by McLean, Jay
“All right.”
I lean up, kiss his cheek. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” he says, but he’s looking at his dad. I make it to his door before I hear Connor say through a chuckle, “Dad. What’s wrong?”
“I’m just so proud of you, son. You earned this. You did this.”
Connor
Dad spends the rest of the evening on the phone to whoever will listen to him go on and on about me getting in to Duke. To say that he’s proud is an understatement, and to say that I’m happy to make him feel that way would be the same.
We sit down and have a celebratory feast together, his phone continually buzzing while mine sits stagnant. Besides Ava, I haven’t told a soul, and I think I’d like to keep it that way for as long as possible. With playoffs coming up, I want to keep my focus on the team that’s helped me get noticed.
Dad’s phone sounds, and he answers on the first ring. “He did it!” he almost shouts. “He got into Duke!”…“I know, I’m ecstatic!”…“All on his own!”
I smile at his exuberance, but the fact is, he’s wrong. There was no way I could have done any of it without his support or without his final push to do it all for the girl next door.
I pick up my phone.
Connor: Hey, can I come by later?
Ava: Of course! You okay?
Connor: Yeah, I just need to tell you something.
Ava: Should I be scared?
Connor: No, just text me when you’re free.
Ava: Ok
It’s close to ten by the time Ava messages me.
Ava: I can sit out on my porch now?
Connor: I’ll be there in five.
“Hey there, Duke Blue Devil,” Ava sings as I walk up her driveway.
“Damn, that sounds good,” I laugh out. She’s sitting on her porch, a blanket around her, with her hands wrapped around a mug. “Look at you all bundled up.”
“It’s cold,” she says, sliding over a tad so I can sit next to her. She reaches under the bench and reveals another mug, handing it to me. “Hot chocolate?”
I take it from her, blowing at the rising steam. “Thank you.”
“Marshmallows?” she asks, digging in under the blanket to get a bag of marshmallows.
Holding the mug out between us, I say through a laugh, “Jesus, what else have you got under there?”
She drops a few marshmallows in and says, “I have one more thing, but it’s a surprise.”
“Is it a naked surprise?”
“Connor!” she squeals, knocking my side with hers.
The hot chocolate spills over the lip of the mug, burning my hand. “Shit!”
“Sorry!”
I hiss, setting the mug on the floor, and then shake out my hand. I lick the liquid off my fingers and glance up at Ava. Her lust-filled eyes are fixed on my mouth, my hand, her breaths becoming shorter.
Busted.
I smirk. “Can I help you, you creep?”
Ava blinks and comes back to reality… a reality where I’d happily have her lick my entire body. She clears her throat. “Turn around.”
“What?”
“Turn. Around.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“What do you think I’m going to do?”
“I don’t know. Pour scalding hot liquid all over me.”
She rolls her eyes, then says, “Fine.”
Her back to me, she reaches into the blanket again, and I watch her pull out a balloon—this one blue. Her shoulders rise with her inhale, and then she blows into the balloon, making it expand. It takes her a few seconds to knot the end. When she’s done, she turns to me, holding the balloon between us. I take it from her and read the black marker.
Connor Ledger
#1 Boo Devil
“I love it,” I tell her honestly, my smile stupid. “It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten.”
She giggles, takes a sip of her hot chocolate. “Better than that sweet truck sitting in your driveway?”
“So much better,” I laugh out, swapping the balloon for my own hot chocolate. I take a tiny sip.
Her front door opens, and Trevor comes out, looking down at his phone. When he lifts his gaze, he says, “Hey, bro. Congrats.”
“Thanks, man. Appreciate it.” We do the standard—weird—universal jock handshake.
He says, “Hey, did you know that according to—”
“Stop,” Ava warns.
His eyes narrow at her. “I’m talking to Connor.” He switches his focus to me. “Did you know that according to Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, Texas A&M is the happiest campus in the nation? The entire nation, Connor.”
