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“Should I not be?” I try to take a calming breath, but it doesn’t seem to help. “What do you want?”
“Look,” she says, glancing at all the people still milling around us. “This isn’t the time or place… but can you meet me somewhere?”
“No.” I don’t want to be here. Not with her. Not alone. I grip my phone tighter. As pathetic as it is, I want my dad.
“Please.”
I laugh once, look over her shoulder, and hope she can’t see the ache through my eyes. “It’s funny… I cried that same word over and over in that car… when I felt like I was suffocating. I said please, Mama, and you didn’t care then, so…”
“I know.” She wipes at the corners of her eyes, and my gaze moves there, sees the pain she’s carrying. “There’s a lot of things we need to talk about.”
“You need to talk about,” I rush out, trying to be strong, defiant. “I have nothing to say to you.”
I start to walk away, but she stops me, her hand on my elbow. I flinch. Turn to her.
“You owe me nothing,” she says.
“I know this.”
“Connor,” she sighs out, looking around us. “You don’t know how much I’m risking by being here.”
I step forward, tower over her, and let that initial anger consume me. “I should have you arrested.”
“I know,” she whispers, and I can tell she’s on the verge of sobbing. And I know that I shouldn’t feel the way I do when I hear the single cry escape her. I know I should walk away, just like she did. But…
But I can’t.
“Here,” she says, taking a step back. She keeps her gaze lowered, guarded when she hands me a folded-up note. “Here’s my number. I’ll be at this address at 7:30 tonight. Show up or don’t, but trust me, Connor. It’s better to live your entire life with the truth than it is to live with regret.”
AVA
I don’t hear from Connor for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening, and so I assume that he’s busy. Of course, he would be. I get Mom settled on the couch after listening to her ramble on and on and on about Connor’s game, about him getting MVP, and I smile when she says, “You’re so lucky to have each other.”
I clean up the house a little but keep the streamers and balloons up for when Connor returns. Then I go to my room, grab the large cardboard gift box I keep under my bed and knock on Trevor’s door. He doesn’t answer, and when I open it, he isn’t there. He’s not in the kitchen or in the bathroom, and so I check out on the porch. He’s sitting on the bench, his phone to his ear. When he sees me, he says into the phone, “I’ll call you back.” When he hangs up, he focuses on me. “What’s up?”
I sit next to him, make sure the baby monitor’s on so I can hear if Mom needs me. “Was that Amy?”
“Yeah.”
He points to the box. “What you got there?”
I turn to him, my smile soft. “I know that you’re just messing around with the whole jealous-of-Connor thing…”
His eyes narrow.
“At least, I think you are.”
“I am,” he assures, and I breathe out a sigh of relief.
I hand him the box. “But I wanted you to know that I’m just as proud of you as I am of him.”
He takes the box from me, his eyes thinned in confusion as he opens the lid. He picks up the first scrapbook and flips the page. There’s a picture of him and me at his first college game—when I begged Mom and William to let me go with them. He’s in all his football gear, and I’m wearing an Aggie jersey with his number on my cheek. I look so young. We both do. He turns the page; sees the article I’d cut out of the Texas A&M Today newsletter about him and where he came from. “You did this?” he whispers, and I can hear the emotion in his voice that he’s trying so hard to hide.
“That’s just your college freshman year,” I say, nodding. I reach into the box, pull out the other five scrapbooks, discarding the additional photographs and articles I didn’t have room for but wanted to keep. “These are every year from high school freshman up.” Then I point to a photo album. “And that’s just of you and me growing up.”
He’s silent as he goes through every photograph, every article, every printout from every website that ever mentioned his name. He sniffs occasionally, and I know my brother well enough to know he’s big and bulky on the outside, but inside… he’s a giant softie, and his staggered exhale reminds me of why I love him so much, why I look up to him the way I do. “Jesus, Ava,” he mumbles, the heels of his palms going to his eyes. “I had no idea you did this.”
“I know,” I tell him, shifting when he puts his arm around my shoulders. “And this might sound extra cheesy and super wrong, but… you were the first boy I loved, Trevor, and that won’t ever change. You’re always going to be my big brother, and I’m always going to be a pain in your ass.”
