Chapter Thirty-Four
Thirty-Four
Ava’s waiting for me at Arrivals. She holds a printer-paper sign: a blown-up photo of Pancake with the words MY MOM typed across it. It forces a laugh out of me, a bright bubble that wrenches up my throat.
“Hi,” she says when I drop my bags to hug her. Crouched in the middle of the terminal, eyes pressed shut, Dexter and Iris somewhere behind me. Soraya and Nolan, too.
Ava smells like our apartment. Patchouli and the rain-scented hand soap in the kitchen. It brings my real life back to me with acute, stinging longing: my bedroom in Lincoln Park, the tickle of Pancake’s whiskers against my neck when we sleep, Ava right there in the living room.
“Are you okay?” she asks when I pull back. Peering up at me, her red hair in a messy topknot. No makeup. Sweatpants. I know she rode nearly an hour on the L to meet me here, and I choke on it, a little: how much I love her.
“No,” Dexter says, peering around me and holding out his arm to give Ava a hug. She accepts it, rubbing his shoulder blade. Ava’s the best hugger: she does it with her whole body. “She’s not.”
Iris glances between us, alarmed, and I say, “I’m fine, actually.”
“Yeah?” Iris asks, her eyebrows rising. “Did I miss something?”
“No,” I say, firmly, as Soraya and Nolan appear behind her. “I’m just tired.”
Soraya watches me, knowing. I can’t bear the thought of what Campbell’s told her.
“Expense a car home,” Iris says. She looks at Dexter, then me. “Both of you, okay? You did amazing work. Go get some rest.”
I accept her hug when she opens her arms to me. Offer Soraya a tight, awkward wave. Turn away from Nolan before he can attempt any sort of goodbye.
“I’ll see you Monday,” Dexter says. “Right?”
“I’m not going to jettison it all and go live off the land, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He squeezes my elbow with one, outstretched hand. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“I’ll see you Monday,” I say. Dexter nods, then glances at Ava, then follows Iris toward the taxi line.
Ava looks up at me under the harsh lights of the terminal. “Home?” she asks.
“Home,” I say.
Lev goes to bed at nine. He says it’s because he has an early shift at the pharmacy, but I’m pretty sure it’s because Ava told him to give us space.
When he stretches from the armchair and drops a kiss onto her forehead, I look down at my nails.
Over the past few days I’ve picked my cuticles to bits.
“Night, Mattie,” Lev says. “Good to have you back.”
“Good to be back,” I say, managing a smile. He disappears down the hallway, and Pancake resettles in my lap, unrolling one paw and stretching out her claws before tucking them back in.
“Where’d you leave it?” Ava asks, quietly.
I lean my head against the back of the couch. We’re facing each other, each propped against one of the arms with our legs tented between us. She nudges my hip with her socked foot.
“Nowhere,” I say. I know what she means, of course. Not the pitch, or the question of my promotion, or the tension between Dexter and me in California. She means Campbell. “We left it with nothing.”
Ava’s eyes crinkle. She looks so sad, but not half as sad as I feel. “What was the last thing he said to you?”
“That our pitch sucked.”
Her mouth pops open. “He said that?”
I sigh, scratching Pancake’s ear. “Not in so many words. But, basically.”
“And the last thing you said to him?”
I wish I didn’t remember, but I do. It was only supposed to be ten days.
“I told him it was never serious to me,” I say, softly.
“Oh, Mattie.” It’s dark in our living room, just the salt lamp glowing from the TV stand and the light filtering over from under the microwave in the kitchen. But I can still make out the disappointment on Ava’s face. “Why?”
“Because it wasn’t supposed to be,” I say. I don’t mean to, but I sound defensive. I can’t help it—I’ve ruined this so entirely, and I’m so mad at myself. All I have left to hold on to is the idea that I did the right thing. “It shouldn’t have been.”
“There’s no ‘should’ in these things,” Ava says. “You feel how you feel about each other. Everything else is just noise.”
I look at her. My best friend, the closest person in my life. All I’ll ever have, and about to slip through my fingers.