I don’t know what his angle is, but my mind’s pretty set on Duke. “I did not know that,” I respond.
“Huh.” Trevor nods, then shrugs. “Just thought I’d mention it.”
He goes back into the house without another word, and I turn to Ava. “What was that about?”
She’s rolling her eyes, her head moving from side to side. “He’s trying to get me to go to Texas A&M.” She fist pumps the air. “Gig ‘em, Aggies!”
“Wait, did you get accepted?”
Nodding, she says, “I got early acceptance to a few places.”
“What?! You didn’t tell me that.”
“It happened, you know, when we weren’t really on speaking terms. It caused a lot of drama.”
“Yeah? How so?”
She sighs, just as a gust of wind blows by, forcing her wild hair to bounce all over the place. She tries to control it, but another gust comes, and her brow dips, frustration forming on her lips.
I set the mug next to me on the bench and take off my hoodie. Then I stand in front of her, order, “Arms up.” With a giggle, she does as I ask, and I slip it over her head, making sure her hair is restrained under the hood. I sit back down, glance at her just in time to see her sniffing the fabric. “Why are you so obsessed with me?”
“It smells nice,” she says through a laugh. “Like post-shower jock and teen spirit.”
“How many jocks have you sniffed?”
“Oh, God,” she moans. “Like, so many.”
“Huh.”
Her rumble of a giggle forms deep in her throat.
I tap her blanket-covered leg with the back of my hand. “So, you got early acceptance to a few places…?” I ask, bringing us back.
Nodding, she says, “I kind of hid the letters from Trevor.”
“Why?”
“Because,” she sighs out, staring ahead. “I didn’t want him pressuring me to go. And he did exactly that, and my mom got involved and said some really harsh things. I ran out of the house, and a few hours later you found me sitting outside my old house.” She tilts her head to face me, wearing a sad smile.
“I’m sorry that happened.”
“It’s okay. We’re dealing with it all now.”
“So, you got a few early acceptances?”
“Uh huh,” she says as if it’s no big deal.
“Where to?” Please say Duke. Please say Duke. Please say Duke.
She inhales deeply. “Just Texas A&M, University of Florida, and UNC.”
“That’s kind of massive, Ava. Like, even if you don’t go, that’s…”
“Huge,” she finishes for me. “And it’s not as if I’m not proud of myself, because I am. I know how hard I worked for it. It’s just that I’m not ready yet. I have a lot of things to figure out before any of that.”
I try to put myself in her shoes. Everything’s so simple for me. I have one goal, and there’s nothing really stopping me from achieving it besides myself. There are so many factors outside of her control and the fact that she manages to—
“You like the hot chocolate?” she asks, breaking through my thoughts.
I take another tiny sip. “Yeah, it’s real nice,” I say, my shoulders tense as I rub my arm, trying to ease the chill of the cold night air.
Ava scoots closer, her hands holding the blanket ope
n for me. I squeeze in, gather the ends of the blanket and wrap them around both of us, shielding us from the rest of the world. I use her body heat to keep me warm. She says, “You shouldn’t have given me your hoodie, stupid.”
“So, give it back.”
“Never,” she whisper-yells.
I don’t mind it, though, because she’s in sleep shorts, her bare legs emitting the most heat. I grasp her calves and pull them over my lap. She wriggles around until she’s comfortable, taking my free arm and holding it to her. With her head resting on my bicep, she says, “I miss these moments with you. When the world’s quiet and we can just be… and it doesn’t matter what we are. We’re just two people who like to be around each other, you know?”
“Yeah,” I agree.
“We don’t need labels, Connor. Friends or not, you’re always going to be the boy who went out of his way to show me that magic is real and that it exists and…” She pauses a beat, her exhale warming my chest. “You’ll always be irreplaceable to me.”
I let each of her words sink in, inhaling them through my bloodline. “And you’ll always be my first.”
