Chapter Ten #3
Ava laughed as she retold an experiment gone wrong her second year of medical school. Her class was tasked with identifying bacteria in a classmates’ cheek, and she found sperm in the sample from her lab mate.
“I spent a good five minutes trying to figure out what the hell I was looking at and why it was swimming around in there. I was so embarrassed for him.”
Jay cackled. “Honestly, your professors should know better than to let college kids swap saliva.”
An hour slipped by unnoticed, their plates now mostly empty.
“Maybe we should come back to this distinguished establishment tonight.” Jay pointed to a poster hanging on a bulletin board to their left. “Looks like they’re doing an Indian night.”
“I haven’t had decent chai since your mom, you know,” Ava said, a hint of wistfulness in her voice. “Or halwa, for that matter.”
“Me either, but I keep trying.”
“Have you heard anything?” She blanched as soon as the question left her mouth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No. It’s fine, A.” Jay returned to looking out the window. “Same as always. I still think Dad knows more than he ever said, but there’s no way to prove it. She could be dead. Or she could be in India somewhere, living better than she ever did here.”
Their mother left after Jay and Ari turned ten. Mira was barely four. One day she was there; the next, she was gone, paperwork unfinished and promises trailing behind her. Their father disappeared into the bottle after that, and whatever chance there had been to keep things together went with him.
No one ever explained why she never called, never wrote. It was as if she’d boarded a plane to nowhere.
Ava remembered the day she left—how Jay had stood in the doorway, suddenly too small for his own body.
She exhaled slowly, as though she could press the memory back where it belonged. This wasn’t why she was here. This wasn’t what they’d agreed to dig up.
“We said we’d only talk about us now—not the past—”
“Stop worrying.” Jay said it a little too quickly, staring out at the darkened glass. “I’m not as fragile as I look, you know.”
Ava wasn’t entirely sure that was true. But she let it go. Pushing never helped—it never had.
She offered him a small smile and shifted in her seat, curling one leg beneath her. The emotional weight of the conversation drained away, leaving exhaustion in its wake. It settled over her like fog, heavy and slow, dulling the edges of everything.
“I should probably get home soon,” she said, already thinking of the comfort of her bedsheets and the warmth of Binx on her feet.
“Are you okay to drive? You’re exhausted.”
“Your hospitality served me well, Mr. Wyler.” She smiled, putting on her fake accent. “I do, indeed, feel refreshed.”
He stood, stacking their trays, worry faint but present in the crease of his brow. “Let me walk you to your car.”
“You should get back to Ari.”
“I don’t think he’ll notice I’m gone,” Jay said, sliding the trays onto the conveyor belt by the dish return. He held the cafeteria door open for her, and she had to pass close—too close—her shoulder brushing his chest. “And I need to make sure you don’t fall asleep standing up.”
“My hero,” she quipped, even as her pulse kicked up in a way she ignored.
In the elevator, Ava leaned back against the wall, her bag heavy on her shoulder. She let her eyes close for just a second, and when she opened them, she caught Jay watching her in the reflection of the metal doors.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
But he didn’t look away.
The silence shifted. The space felt tighter—warmer in a way it hadn’t been moments ago.
The elevator hummed.
Five floors.
Four.
Jay shifted his weight. She saw his jaw tense, his hand coming up to the back of his neck.
Three.
Her heart started racing. She audibly swallowed, nerves prickling under her skin.
Why did she suddenly feel nervous?
Two.
One.
The doors opened to the dim parking garage. Ava led the way to her car, hyperaware of him beside her. Everything was so loud: the echo of their footsteps, the steady rhythm of his breathing, and the way they moved almost in sync without trying.
Finally, they made it. She unlocked the car, tossing her bag inside, and when she turned back, Jay was closer than she expected.
Cinnamon and cigarettes overtook her senses, and underneath it was an institutional soap she knew from every long shift she’d ever worked.
Jay had no business smelling like her hospital.
He didn’t belong in Dr. Davenport’s world, yet here he was, smelling like both her past and present combined.
“Thanks for the food,” she breathed.
“Thanks for the sunflowers.”
Neither of them moved.
They stood there, caught in the space between leaving and staying.
Jay’s dark eyes held hers, and he lifted his hand slowly to tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
When his fingers lingered near her jaw, her breath caught, and she leaned into his touch without meaning to—just barely, but enough that his fingers spread against her cheek.
“A…” His voice cracked on that one letter.
She should step back. She should get in her car and drive home.
Instead, she tilted her face up.
His other hand came to her waist, fingers curling into the fabric of her scrubs, and the contact went through her like a current. Her whole body went still as if waiting for permission to fall apart.
“Tell me to stop,” he rasped.
She didn’t.
Her hands slid up his chest, slowly, until they rested against his shoulders. Jay leaned in, giving her every chance to pull away. She could feel the pull of him—that familiar gravity that had always existed between them.
Her eyes fluttered closed.
His nose brushed against hers, barely there, and she forgot how to breathe.
“Ava.” The strained way he said it made her stomach flip.
She made some small sound in response. Her hands had found their way into his hair, fingers threading through it—black now, not blue.
“What are we doing?” she whispered. She needed to know if he felt the impossible pull, too.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I don’t know, but I—”
He didn’t finish. Just stayed there, holding her, his lips a breath away from hers.
Then he exhaled shakily and stepped back, dropping his hands. The loss of him was immediate and cold. She let go too, her arms falling to her sides.
“Text me when you get home,” he said roughly.
Ava nodded and slid into the driver’s seat. He closed the door for her, his hand lingering on the handle. Through the window, neither of them looked away first—then both of them did.
She started the car, and he walked toward the elevators, shoving his hands in his pockets.
As she drove away, she watched him in the rearview mirror until he disappeared.
Her lips tingled from a kiss that never happened.
She sat at the exit of the parking garage with the engine idling, trying to remember how to just be a person.
Then she reached over and pulled her sweatshirt off the journal in the passenger seat.