She pushed her empty plate aside and leaned back in her chair, swirling the wineglass in her hand as she regarded me intently. “Are you finally going to tell me what happened?”
I sighed and drained my glass. As I poured another, I answered, “You know, it’s strange. I barely know him, yet I feel a connection to him that I’ve never felt with anyone else. Not even Neil.”
Neil was my last boyfriend. We’d dated my junior year in college. He had been four years older than my twenty-one and a great deal more mature than the boys I went to school with. He was a wonderful man but we discovered after a few months together that we just didn’t work. I was a homebody and, to an extent, he was as well, but he did like to go out and try new restaurants. I always found it difficult to frequent such public places because I was constantly bombarded with the emotions of the people around me. While most restaurants might seem like they were full of fun and happy people, nothing could have been further from the truth. Beneath the bright surface, I could feel the darkness of the thoughts that surrounded me. Pain, anger, disappointment, frustration, jealousy. Those emotions were almost painful when I was exposed to them for too long.
Neil wanted to have children, but I told him I wasn’t sure. After the relationship ended, I realized my uncertainty had more to do with our relationship and not because I didn’t want a child. I loved children. They broadcasted every emotion they felt at full volume, but there was no underlying agenda or malicious intent. While there was an exception to every rule, I found my interactions with children to be satisfying and fun.
Neil would make a wonderful partner for a lucky woman, but I was also relieved that lucky woman wasn’t me.
“Wow, that’s pretty serious,” Ava replied, taking me away from my thoughts of the past.
“Yeah, it is,” I answered, taking another sip of my wine. “At least on my part.” I recognized that I was getting tipsy, but I didn’t care. I needed to cut loose. I hadn’t talked to Ava about Rhys since the kiss in the park because I wasn’t sure how I felt about him. Now I knew.
Rhys could have been a man I fell hard for if he hadn’t been too stupid or too scared to realize that we shared something special. It might have been in its infancy, but our connection had the potential to become my extraordinary ordinary.
“So, what now?”
“Nothing,” I replied with a shrug. “He made his choice. I made mine. We’re going our separate ways.”
“Why do men always seem to have their heads up their asses? Do they like the view?” she asked, annoyance easily discernible in her tone.
I giggled. Then I snorted. My giggles became full-blown laughter. Ava joined me. “Like the view?” I questioned, snorting again. “I need to remember that. I’m going to have to use it.”
“You don’t curse, remember?” she pointed out.
“I might start just to tell that joke.”
Ava shook her head. “It wasn’t that funny, silly.”
Maybe not, but I hadn’t laughed much over the last few weeks. It was nice to let it out.
“Are you ready to eat ice cream straight from the carton and watch a funny movie?” she asked. “From what I understand, that’s practically a requirement when you have man trouble.”
“That’s a cliché,” I argued.
“Maybe, but it sounds like fun.”
She had an excellent point. “Okay, but I want to try something. I found this recipe on that pinning website. You take ice cream or sherbet and pour sparkling wine over it.”
Ava perked up in her seat. “So it’s a dessert that will also make you tipsy? Count me in!”
We gathered our plates and went inside for the movie and dessert. As I poured more wine and dished up ice cream, I said to Ava, “You know, I feel like we’re always talking about the state of my love life but you never bring up yours.”
She glanced at me with a droll look. “That’s because I don’t have a love life.”
“Why not?” I asked, genuinely curious. Despite our long friendship, Ava was an intensely private person. She rarely talked about her past or her relationships. I couldn’t remember the last time she even mentioned going out on a date.
A wistful expression flitted across her face. She looked a little lost and wishful. “No one seems…right,” she explained. “It’s like a piece of me is missing. An empty space that’s just for one person. Every time I meet a man, I feel as though I’m comparing him to someone else, even though there’s never been anyone else. After a while, I just gave up. It’s not fair to him if the relationship drags on and I’m not completely invested.”
While I understood what she was saying, I could also feel the yearning within her for a partner. For love. “But if you don’t look for your missing piece, how will you ever find it?”
Ava laughed, but there was very little humor in it. “It’s been centuries, Savannah. I doubt I’ll ever find what I’m looking for.”
I swallowed hard at her statement. I had always sensed that Ava had lived a long time, but centuries seemed longer than I expected. If I were achingly lonely after twenty-eight years, how would I feel after hundreds?
Ava seemed to sense my sadness and she smiled at me. “I’ve been around for a very long time. I love my life and I’m accustomed to being alone. I’m not pining away for the love of my life.”
“How old are you?” I asked her. “You’ve never answered me when I asked before, but now I really want to know.”
“I’d say I’m a few years older than Rhys,” she replied.
Though I suspected she was older than she appeared, I hadn’t expected that answer. How was it I managed to befriend two supernatural beings that were both thousands of years old?
“You were not the only lonely person when we met, Savannah,” she murmured. “And you were not the only one who needed saving.” Before I could respond, she gathered her bowl of ice cream and glass of wine. “Now, enough of this depressing stuff. I came here to cheer you up, not make you feel worse. Let’s go watch a movie, eat ice cream, and get tipsy.”
Feeling as though my perception of Ava Amaris had just been changed forever, I picked up my own bowl and glass and followed her into the living room.
