Page 157 of Slapshot Baby

"I need to go," she says.

"Fine."

"Kai..."

"I said fine, Ava."

I hang up.

Her contact photo stares up at me from the screen. That grin. My coffee mug raised toward the camera.

I put the phone face down on the cushion.

A ball of regret hits me.

I just pushed away the only person who's made the last few months survivable.

I just hung up on the only person who makes any of this survivable.

My thumb hovers over her name. Call back. Say something. Anything. But I can’t bring myself to call her back.

27

AVA

Overprotective Defense

Four days without his voice and I've been bathing in the silence.

Not the peaceful kind.

The kind that hums behind my teeth when I wake up reaching for a phone that has nothing on it. The kind that fills the space between my ribs when Biscuit presses her nose into my palm and I realize I've been staring at the same spot on the ceiling for a while.

I said fine, Ava. Click.

That click plays on a loop now and makes my hands shake when I brush my teeth.

But I'm handling it.

The night he hangs up, I end up on my bathroom floor, tile cold through my shorts, knees pulled to my chest, the seam of the bathmat pressing a line into my ankle.

Biscuit wedges herself between my hip and the tub, her floppy ear draped over my knee. Every few seconds she pushes her nose into my wrist and whines in a soft, broken pitch.

Lucy opens the door, takes one look at my face, and drops to the floor beside me, her arms going around my shoulders.

"What happened?"

I try to answer.

What comes out instead is a sound I haven't made since Dad drove away the third time, the ugly, hiccupping kind that strips your throat raw and leaves your ribs sore afterward.

Lucy holds me tighter, her chin on top of my head, her fingers gripping the back of my shirt.

When the shaking stops, she pulls me to my feet, walks me to my room, pulls back the covers, and tucks them around me.

Biscuit jumps up and curls against my stomach. Lucy sits on the edge of the mattress and rubs my back in slow circles until my breathing evens out.

“He... he hung up on me.”