Will
Chapter Thirty-One
I dropped my fork against the plate, staring up at her with indifferent eyes.
“Can I ask why?”
“Because I’ve given you time and waited for weeks now, and you’ve still yet to mention, let alone introduce us to your new girlfriend.”
Ava choked on her seltzer, and if my mouth wasn’t empty, I might’ve done the same.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“You and that new girl. What’s her name? Elsa?”
Ava snorted, and I shot a glare in her direction.
“Elsie,” I corrected, despite not wanting to even get into the topic of her at the dinner table with my parents.
What was I? Fifteen?
“Yes. I’ve heard it from multiple people that the two of you spend quite a lot of time together lately,” she stared at me pointedly, “and I just don’t think it’s fair that you’d keep such exciting news to yourself.
I mean, honestly, Will, are you ashamed to introduce us to her?
Are we that much of an embarrassment to you? ”
“Since when do you listen to town gossip? You’ve said yourself no one here ever knows what the hell is going on.”
“Yes, that’s true, Will, and I would’ve written it off as nonsense if I didn’t notice a change in you, myself.”
“I don’t know how that’s possible because I’m not dating anyone,” I said solidly. “And if I were dating Elsie,” the words coursed through me like an adrenaline rush I wasn’t expecting, “then I wouldn’t bring her around here, considering Ava’s been nothing but awful to her since she showed up.”
Ava kicked me under the table, as if we were still kids and I was tattling on her to my parents. But if she wasn’t ashamed to be acting like that in front of everyone else, there was no reason she should expect me to hide it.
“You don’t like her, dear?” My mother frowned, sympathetic as always with her daughter-in-law.
“I don’t mind her, either way,” Ava said. “We just haven’t gotten a chance to get to know each other very well yet.”
“Oh, really? Is her showing up to save your ass when you needed help babysitting not enough time to get to know her? Or everyday she spends in the café where you choose to act like she’s not even there?”
My mother scrambled to make sense of the conversation. “Babysitting? You mean a few weeks ago?”
“It’s not my fault that you seem to take up so much of her time.” Ava glared at me. “Why would I go wait on her at the café when you seem to jump in the second she needs absolutely anything?”
“It’s called helping our customers.” I scowled.
“Yeah? Well, what’s it called when you go spend the night at her house?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I gritted out.
“I was told your truck was there the entire night on Halloween,” she said, tone heavy with accusation.
“Does no one have anything better to do than keep track of what I’m doing? I swear, no one in this town has a life—”
“So are you denying it?”
“No.”
“Then explain the situation, Will,” she demanded. “If you aren’t dating her, then why were you there?”
I didn’t need to explain anything to her, and the thing that had always infuriated me most about Ava was how she thought the world owed her something.
That I, specifically, owed her something.
Explanations. Answers. Conversations.
“I don’t know why we bothered with this tonight,” I said, standing from my seat. “As if us all getting together would make the day any more bearable.”
“Will,” my mother said, eyes springing with tears that instantly worked to sober me. “Please.”
“I’m sorry, I know these dinners are important to you,” I said. “But this?” I gestured toward the table. “It doesn’t help me. I know family and being together is how you like to cope with it, but I’m not like you guys. All I wanted was to just be alone.”
“Bullshit,” Ava said. “You didn’t want to be alone. You just didn’t want to be with us.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s just funny that your version of ‘being alone’ never seems to apply when it comes to Elsie.”
“Maybe because she doesn’t turn every interaction into a battle,” I countered, agitation rising.
“Because she doesn’t have to fight for you to give her the time of day!”
“For the last time, Ava, I don’t and never have owed you anything. When will you figure that out and leave me the hell alone?”
Guilt crept in before the words were out of my mouth, and I watched Ava wilt before me.
“That’s it,” my father said, a rare moment of authority in the forcefulness of his tone. “This has gone on long enough between the two of you, and it won’t happen anymore in my house.”
“Henry, please,” my mother pleaded.
“Now, I thought we were past the point of treating you like children, but if you act like this, then I have no choice.”
I clenched my fist, already knowing what was coming.
“Ava and Will, the two of you are excused from dinner. You can go into the yard and discuss the matter amongst yourselves. Until you’re able to be around each other without fighting, we don’t want your company.”
