Ava
Ilaid awake all night. I couldn’t settle my mind enough to sleep for even a couple of minutes. I am utterly mentally exhausted. I spent so much of my sleepless night staring at the paperwork that had been sitting on my nightstand. By morning, I still hadn’t signed it.
When I come out for coffee, Istillhaven’t signed it.
“Where are all the documents?” Max asks when he sees me sit down with a full cup of coffee in my hands and nothing else; no paperwork.
“I’m not finished looking them over,” I say.
That was a lie. I’d actually looked them over countless times.
“Well, you need to hurry up,” Max says impatiently. “You’re running out of time to get all the logistics and loose ends tied-up.
“Yes, I know,” I snap at him.
Then I get up from the table and decide to take my coffee back to my room. I push past Trevor and send tiny, rippling waves spiraling around inside of my cup. I’m in my room for no longer than a minute before Trevor comes in.
“Why haven’t you signed the sale paperwork yet?” he asked.
He stood there in the doorway looking at me with a hopeful exasperation.
“I just haven’t gotten to it yet,” I lied. “I will this morning after I’ve had my coffee.”
“You don’t have to sign it,” Trevor says as he walks further into my room and steps closer to me. “Ava, I was just trying to make sure that I wasn’t the reason you walked away from your goals. But you don’t have to sign the papers. You can stay here, and we can make it work.”
Maybe it is because of the fact that he had already told me to take the offer and go, maybe that residual bitterness and the feeling of being pushed away is lingering in my head and clouding my mind. But I suddenly find myself feeling overwhelmed and not ready to deal with the emotions that were sweeping over me. I find myself feeling stifled by my feelings and handling it the same poor way that I did back in high school.
“I don’t want to die in this crappy town just like my mother did!” I shout as I lash out at him. “I can’t stay here.”
I grab the papers again and a pen and scribble my signature on the line. Then I throw the whole handful of documents at him.
“Please get out of my room,” I say. “I need to pack.”
I see Trevor’s face for just a split second before I turned around, and it guts me. He is hurt and confused; so am I. I know that deep down inside I don’t really want to leave. In fact, I hate the thought of leaving at all. But my emotions are too painful to deal with. So painful that I am ready to throw it all away and just blindly get back to my life in Manhattan. I’ll pretend that none of this ever happened. I’ll focus on work and forget about Fairport, and my time here, and Trevor. At least, I’ll try to.
Trevor lingers at the door for a few painfully long moments. I don’t think he know what to do. I wait to see if he’s going to try to talk me out of it, or if he’s going to get angry and say something hurtful about how I always run away before he storms off. I think that I can even hear Max snickering from the other room. If only he hadn’t come here, then none of this might have ever happened. If onlyIhadn’t come here, then I could have just gone on living my life in the city and never known about this—about whatcould bebetween us. After another minute, I turn to see if Trevor is still standing there in my doorway, but he isn’t. He’s gone. I start to grab things to shove into my suitcase and try to bite back the stinging tears in my eyes.
This is stupid, why am I crying? I’m the one who did all of this. I’m the one who wanted to leave.
I know that I’m doing the wrong thing. Every fiber of my being knows that this is the wrong thing. But just like a train wreck, it’s too late to stop it.
10
Trevor
Idon’t know what to do. There’s nothing Icando. I can tell that Ava doesn’t really want to go but trying to convince her to stay any more than I already have will just feel as if I’m pressuring her, and that won’t end well. I feel as if my hands are tied and I’m watching a train wreck that I can’t stop.
I hold the paperwork in my hands all day, and even set them on the nightstand by my bed as I lay awake all night. Once I sign them, it’s over. Once I sign them, there’s nothing keeping Ava here.
* * *
“Where are the sale documents?” Ava asks the next morning as I am half-heartedly working on another repair. “I need to drop them off at the realtor’s office before I leave.”
I walk to my bedroom, get the paperwork, and come back to hand it to her.
“They’re not signed,” she says. She stares up at me with surprise in her eyes.
“I’m not signing them, Ava,” I say.
