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Miss Turner sits forward, her forearms resting on the table. “What’s your secret, Connor?”
I don’t hold back. “Remember the first session I had with you?”
“About your mom abandoning you?”
I nod. “She came back into my life recently.”
“She did?” Miss Turner doesn’t even try to hide her shock. “When? How?”
I tell her everything, just like I told Dad. But I tell her more. I tell her that my mom’s name is Claudia, but in order to hide it from my dad, I’d saved her number in my phone under Wendy—because we met up at a Wendy’s when I was in Georgia for the All-American game. I tell her about my mom and grandmother flying over here to see me, and I tell her about how much I regret choosing to protect her over Ava. I admit that, initially, I had believed my mom’s threats about Ava getting in trouble if anyone would somehow find out that Ava knew she existed. It took me a while to realize that everything my mom ever said to me was a form of manipulation for her own personal gain. I say all this while looking down at my hands, too ashamed to face a woman who knows Ava more than I do, that saw her at her lowest and embraced her at her peak. “I thought I had time,” I say. “With Ava, I mean. I thought I had time to make up for my mistakes, but I didn’t, and now… now it’s too late.”
Miss Turner has stayed silent the entire time I speak, and she’s still living in that silence for seconds after I’m done. A steady blink later, as if coming back to reality, she heaves out a breath and leans back in her chair. She grabs a stress ball from her desk and squeezes once. Twice. Then she says, almost singing the words, “I can accept failure; everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”
My eyes narrow. “Michael Jordan said that.”
She nods. “Are you going to try, Connor?”
Baffled, I ask, “With my mom?”
“Fuck your mom.”
Oh. “With Ava?”
She nods.
I sigh, hopeless.
Miss Turner shakes her head. “Here’s another one for you then: Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.”
“Kevin Durant,” I mumble. “Are you saying I’m talentless?”
“No.”
I rear back. “I’m confused.”
I catch the stress ball she throws at my chest while she says, “I think that quote is about so much more than basketball.” She pauses a beat as if contemplating. “When you think about it, really think about it, talent is God-given; it’s destined. And Ava once told me that she thought you were put on this earth for her. That you moved next door, and you saved her, and that you were destined to be together…”
The past nine months must’ve ruined my brain cells because I can’t seem to comprehend what she’s saying, and she must realize this because she says, “Connor. Replace talent with destiny.”
I say, thinking aloud, “Hard work beats destiny when destiny fails to work hard.”
Miss Turner grins when she must see the light switch on in my mind. “I get it,” I tell her, a single spark of magic flickering in my chest. “Hey, do you just keep a stack of quotes on file?”
“Pretty much,” she replies. “This place does not pay me enough to come up with my own.”
I stand, pick up my bag. “Thanks for listening.”
“You’re welcome.”
I stop by the door and turn to her. “Look, I know that there’s that whole patient confidentiality thing, but if you do speak to Ava, I’d appreciate it if you told her all that… about my mom, I mean. I don’t want her going through the rest of her life thinking that she wasn’t enough.” I pause a breath. “I’ve spent the last fifteen years drowning in those thoughts, and I wouldn’t wish them upon anyone.”
Miss Turner nods, slowly, her eyes lowering. “What are you going to do now, Connor?”
My shoulders lift. “I’m going to start working on me, start giving my dad more reasons to be proud of me, and give my mom even more reason to regret what she did… and then I’m going to work on my end game.”
Miss Turner’s lips tug at the corners. “And what’s your end game?”
Ava.
