Ava
Iwake to my phone buzzing under my face. I fell asleep on top of the covers, and the air conditioning has me shivering. Pulling a blanket up and over me, I reach for the phone and read a text from Camille in response to mine from last night.
It’s okay. Rob is worried about Eric bc he seems to really like you. He’s been through a lot…
I shouldn’t encourage this friendship or flirtation or whatever it is with Eric.
Camille is right—after what happened with his ex, the last thing he needs is to get involved with me when my life is such a mess.
Except being with him is fun and easy, and his obvious interest in me makes me feel special after being alone for such a long time. I like him. I like him a lot.
Staring up at the ceiling, I think about the time I’ve spent with Eric and how he makes me laugh.
I remember the way he cared for me when I had too much to drink at the wedding and stayed with me, risking gossip from his family, to make sure I was okay during the night.
After witnessing the way his mother reacted to us being together at the brunch, I have a new appreciation for the sacrifice he made to spend that night with me.
I ought to text him and tell him I can’t go out with him tonight, that it wouldn’t be fair for me to allow him to get involved with someone who’s as messed up as I am.
But as the day progresses, I never send that text.
I want to see him. I want to feel the way I do when I’m with him.
I like the attention he gives me, the way he listens when I speak and how he watches over me.
Maybe it’s wrong to allow this to happen, but I’m so tired of being alone.
Eric makes me feel again, and God help me, I don’t have the strength to turn my back on him.
During that torturous day, I decide it may finally be time to seek out therapy to deal with everything that’s happened.
I haven’t done that before now because it was too painful to think about, let alone talk about to a stranger.
But last night made me see that the only thing that’s changed since I left San Diego is my address.
If I’m truly to have a chance at a whole new life here, I need help.
As I straighten my hair, I study the reflection of the woman staring back at me.
Her eyes are haunted, her brows furrowed and her mouth pinched by the strain of grief that’s taken an awful toll.
It would’ve been easier, I know, if John had been killed.
At least then I’d have answers. But this endless purgatory has added years to my face that weren’t there when I met him.
Accepting that I can’t continue to do this alone comes with overwhelming relief.
Tomorrow, I’ll try to find someone who can help me and take that first important step toward true healing.
It’s long overdue. Tonight, however, I have a date to look forward to with a fun, funny, handsome, sweet man, and I’m going to push aside the grief and despair and allow myself to enjoy the time with him.
I’ve certainly earned the right to enjoy myself again.
Eric
I like her more than I probably should, especially in light of my recent history with women—or I should say one woman in particular.
Ava is hesitant and a little skittish and deeply troubled by something she hasn’t shared with me.
I’ve had to resist the temptation to ask Camille if she knows what’s up with her sister.
I suspect Camille has been so absorbed in finishing law school and planning a wedding that she hasn’t noticed her sister is troubled.
But I’ve noticed. The day she met me for a drink after work? She’d been crying. She said it was allergies, but allergies don’t leave a person looking as devastated as she looked when we met at that bar.
I’ve always been a perceptive kind of guy.
I see things others don’t. Sometimes I wonder if I missed my calling.
I should’ve been a globe-trotting TV news reporter.
As an astute people-watcher and more than casual observer of the human race, I think I would’ve been good at that.
But I’m too much of a homebody to travel the way I’d have to for that career.
I like being around my friends and family—most of them, anyway—and my current career keeps me close to my siblings and friends.
The first time I met Ava, I saw the pain she tries so hard to keep hidden from others.
It may as well have been lit up in blinking neon: This girl is suffering.
Naturally, being the masochist that I am where women are concerned, her suffering sparked my curiosity.
The fact that she’s simply stunning didn’t hurt anything, but that’s almost secondary to my desire to know what happened to her.
I sniffed around a bit with Rob and Camille when they were first home from their honeymoon. Walking the careful line between showing too much interest and trying to find out more about her, I tried to bring it up casually when I had dinner with them, Amy and Jules the day after they got back.
