missed out on you.”
Chapter 16
Ava
“Where the hell is my wallet?” Trevor’s walking around the house as if we have all the time in the world.
“Did you check your pants pocket from the last time you remember having it?” Krystal offers.
“I don’t even know when I had it last!” he grumbles.
I put my hand on the doorknob, twist. “Hurry up!”
“Ava,” Mom scolds. “Give him a minute.”
Trevor walks out of his room with three different pairs of pants, patting down each pocket.
“I’m going to be so late,” I mumble.
Now Trevor’s looking behind the TV because of course it’s going to be there. “Why do you have to get to school so early, anyway?”
“Because someone,” I say, glaring at him, “made me see the school shrink.”
“Ava,” Krystal admonishes. “We don’t use that term.”
“Sorry.” I lower my gaze, my voice. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Where the hell is it!” Trevor utters.
“I’ll be outside,” I announce to whoever is listening. I open the door.
Freeze.
On my doorstep is Connor, one hand raised, ready to knock.
“Connor?” I shriek.
“Ava?” He looks as confused as I feel.
“What—” My voice is too high, too loud. My pulse thumps wildly, beating on my eardrums. I try again. “What are you doing here?”
Trevor shoves me to the side.
Connor lifts Trevor’s wallet, but his eyes are glued to me.
“Thank you,” Trevor says, relieved as he grabs for it. “I’ve been looking all morning.”
“You left it in my car,” Connor tells him. To me, he asks, “What are you doing here?”
I say, “I live here.”
Trevor laughs. “I’d introduce you both, but it seems like you’ve already met.”
“Wait,” replies Connor, his feet planted on our porch. “You live here?”
Now Trevor’s pushing me out the door as if he’s the one in a rush. I stop inches short of slamming into Connor, while Trevor shuts the door behind him.
I’m practically sniffing Connor’s shirt; I’m that close to him.
“I told you I lived with my sister,” Trevor says, moving past us and down the porch steps.
I ask, “How do you know each other?”
Trevor answers, “I told you about him, no? He just moved in next door.”
He told me we had new neighbors. He didn’t mention him by name or give any other information.
“Your sister?” Connor asks, confusion evident in his tone.
“Stepsister,” Trevor and I respond at the same time.
“Oh.”
We all three make our way down the driveway.
“Hey,” Trevor says, turning back to us. “Do me a favor? Drive her to school? I might be able to grab a decent breakfast before work.”
“Sure,” says Connor.
I reply, trying to get out of it, “No, wait.” Because the last time I was in the confines of Connor’s car I almost lost all my senses. “His car…” I get stuck for words and idiotically come up with: “His car smells…” But it comes out a question, and I wish I could rewind time, or I don’t know, disappear into thin air.
“My car does not smell,” Connor says defensively.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that,” I admit. “It doesn’t.”
Trevor’s eyes narrow. “How do you know what his car smells like?” Then his face lights up with a stupid shit-eating grin. “Wait, is Connor the Some Guy From School?”
“Trevor!” I screech. “Shut. Up!”
Trevor laughs, his head thrown back as he opens the door of his truck. “Go easy on her,” he tells Connor. “She’s on her period. Apparently, it’s a heavy flow.”
I die.
Right there.
On my driveway.
Dead.
The first thing Connor does when we get into his car is reach for his gym bag in the back and spray deodorant everywhere. I die my second death of embarrassment and cover my face with my hands. “Sorry. Your car doesn’t smell!” I laugh out.
“Uh huh. Sure,” he responds. He’s smiling, though, eyeing me sideways as he starts the car. Then he coughs, waves a hand in front of his face, the deodorant getting to him. He winds down the window. I try to do the same. “Yours doesn’t work,” he says, clearly proud of himself. He sprays the can directly on me.
“Connor!” I squeal.
He does it again. “Sucks to be you.”
Another spray.
I attempt to shield myself, but it’s useless. “I said I was sorry!”
His chuckle reverberates throughout my entire body. “Okay,” he says, dropping the can on his lap. He offers me his pinky, giving me the same deep-dimpled smile that had me losing my mind the first time I saw it. “Truce?”
“Truce,” I respond, linking my finger with his. His touch is warm, soft. I’m almost tempted to take his entire hand and hold it in mine. But that… that would be crazy. Right? Right.
We stop at a red light, and he turns to me. “I researched that Blanch Tyler what’s-her-face.”
“Moore.”
“Yeah, her. Man, she’s…”
“My hero.”
“Your hero?” he asks, incredulous.
“I don’t know. There’s something about having that level of control over men that makes me…”
“Insane?” he finishes, his back pressed against the door, as if afraid of me.
