“I thought you knew who she was. I didn’t think—I couldn’t even wrap my head around the fact she was someone you were into. It didn’t make sense. I thought you might be shitting with me.”
My hands slap against his chest, and now it’s me pulling him in by the shirt. “Shitting with you?” I grit it through my teeth. My entire body vibrates like one red-hot nerve ending. A wild thought enters my mind. “Is she fucking with me? Is this some Vincent brand of revenge for locking that psychopath away for life?” I roar over his face, and he winces. I push Jet clear to the wall as I speed for the exit, and a body jumps in my path.
“Whoa!” Ava pants breathy, smelling of honeyed perfume. Her lips are a deeper shade of red than they started out the night. “You weren’t leaving without me, were you?” She laughs as if she knows it were never a possibility.
Ava. My heart stops and starts, malfunctioning right here in the place I never wanted to be in, standing before someone who my head suddenly wants nothing to do with and my soul is suddenly grieving.
A part of me wants to lay into her. A part of me wants to wrap my arms around her one last time, but I don’t dare give either her or me the honor. I’m blindsided, confused. I have no idea what the fuck is going on, and I’ve got a fight-or-flight response I really need to tend to.
“Actually, I am leaving.” I circle around her before she can pull me in. “Family emergency. I’m sorry. Maybe it’s not too late for you to catch up with your brother.”
I take off into the night, jump into my truck, and drive the hell away from Whitney Briggs, out of Hollow Brook’s city limits and just keep driving straight through the night.
In the morning, my lids flutter as the brightness of a new day sears across my face. For years I would use a clothespin to seal the split in the curtains to avoid a blast of sunshine in my eyes just like this one. I groan, glancing at the clock on my nightstand that reads eleven thirty-five, and my eyes close again in response to this ridiculous hour. Here I am in my own room, in the bed I’ve slept in for a majority of my life, and I wonder if anything that’s transpired over the last few years had ever really happened. Had Stephanie really died, or is she in our shared bathroom hogging up the shower, ready to sing off-key for the next twenty minutes straight? That would blink Bryson, Baya, and Owen right out of existence, or in the least out of my radar. And I suppose Ava would suffer the same fate, or blessing. Not sure how either of us should classify the fire we inadvertently put ourselves through. I’ve made mistakes before. I’ve walked into a bad situation backward and landed knee deep in trouble. But it would be so very easy, so welcome for it to have all been one long raging battle of a nightmare instead.
My gut coils tight. Not sure I could ever classify Ava as a nightmare, let alone a bad situation, or even trouble for that matter.
I reach over and snatch my phone off the nightstand. Six messages—four from Ava asking if everything is okay, pleading with me to call—one from Lucky calling bullshit on my family emergency and telling me to watch my fucking back—and one from Jet telling me he’s there if I need to talk.
“Shit.” I try to expunge the last trails of sleep from my eyes, squeezing them shut before staring at my messages again—Ava’s.
She doesn’t know. Does she? Has she known all along? When I asked her what her name was, she said PB and J. Was this some fucked-up act incited to mess with me from the start because of what her sister is going through? A dull huff rattles my chest. What her sister is going through. I almost want to laugh. Nope, I doubt Ava would take revenge that far. She can’t. Everything about her screamed she was genuine.
I used to be a great judge of character. I used to understand people for who they were, no matter what they presented on the outside. But then Steph died, and my world went to shit, taking my mind and all of my good judgment right along with it. And to think I was this close to being with her.
My eyes close again, involuntarily this time, and a brief vision of my body lying over Ava comes to me unwarranted as I bury myself deep inside her. I can see her lips part, her head arch back with pleasure, and I would be right there with her, gliding my body over hers, enjoying the hell out of it myself.
I spike up out of bed, take a long, hot shower, get dressed, and as much as I want to head downstairs, my feet pivot and I head toward Stephanie’s room instead. The door glides open for me as if she were opening it herself. Her canopy bed, the frilly pink curtains, her desk and all of its clutter—it’s identical to the day we lost her. The scent of her perfume, Wild Honey, still permeates the air. I once accused my mother of spraying it down with the remainder of Steph’s bottle, but she swore up and down she wouldn’t dare. I take a deep breath of that sweet scent and hold it for a moment as I observe her notebook still on her desk—notes from trig. A trio of paperbacks sit to the left of that, and a tiny ceramic heart just above it filled with a few tangled necklaces, a ring or two—the bracelet she wore almost every single day but not on that night. I fish it out, the glossy gold chain that sat thick and beautiful over her tiny wrist.