“You don’t understand,” I hear myself say.
“No?” Ava’s eyebrows lift. “Then explain it to me.”
I bite the insides of my cheeks. “I don’t know if I want it,” I say. “Commitment like that. Marriage. I don’t know if I want it ever.”
“Okay,” Ava says, slowly. “And?”
“And so it makes these things different for me, Ava, and I just—” I break off. I don’t want to have a hard conversation with her tonight. “I don’t think you get it.”
“That’s not fair,” she says, testily. She sits up straighter and pulls her legs in, so her foot isn’t touching me anymore. “You aren’t giving me the chance to get it. You hold your cards so close, Mattie, but it’s just me.”
I hesitate. Finally, I say, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”
“What, by not wanting to get married?” Pancake looks up at the rise in Ava’s voice, and she quiets back down. “Why would that hurt my feelings?”
“Because you want it.” It feels so fundamentally true to me: if Ava and I don’t want the same things, we can’t stay this close. “Marriage. A family.”
But she scoffs up a laugh and says, “I don’t care if you want something different than me. I want you to be happy because I love you.”
My cheeks burn. “But even the other day, on the phone—you were like, one day you’ll get engaged. You expect it.”
Ava stares at me. “I don’t even—I don’t remember saying that, but okay.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it as, like—” She waves a hand in the air between us.
“I was talking about me, Mattie. I just felt overwhelmed being the center of everything, and all I was saying was getting married is a choice anyone can make. Including you. Not that you need to, or even that you should.”
“Okay,” I say, pressing a fingernail into the pad of my thumb. “That makes sense.”
“Does it?” She shifts closer to me. “Because I feel like I missed something really big here. Like you haven’t been telling me something.”
I look down at Pancake. She’s right, of course.
“I’m scared of what happens,” I say, carefully, “when you leave.”
It hangs between us. Ava blinks.
“ ‘Leave’?”
“Get married.” I rub Pancake’s ear between my thumb and forefinger, her velvety fur like a worry stone. “Move out.”
“I’m scared, too,” Ava says. My fingers go still as I look up at her. “Obviously, I’m scared.” She lifts a hand, drops it. “I haven’t lived without you since I was seventeen.”
It tightens my throat, a purse string pulled sharp. I picture us at seventeen. At twelve. At eight.
“I’m so happy for you, Ava,” I say. “I don’t want you to ever think that’s not true.” I draw a breath that rattles in my throat. “I’m so happy for you, and I’m going to miss this version of our lives so much.”
Her eyes fill, and it makes mine sting, too. This has always been true: seeing Ava cry gets me there faster than anything else.
“I know that’s true,” she says, “because I’m also so happy, and I’m also going to miss this version of our lives so much.”
“It’ll be okay,” I say, strangled. As much for me as for her. “Lev really, really loves you.”
“Yes.” Ava reaches for both my hands, sitting up and pulling me with her so we’re arced toward each other with Pancake between us.
“But I’m always going to need you, Mattie.
You’ve been here for every chapter of my entire life, and I want you there in every one we haven’t written yet—even if we’re doing different plots, or using different fonts, or whatever the metaphor should be. ”
I laugh wetly, and she squeezes my fingers. “Did you think I was going to disappear or something? Are you dumb?”
“Clearly,” I say, waving my hand around. I drop my forehead onto her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, right next to me, “if I ever let you think my marriage was the end of anything for us. You’ll never be rid of me.” She nudges me off her shoulder and meets my eyes. “Not ever. Even if it has to be different.”
“Good,” I whisper.
She smiles, letting go of my hands as she leans back. “You know what Lev said to me, when you were gone?”
I feel my eyebrows rise. Knowing what Lev says about me to Ava—what they talk about when I’m not around—feels like breaking some sort of rule. Something I’m greedy to know but will get into deep trouble for finding out.
“He said we’re overcorrecting, with how much we love each other.
” Ava huffs a laugh. “Being so considerate of each other’s feelings that it’s doing the opposite of what it’s supposed to.
