Chapter 23
I twist a faded purple-and-pink lock around my finger, feeling the familiar, pacifying softness.
“You need to touch up your color,” Ava says, squinting at me through the phone screen. “At least the hat covers it.”
“I should have done it before I left, but alas,” I sigh.
I flop backward on the bed and immediately regret it when a rib shifts out of place, taking my breath away.
I gingerly roll over and prop up the phone on the pillow.
When Ava was young, she’d have nightmares and beg me to come lie with her until she fell asleep.
She said it was the only thing that would keep her safe from them.
After Mom left, it was like we were all stuck in this turbulent stillness.
Everything felt like it was falling apart, but we couldn’t do anything to stop it.
We were stuck. Dad was lost in his grief, Ava was confused and struggling, and I was now tethered to home by love and responsibility when I was on the brink of leaving the nest. All Ava and I had was each other for a while. She’s still my best friend.
“What’s wrong, Mars Bar?” The purple rope lights in the background cast her in a violet halo.
“I think I made a mistake coming here,” I admit.
The turbulent stillness never seemed to leave me.
Even if my dad and Ava seemed to move forward, I was stuck exactly where I’d always been.
Even now, I’m stuck waiting to go home. “I should have picked up some extra projects or tutoring or gotten another temporary job. If we get sent home without the full paycheck, I’ll have barely made more than I could have without flopping on national TV. ”
Ava looks at me like I’m a kitten trying to reach the top of a stair I’m too short for. “You’re not flopping. You’re getting your bearings.”
“Is it exhausting being the optimist of the family? It sounds exhausting.” I endlessly appreciate my sister, but do not understand where anyone can find a well of hope that’s so eternally full.
She giggles. “Dad’s on team ‘positive outlook’ since his accident, so I don’t have to shoulder that burden alone anymore.”
Our dad could have turned bitter and angry when he woke up in the hospital after getting hit by a car.
It had crushed his pelvis and part of his spine.
Instead, he woke up with a smile. He said he knew he survived as a second chance to be there for us.
While he’s been so much more present in our lives than he had been in years, and I’m so thankful he survived, the bills became another tether to home.
Without accessibility upgrades to his business, he hasn’t been able to go back to work.
It’s only my income and Ava’s part-time job supporting a mortgage, my rent, and all our bills.
Every time I think about it, guilt wracks me for being annoyed, even through the overwhelming relief. The two emotions can coexist. I know this, but it doesn’t always make the guilt less awful.
“Well, don’t try to convert me,” I snicker. “I have little going for me outside of a bad attitude and being moderately hot.”
Ave rolls her big, dark brown eyes in mock frustration. “Okay, Ms. Incredible-Bot-Builder-Mechanical-Aerowhatever-Engineer-College-Professor-Super-Sister. I won’t try to sway you to the light side, but you made the right choice.”
I rub a spot on my forehead where a headache is taking root. “I don’t know, Ave. My body hurts even if I’m using my cane more, I’m exhausted, I’m about to be sent packing, and Jacob’s here and messing with my head.”
She shakes her head. “Nope, no way. You’re not going home. No team has ever dropped out mid-competition, so I think Joel is all bark and no bite on that one. What’s Jacob doing, though?”
“He’s being nice.” My face twists. “It’s this confusing hot-and-cold routine. One minute, he’s nice; the next, he’s trying to get Zeta kicked out; the next, he’s doing me a favor; and the next, someone on his team is taunting me. It’s fucking with my head,” I admit.
She gasps. “Wait, what kind of favors?”
I sigh. “He bought me dinner and—”
“HE BOUGHT YOU DINNER?” she screeches.
“Ava, shhhhh. You’ll wake up Dad.”
She sits up in bed frantically. “Okay, but WHAT? Explain.”
I regret mentioning it. I should hang up and go to bed. My headache is blooming across my head. “I don’t even know. He found me going out late at night for something to eat and offered to drive me and then paid. It wasn’t like a date or anything.”
“Just two rivals going out to dinner?” she says, flaunting a skeptical brow lift.
“Yes?” I grimace. “See! This is what I mean. It’s really confusing! He made me custom ring splints after I said my metal ones weren’t safe to work with and—”
“Excuse me?”
“He made me new ring splints,” I grumble.
“Oh, I heard you,” she deadpans. “I’m just shocked.”
“Join the club.”
She shakes her head, purple-tinted, blonde, messy bun bobbing. “Maybe ....” She pauses.
“Maybe what?” I sit up too.
“Maybe he’s trying to make amends, not trying to fuck with you,” she posits. “You said his teammate was the one who was a jerk to you, not him?”
My brain whirs, connecting moments and facts like puzzle pieces. Trying to rebuild the scaffolding of my assumptions. It’s fragile and tenuous, like it may not hold up to even the slightest shake. “Yeah, but ....”
“But what?”
Nothing. I’ve got nothing. The hot-and-cold routine has been confusing, but I’m feeling warmer and warmer lately. Could I have misunderstood? Could I finally move on from everything that happened?
“I’m not saying you should join Team Jacob,” she says, soothingly soft.
“He hurt you; he lied. I don’t think you should forget that.
It’s been years since everything happened.
” Ava doesn’t know everything that happened between us, but she knows about the incident.
I’ve kept most of my feelings to myself because she said he’s been nice to her when I’m not around.
“Maybe he’s realized he fucked up. I’m saying: use that big brain of yours. Also, your words. Talk to him.”
“Willingly?” I groan.
She laughs. “At least to figure it out, or it’ll keep fucking with you.”
I agree, but my mind is still churning. She’s right. If I have any hope of salvaging this season, I have to make some changes—and one of those includes figuring out what the hell is going on with Jacob.