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Next to me, Austin smacks my arm, bringing me back to reality. I look up at the girl, someone I don’t recognize, and point to Austin. “Have you met my friend Austin?”
Austin waves, bares his teeth with a grin.
The girl draws out the word, “Hey,” and I go back to Ava.
“So…” I start.
“So,” she replies. She won’t look at me, at least not directly, and by the time I get the courage to say anything more, the professor walks into the room, welcoming the class with a booming, “Welcome to criminal psychology!”
Ava sits up in her chair, her focus at the front of the room.
I pull a notebook out of my bag and tear out a sheet of paper. I write:
Have dinner with me? Yes or no?
I slide it across to her desk while I pretend to be paying attention to the professor’s speech. From the corner of my eye, I see her reading my note, then grabbing a pen. Head down, she starts writing away. When she’s done, she moves it across the table to me.
There’s a circle around no, and an arrow pointing down to her writing: Let me cook dinner for you? Yes or no?
My grin is stupid. I circle yes, hand it back.
She writes: Tonight?
And I reply: I have practice until 7. After?
Sure. I’ll text you my address.
Does that mean you’ll have to unblock my number? I hand it to her, watch her grimace while she reads it.
She writes back: We have a lot to talk about.
We sure do, but now isn’t the time, and so I write, pulling out my false confidence from earlier: Question: Will dinner tonight end in a kiss? Yes or No?
She turns to me, her eyes meeting mine, so bright and so sure and so damn perfect. She doesn’t respond. Instead, she folds the note until it fits in the palm of her hand, then she shoves it down her top, I’m assuming into her bra, and mouths a single word that turns all my bad days into hope-filled nights: “Magic.”
FORTY-NINE
ava
I’m in trouble.
Deep, soul-shattering trouble.
Because nothing has changed, and everything is the same, and this time, I’m not talking about my mom. I’m talking about my feelings for Connor.
“It doesn’t make sense,” I tell Amy, my phone on speaker on the kitchen counter. “It’s like, I saw him, and everything just came flooding back.” I pull out some vegetables from my fridge and grab a knife from the drawer. “And why did I ask him to come over for dinner?”
Amy giggles.
“What the hell was I thinking?” I slice a pepper in half, then drop the knife, press my thumb to my temple. “Like, if we went out for dinner, at least we could leave separately and whenever we wanted. And going out means people, and those people—they would’ve stopped me from breaking down into tears or, I don’t know, humping his leg and licking his face, but here, in my apartment… Amy, there are no people in my apartment, and I’m going to make a complete fucking fool of myself. I can already tell.”
“Well, if you hump his leg and lick his face…” she says through a giggle.
“You’re not helping!” I whine, stomping my foot. “Maybe I should talk to Trevor.”
She all out laughs now. “Oh, yeah, he’s going to be much more helpful,” she sings, and I can hear her sarcasm from a thousand miles away.
“Amy!”