Her head tilts to look up at me. “But we never…”
“You’ll always be my first love, Ava. Everything else is insignificant.”
She draws in a long, staggered breath, her eyes on mine. Moments pass and unspoken words have never been so loud, so clear. “Connor,” she whispers.
“I know,” I respond. And I do know. I know that the mistakes we’ve made are in the past and that our love is bigger than that. But our love isn’t bigger than life. And that life… that life is too hard for her right now, and I have to understand that. To accept it. I break our stare and take another sip of the hot chocolate.
“Hey,” she says. “Didn’t you want to tell me something?”
Right.
I wanted to tell her that she was my end game. That everything I’d done to get myself here was for her. Her and her mom. But I look at her now, and I see the clarity in her eyes. See the way she loves me without being in love with me, and even though it causes my heart to ache in ways I never thought possible, I don’t want to lose it. Or ruin it. I don’t want to let her go. “It was just about that multimedia project. I assume we’re going to go with some morbid murder?”
“Is there anything more fascinating?” she mumbles, settling her head on my arm again.
The front door opens, and Ava growls. “What now?”
I chuckle.
Trevor pokes his head out. “Two words. Texas. Barbecue.”
“Get lost,” she laughs out.
Trevor closes the door.
“Texas barbecue is pretty dope,” I murmur.
“I know, right? It’s the first point on my pros and cons list.”
“You have a list?”
“Yep.”
“What else is on the list?”
“Peter Parker will be there for the next four years earning his master’s.”
My stomach twists. “Is that a pro or con?”
A heavy sigh. “I haven’t decided.” Then she sits up, narrows her gaze on the mug I’m holding. “You sure are taking your time with that.”
I grimace. “I have a confession.”
“What’s that?”
“I hate chocolate.”
Chapter 13
Ava
Connor: Thank you. I think I missed your balloons the most.
Ava: lol. Trevor just saw the message and he thought you were talking about my tits. He wants to kill you now.
Connor: Oh, yay! Can’t wait to see him again.
Ava: You’re welcome about the balloon. Have a good game. :)
Connor: I will.
Ava: I mean BOOO! YOU SUCK!
Connor: lol
“Hey, Trevor?” I call out, getting Mom settled on the couch with a blanket and a trashy magazine.
He walks out of his room with the phone to his ear.
“Is that Amy?” I ask.
He nods.
“Tell her I said hi.”
“And me,” Mom tells him.
He says into the phone, “Mama Jo and Ava say hi.” He’s silent a moment. “She says hi back.” Then to me: “What’s up?”
I point to the new TV Trevor bought us with the Christmas bonus he earned from his work with the Prestons. “Does that have that AirPlay thingy?”
“I think so, why?”
“Because they’re streaming Connor’s game tonight and I wanted to see if we could watch it on a bigger screen than my laptop.”
Trevor thinks a moment. “When does the game start?”
I check the time. “Like, five minutes?”
He tells Amy, “Let me call you back.”
It takes him three minutes to set up the TV so it streams from my laptop, and I get comfortable on the couch next to Mom. “Just tell me if you need anything, okay, Mama? I can stop watching whenever. It’s not a big deal.”
With a nod, she says, “Okay, Ava. I pwa… pwa—” Her face scrunches with frustration.
“It’s okay; take your time,” I encourage.
“Pwamise.”
“Nice job!” I say, my hand raised for a high five. She’s holding a mug of tea in her hand, and so she offers me an eye-roll along with her stump. I high-five it anyway.
I watch the game on the edge of my seat, my eyes glued to the screen. From what I’ve gathered, the team they’re playing is solid third on the leaderboard or ladder or whatever it’s called. St. Luke’s and Philips Academy continuously vie for first place. The scores are close, but St. Luke’s is always a few points ahead. Still, it makes for a decent game. I check on Mom every few minutes, but she seems happy to be reading her magazine. Trevor sits on the other couch, his thumbs continuously tapping on his phone. Five minutes left before the final buzzer, St. Luke’s scores twelve points within two minutes and moves even further ahead. Connor scores ten of those points, and then, with three minutes left, something in him switches. He seems to push himself harder, faster, and he puts on a show, amping up the crowd with him. I bite back a smile when I watch him gorilla pound his chest after an insane dunk, his “whooo” heard over the cheers. He’s hyped as hell and damn, do I love watching him.
