by Emery Rose
I want to trust you. “I’ll do whatever I can to support you. I’ll help you with the paperwork and the accounting... I can do an hour a day and I can take care of your social—”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I need to do this on my own.”
“No, you don’t. I want to help you. Don’t let your stubborn pride get in the way.”
He clenched his jaw. I sighed. I still knew him so well. Which meant I also knew how to get through to him.
“Remember Jake Masters?”
“Fucking douchebag. How could I forget Jake Masters?” He took an angry drag on his cigarette, his eyes narrowed into slits.
For some reason, out of thousands of students, he’d targeted me. “In the beginning, he used to flirt with me. Like I should feel honored he chose me. But I told him I wasn’t interested, to stop bothering me. It started with just words…” Connor knew all this, but I felt the need to remind him. “He called me ice princess. He asked me why I acted like I was better than him.”
“Because you were better than him. And you didn’t let him take something you weren’t willing to give.”
“Jake came into the bar about a year and a half ago.” He hadn’t changed much since high school. He still had a permanent smirk on his face and tousled brown hair he probably spent a lot of time styling. As proof that life wasn’t fair, he’d landed a trading job on Wall Street and had bought a waterfront apartment in one of the glass and steel monstrosities in Williamsburg, something he’d been quick to brag about. “I was in the front talking to Killian when he came in.”
Connor ground out his cigarette under his boot and waited for me to go on. His jaw was clenched, the little muscle in his cheek jumping.
“It had been so long, but as soon as I saw him, I was fourteen again. He made me feel… helpless, like he still had all the power.” Memories washed over me, but there was still one that I always blocked out. “I got that sick feeling in my stomach, you know?”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, his voice soft, his eyes filled with concern. “What happened?”
“Killian wanted to kick him out, but I told him I needed to confront Jake. So, I did. And after I went off on him, he said, ‘Why are all the hot chicks so fucked up?’”
“Fucking asshole,” Connor ground out and then in a softer voice he said, “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad I confronted him. But afterward, all I wanted to do was call you and talk about it. Because you used to be my best friend. And you’re the only one who would have understood how it made me feel.”
He lowered his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “But I was in Miami.”
“Yeah. But I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. I’m telling you this because you were my white knight, Connor.”
“Killian was your white knight. He beat up Jake, not me.”
That still bothered Connor, but he hadn’t even been there when it had happened. By chance, Killian had come outside and caught the tail end of it. “I know and that was great. I appreciated what Killian did. But you were the one who picked me up and helped me put the pieces back together. You made me believe it wasn’t my fault. You were always there for me. You made me feel beautiful and special and cherished. I felt like Jake broke something inside of me—”
“He didn’t,” he said, sounding angry that I would even suggest that. “You were too strong to break.”
It was nice that he believed that but, at the time, I did feel broken. And ashamed. Scared. Angry. Victimized. And so alone. Until Connor had befriended me. “Because it only lasted a few months. But you… what you lived through… I never would have been strong enough to live through that. It would have broken me. It didn’t break you, Connor. You’re so much stronger than you know. And I always used to be on your side because you were always on mine. Remember when we were on the same team?”
Connor squinted into the distance. “I remember.”
“When I lost you, I not only lost a boyfriend, I lost my best friend.”
He closed his eyes. “Ava…”
“I’ve missed you,” I said, being more honest than I’d been in a long time. “So much.”
“Missed you too. I’ve been gone a while, but I’m back now.”
“I want to believe in you again.” It wasn’t the same as saying that I did believe in him, but it was a start.
“What were you thinking, Ava? Two months?”
“It was the only date available for a year. But you can do it. I know you can.”
He exhaled sharply. Claudia poked her head out the back door. “Connor. Your next client is here.”
“Be right in.”
I looked over my shoulder as the door closed behind Claudia.
“I didn’t sleep with her.”
“I didn’t sleep with Orlando.” He smiled, happy that I’d admitted it. Orlando was just a friend, and he was a good instructor. Not to mention that he was more likely to go for Connor than me. “So…” I clapped my hands together and rocked back on my heels. “You’ll accept my help, right?”
He gave me a wicked grin I didn’t trust. “Since you’re offering… there’s something I need.”
“Dinner? I brought you a taco.”
He shook his head. “Not what I had in mind.”
“What do you need?” I asked warily. If he was talking about sex, the answer was no. Absolutely not. No sex with the ex.
“An invitation.”
12
Connor
There were four women in the class, but I had no interest in watching the others. I was only here for Ava. I leaned against the wall, out of the way. Multi-colored silk ropes hung from the rafters of a double-height ceiling. Ava was wearing Lycra leggings and a sports bra, her toned stomach on full display. She was all lean muscle, she’d always been in good shape, but this was the fittest I’d ever seen her. Christ, she was strong and so flexible it got me thinking about things I shouldn’t.
