by McLean, Jay
But Amy is there.
And so is Peter.
It’s been a few days now, and every day I get home from school, there’s another form of vandalism done to their house.
The neighbor who caused all this shit has gone.
Disappeared.
And nobody knows where.
I lie on my bed, my eyes on the ceiling, my phone resting on my chest. Every call to Ava I’ve made has gone unanswered, and every response to a text seems like she’s giving me just enough to stay within arm’s length.
Dad knocks on my door, enters without waiting for a response. He looks at me, pity laced in his stare. “How are you feeling, son?”
I shrug. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to feel.
He sits on the edge of my bed, his body half turned to me. “Have you heard from her?”
“Not really. I sent her a text earlier, but she hasn’t responded,” I lie. Because she did respond; she just didn’t give me what I needed. “I feel like I’ve done something wrong,” I admit.
“No, Connor, you can’t think like that. You can’t take it personally.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.” I sigh. “But I don’t know how not to. I get that she’s going through a lot, but all I’m doing is trying to be there for her, for them, and she just keeps pushing me away.”
“Yeah,” Dad mumbles, and I can see his mind working. “She’s going through a lot, Connor. And sometimes our problems are greater than the need to express them.”
I stare at him, right into his eyes, and hope that he can somehow see that I’m going through something, too. But I don’t have the heart to tell him. “I guess.”
Dad gets up to leave, and I pick up my phone, look at the last message I sent her. I told her I love her. She wrote back: Ok.
Dad stops in the doorway, his hand on the knob as he turns to me. “Just give her the time and the space she’s asking for. When she’s ready, she’ll come back to you.”
If she comes back at all.
* * *
I wake up to loud knocking on my window, and I rush out of bed, knowing there’s only one person in the entire world who would be there. Under a starlit sky, Ava stands with her head down and her arms crossed. Her hair’s loose, wet, as if she’d just gotten out of the shower. I’d been so worried and had gotten so worked up about us that I’d somehow forgotten how beautiful she is. But she’s here, now, and she’s everything I’ve needed, everything I’ve craved. She’s so damn perfect.
When I lift the window, she looks up, those maple-colored eyes clear of the tears that have coated them for days. “Hey, sorry, I tried knocking on the door…”
“Sorry, I must’ve been… it doesn’t matter. Did you want to come in?”
“Can you meet me at the door?”
I smile, giddy. “Yeah, of course.”
I’m already waiting at my open door by the time she comes around the front. I open the door wider, expecting her to come in, but she shakes her head, keeps her distance. My smile falls. So does my heart. Right to my feet.
“Connor…” It’s just my name. Two syllables. But I’d heard it in this tone once before… It was the last time she gave up on me. On us.
“I don’t know what I did,” I whisper, more to myself than to her.
Her eyes meet mine, and those tears she’d been carrying return. “I’m leaving, Connor.”
My stomach plummets. “What?”
She turns to look behind her, and it’s only now I notice Peter’s car sitting idle at the curb, headlights on, with Miss D sitting in the backseat. “Ava, what the hell are you doing? Leaving me is one thing, but leaving—”
“Trevor has to stay to finish up some jobs,” she interrupts as if she’s planned this entire conversation in her head, and I wasn’t even part of it. “We have to leave tonight to get Mom’s placement at the treatment center.”
Dread solidifies every organ. Every muscle. “Where?”
“It’s in Texas.” She blinks, letting a single tear stream down her cheek. “And Peter… Peter’s going to take care of me.”
“Ava, no,” I breathe out, stepping closer to her. I reach for her hand at the same time she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a folded sheet of paper. She hands it to me, her head bowed.
My nostrils flare with my heavy breaths as I take in the scene. Peter has Miss D, and soon, he’ll have Ava.
Ava says, “You said you were in Georgia.”
“What?”
She motions to the paper, and I quickly unfold it. Bile rises to my throat when realization hits. It’s the fucking receipt for the room service. “You said you were in Georgia,” she repeats.
“That’s not what it looks like,” I rush out. “I can explain—”
“You don’t need to,” she interrupts. “It won’t change anything. I still have to leave.”
“But—”
A single sob escapes and I try, again, to somehow get closer. But the closer I get, the farther she goes, and I know… I know she’s out of my grasp. She wipes at her tears with the back of her hand, her chin lifting, her eyes on mine: a show of strength while I’m drowning in weakness. “Remember that time in your truck, when you told me that you did everything for me?”
I nod, wait.
She swallows. “I got into Duke, Connor.”
I whisper a “What?” because it’s the only thing that forms in my mind.
“There’s a residential treatment facility near there that has a program for people in our situation, but there’s a waitlist, and I was doing everything I could to get my mom there. Miss Turner was helping, too. We’d been writing and calling and pleading our case, and I… I just needed time.” More tears flow, and this time, she lets them free. “I kept telling myself that if I could just wait, then everything would fall into place. But I can’t wait anymore, Connor. Because she’s getting worse, and so am I. I’m falling apart, and I can’t…” She breaks off on a sob, her hands covering her face, and there’s an intolerable ache in my chest that won’t fucking quit.