“Jesus, Ava,” Trevor says through a chuckle. “Wipe the drool off your chin.”
“Shut up.”
When the game’s over, I think twice about sending him a text. The last time… well, it didn’t go so well. Sure, it’s different circumstances, but the memories and the fear are still there. I decide to leave it for tonight, and hopefully, I can catch up with him tomorrow.
With the laptop on the coffee table, I sit on the floor in front of it and switch from the stream to my math homework. I’m just getting into it when Mom says from behind me, “Connor, six-five, but is hoping for a growth spurt.”
Eyebrows drawn, I turn to her. Then I look out through the closed window, thinking maybe she meant that Connor’s here. But he can’t be. He’d still be in the locker room. “What about him?” I ask, but she’s back to reading her magazine.
A half hour passes, and she says it again: “Connor, six-five, but is hoping for a growth spurt.”
Again, I turn to her, confused. “Did you… did you see him on the TV?”
Mom nods, puts down the magazine and stands up. “Tell him to come here.”
“What?” I ask, eyes wide. Surely, she didn’t say what I think she said.
“Tell him to come here.”
“When?”
“Now.”
I look at Trevor. He simply shrugs. A lot of help he is.
“Why do you want to see him?” I ask, mystified.
Mom sighs. “Ava. Connor, six-five, here. Now.”
I stand, my mouth agape. I try to form a sentence, but nothing comes.
Mom moves to the kitchen. “Now, Ava.”
Following after her, I say, “Mama, you know that Connor and I aren’t… we’re not… he wouldn’t be expecting to come here. He’s
probably out celebrating with the team.”
Mom finishes filling her water bottle from the tap and turns to me. “Ask him.”
Ask him… as if it’s that simple.
It is that simple.
“Okay,” I tell her. “I’ll ask.”
I grab my phone from the coffee table and go to my room. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. It’s not like he hasn’t met her before… but things have changed and ugh.
I dial his number, bring the phone to my ear. It rings and rings and rings, and just when I’m about to hang up, he answers, his voice distant. “Shut up, it’s Ava! Hello?”
“Hey.”
“Hey, what’s up?”
In the background, I can hear a couple other boys talking, but he doesn’t seem like he’s in the locker room. It sounds like he’s in his truck. “Are you busy?”
“Ava!” I recognize the voice as Mitch’s, and I’m instantly repulsed. “If this is a booty call, just say so.”
“Shut the fuck up!” Connor snaps. To me, he says, “I’m just driving a few of the guys to the diner. We’re grabbing something to eat. Can I call you after?”
“Um.” After could be hours from now, and Mom will be too tired. “No, it’s okay. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”
“No, I’m just parking now. I’ll kick the guys out and call you back. One minute, okay?”
“It’s fine, Connor. Do your thing.”
“I’ll call you back.”
He hangs up, and I slump down on the edge of the bed, nerves flying through my veins. Less than a minute later, my phone rings.
“Hey,” I answer. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“Ava, it’s fine. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. It’s stupid… I’ll just tell her you’re busy.”
“Tell who?”
I swallow, anxious.
“Your mom?” he asks.
“Yeah…”
“Does she… is she okay?”
“Yeah, she’s fine. It’s just…” I pick at the fluff on my sleep shorts. “She wants you to come over.”
Silence.
Followed by more silence.
Finally, he asks, “Really?”
“Yeah,” I say through a sigh. “I don’t know why, and Mom won’t tell me. She just kept saying for you to come over. And, look, you’re busy, and I’ll tell her so.”