She was trying to forget I was here, so she could get in her zone. But every now and then she glanced over at me then shook her head a little like she needed to stop doing that. I didn’t want to mess up her class or ruin her concentration, so I fiddled with my phone for a while and Googled random things—glass blowing, the graffiti on the Berlin Wall, and Rio de Janeiro. I scrolled through photos of Christ the Redeemer, arms open wide above a sprawling city. Sandy beaches and rolling green hills, colonial architecture, the carnival. The vibrant street art in a city riddled by crime, inhabited by the wealthy and the wretchedly poor. It seemed like my kind of place, a city with a heartbeat, heat, color, and contradictions.
When the first notes of Muse’s “Undisclosed Desires” started playing, I pocketed my phone and tipped back my head, looking up. Ava had climbed to the top, a turquoise silk wrapped around her ankle, her hands holding the silk tie taut, back arched and her body suspended upside down and high above. I could tell by the look on her face that she was fully in the moment. Everything around her had ceased to exist. I couldn’t say what she was doing. I didn’t have the names for her moves. All I knew was that it was brave and daring and so fucking beautiful. Flying and dropping down in a free-fall. She made it look effortless, her flexible body bending to her will. Fluid and graceful. Her moves synchronized to the music.
Ava, my muse, my inspiration. She would be my art.
She didn’t notice when I snapped photos on my phone. Or the way I stared at her, in shock and awe. Fragile, my ass. This girl wasn’t made of glass. She was forged of malleable steel.
If Ava were a tree, she’d be a willow. They bend, but they don’t break.
When the class ended, I waited for her to come to me. She dressed in her hoodie and Nikes, said goodbye to the others, and walked toward me with a smile that was just for me. I recognized that smile like a song I hadn’t heard in a long time but still remembered all the lyrics.
“You amaze me.”
“It’s not easy to amaze you,” she said. “With your sh
ort attention span.”
True. I had a low threshold for boredom, but Ava had never bored me. I found her endlessly fascinating. “You always manage to keep me entertained.”
“Empanadas?”
I laughed and took her backpack off her shoulder and slung it over mine.
“I brought my iPad,” she said, following me out to my bike. “We can make a plan. I also have a roll of quarters and a huge appetite.”
“You should have been a Girl Scout. Always prepared.”
“I wouldn’t have lasted a day. I don’t play well with others, remember?”
I laughed. Her second-grade teacher had written that on her report card and it still bothered her. “That’s because you were still playing your perfect princess role. You left that girl in the dust years ago.”
“Right about the time I met you.”
“I ruined you for all others,” I said.
“You did.”
“What about Zeke?” I asked.
“What about him?”
I was about to put her helmet on for her, but she took it out of my hand and did it herself. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’m hungry.”
On the short drive to the diner, I tortured myself with thoughts of her and Zeke together. What could they possibly have in common? Besides working together. And sleeping together. Fuck. I needed to let it go, but it was hard.
When we were seated in a booth with menus in front of us, she smashed the roll of quarters against the table edge and spilled them onto the table. “We can play quarters with our papaya juice.”
“Fun times.”
“Don’t do that,” she said, feeding quarters into the machine.
“Do what?”
“That thing you do when you’re pissed off. You get all cranky and disagreeable.”
I am peaceful. I am strong. Blah, blah, fucking blah.
I leaned back against the seat and crossed my arms. “How many guys have you been with?”
She jabbed at the keys on the jukebox, ignoring my question, then gathered up the extra quarters and tossed them in her bag. Ava smirked when “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” started playing.
“Funny.”
“Does it really matter how many guys there were? If none of them—”
“If none of them… what?”
Our conversation was cut short by the waitress stopping by our booth to take our order, a different waitress from last time. I did the ordering for both of us. Stupid, really. Like I had something to prove. Like I needed to be in control of something in my life.
After the waitress left our booth, Ava leaned her folded arms on the table. “It doesn’t matter if I’ve been with two guys or twenty.”
Twenty. What the fuck? It mattered to me.
“It’s not like you haven’t been with other girls.”
“I haven’t been with anyone since that night with you.” Eighteen… nineteen months ago. It was a few days before Killian had hauled my ass off to rehab. Ava had called me when she was feeling low and I was flying high. The sad part was that I barely remembered that night with her.
“Not even… just for a night?” she asked.
I shook my head. Her gaze dropped to my chest then she pulled out her iPad and a keyboard and set it up on the table. “Let’s get organized,” she said, pulling up a spreadsheet. Little Miss Efficient.
“You think a spreadsheet will solve all our problems?” I asked, watching her type something into one of the boxes. She kept right on typing, her brow furrowed, like this spreadsheet was the most important thing in the world.
“If you’re sexually frustrated, then maybe you should do something about it,” she said, still typing.
“And what do you suggest? Should I take Claudia up on her offer?”
Her mouth dropped open and she lifted her head from the screen. “She offered to have sex with you?”
“Don’t look so horrified. Some women think I’m hot.”
“Most women think you’re hot.” She lifted her eyes to my face then lowered them again. “It’s just… Claudia doesn’t look like your type.”