“Can I just go home, then?” I said.
“No,” my father’s voice boomed. “Yard. Now.”
Ava, ever obedient, sprang to her feet and out the sliding glass door that led to the backyard.
With heavy footsteps and an even heavier sigh, I followed.
“It’s freezing out here,” Ava said, wrapping her arms around herself and pretending not to be hurt by my earlier abrasiveness.
“Yeah, well, that’s sort of the point, isn’t it?”
This—sending us outside—it was a tactic my parents used when we were kids to get us out of their hair while we were fighting.
By sending us outside to make up, they figured if it was too cold, or too hot, we’d try to get apologizing over with as fast as possible, and if the weather was fine, then they figured we’d wind up playing with each other anyway, ultimately reaching the same end goal.
But we weren’t twelve anymore, and our problems were bigger than not sharing our newest toy.
“So, can we pull it together long enough to get the rest of this night over with?” I asked.
Ava, whose back had been turned against me, whipped her head around to shoot me a scathing look.
“No, I don’t want to ‘get this over with.’ I want us to finally have a real conversation that leads to something other than animosity.”
“Oh, come on, Ava! Do you really want to sit out here in the cold and talk about our feelings?”
“No,” she said, “we’re going to talk up there, like we used to. Until maybe I can find some semblance of the person I used to know.”
And then, she turned toward the treehouse that we hadn’t been inside for well over a decade and started climbing the ladder.
“Ava, come on!” I called, watching her crawl into it. “This is ridiculous. I’m not going up there.”
“Then you’re choosing to let whatever this is fester between us,” she poked her head out of the opening, “until there’s no coming back from it.”
I deliberated for a moment before reaching for the ladder and climbing up after her.
She moved back to give me room, but the area was way more cramped than I remembered it being.
There were still a few remnants from childhood lingering around the dark space, and for a second, I pictured Ava the way she was as a girl, sitting up here, wanting nothing more than to be included in mine and Matthew’s conversations.
“Well,” I said, sitting against the wall. “Now what? We talk about everything that went down between us?”
“Yes!” she said. “Because ever since that day, you’ve closed yourself off, not just from me, but from everyone, and I’m sick of it.”
“You’re flattering yourself if you think it has everything to do with you.” I snorted. “My brother died, Ava. Did you really expect me not to be changed by that?”
“My husband died, too, Will. It doesn’t mean we shut the world out.”
“Well, maybe you didn’t love him like I did.”
She winced, recoiling away from me. The words hung heavy between us in the darkness of our childhood.
I couldn’t help but think Matthew would be ashamed of the type of guy I’d become.
“I’m sorry,” I said, for his sake, because he’d always come to her defense for as long as I could remember, and knew if he were still here, he’d be doing the same thing now. “I know you loved him.”
“I did,” she said. “He was my best friend. You both were. My entire life changed when we lost him. Don’t you know that? And after you stopped talking to me, he was all I had.”
“That’s not true. Everyone in this town loves you. You’re practically the princess of Colbridge, isn’t that what my parents used to say?”
She sniffled, laughing at the old nickname.
“I had people, Will,” she conceded. “But not the ones who mattered most.”
I paused, not knowing how to comfort her anymore. Too much had changed between us.
She took my silence as an invitation to keep talking.
“Listen, Will. On the day of the wedding, I—”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” I told her adamantly. “In fact, I think it’ll be better if we never bring it up at all.”
“But we have to, Will. We’ll never be able to move on from it until we have an honest conversation about that day.”
I shook my head, already trying to stand.
“You never gave me a chance to explain. You wouldn’t even hear me out.”
“And I won’t!” I said, nearly hitting my head on the roof of the treehouse. “It’s in the past. And if you really want things to be okay between us, then you won’t try to force me to have a conversation that I have no interest in having.”
“Will, wait—” she called, but I was already climbing out of the treehouse and away from her.
Away from the anger that the memory of that day brought. And away from Ava, who had caused it all.
“You can tell my parents I went home,” I called over my shoulder before pushing open the side gate and getting the hell away from her and the memory of Matthew that seemed to linger over us both.