His reaction makes me giggle.
And the spray of deodorant makes me stop. “You called a truce!”
The light turns green, and we’re moving again. “I value my life more than a truce,” he murmurs, and resprays me.
I reach across the car to grab his forearm, but he’s too strong, and he damn well knows it. “Give me that stupid thing!”
“Ava, you’re going to make me veer off the fucking road,” he laughs.
“No, you are. Give it!” I can’t stop laughing.
“Fine,” he says, handing it over.
I throw it out his open window.
He hits the brakes so fast my seatbelt catches. Then he turns to me with a seriousness that has me clamping my lips together to stop from busting out a cackle. “That’s litterin
g, Miss Diaz.” He motions his head outside. “Off you go.”
He has a point. I roll my eyes but open the door. There are no other cars on the road, thank God, and so I quickly find the can, pick it up, and start back for his car, gripping the can tight. No way I’m letting him have it again. I place my hand on the handle, but the car moves forward a few feet. “Are you serious?” I yell, jogging forward to keep up. I reach for the handle again. He drives off again. This time farther. “Connor!” I can hear him laughing, see him eyeing me in the rearview. This happens three more times, his laughter getting louder, and mine becoming more uncontrollable. It’s been years, years since I’ve felt this way. Laughed this hard. Felt this free.
I don’t bother moving when he does it again. Instead, I stand still, my hands on my hips, my foot tapping. “I don’t mind walking,” I shout. A lie. Fuck walking. I’d sooner call Trevor to pick me up.
The car roars to life, and just when I think he’s going to bail, I see him reach across the car to open the door for me. “Truce,” he yells.
“Your truces mean nothing!” I shout back.
“Triple truce!” he counters.
I walk toward the car slowly, anticipating his next move. When I get to the open door, I see him watching me, his head dipped, his bottom lip between his teeth. I gracelessly sit and quickly shut the door, deodorant still in my hand.
“You’re an asshole,” I say playfully, spraying him with his chosen weapon.
He chuckles, starts driving again. “What can I say? I like to watch you run.”
It turns out Connor comes to school this time on Mondays because he has a short practice. I tell him the truth about why I do, to see Miss Turner. He simply nods. When I ask if he’s curious as to why I was seeing her, he shrugs, says, “I mean, it’s pretty obvious you’re a sociopath.”
I spray his entire body.
He laughs it off, cranks his window up, and breathes it in as if it’s fresh air.
If anyone’s a sociopath here, it’s him.
Connor and I walk together to Miss Turner’s office, as it’s on the way to the gym. “Thanks for the ride,” I say, my hand on the doorknob. I twist. Push. Nothing happens. Connor laughs, peels off a note stuck on the office window.
Miss Turner is ill. No sessions today.
“Seriously?” I groan, slamming my open hand on the door. And because I’m an idiot, I try the door again, my forehead touching the timber. “Doesn’t she know about texts or emails?”
Connor says, sticking the note back up, “Yeah, you sure seem like you could’ve used that extra hour to sleep in, cranky.”
I narrow my eyes at him, backhand his brick wall of a stomach. “Go to your stupid practice.”
He feigns hurt, only for a second, before asking, “What are you going to do?”
“Sit in the stands and shout boo every time the ball comes near you.”
Laughing, he says, “Why are you so mean to me?”
I hasten my steps to keep up with him. “Defense mechanism.”
“For what?” he asks.
To stop me from falling for you, stupid.
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
CONNOR
Ava comes through on her word. She sits front row center, in the gym stands. And as promised, the second a ball is in my hand, she shouts, “Boo!” Which garners looks from the other players, coaches, and the few spectators crazy enough to watch a half-hour practice session first thing Monday morning.
I shake my head at her, but she simply raises her eyebrows, a smirk on her lips, lips I’d love to—
“Ledger!” Coach Sykes yells. “This isn’t a teen soap opera. Get to work.”
“Boo, Ledger!” Ava shouts, and now she’s laughing, silently, but I know it’s there because I can see her shoulders shaking with the force of it. I’m too busy watching her that I don’t even notice Coach Sykes approaching me until the ball slams against my chest.
Ava laughs harder.
“You get one,” I tell her and decide that if she’s here to watch me, then I may as well give her a show.
The practice is nothing more than basic drills. But when the coach asks for suicides, I’m the first on the line. When he wants to work on ball handling, I’m using two balls, behind the back, reverse, between the knees, ankle breakers. When he asks for lay-ups, I’m power dunking—one after another.
“Damn, Ledger! Where the fuck have you been hiding?” Rhys shouts.
“Quit showing off!” Mitch yells. “We get it; you’re good.”