“And Zeke was yours?”
She shrugged. “It was fun for a while.”
“Fun,” I said like it was a dirty word.
“It was easy, okay? Don’t judge me for that. I was trying to get over you. I’ve been trying to get over you for years.”
“And how did that work out?”
“You tell me. I’m sitting across the table from you in a diner we used to go to when we were madly in love. And I don’t want you to be with Claudia or anyone else. But all I can offer you right now is friendship and my organizational skills. Don’t force my hand, Connor. Don’t tempt me to give you something I’m not ready to give you.” Her bottom lip trembled, and she gripped it between her teeth.
For a few long moments, neither of us spoke. I knew she wasn’t just talking about sex. She wasn’t ready to trust me with her heart. “I’ll wait for you,” I said, finally.
“I don’t know how long it will take…or even if—”
“I’ll wait.”
“Connor…”
She sat back as the waitress served our food. For a few seconds, she just stared at it spread out in front of us. Then she lifted her gaze to me and we both laughed as Tammy Wynette started singing about standing by your man. “Such a lame song,” she said, picking up an empanada. “Tammy wasn’t much of a feminist.”
“After all, he’s just a man,” I quoted.
“Exactly. What can you expect?” she asked, taking a big bite of her empanada. “Sounds like the woman has to do all the heavy lifting.”
I jerked my chin at her iPad. “You should be taking notes. Tammy’s giving you some good advice.”
“How to build up the weaker sex. How to accept everything he does even when you don’t understand it. How to forgive him for every shitty thing he did… over and over. I should have earned a badge for that.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. She diverted her gaze and I could tell she regretted saying the words, but she’d said them anyway. When you love someone, you give them the power to destroy you. With a careless word. A look. A gesture. You know how to hurt them more deeply than anyone else ever could. Love makes you vulnerable, exposed, your soul bared to them.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean that.”
“You did. But it’s okay. You earned the badge.”
She didn’t respond. While she ate, she devoted her attention to building a spreadsheet. An extensive to-do list of all the things we needed to accomplish over the next two months, all designed to get me ready for this fucking exhibition while I also ran the shop and did everything else I needed to keep myself on the straight and narrow. Gym time. Healthy eating schedule. My weekly meetings. It sucked. All of it. I’d always considered myself a free spirit, a law unto myself, but that hadn’t worked out so well. As much as I hated following a schedule, following all the rules, it was now one of life’s necessities.
Ava and I had changed. Life had changed us. Turned us into people I sometimes didn’t recognize. But sometimes I still caught fleeting glimpses of who she used to be. Back when Ava was more trusting, more open, more willing to believe that I could be someone good. Someone worthy. Someone she wanted to build up instead of tear down. Maybe I was still clinging to the past, holding on to fragments of a dream that had vanished.
“Does working at the bar make you happy?” I asked her when I dropped her off in front of her apartment.
“I love my job.”
“Good.”
She tilted her head, reading the skeptical look on my face. “Why the doubt?”
I shrugged. “I always thought you’d do something creative. Dance or choreography… I never pictured you working in an office.”
“I studied business in college.”
“I know.” That had surprised me, too. I had always thought Ava belonged in a spotlight, not hiding behind textbooks and computer screens.
“Who knows? I might run off to the Cirque de Soleil someday.”
“You’d be the star of the show.”
Her smile faded. “I hate it when I hurt your feelings.” I shrugged one shoulder like it was no big deal. I wished the words would just slide off my back, but they never did. Words had always hurt me more than fists. I’d learned to roll with the punches years ago, and had developed a tough exterior, but words… they still got under my skin and echoed in my head long after they were said. “I’ll try to refrain from bitchy comments.”
“Say whatever you need to.” I pounded my fist against my heart. “I’m wearing my suit of armour.”
“You can handle the slings and arrows from my sharp tongue?”
“Even the poisonous ones. Let ‘em fly.”
“My knight in shining armour,” she teased.
I winked at her and watched her walk away. When she reached her front door, she turned and blew me a kiss before going inside. I held my hand against my heart.
Ah, Ava, you slay me.
13
Ava
It had been three weeks since the night Connor came to watch my aerial silks class. Last week, Killian helped Connor move into Jared’s place. It didn’t take them long. Connor didn’t have a lot of stuff and most of what he had ended up at Goodwill because Connor bought Jared’s furniture. Jared wanted to make a fresh start in San Diego when or if he ended up settling down there. First, he was going traveling and had no plans beyond the next few months.
“You again,” Claudia grouched, standing on the other side of the partition of Forever Ink’s office. You couldn’t really call it an office. Just a space in the back partitioned off from the rest of the shop.
I lifted my mug of green tea to my lips and eyed her over the rim as I took a sip. “You should get used to me. I’m going to be hanging around a lot.”
She rolled her eyes and rested her folded arms on the partition. “What’s the deal with you and Connor?”
I arched a brow. “Are we friends now?”