Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 53

Ava

I’m sitting in front of my computer staring at the blinking cursor when James comes into the guest house through the open doors. I swivel in the desk chair and smile up at him, but his attempt to return it falls about a hundred yards short. He hasn’t said a word since Davenport left, just ate his cake in silence, staring down into the melted chocolate center like it held the answers to the universe. Even Nina and Leo laid off him. So I followed suit.

He makes his way behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders, rubbing lightly at the tension there.

“Is that to your dad?” he asks and I look at the subject line and wince: Why didn’t you tell me?

Tammy’s rambling email is open in a separate tab. Her explanation of the conversation with Olivia before Venice is so detailed that she might have hired a freelance editor to give her notes. I’m sure she wants to kill me because my only response was ‘I love you. Stop obsessing,’ with zero details about the things that happened after I left her.

But Tammy will have to wait, because the lies my parents told me are gnawing away at the edges of my brain like starved rats. James had a point about the secret when I was young—they kept it to protect me—but after that. I just can’t wrap my mind around keeping something like that from your daughter while she holds your hand through injections and tests. And even worse, for my dad to hide it after she was gone—well, that seems selfish and unforgivable. Cowardly, even.

I reach out and push the screen of the monitor down against the keyboard without hitting send.

“I can do this later. You ready to tell me about the handsome Brit?” I ask, swiveling around to face him. He shakes his head and sits on the edge of the bed.

“There’s nothing to tell, really. Davenport owns The Post in London—also has more money than he knows what to do with. He wants me to move there and work exclusively for his publication,” he says.

“James, that’s amazing!”

But he doesn’t seem to think so. Just kind of shrugs and messes with the hem of the comforter.

“Why aren’t you excited? You love photography. It’s your dream—”

“Was my dream,” he interjects, finally making eye contact.

“Was? What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m not in a place to entertain chasing a dream I had a decade ago—”

“Because you’re so old?”

He swats my leg and murmurs that I’m a smart-ass.

“I’m just experienced enough to know that I don’t want to leave the people I love,” he says, holding my gaze.

I stand from the rolling chair and sit beside him on the bed, intertwining my fingers with his. I know there’s more to it. The people he loved—the people who were supposed to love him unconditionally—they left. And now he’s hell-bent on correcting that wrong.

“And what do the people you love have to say about this?” I ask, knowing full well that Nina and Leo must be pushing him like bulldozers toward this opportunity.

He studies my face for a moment, then reaches across his body and puts a hand on my cheek, then asks softly, “I don’t know. What do you have to say about it?”

The words spin around my brain, picking up all of the emotions I’ve been keeping tucked away like cotton candy spooling on a stick. My view of him suddenly blurs as the tears fill my eyes, and I blink hard to gain some sort of clarity, but nothing is clear.

How will this ever work? I have a life—a future in Philadelphia. A plan that I’ve been working toward since my mother passed. And I’m supposed to … what? Forget all of it? Pass up everything that I’ve been making vision boards for since 2019?

My tongue is suddenly paralyzed and the silence becomes too heavy to bear.

“James—” I start, but my throat is so dry it hurts to say his name.

Tell him.

My mother’s voice makes the first tear fall, but I shoot back at her.

Like you told me everything?

The silence in the guest house begins to swell like a fresh bruise.

“You don’t need to say it, Ava. I just want you to know. I’m in love with you—and if I’m being honest, I have been for a while. Maybe since that night in the courtyard—maybe before.”

He kisses a tear that has reached my jawline and I shut my eyes.

“I have to go back,” I whisper. And when I open my eyes again I know these words—the truth—is ripping through him.

“Do you?”

I nod. “Yeah. I do. Just as much as you need to stay here with your family, I need to go back. And I can’t give up my pl—the future that I worked so hard for.”

He holds my gaze and I can see in his eyes that he’s deep in thought, but he doesn’t share.

Neither of us brings up the logical next solution. Long distance. We don’t need to. Because long-distance relationships have a light at the end of the tunnel. A goal to work toward. An eventuality of landing in the same country so that you can be together.

That eventuality doesn’t exist here.

James looks down at my hand in his and then back into my eyes.

“Then I guess we better make the best of these last few days together.” He tries to smile, but the effort’s too much.

So I save him the trouble and cover his mouth with mine as he pulls me on top of him and I do everything in my power to show him how I feel without the words that I can’t bring myself to say.