by Hanna Hart
The pair walked away with two veggie corndogs. Partly because they were delicious and partly because all of the meat ones had already sold out.
“It's so frustrating, being with her,” she said, dunking the fried and battered meat substitute into a paper cup of mustard.
“I can only imagine,” Walker said. “Living with my mom? I'd be ready to crawl into a hole and hibernate there for the rest of my life.”
“Yeah,” she said, chewing. “And your mom's nice! That's the thing.”
“Hey,” he hushed gently. “Gloria is nice.”
“Yeah,” she scoffed with a laugh. “Real nice.
Walker studied her face, and she felt his gaze burning into her. “I thought you said she was doing better?”
“She is,” she said quickly. “She is. But that doesn't make up for twenty-seven years of drama with her, does it?”
Walker licked his lips, then took a bit from his corn dog. She waited for an answer from him, but he made a joke out of taking forever to swallow his bite.
She stared him down with a well-humored, lecturing stare. “Does it?” she asked with a faux-outraged laugh.
“I think it has to,” he said with a shrug. “I mean, if you want any kind of relationship with her now, there has to be some level of forgiveness. That’s the key to any relationship, I think.”
She snorted, “You’re saying you forgave your ex-wife?”
He considered this, then said, “No. But I forgave you.”
Ava looked down at the snowy ground beneath her and the way it seemed to melt at the sides of her boots.
“It wasn’t easy,” he said, still smiling. He had to, she thought, or the whole night would have been trashed. She hadn’t been expecting to talk about their breakup.
“I bought the ranch, and I remember looking around and going…huh,” he mused, “this was supposed to be ours.”
“Are you trying to make me feel worse, or did you just forget how to do a pep-talk?” she mocked, though couldn’t help the welt of guilt she felt in the depths of her chest.
“I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I’m just letting you know that some things are worth getting over.”
“Stop being so mature all the time; it drives me crazy,” she said. “Were you this relaxed when we were together? I can't remember.”
He smirked. “Blocked it out, huh?
“Self-preservation, I think,” she winked. “Can I say something honest, but kind of horrible?”
“As long as it isn't about me, sure,” he laughed.
“I'm really...angry.”
He tossed the rest of his food in a nearby garbage can and turned to her with concerned eyes.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean,” she set a hand over her chest, listening to the zipping sound of her jacket’s fabric as her fingers scraped against it. “Inside,” she finished. “I'm just, I don't know, sometimes I just feel...”
“Broken?” he asked, and she nodded. “Ah, Ava. That can't be true. I mean, look at you,” he grabbed her hand. “Look at your life. You have this great job that you love. You have this great, self-sacrificing spirit, helping your mom and all that. You're beautiful, fun, funny. What's there to be angry about?”
A lot, she thought. A lot.
She remembered being seven years old and cleaning up a spot on the rug where her mother had gotten sick after a night of heavy drinking. She remembered bringing her mother beers first thing in the morning. She remembered calling an ambulance at ten years old, thinking her mother was dead.
Ava remembered wondering why she wasn’t good enough to stay sober for. She wondered why her mother didn’t care about her only child or even herself. She wondered why Gloria let unsavory people into their home and why she didn’t care that they hurt her daughter.
“She took my whole life from me,” she said softly. “And now she sobers up just in time for her to need me. And I’m all she has, and she’s all I have. And something about that just makes me feel really, really sad.”
Ava thought about her life and the mind-trip it was to grow up with an addict. She remembered coming home after a long night out with Walker and she’d found her mother passed out in a doorframe.
Her right temple was covered in blood from whatever she’d banged it off from falling, or from whoever hurt her that night, and Ava screamed so loud that she cringed from her own keening.
Walker waited in his car. He always waited for her to get in when he dropped her off at night, and when he heard her shout, he came running.
She remembered how he picked her mother up and brought her into the back seat of his car. How patient he was. How he never judged her life or her mother.
Then she thought about that first day she met Walker and how kind he was to her when he took her to the hospital that day to find her mother. He’d made jokes in the waiting room and did anything he could to distract her from her distress.
He was a good person.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Walker,” she said, drawing her brows together and searching his face intensely.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t want you to think that I didn’t, you know,” she stammered and struggled to get a hold of the emotion that tightened her throat. “I was just a messed-up kid.”
“Hey,” he said quietly, squeezing her hand. “It’s in the past.”
“I don’t want you to think I wasn’t affected by our breakup,” she insisted.
“You don’t have to apologize, Ava. I wasn’t lying when I said I was over it. I have other fish to fry,” he joked.
“Exes to hate,” she added quickly.
“Plots to plan,” he winked.
She laughed and squeezed back before releasing his hand, drawing her fingers up to trace his jawline. “You know, I almost forgot what you looked like,” she said quietly, her breath coming out as white air before disappearing into the night. “When I saw you the other day, I was overwhelmed with all of these memories, you know?”
He nodded. “I do.”
“New Year’s when you snuck out to be with me and Tibby,” she smiled.
“And I came home and was grounded for life!”