For so long I thought she took it off for the occasion—that she was leaving it behind like some morbid memento. And once we found out the truth, that Steph hadn’t taken her life at all, I used to pull this strand of gold out and stare at it for hours. Steph simply decided not to wear it that day. I bring it to my lips and kiss it before burying it inside my pocket. It’ll be nice to have something of hers back at the frat house, on my nightstand, close to my heart on those particularly painful nights, and I have a feeling there will be more of those than any other in my future.
I glance around her room once again. Mom thinks that this shrine actually helps keep her memory alive. Dad and I tend to agree. There’s a gentle peace in this room. It’s always been here, even when Steph was alive. I used to come in and hide out in the closet, reading comic books while she talked on the phone. I remember at least half of those conversations—mostly with friends and half of those were with Bryson. I remember a few with Aubree, too. Aubree. That witch with her long red locks, her wicked grin, those glassy eyes that always looked right through me. For some reason, I can’t seem to juxtapose her features against Ava’s—don’t want to.
I open up the closet and thump my fingers over Stephanie’s clothes before heading downstairs.
“Morning to you, Mr. Sleepy Head!” Mom engulfs me with a firm embrace, both the house and my mother hold the strong scent of roasted turkey, and I inhale as much as I can as if trying to suck in all of the memories this place holds, Stephanie’s ghost right along with them.
“Afternoon,” Dad corrects, coming at me with his glasses sitting low on his nose, already in a dress shirt and slacks ready to take on the holiday. We might be a small family, but holidays and birthdays alike are quasi-formal events that we make a big deal out of.
Mom leans in and whispers, “I didn’t want to wake you.” She nods toward the staircase. “Where’s your friend?” She extends the wordfriendout to mean anything but something platonic.
Crap. I should have called last night before I got lost on that never-ending drive. My eyes snag on the dining room table set for four, and my stomach tightens in a knot.
“She had a family emergency.” One lie is bad enough, why make it two? This one just so happens to work both ways.
“Oh, poo!” Mom claps her hands just once as if annunciating her disappointment. “I was really looking forward to getting to know her. Well”—she fans her hands through the air on her way to the kitchen—“I’ll have everything ready to go early. Get settled and we’ll eat soon.”
Dad and I watch the tail end of a game before helping Mom trek far too much food to the dining room. As much as I appreciate all of the hard work my mother does for this holiday, I always feel a bit guilty when we hardly put a dent in the meal.
We take our seats, and Dad says grace, but I can’t get over how sad that plate sitting across from me looks. That was Steph’s seat. Today it would have been Ava’s. My throat clenches with a painful lump as I lose myself in that empty chair. I didn’t think anything could feel as bad as losing Stephanie.
I was wrong.
Thanksgiving was a bust. Not only did I eat a fraction of what I was capable of, I wasn’t able to be there for my parents like I wanted to. Each time they tried to start a conversation with me, I’d grunt out the shortest answer possible. My mood is killing their mood, so as soon as Saturday morning rolls around, I head back to Beta house and lock myself in my room.
Life may be in the shitter once again, but there are options. I waste the afternoon and most of the evening away trying to digest each and every one. A: I stay at Briggs and ride out my scholarship—hoping to God I don’t die from the agony I’m currently embroiled in. B: Finish out the semester, take spring off, and look for another school that might take me on come fall. C: Fuck it all and drop out. Get a job loading ships at the dock. I’d make a decent living. I could get married one day and have a family of my own. Try to live a normal life for once—try to forget all about this abnormal life I keep trying to squeeze myself into. A vague picture of a large house, a white picket fence comes to me, three faceless, genderless children, a beautiful faceless wife by my side. But slowly, painfully, her features come into focus, and I’m staring right at Ava Vincent and her million-dollar smile. Breaks my heart all over again.
I pluck my phone off the distal end of the mattress and stare at the last message she sent today.