“Ava…” I breathe out.
“I did it all for you, too, Connor.” She sniffs once. “I should’ve left a long time ago, but I just thought… if I could get through this…” She inhales deeply, her eyes back on mine. “But maybe it’s for the best, you know? Maybe following you to Duke wasn’t what you wanted, and—”
“Ava, please. Just give me two minutes to explain everything and—”
“There’s a place in Texas that can take her right away,” she interrupts again. She’s made up her mind, and nothing I say or do can fix things. “I’m going to move in with Peter until I can find my own place.”
My eyes drift shut as the world around me closes in, and the fragments and happiness of a life I once pictured begin to crumble around me.
“I wasn’t going to tell you I was leaving at all,” she says, “but that wouldn’t have been fair to us. And I just came here to say goodbye, and to thank you for loving me, even if—”
Peter honks his horn. “Ava, we have to go!”
She glances at the car and then back at me. “I’m sorry I wasn’t enough, Connor.”
I’m experiencing it all over again. The moments right before my first death. My body starts to shut down.
To give in.
Give up.
Until I’m drowning in nothing but anguish and despair.
She’s at the car now, opening the door, but it’s too little, too late. She closes the door on us, and I slam my palm against the window, again and again. “Please, Ava! Don’t leave!” I kick at the fucking car when Peter revs the engine. “Please.”
I see her mouth move, see her say a single word that puts the final dagger in my heart: “Go.” I watch the car take off, follow it through the night until the lights disappear, and then I run into my house, my heart racing. I grab my phone, dial her number. It doesn’t even ring. The automated voice tells me the call can’t be connected.
“Two fucking minutes!” I
grind out. I just need two fucking minutes to explain everything. My legs take me, as if on their own, down the same path I’ve taken hundreds of times before. I slam my palm on her front door. “Trevor!”
He opens the door, and I’m ready to fight him. To beg him to call her. But the tears in his eyes show the same devastation that’s coursing through my bloodline. “She needed to do this, Connor,” he says, his voice cracking. “She needed to do this for her. And if you love her… you have to let her go.”
There’d be no happy ending to our story, she once told me. There’d be an intense beginning, a shaky middle, and then heartache.
This is the heartache.
This is The End.
Chapter 39
Connor
I watch the night sky outside my window turn to dawn, turn to day. The sun rises, just like it does every day. But today isn’t like every other day. There’s no warmth that comes with it, no light, nothing. Nothing but a reminder of every new day I’ll have to live without the person I planned on spending forever with.
Dad comes home, and I don’t get up from my place on my bedroom floor. I lean against my bed, stare at the wall opposite. There’s a patch of paint a lighter color than the rest of the room from when I put my fist through it the first time she left me. Punching the wall didn’t take away the pain then, and it sure as hell won’t now.
Dad knocks, and I don’t respond, knowing he’s going to open the door anyway. I hear the knob turn and the door open, and then Dad’s quiet gasp. He’ll know—without me having to say a word—that something’s wrong… something’s changed. “Connor, what happened? Is Ava—her mom—”
“They’re gone.”
“Who?”
“Ava and her mom, they left overnight. They’re gone, Dad.”
“Connor,” he breathes out, sitting down next to me. “Gosh, son, I’m sorry.”
I shake my head, look down at my hands, and sniff back the heat burning behind my eyes. And then I let out the words I’ve been holding on to for years: “What’s so wrong with me, Dad?” I face him, my eyes clouded. “Why do they keep leaving me?”
“Oh, Connor, no…” he sighs out, his arm going around me, pulling me to him. “This is not about you. Ava’s pain—”
“And what about Mom’s?” I ask around the lump in my throat. “Was Mom’s pain so bad that she had no other choice? Because I’m trying to work through all this and I’m trying not to take it personally like everyone keeps fucking telling me to do, but how? How the fuck can I not do that?”
“What’s happening with Ava is not the same—”
“Are you sure?” I ask, accusing. “Because Mom said to ask you about what happened back then.”
His eyes widen in shock. “What the hell are you talking—”
“She found me,” I interrupt.
Anger blazes in his eyes, and he releases me. He stands, his fists balled at his sides. I tilt my head, look up at him as he paces the room. Three steps one way, three steps back. “How? When?!”
“Answer me!” I yell, years of withheld anger and frustration and unasked questions pumping through my veins. I get to my feet. “What did you do to make her—”
“Nothing!”
“Then why?” I cry out, unable to hold it in any longer. “Why did she hate me so much she wanted me dead?”
Dad takes me in his arms again, as if I’m three years old asking the same goddamn question.
I push him away. “Your hugs aren’t going to fix it, Dad. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m eighteen, and I deserve the fucking truth!”
He swallows, and I can see the fear in his eyes.
“Tell me!”
Dad shakes his head, his eyes drifting shut.
“Dad, please. I need to know,” I beg. “I need to understand so I can stop feeling this.” I press a hand to my chest. “Do you know what it feels like to think that something is broken inside you?”
When he opens his eyes again, liquid pain flows from their depths. “It was never about you, son. She did it to hurt me.”
“Why?”
