Chapter 12 - Tucker
Tucker
I was desperate to see Ava by the time she asked me to visit her. I wanted to tell her my latest news in person. I’d gotten a job. I would work as a grocery bagger at the Shelfmart up the road from my house.
I planned to sock away as much money as possible. I had spoken with the manager, and he assured me that once summer came, they’d be hiring several more people. I was confident that we could get a job for her, too.
To top it off, I’d been looking around for a place for her to stay, and one of Sarah’s friends had found a house to rent after graduation.
They were cramming a half-dozen beds in the rooms so they could afford it.
I had pictures of the place, her new roommates, and the Shelfmart where I worked. Everything was falling into place.
I parked around the corner from her house that night, holding a pot of yellow daffodils. I crossed behind the line of duplexes until I reached the porch behind Ava’s.
I flattened myself against the wall and texted her to let her know I was there.
The wait was excruciating.
Finally, I heard a rustling and saw her in the window, wiggling the nails out of their spots. I guess she saw me because she smiled.
Worth it. Worth every risk.
With painstaking slowness, she raised the window and leaned out.
“Hi, handsome,” she whispered. She wore pale yellow pajamas, her hair in disarray. My throat tightened at seeing her in this new way, like she was headed to bed.
“Should we recite some Romeo and Juliet?” I’d been reading it in English Lit, and she loved hearing the story.
“Way too tragic,” she said. “Our story has a happy ending.”
I lifted the pot of daffodils.
“Love them,” she said. “Put them on the back porch close to the middle, so Mother will think they belong to Grandma Flowers.”
I did as she asked and came back to her window.
“I’m so happy to see your face,” I said.
Ava glanced behind her. “Hold on a second.”
I flattened myself against the wall in case her mother was coming. But after a moment, Ava returned. “She’s in bed. Why don’t you come up?”
Enter her room?
I reached up to grasp the bottom of the window, not sure I’d make it in.
“Find an empty pot to turn over,” Ava whispered.
I searched around and found a good-sized one. With the extra step, I managed to get my shoulders through the window. Ava pulled me through, and I dropped softly onto a rug.
A single lamp by her bed cast a soft glow over a pink bedspread and a dresser.
One wall was covered with flowers cut from colored paper.
I spotted roses, tulips, daisies, and many more I didn’t recognize.
Some had faded, a testament to the years she’d been painstakingly taping them up, but others were bright.
I walked along them as she carefully closed the window.
“When you mentioned paper flowers, I didn’t imagine so many.”
“They’re my greatest secret. The more I have, the easier it is to hide what I’m doing.” She lifted the leaf of one of the closest flowers. “Look closely.”
On the back side were tiny words.
I used my phone as a light to read them.
You were born in 2000. Your father left. Marcus Anthony Roberts. He married your mother in 1997.
“Whoa. Are there words on all of them?”
“No, it’s random. She’s never caught them.” She gazed proudly at the walls. “I wouldn’t have known so much of my history after the hospital without them. She’s changed my journal many times. I’ve gotten good at spotting which handwriting is mine and which is hers.”
She lifted a yellow flower from a small table by her bed. “This one is for you.”
I aimed my phone at it. Like the others, tiny words created the illusion of stray lines.
Tucker Giddings is beautiful, smart & perfect. I love him. Even if I lose my memories. My heart will remember. Always.
I lifted my gaze from the flower to her face. “You mean it?”
Her expression didn’t waver. “I do.”
“I love you too, Ava,” I said. “Ever since the disco room.”
We watched each other, her eyes glistening, until footsteps broke the quiet. A door closed down the hall.
“This way,” she whispered, leading me to her closet. She had built a space between cardboard boxes, covered with a quilt.
I ducked into it and she pulled the quilt down over the gap.
“Ava?” Her mother, slightly muffled, just outside the door.
“Yes, Mom?” Ava’s voice was thick with sleep. She faked it well.
Her door creaked, and I assumed her mother entered the room. “You left your light on.”
“Oh, sorry.” A small click.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.” The door closed with a groan and a pop.
I waited. I held the flower, delicate and precious. I rolled it carefully so that it wouldn’t get crumpled and slid it into the pocket of my shirt.
Time passed slowly as I waited. My back ached, hunched over in the tight space. At last, the quilt moved aside. “Tucker?” I could barely see Ava now that the room was dark.
“I’m here.”
“She won’t check again.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Should I go?” I asked.
“Get in bed with me. Worst case, I throw a pillow over you.”
In bed. “Okay.”
My eyes adjusted to the low light as Ava pushed back the covers.
“You should probably take off your shoes,” she said.
“So much for a quick getaway.”
She giggled softly. “Come here.”