“For life!” she repeated with her best impression of Walker’s father. “He was so serious about that, even though you were like, what? Eighteen? Nineteen?”
“I’m pretty sure they tried to ground me up until I was twenty-five,” he chuckled, “And I didn’t even live there anymore.”
“It's weird how similar it is,” she said. “Being with you, I mean. The way you smell, your candor—”
“My candor?” he repeated with amusement.
“It's so familiar, it almost feels weird,” she said.
“For the record,” he said, nearing her face, “I never forgot what you looked like. I thought about you a lot over the years. You know that?”
She swallowed hard. “I couldn’t think about you.”
This made him laugh. “It wasn't all bad, Ava. Not for me, anyway.”
“No. It wasn't,” she agreed. “That's the point. I just needed to be alone.”
“What about now?” he asked.
She blinked, pulling back and offering him a curious tone. “What do you mean?”
“Do you still need to be alone?” he asked.
“Ah,” she said with a smirk.
Ava pulled back the thick layers of her jacket and sweater to reveal her forearm and the clean lines of her minimalistic tattoo.
The drawing depicted the outline of a wolf howling in front of a mountain. “I am but a lone wolf,” she said, moving her arm so he could catch the ink in the carnival lights. “Always and forever.”
He ran a thumb tenderly over her arm and asked, “Would a lone wolf care to get together again, or is she sick of seeing this worn-out old dog?”
She pulled her sleeve back down and looked up at the man she used to love. She gave the question genuine thought, but she already knew what her answer would be.
Chapter Nine
Walker
Everything was snowballing.
One afternoon with Ava turned into handfuls, and soon they were seeing each other every day. They walked through spruce trees lit up with sparkling lights, attended town celebrations, got pulled by horse and carriage out in the winter wonderland created for the residents of Denver. Walker had even accompanied Ava to the mountain lodge and watched her work her immense talent.
Though their days were busy and their time filled with new sights and sounds, Walker's favorite moments were the ones that were soft and still. They were the ones that reminded him of who they used to be.
It was a Friday evening, and Walker was at Ava’s house, far away from the prying eyes of his family.
Gloria was out for the evening, working a midnight shift, and so they curled up on Ava’s queen-sized bed, above the covers.
They lay with their heads at the foot of her mattress, Ava on her back and Walker on his stomach, sharing a women’s magazine between them.
Leave it to Gloria to still buy magazines.
It had a list of a hundred questions to ask on a first date, and the two had taken to passing them back and forth.
Ava lay on her back with freshly painted toenails, turquoise blue, with the magazine in both hands outstretched above her.
"Favorite book you've ever read?” she asked, flipping to the next page of the question list.
"On the Road,” he said easily. “Kerouac.”
"Oh my gosh!” she laughed, pressing the magazine to her chest. “Still?”
"'He'll be alright,'" he quoted in his best Americana-accent. "I just love that line. What about you?"
"Burr,” she said with a cute smile. “James Stevenson.”
"The kids book?” he asked with an amused wince.
"I just love it! These two little kids complain about the snow and how cold it is,” she began.
"But grandpa's always there to tell them about his own experience,” he said, then did an impression of his grandpa’s voice as he mocked, “’You don't even know what cold is! Darn kids!’”
"I just love it,” she said, looking proud of herself.
"Because you can't love a book for adults,” he teased.
Ava turned her head to face him and pressed her chin against her shoulder in a wry, horizontal shrug. "At least I don't pretend I'm a jazz-loving beatnik,” she snorted.
"Hey!” he laughed.
Things between them were going well. But what exactly was between them was anybody’s guess.
Ava extended the magazine to Walker and said, “Okay, your turn."
“Alright,” he said, getting comfortable as he read off the next question, "What do you want to do when you retire?”
He looked at Ava, who showed no signs of answering any time soon, so he said, "Well, I know what I want to do. I want to own a ranch.”
"Wow, it's like you're retired already,” she said.
"I can't help it. I found something I love, and I can't imagine ever giving it up.”
"That's nice,” Ava said wistfully.
"What about you?” he asked.
"I don't know,” she said in a higher pitch, then turned on her side and flirted, “Ranching doesn't sound like a bad idea at all. Waking up to the horses every morning. It almost gives you something to do without the stress of a proper job. You must get up some days and feel like you've found your own little slice of paradise.”
"Sometimes,” he agreed.
Other times it didn’t feel so good to be at the ranch.
He had every reason to love his job. After two years of putting blood, sweat, and tears into his ranch, Walker had a massive success on his hands. His ranch was booked solid for the next four years and appeared in endless travel magazines and websites.
It was everything he had ever dreamed of.
But when he remembered that this was the ranch he was supposed to buy with Ava—the one he was supposed to run with Leanne—and it all felt a bit hollow.
He passed the magazine over to Ava and said, "Alright, your turn."
"Who was your first crush?" she read off the page, her pouty lips looking perfect as they sounded out each word.
"Ugh," he said with embarrassment. "Katrina Krux."