“He’s better than good,” Coach Sykes retorts. “In fact, every practice I want you all to come in with the same amount of power and precision that Ledger has! Got it?”
I throw Ava a smirk.
She gives me the finger.
Psychology may be my favorite subject in the history of forever. Scratch that. Ava is my favorite subject. Sitting side by side in class waiting for the teacher to arrive, she asks me questions:
Where am I from?
Why did I move here?
Who do I live with?
What’s my favorite murder?
I answer each one with truth, minus the murder one because I don’t even know how to answer it. Mitch walks past us, sniffing the air. “What the hell is that smell?”
We burst out in childish giggles. She says to me, “You were not at all impressive this morning. I just want you to know that in case you think otherwise. In fact, you pretty much sucked.”
Mr. McCallister enters the classroom saying, “You may spend the first ten minutes of class discussing your partner paper. Use that time wisely.”
Ava and I turn to each other at the same time, our knees knocking painfully. Ava groans, reaching for her knee, but I beat her to it, grimacing. I rub at the spot I think I hit, while we both apologize. Dipping my head closer to hers, I whisper, “So I worked on the outline like we said.”
She moves closer again. So close I can feel the heat of her cheek on mine. “Why are we whispering?”
“Because I don’t want anyone to hear our plan and steal it.”
“Got it.”
“Hey, Coach said you have to be at every game from now on. Says you’re my lucky charm.”
Ava pulls back to look at my face, then rolls her eyes. She says, her voice still low, “You’re going to need it if you don’t take your hand off my leg.”
It’s not as if I’d forgotten it was there. I was just hoping she wouldn’t notice. Or if she did, maybe she wouldn’t mind. With a confidence only she brings out of me, I squeeze her knee, tell her, “I’m just trying to give you an actual reason.”
“For what?”
“To say I make you uncomfortable.”
“Oh, I’ve come to terms with the fact that you’re a creep.”
“Oh yeah?” I laugh.
She nods, brings her head closer again, our faces almost touching.
I ask, “You want creepy?”
“Oh, no,” she backpedals.
If she wants to play, I’m here for it. “Your eyes are possibly the prettiest things I’ve ever seen.” And it’s the truth. Whenever I picture her in my mind, her eyes are the first things I see.
I hear her swallow, loud, and I know she’s feeling something. When she pulls away, her eyes search mine, her cheeks flushed. My heart is racing, my mind spinning. Because never in my life have I wanted a girl more than I want her. And not even in the physical sense. But just talking to her or being around her. To feel this all day, every day. It feels like my soul’s on fire, and she’s holding the match. “Yeah?” she starts, a threatening lilt to her tone. She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. Finally, she stutters, “Well… well, your smile could melt panties.” The second the words are out of her mouth, her eyes widen, and she covers her face. I think she mumbles, “Too far, Ava. Too fucking far.” But I can’t be sure.
I finally remove my hand from her knee so that I can tug at her wrists and uncover her face. And then I smile my—and I quote—panty-
melting smile, just for her.
She shoves my face away with her entire palm. “Stop.”
“Psst!” Rhys hisses from behind us.
We both turn to him.
He says, “Quit eye-fucking each other. It’s making me uncomfortable.”
I rip off a sheet of paper from my notebook and draw a large spoon, then hand it to him, my smile widening. “For your cry-about-it soup.”
Chapter 17
Connor
“So, how’s school?” Dad asks.
“Good.”
“And the team?”
“Also, good.”
Dad looks up from his meal and drops his knife and fork on the plate. “I feel like we have this same conversation every day.”
“Because we do,” I murmur. “But I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“Well, I don’t know, Connor,” he says, running his hands through his hair. “Why don’t we talk about something else then? I feel like… I don’t know. Ever since we moved here, we’ve become so disconnected.”
Shrugging, I take a sip of my soda. “Remember that girl I told you about?”
Dad inhales, long and slow, and I already know what’s coming next. “Don’t let a girl distract you from—”
I rub at my eyes, frustrated, cutting him off.
“Connor, this is serious,” he says.
“I know, Dad. I know how serious this is. I’m the one who feels the pressure of it,” I rush out, then take a calming breath and regroup my thoughts. “But you want to sit here and have a non-mundane conversation with me; this is what I want to talk about. This is what’s happening in my life right now. This is what I want to tell my dad. I’m seventeen, and I’m interested in a girl. And I’m allowed to be. But my wanting to spend time with someone doesn’t take away from my other priorities. I know how important the end game is. For both of us.”
Dad’s silent a moment, his heavy breaths filling the small room. Finally, he nods, his eyes locked on mine. “You’re right,” he sighs out.
And I exhale, relieved.