That it’s pushing us apart, because we can’t actually see each other as we are anymore.
” She eyes me as her words settle. “Which sure sounds like something I’d do, but it’s not very Mattie of you. ”
I run a fingertip over the spot where my nose ring used to be. Lev’s right—and knowing how thoroughly he’s paying attention, not just to Ava but to me, makes me feel known in a new sort of way. Like he’s part of all this, too. My family with Ava.
I swallow, but still my voice comes out throttled. “Lev’s got my number, huh?”
Ava nudges my leg with her foot. “He cares about you. We both do.”
My nose burns as I nod. It’s embarrassing, how much of a relief it is to hear her say it. Like there’s room for me in the life they’re making together.
“It’s part of why I wanted him to move in, Mattie.” She says it slowly, looking at me like she’s putting something together. “So you would know each other.”
“Yeah,” I say, but my voice breaks conspicuously. I wish I could undo all the time I’ve spent feeling superfluous in this apartment, like an unwieldy extra limb. If only I’d said something. All these months, if only I’d trusted my very best friend to understand me.
“I’m not usually bad at confrontation,” I tell Ava, finally. I meet her eyes and think of us in this same spot a month ago, Ava calling me attack-y. Of us in our hometown, eight years old in her childhood bedroom. “But I guess I’m learning I’m pretty bad at it with you.”
Ava’s eyes soften. “I can’t be a good friend to you if I don’t know what’s going on with you. What’s actually going on. You have to tell me. And I know”—she holds up a hand as my mouth opens—“I have to tell you, too.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding. “Deal is from now on, we tell each other.”
“Even if it’s hard,” Ava agrees. “Even if it feels shitty.”
“And if we fuck up, it sounds like Lev’s prepared to be our couples counselor.”
Ava laughs and Pancake lets out a little sigh. We both look down at her.
“What I still don’t get, though,” Ava says, slowly, “is what any of this has to do with Campbell.”
Her eyes land on mine, direct as a pair of high beams. I exhale, long and steady, until my lungs burn.
“Just that we talked about this,” I tell her, “in California. How he doesn’t believe in soulmates, and I’m not sold on marriage, and it all sort of added up to this answer that felt like: no matter what, we won’t stay together.”
Ava studies me, her eyes narrowing. “That doesn’t make sense.”
I run my lip between my teeth. “No?”
“Did he say that? That he didn’t think it could last, or that he didn’t want to stay with you?”
I want you. I want you with me all the time.
I close my eyes. “No.”
“Mattie,” Ava says, warningly. “You’re making this more complicated than it is.”
“It’s pretty complicated.”
“Actually, it’s not.” She reaches out to jiggle my wrist, and I open my eyes.
“Marriage is something you can do if you want, and it’s something you don’t have to if you don’t want, and I don’t think it really has anything to do with Campbell, actually.
” She squeezes my arm. “I know your parents made you terrified of this stuff.”
I think of my mother finding me in her closet on Halloween. The look in her eyes, like she was exhausted by the memory of a life she might’ve wanted more than this one. And how hard it must have been for her to make the choices she made, knowing how hard it’s been for me to make these ones now.
“But the question,” Ava says, “isn’t about marriage, or any kind of lifelong anything—it’s about whether you want to be with him now.”
My mother, watching me walk down our front steps toward my first high school dance. My father, waiting up for me in the blue glow of the television.
“But why would I do it at all,” I say, my voice small, “if it’s headed for something that’ll hurt?”
Ava doesn’t blink. “Because you don’t know that it is. You can’t know that. And no matter what’s coming, it matters how you feel right now.”
Maybe it’s worth it, I’d told Campbell in California. Just to feel this way.
“Did he cancel your flights?” Ava says. “To North Carolina and back?”
I pull my phone out of my pocket, breathing against the swell of everything rising in me. I scroll through my inbox and find the right email. Click the link and wait for it to load.
When I look up at Ava, her eyebrows rise.
And then—so soft it’s barely a word at all—I say, “No.”