As I put on a gray suit for my night out with Ava, I think back to that dinner with my siblings, which was before Ava moved to the city from her parents’ home in Purchase.
Camille gave me the perfect opening when she said Ava and I seemed to hit it off at the wedding.
“We did,” I said. “We had a great time.” I didn’t mention that I’d been texting with her regularly since the wedding because that’s no one’s business but hers and mine.
“I loved her,” Jules said over sushi and fancy drinks at a midtown place Amy recommended. “Such a fun girl.”
Our youngest sister likes everyone—literally every person in the world.
She’s never had an enemy or met anyone she didn’t want to befriend, from homeless people on the street to millionaire clients.
Jules has the kindest heart I’ve ever experienced, and because of that, the rest of us worry endlessly about her safety.
Fortunately, along with her compassion is a healthy dose of street smarts—and pepper spray Rob bought her attached to her keychain—that keep us from losing sleep over her.
“You think you’ll see her again?” Rob asked casually.
A word about my “older” brother here—he doesn’t do anything casually, so there’s nothing casual about his probing question.
“Of course I will,” I told him. “Her sister is married to my brother. I expect I’ll see lots of her.”
Rob scowled at me. Most people don’t see right through him, but his siblings always do.
“Leave him alone, Rob,” Amy said, sipping from an overly full martini glass. “The last thing he needs is everyone up in his grill because he had a good time at your wedding.”
“Thank you, Amy.” I raised my beer mug in tribute to her.
They’d made fun of me for ordering a beer when the rest of them went the fancy cocktail route.
I had stuff to do the next day, and beer never leaves me feeling like shit after a night out.
I adore bourbon, but beer and I are old friends.
“What’s her story, anyway?” I asked Camille, in the same casual tone, only mine was much more effective than his because Camille took the bait.
“I’m sure she told you she’s lived in San Diego since she left for college and only recently moved home.
She’s hoping that’s very temporary because my parents are super excited to have one of us back at home.
They’re giving her a little too much attention, and after ten years on her own, they’re going to quickly drive her nuts. ”
None of this information was new to me. Ava told me this much herself.
“No serious boyfriends?” Amy asked, glancing at me with a knowing look in her eye.
I appreciated her saving me the trouble of having to decide if I was willing to ask that question.
“None that I know of, but Ava is super private. She never said much about her life out there, and I was too busy with law school to pry. All I know is she wants to find a job and an apartment in the city.”
“I put out some feelers with my contacts for her,” Jules said. “She’ll find something soon.”
“Thanks for that,” Camille said. “I’d love to have her living close to us.”
I want that, too, not that I shared that thought with them.
I’ve learned to hold my cards close around my overly involved family.
I failed to do that with Brittany. I was so crazy about her, I wanted the whole world to know.
Think Tom Cruise on Oprah’s sofa after he met Katie Holmes.
That was me with Brit. After waiting my whole life for the one, I went all in like a madman on steroids.
Months after the disaster, I still miss her and actively hate myself for that. More than anything, I miss the feeling that had me higher than I’ve ever been in my life. But I’ve learned that when you’re higher than you’ve ever been, the crash is that much more excruciating.
In thirty-two blessed years, I’d never been disabled by grief or disappointment, but I was after she left me—or, I should say, after she ghosted me.
To this day, I can’t get my head around how someone could do that to the person they’ve professed to love.
It boggles my mind. And when I think about the way I freaked out trying to find her, calling in the police and sounding the alarm with everyone we knew…
I shudder as a wave of nausea has me wondering if I’m going to be sick—again.
I’ve puked more since she left me than I did in my whole life before her.
Only after Amy and Jules tracked her down and came back with the true story did I fall into the deep pit of true despair.
Before then, I’d had hope to cling to. Surely there had to be an explanation that made sense.
I’d pictured her in a hospital suffering from a head injury that had stolen her memory.
What other reason could there be for seven days without a word from the woman I loved?