I settled next to her, and she rested her head on my shoulder. A deep sigh escaped my chest. This was the most perfect thing I’d ever felt.
She curled in closer. “This is nice.”
“Yeah.”
“You said you had something to tell me that had to be in person.”
“I do.” I told her about the job and the house.
“You’ve thought of everything,” she said.
“Not really. You’ll have to get an ID at some point for the job. Do you have your birth certificate?”
“What’s that?”
“A document that lists when you were born and who your parents are. It’s something you need when you fill out forms for a job.” There were a lot more steps than that, but I didn’t want to overwhelm her with Social Security cards and all that.
I’d just been through it, and I knew the drill.
I’d had to get almost everything reprinted since it was impossible to sort through all the stuff from my old house after my family died.
There was so much emotion in old things.
Even something as simple as a chair brought up the image of my mother sitting on it, lecturing me as she doctored my skinned knee.
A toolbox was my father trying to show me how to line up the shaft of a screwdriver in a groove.
When I got the Shelfmart job, I hadn’t been up for reliving my past to find the documents. It was easier to fill out forms and get replacements. It would be the same for Ava, although for different reasons. “Thank you,” she whispered.
I turned to kiss her. It felt different lying this way, her hair a dark shadow across the white pillow.
After a moment, she pulled away. “Tucker, can I ask you something?”
“Always.”
“How do you know if you’re a virgin?”
“You mean me?”
“No, silly.” She gave my chest a playful shove. “For girls. How do they know if they’ve had sex or not?”
My throat went dry. “I think you bleed the first time. There’s something inside that breaks.” I had a lot of second-hand knowledge, Bill telling me about how Sarah “bled like a murder scene” and they had to clean it off the back seat of his car. And some random bits from health class.
“Oh,” she said. “That sounds painful.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done it.”
“You haven’t?”
“I’ve had a lot of seizures at school,” I said. “Although, even if I hadn’t, I’m not sure I would have been anyone’s first pick.”
“You’re my first pick.”
My feelings for her turned ever so slowly in my chest.
“You think we could find out?” she asked.
“If you’re a virgin?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I know that I met boys before. But I was a lot younger then. Maybe too young for that. But I want to know. It doesn’t seem right not knowing if you’re a virgin.”
I hesitated. “I don’t carry condoms around.”
“I don’t think I have VD,” she said carefully. “The kind that Bill jokes about.”
I was glad for the dark because my face must have turned ten shades of red. “That was Bill being a jerk.”
“I don’t think I have anything wrong with me.”
“I’m sure you don’t. That’s not what I meant for the condoms. I mean, if we don’t take care of things, you can get pregnant.”
“Oh.” She paused, her voice even softer when she spoke again. “When I was in the hospital, they asked about my period. When I had my last one.”
My face burned again.
“I had no idea,” she said. “I didn’t even know what she meant. So, I asked the nurse what a period was. She said when I bled between my legs.”
“Did your mother say anything?”
“She wasn’t in the room. I was with the social worker and a nurse. You know, after I said Mother had hurt me. We were sorting all that out.”
“What did the nurse say?”
“She went to my chart and said that I was on some sort of shot. It’s one you only have to get every few months, so you can’t get pregnant.”
“I’ve heard about that,” I said.
“Well, I’m on it. So, I can’t get pregnant.”
Her last word hung in the air.
She wanted to do this.
With me.
“Tucker? Can we do it, so I can find out?” Her eyes shone, catching the hint of light from the window. “You know, like an experiment. For science.”
That made me grin. “Well, I can’t say no if it’s for science.”
She pulled my face to hers. We kissed, and it was like no other kiss that came before. Until then, we’d always reserved something so that we wouldn’t bend so far that we might break.
But now, we held nothing back. We kissed everything, touched everything, and when I felt inside her body, there was resistance.
“I think it’s a yes,” I told her.
“Really?” she sat up. Her shirt was off, and the feeble light from the window illuminated her body. She was letting me see this. Touch this. And soon more.
“I think so. But I don’t have a ton of experience.”
She pulled off my shirt. “Let’s find out. I don’t care if it hurts.”
I scrambled out of my pants and underwear.
“Whoa,” Ava said. “That’s what goes in me?”
I glanced down. “We don’t have to.”
“No, I want to. It just seems like a lot.”
I slid into bed beside her. “It’s probably on the average side.”
She laughed. “Is this what they’re talking about when they say, ‘Size matters’?”
I grinned. “I think so.”
“Well, you’re about to matter a lot.”
I had to stifle my laugh. Ava could really be funny when she wanted.
She wiggled out of her pajama bottoms. “I guess these have to go.”
I wasn’t laughing anymore. My anticipation was so great, I wasn’t sure how I would even hold back when I got there.
But this night would prove it. Ava and I were meant to be together.