He grasps his hair, his eyes to the ceiling as his chest rises. Falls. Again and again. “She did it because I told her I was in love with someone else.”
My stomach drops. “You were cheating on her?”
His eyes meet mine again, and he nods once. “Yes.” Then he seems to release a breath he’d been holding on to for years. “With another man.”
Everything inside me stills.
Every memory.
Every moment.
Every laugh.
Every cry.
Everything.
Freezes.
I rear back, unable to look at him.
“Connor, just listen to—”
I shake my head, cutting him off, and lock my eyes on his. Ava once told me we had the same eyes—my dad and me—and I agreed even though I’d never really paid attention before. I just thought I knew him well enough to see them clearly. But now… now I look at him and… “Who the hell are you?” I grab my ball, ignore him calling after me as I leave the house and go to my truck. He stands at the porch, knowing he can’t stop me, knowing he can’t save me.
Not anymore.
* * *
It takes over an hour for me to find the turnoff to the exact parking lot I’m looking for. As soon as I get out of the car, I can hear the stream of water, and I follow the sound to the lake clearing. I’m not sure when it was exactly that I decided to come here, of all places. Having this place bring nothing but memories of Ava is probably the last thing I need, but it’s the only thing I want.
We’d both declared the day we spent here The Best Day of Our Lives, and maybe that’s why it called to me. To remind me that once upon a time, I had it all right at my fingertips. I sit at the water’s edge, my mind spinning with too many thoughts, too fast, and I can’t seem to focus on one long enough to steady my pulse.
I think about my dad, and then Ava, and all the moments that led to now, and I still can’t make sense of any of it. And then I remember how much Ava had changed in the past couple weeks. I recall her moods, how quickly she moved from angry to happy to sad to loving to devastated, and I wish I’d seen it then; that something bigger was happening. I should have picked up on it when she demanded Rhys give back the jersey I’d sold him. She was so angry and so passionate about it… because she knew how much it meant to me. How that memory with my dad was one I hold close.
I picture her sitting next to me while I tell her everything that just went down. And it feels too fucking real when I imagine her taking my arm and holding it to her as she looks out at the lake, her eyes glazed, because—I’m too fucking late to realize—my pain was hers, too. I should’ve seen that, and I should’ve told her about my mom, but instead, I chose to protect a woman who abandoned me rather than the girl I love. My eyes close when I envision Ava turning to me, her breath leaving her slowly. “He’s still your dad,” she’d tell me. “He’s still the same man who believed in your dreams more than you did, who did everything he could to make them come true. He’s still that man who held you every morning while you cried because you were so afraid he’d never come back. But he always came back for you, Connor. Always.”
I wipe the pathetic tears off my cheeks and suck in a breath. Hold it. Then I get to my feet.
Because she’s right.
He always came back.
And so I have to as well.
* * *
Dad looks up when I open my front door, but he’s not alone. There’s a man I’ve never seen before sitting next to him. Their hands are locked, fingers laced, and Dad’s quick to separate them, quick to stand. “Oh, thank God, Connor. I wasn’t sure if you’d come back.”
I can’t take my eyes off the other man. He’s stockier than Dad, with hair so dark it’s almost black. His eyes are brown, but light, like Ava’s, and when he stands, he stops a few inches short of my dad. He clears his throat, looking between Dad and me, again and again, an
d all I can do is stand, one foot in the door, one foot out. I want to run, but Ava’s imaginary words force me to stay. “I should go,” he says, breaking the silence.
Dad nods, and I finally find my voice. “Stay.”
The man’s eyes widen, and he glances at Dad. “I think maybe you guys should…”
I step into the house, closing the door behind me, and then approach him, my hand out. “I’m Connor.”
“Michael,” the man croaks out, taking my hand in a firm shake. “And I know who you are. Your dad talks about nothing but you.”
I nod and can’t seem to stop the movement as I peek over at Dad. He’s looking down at his feet, as if ashamed. “Dad?”
He looks up now, guilt and remorse making his lip tremble.
“This doesn’t change anything.”
Imaginary Ava was right. He’s still the same man he’s always been, and I can tell by the way his embrace soothes the ache and removes all my insecurities.
Michael stays. He sits next to Dad while Dad and I reveal all our secrets. Fifteen years’ worth of them.
I tell him about Mom. Every single detail. From the cars she gave Ava, to the All-American game, and the last meeting we had when I told both him and Ava I was in Georgia. I tell him that in a way, I lied because I was ashamed of my need to get to know her, my need for closure. He says he understands. That he has to, especially since he can’t be one to judge. But he’s pissed—not at me, but at her—for going behind his back and using their conflict to get to me.
And then he tells me about Michael.
All of it.
My mom and Michael used to work together, and he and Dad met at one of her work functions. They clicked instantly and became friends, and over time, those feelings grew, changed. Neither of them had ever had a single thought—in that way—about another man, so admitting they were gay was incomprehensible. Especially to themselves. They were simply in love with someone who just happened to be the same gender. They were never physical back then, but Dad admits that he was emotionally cheating on my mom for months before he told her. He says he “came out to her,” because it’s the simplest term, but it was so much more complicated than that.