"Excuse me?" she interrupted with a bounding, hand-over-mouth laugh. "Fake name alert!"
"It was her real name, I swear!" he chuckled. "We called her Penny Pringle."
"Fake name," she insisted. "She was definitely undercover in the CIA."
"She was seven!"
"Hey, I hear they start them young," she winked, and he felt heat rise in his chest.
"All I remember was that she had curly blonde hair and she pushed the class bully at recess. I was smitten after that. I think they ended up dating in high school," he shrugged. "But I don't remember."
"You love a girl who can stand on her own two feet, huh?"
"What can I say, I've always liked the rough-and-tumble girls," he said, nodding toward her.
"Mine was Martin González," Ava answered. "He was from the same part of Mexico as my mom, and I was like, what? Eleven or something?"
"You never liked a guy before eleven years old?" he asked, raising a curious brow.
"What can I say? I was a late bloomer."
He nodded. "And whatever happened between you and Mr. González?
"He came to my table at lunch and shared his chocolate milk with me. Then he asked if he could be my boyfriend one day and I said yes. I was pretty sure that meant I was going to get free chocolate milk for the rest of grade-school, but we basically never spoke again after that," she said, her dimples forming in the corners of her mouth.
"Wow, that's cold!" he exclaimed.
"Ice cold, baby," she said in a seductive tone. "And from that day forward, I learned never to trust a man again."
"Yeah, I bet," he said.
Walker felt a host of conflicting emotions. Scared and excited, adoring and angry, romance, curiosity, the list went on.
He thought he knew what he wanted—to be alone and focus on the ranch. To mourn the loss of his marriage and forget that love ever existed.
But then he ran into Ava, and things seemed to change. She brought him back to a time when he loved so purely. When he was with her all those years ago, there were no worries, no suspicions, no guilt or feelings of being unworthy. Not until the end, anyway. There was only pure, innocent love.
Ava undeniably made him a better person. At eighteen, he was inclined only to think of himself. Then he met Ava, and everything changed. All he wanted was to make her smile, to make her life easier, to love her.
These feelings had returned in the recent days they spent together. He found himself thinking less and less about his troubles and focused on the happiness he felt.
Walker hadn’t been happy in over a year. He’d devoted his life to the ranch, then Leanne, then watched it crumble before his eyes. There wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it.
Happiness felt foreign but so addictive.
That’s where those conflicting emotions came back into play. He felt elated around Ava. When he wasn’t around her, he was counting down the minutes until he could see her again.
"Alright, alright," he said, once again taking the magazine from her and laying it down on the deep blue comforter on the bed. "My turn. Let's see. Oh, okay. Have you ever pictured yourself having kids? Psh, that one's easy."
Ava's eyes darted toward him, and she sounded genuinely surprised when she asked, "It is?"
"Isn't it? I mean, what kind of person doesn't want kids?" he scoffed.
Ava's smile fell then, and her expression became unreadable to him. "Um," she said. "You?"
"When did I ever say that?" he asked, narrowing his brows.
"When we were together."
"No, I didn't," he said.
"Yes, you did. I remember very clearly that you didn't want them," she said. Ava sat up and did a full-body turn toward him as she recollecte
d, "In fact, you were completely miserable any time we had to be around them. Full stop!"
"Oh," he mumbled bashfully. "Well, I mean, the crying is annoying. I don't necessarily want to hear someone kid's screaming in my ear while I'm trying to enjoy a nice dinner. But it's different with your own kids. I always wanted kids."
"No, you didn't," she said, crossing her arms insistently. "We talked about it and you said you didn't want them."
"I only said I didn't want them because you said you didn't want them," he laughed. "I didn't want to be the uncool guy who wanted to start a family, you know?"
In truth, he only briefly remembered ever having a conversation about kids with Ava. They were so young when they broke up, he couldn’t even imagine being serious about babies and family back then. But having a child was something he always knew he wanted in his future.
Ava’s expression grew cold. She went suddenly serious as she said, "You should have told me that, Walker.
"Because then we would have had kids?” he joked, nudging her playfully. “That wouldn't have worked out so well, would it? Besides,” he shrugged, looking up at her. “We didn't talk back then, did we?”
"No,” she said. “We didn’t.”
"But we talk now,” he offered. “And I think I want to keep talking.”
Ava swallowed and her hard expression began to soften. "What do you mean?”
"I mean...I was so focused back then, and maybe not in a good way,” he said. “I had tunnel vision about getting out of Colorado, about getting my money, getting away from my parents, about the ranch. I think maybe I didn't treat you the best.”
Ava looked down, and Walker watched the way her dark hair fell around the curves of her face, entranced.
He wanted to ask what happened between them. How they could have been so happy one minute and so cold and distant the next. He wanted to ask what it was about him that made him seem unlovable and easy to leave, but instead, he said, "I wish I listened to you.”
She didn’t look up as she asked, “About what?”
"I didn't get it, about your mom. I didn't understand the responsibility you felt toward her. I pushed you away, and I'm really sorry.”
"Don't be,” she said evenly. “We weren't...I mean…”
