Page 76 of Quiver

“Can we go inside? You and I need to have a talk, and I’d rather not do it in the cold.”

She hadn’t wanted to let her into the home she’d inadvertently come to think of as a sort of sanctuary, but she didn’t have it in her to tell Ava to buzz off, which probably constituted progress. “Sure.”

She trudged back into the house but didn’t kick off her boots in case she needed to make a quick exit. Ava clearly had no such issue, as she unlaced her shoes and left them neatly on a mat near the door, then set about filling a coffee maker with water and grounds. The way she moved around the kitchen with ease and comfort pinged Kylie’s defenses again.

“You had something you wanted to say?”

Ava smiled over her shoulder. “I’m making decaf. It’s all Fletcher has. You want cream? Sugar? Whiskey?”

“You don’t seem like a whiskey kind of woman.”

“No,” Ava admitted, “but you do.”

“Fair enough, but sobriety suits the moment.” She eased into a seat at the table, marveling at how this woman bowled over her resistance without an ounce of force.

She reached into an upper cabinet and pulled out a small bottle. “I’ll add a dash of peppermint to mine.”

“That also tracks. So far, we’re very on brand here.”

Ava shrugged and poured a bit into a mug on the counter, then added coffee on top of it, before filling another and bringing it to Kylie.

She sat opposite her and blew on the mug for a second, causing the tendrils of steam to curl over the hot coffee. Then she lifted her eyes to meet Kylie’s and said, “I’ve always known Fletcher was in love with you.”

The words hit her in the chest with only slightly less force than when Fletcher had said them yesterday.

Ava continued, her voice even, steady, and soft. “I’m only a few years younger than you. You wouldn’t remember me from high school, but I saw you in all the plays. I actually got my first hints of who I might be while watching the two of you around town. Even a kid could see the power of your connection.”

She had no idea where this was going, and, for once, she had no pithy response, so she waited.

“When you left, it shattered something in her, and I wanted to be the one to put the pieces together again. I wanted to see her look at me the way she’d looked at you. In my naïveté and youthful optimism, I believed I could love her enough for both of us. I won’t admit how long it took for me to realize love didn’t work that way.”

Kylie scanned the memory that had haunted her for so long, the image in her brain of this woman with her hands on Fletcher, her lips against her cheek, the adoration in her eyes. She’d only seen Ava with her vision tinged red. She’d never seen what Fletcher’s eyes had conveyed in the moment, or what they’d failed to. Was it possible the same memory that had driven Kylie mad for so many years had driven Ava to such a sad realization?

“She never felt for me what she did for you, and I’m not proud of how I tied myself in knots trying not to face the truth, but Kylie, and this is the important part here, those days are so far in the past, I can’t summon anything but gratitude for what they taught me about myself, and about love. By the time Bex came along, I was a different person with a stronger sense of self, and ready to love and be loved by someone equally, fully, powerfully.”

“Fletcher mentioned you and Bex overcame some obstacles.”

Ava smiled so sweetly, Kylie had to glance down at her coffee cup. “We did. That’s life, but I’m in it with someone who’s committed to navigating those challenges with me in a way Fletcher never was.”

“Fletcher cares about you a lot.”

“She does, and once I let go of trying to make our relationship something it wasn’t, she and I became much better friends than we ever were lovers. We’re able to be real, honest, and comfortable in ways we weren’t when we were together, which is why I was thrilled when Fletcher said what she did back in the hospital. It’s out there now, the truth she always needed to speak.”

“It didn’t bother you?” Kylie found the idea hard to believe, but Ava’s utter genuineness left little room for her doubt to flourish.

“I’m not bothered by honesty or healing, or anything that leads to her happiness. The only thing bothering me about any of this is your inability to say it back.”

“What?”

Ava leaned back in her chair and lifted the mug to her lips rather than respond, which only left Kylie to sit on the sharp edge of such a softly delivered blow.

“I don’t know why you … I mean, she and I … she was not really …” She started several rebuttals, but they all fell flat even before she had a chance to complete them until she finally managed to spit out, “What the hell?”

Ava laughed lightly.

“What’s funny?”

“At least you didn’t try to tell me you don’t love her.”